I tend to think that things were much much better in the 1800's. I love reading books that were written prior to 1930 because they seem to have real substance compared to what I see written today. It is hard for me to imagine it being "that bad" in Spurgeon's day. I wonder how he would view what he would see today if he were here today. When I read this (following excerpt) at Lyn's blog I couldn't help but see this very thing still going on today, and of course it has always been there, we always have the problems of the flesh to deal with in our fallen state, and of course many in the church in each generation believes their generation is much worse than the one previous to the current one (my hubby keeps reminding me of the fact that I'm getting old this being one of the evidences for it). I cannot stand falseness, and it seems I used to have much more patience or rather I should say TOLERANCE for falseness and flattery and weakness being interpreted as being "loving". So what follows is for me a breath of fresh air break from the current atmosphere of caustic false fumes of false love:
From Psalm 78...
Verse 36 Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth.
Bad were they at their best. False on their knees, liars in their
prayers. Mouth worship must be very detestable to God when dissociated
from the heart: other kings love flattery, but the King of kings abhors
it. Since the sharpest afflictions only extort from carnal men a feigned
submission to God, there is proof positive that the heart is
desperately set on mischief, and that sin is ingrained in our very
nature. If you beat a tiger with many stripes you cannot turn him into a
sheep. The devil cannot be whipped out of human nature, though another
devil, namely, hypocrisy may be whipped into it. Piety produced by the
damps of sorrow and the heats of terror is of mushroom growth; it is
rapid in its springing up—"they enquired early after God"—but it is a
mere unsubstantial fungus of unabiding excitement. And they lied unto
him with their tongues. Their godly speech was cant, their praise mere
wind, their prayer a fraud. Their skin deep repentance was a film too
thin to conceal the deadly wound of sin. This teaches us to place small
reliance upon professions of repentance made by dying men, or upon such
even when the basis is evidently slavish fear, and nothing more. Any
thief will whine out repentance if he thinks the judge will thereby be
moved to let him go scot free.
Verse 37. For their heart was not right with him. There
was no depth in their repentance, it was not heart work. They were
fickle as a weathercock, every wind turned them, their mind was not
settled upon God. Neither were they stedfast in his covenant. Their
promises were no sooner made than broken, as if only made in mockery.
Good resolutions called at their hearts as men do at inns; they tarried
awhile, and then took their leave.
They were hot today for holiness, but
cold towards it tomorrow. Variable as the hues of the dolphin, they
changed from reverence to rebellion, from thankfulness to murmuring. One
day they gave their gold to build a tabernacle for Jehovah, and the
next they plucked off their earrings to make a golden calf. Surely the
heart is a chameleon. Proteus had not so many changes. As in the ague we
both burn and freeze, so do inconstant natures in their religion.
Verse 38. But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not.
Though they were full of flattery, he was full of mercy, and for this
cause he had pity on them. Not because of their pitiful and hypocritical
pretensions to penitence, but because of his own real compassion for
them he overlooked their provocations. Yea, many a time turned he his
anger away. When he had grown angry with them he withdrew his
displeasure. Even unto seventy times seven did he forgive their
offences.
He was slow, very slow, to anger. The sword was uplifted and
flashed in midair, but it was sheathed again, and the nation yet lived.
Though not mentioned in the text, we know from the history that a
mediator interposed, the man Moses stood in the gap; even so at this
hour the Lord Jesus pleads for sinners, and averts the divine wrath.
Many a barren tree is left standing because the dresser of the vineyard
cries, "let it alone this year also." And did not stir up all his wrath.
Had he done so they must have perished in a moment. When his wrath is
kindled but a little men are burned up as chaff; but were he to let
loose his indignation, the solid earth itself would melt, and hell would
engulf every rebel. Who knoweth the power of thine anger, O Lord? We
see the fulness of God's compassion, but we never see all his wrath.
Verse 39. For he remembered that they were but flesh.
They were forgetful of God, but he was mindful of them. He knew that
they were made of earthy, frail, corruptible material, and therefore he
dealt leniently with them. Though in this he saw no excuse for their
sin, yet he constrained it into a reason for mercy; the Lord is ever
ready to discover some plea or other upon which he may have compassion. A
wind that passeth away, and cometh not again. Man is but a breath, gone
never to return. Spirit and wind are in this alike, so far as our
humanity is concerned; they pass and cannot be recalled. What a nothing
is our life. How gracious on the Lord's part to make man's
insignificance an argument for staying his wrath.
Verse 40. How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness.
Times enough did they rebel: they were as constant in provocation as he
was in his patience.
In our own case, who can count his errors? In what
book could all our perverse rebellions be recorded? The wilderness was a
place of manifest dependence, where the tribes were helpless without
divine supplies,
yet they wounded the hand which fed them while it was
in the act of feeding them. Is there no likeness between us and them?
Does it bring no tears into our eyes, while as in a glass, we see our
own selves? And grieve him in the desert. Their provocations had an
effect; God was not insensible to them, he is said to have been grieved.
His holiness could not find pleasure in their sin, his justice in their
unjust treatment, or his truth in their falsehood. What must it be to
grieve the Lord of love! Yet we also have vexed the Holy Spirit, and he
would long ago have withdrawn himself from us, were it not that he is
God and not man. We are in the desert where we need our God, let us not
make it a wilderness of sin by grieving him.
C.H. Spurgeon, from the
Treasury of David
I edited to highlight all the good parts...I might as well have highlighted every word. Oh how I pray the Lord will pour out His spirit so people will stop all their bogus philosophizing and actually learn from the Lord Himself...and I'm not talking about people crediting their own vanity to the Holy Spirit, but actually begin speaking the truth of what the Bible actually says, and supporting what the Lord says to us with expounding on the truth, not all the silly "new" information we now have to suffer through.
