Return ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings....Jer. iii. 22. BACKSLIDING is a species of apostacy from the faith; apostacy is the high road to destruction: total apostacy will certainly end in eternal damnation; for there can neither be repentance or hope, for such a soul. The Son of God is the only sacrifice for sin; this be once professed to believe: but now he tramples on his precious blood, wilfully despises and rejects our Saviour; so that now he has only "a certain fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour every adversary of Christ.”......Heb. x. 26, Most stricking is the picture of such drawn by Mr. Bunyan, in his Pilgrim's Progress, as a man in an iron cage who thus confesses; "I was once a fair and flourishing professor, both in mine own eyes and the eyes of others; I was as I thought, fair for the celestial city, and had even joy at the thoughts that I should get thither ; but I left off to watch and be sober; laid the reigns upon the neck of my lusts; I sinned against the light of the word and the goodness of my God; I grieved the Spirit and he is gone; I tempted the. devil and he is come to me; I provoked God to anger and he has left me; I have so hardened my heart that I cannot repent. O, eternity! eternity! How shall I grapple with the misery I must meet with in eternity!" Lord enable me to take warning by others, and obey thy gracious words, which prevent thy childrens total apostacy from thee. Observe, 1st. The conduct of the Lord to such; he arraigns them in the former verses. 1st. Of treacherously departing from him, like a wife from her husband: O, what perfidious faithless conduct! For, 2d. It brings on perverting our way before God, and 3d. This ends in forgetting the Lord our God; this is the cause of every evil. If the objects of time and sense drive the memory of the Lord from our minds, though but an hour, how foolish do we act! Our hearts imperceptibly backslide from the sense of his presence: but O, the love of our lord! He reminds us, 1st. Though backsliden, yet he owns us as CHILDREN. O Father thy love ever lives, though folly is in our ways. 2d. He calls in love, RETURN: may love cause us to take shame, fall down in sorrow and cry for mercy. For, 3d. He promises, "I will heal your backslidings:" I will freely and fully pardon them ALL,-though ever so numerous, heinous or aggravating, as though they had never been committed. Backsliding sinner! believe and rejoice; see the effects of this love in the next meditation: O Lord, my God, lighten mine eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death....Psalm xiii. 3. I've nought to plead but thy free grace, Grant me to see thy smiling face, Behold we come unto thee, for thou art the Lord our God.... Jer. iii. 22. PETER was an awful backslider; his crimes deserved hell; so do yours and mine: both he and we, should be sent there, if love did not reign in heaven, and grace abound to sinners on earth: one look of love from Christ broke Peter's heart, made him weep bit. terly, and return to a crucified Saviour earnestly. A bone broken and set, is stronger than it was before: this I am sure of, a heart broke by forgiving love, grows stronger in love. Having much forgiven, we love much; I have often thought fresh love added speed to Peter's feet, when he run to the sepulchre to see his dear, his crucified Lord....John xx. 4. See the happy effects of loving speeches and gracious words from a loving Lord. We saw the backsliding children arraigned, and their conduct condemned in our last medita tion? What was the sentence passed on them? Was it, go ye cursed vile wretches, ye have gone from me in your ways, now I will be glorified in your damnation!" No: break hard heart; melt O frozen soul; bow stubborn knee, and be as sinews of a new born babe; for love everlasting; immutable love lives; sovereign unmerited grace proclaims RETURN YE BACKSLIDING CHILDREN, (children still! O matchless grace!) AND I WILL HEAL YOUR BACK What say gracious hearts to this? Do they reply! "O this is fine doctrine!" Come let us continue to go on, to enjoy the world and sin, and delight ourselves in our happy distance from God. O no: this is the language of hell-born, free-will pride; if left to that so they would act; but a spark of free grace within us, catches fire from gracious words without and therefore it is, BEHOLD, see the effects of the Lord's rich grace and precious love; like fire it melts down our hard hearts, makes us lament our base conduct: affects us with the deepest sense of sin: inspires our souls with a hope of mercy and assurance of pardon, and therefore, "we come unto thee." Here we see the actings of a holy faith in the heart it works by love by the loving declarations of a gracious Father, and dear redeemer: it works love in the heart, and it works by love in returning to God; and here is the joyful claim of faith; "FOR, O precious cause! FOR thou art the Lord our God: was it not so? thou couldst never have borne with our vile conduct: never had a thought of mercy, nor a look of love towards us. O, let covenant love and faithfulness ever bind our hearts to thee, that we may never more depart from thee; pervert our way before thee, or ever forget thee, O Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit, our one God in Jesus. When we the sacred truth believe, Our souls to him return and live, Ungodly men who turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. ....Jude 4. FROM what the bee extracts honey, venemous insects will poison. The word of God, which is food to gracious hearts, is the sport and contempt of profane wits. An ungodly heart will convert the most wholesome truths of God's grace, into the most poisonous effects: there ever were such men: there are such at this day, who hold forth some of the most precious truths concerning the Lord Jesus, and the grace of God abounding to sinners in him, and yet with these maintain the most damnable heresies. They are the fools who make a mock at sin.".....Prov. xiv. 9. Personal holiness, they hold in the greatest derision: they declare their sin as Sodom; say unto the wicked it shall be well with him: tush, the Lord careth not about our walk and life: if we have lusts better gratify them than burn with them; and they swallow up every unscriptural error, in that damnable heresy, all men shall be saved at the last: one scarcely knows which to wonder at most, why such persons should preach at all, or why any who name the name of Christ can hear them: but scripture must be fulfilled; "There shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts."....2 Pet. iii. 3. I never knew but one instance of a person who had joined himself to these vile Antinomians, that escaped from their soul destroying doctrines. My soul rejoiced exceedingly, for a visit from this aged disciple of Jesus, who through his precious grace is brought back into the ways of truth and holiness. When the preacher asked him why he had left him? he honestly answerd, "Were I to hear you now, I should be almost ready to fill my pockets with stones and stone you; for you had well nigh sent me to hell, with a lie in my right hand." O brethren, as you love the holy Jesus, as you value your precious souls, as you prize communion with God, peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost, beware of such ungodly men; keep at the greatest distance from them; maintain the utmost abhorrence of their hellish notions: why, O why did the blessed Spirit convince us of sin, and lead us to Christ for salvation; but that we should love God, delight in God, enjoy fellowship with God, have no more to do with the unfruitful works of darkness; but walk before him in righteousness and true holiness all the days of our life. Be assured, if your faith does not influence you to this, it is not the faith of the holy gospel, not a faith in a holy Jesus, it does not work by the love of him, but is the faith of the ungodly, whose end is destruction.... Phil. iii. 19. Faith without love's an empty dream, Grant me, O Lord, renewing grace, Let God be true, but every man a liar....Rom. iii. 4. I HAVE read of one who was dumb; but on seeing a violent attempt to murder his father, cried out with great vehemence, my father, when his heavenly Father's truth and faithfulness are attacked, Paul could not be mute; fired with a holy emotion of spirit, he cries out, "let God be true. Vain arrogant man, will you dare oppose your carnal reasonings, and fallacious arguments, against the covenant purposes, faithful word, and precious promises of the Lord? Every such man, be he ever so noble, mighty, wise and learned, is a liar: Paul's heart was too warm with zeal for the glory of his God, to pay any soft compliment to those who act under the influence of the father of lies. The keen satire of Mr. POPE is admirably adapted to such, Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, Christian, lay aside thy carnal reason; take up thy Lord's word: exercise thy faith upon it: thou art called to be valiant for the truths of a faithful, covenant-making, and covenant-keeping God. Timid silence is criminal, when your Father's truth is arraigned, and his glory at stake. Know thou hast much within thee, and many around thee, in combination to oppose the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh, to bring salvation to miserable sinners, and God's faithfulness engaged to make this effectual, by his sovereign grace, in spite of all the unfaithfulness of man: Mr. Carnalreason says, how can these things be? Mr. high-thoughts exalts himself against them; Mr. free-will refuses to submit to them; Mr. unbelief pronounces them impossible to be true; Mr. selflove declares against subjection to them; Mr. human-pride cries away with them, totally reject them; And Mr. self-righteousness cries them down as leading to licentiousness. These are all professed judges of divinity, but in reality are lying adversaries against your Lord's truth and faithfulness, and your peace, comfort and holiness: abide by what is written: oppose God's truth, to all their lying suggestions: be simple of heart. Let simple faith prevail. Feed by faith upon God's truth, and you shall prosper, while others cavil against it and grow lean. Hold fast," the hope of eternal life which God who cannot lie, promised (to Christ Jesus as our covenant head, and that we should enjoy it in him) before the world began."....Tit. i. 2. Thy sacred truth shall live and reign, The truth of Jesus is my joy, O God, within my heart, In spite of boasting, lying man, The source of all my peace: In this I'll walk, though foes annoy 'Till thou my soul release. M. By faith Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king....Heb. xi. 27. HERE we see faith opposed by fear, and the victory of faith over the dread of wrath. Consider his work and his danger, his faith and his safety. 1st. Moses was engaged in a great work; he was to go to Pharoah, and say from the Lord, "Israel is my son, even my first born, let him go that he may serve me."....Exod. iv. 22, 23. Now might not the king very naturally look upon Moses as a very dangerous, pestilent, hot-headed enthusiast, who under a pretence of religion wanted to raise a rebellion in his kingdom; he had no fear that the king might put him to death in his wrath; "for the wrath of a king, is as the roaring of a lion."....Prov. xix. 12. Most terribly fierce: but, 2d. Consider his FAITH; this set him above fear. He bids defiance to wrath. Forsake Egypt he must; flee from the king he was determined; for he had the command of his God for it. Faith is the parent of all holy obedience; but was his faith nothing more than a strong impulse of his mind, something within him which suggested to him that he must forsake Egypt? No: this he might have had, and obeyed it too to his own destruction; but he had the Lord's word, for the ground of his faith: mind this. "Thus saith the Lord, I will send thee unto Pharoah, that thou mayest bring my people out of Egypt:" there is the word of his faith. 3d. Consider his safety. Pharoah could not hurt the hair of his head: why not? Because the Lord added, "certainly I will be with thee."....Exod. iii. 12. There is the warrant for his safety: thus he believed God, and feared not the wrath of the king. See here the nature and actings of a true and lively faith. 1st. It hath the word of the Lord for its object. There may be strong impressions of mind, warm suggestions of fancy, where there is not, thus saith the Lord. Soul, these will not carry thee out of the Egypt of nature, to the promised land; they will soon forsake thee: then, thou wilt not only fear the wrath of a king, but the shaking of a leaf. 2d. Faith in the Lord's word delivers the soul from fear of the Lord's enemies; according to the strength of our faith, we are set above fears of wrath; we cannot have stronger cause for faith than the Lord's word, nor a better object for our faith than the Son of God. O then, when fear of wrath prevails, look unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, with Lord increase my faith.... Luke xvii. 5. "Where is your faith?" our Saviour Thou author of our faith, increase N M. |