THANKSGIVING

The churches in Canada had their Thanksgiving day October 13 and at the end of this month we are again called, in the States, to come together to acknowledge the name of the Lord for all His benefits bestowed upon us as persons, as families, as communities, and especially as a nation.

Of course, if we rightly consider the many benefits which the Lord bestows upon us undeservedly, then every day of our life should be a thanksgiving day. Without exception, we are all creatures that have forfeited life and have merited death. It is fitting that each morning and evening we should humble ourselves in the dust before that High God with the humble acknowledgment of Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:22, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed because His compassions fail not.” And whereas it pleases the Lord to grant our nation a day of separation, may we together feel and realize something of His longsuffering and forbearance toward us.

Yea, my beloved, in our deep fall in Adam we have lost everything, the true knowledge of God and also attentiveness. To us is applicable what we read in Psalm 92:6, “A brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this.” How necessary it is then that God Himself gives us eyes to behold and observe His mercies. On our right and left hand, thousands and ten thousands have fallen and have been cut off from the land of the living, for whom it has become eternity. Compared with the great mass of people, it is only a “little flock” for which God Himself has prepared that Kingdom, Luke 12:32. It is only those people to whom may be applied what the poet of Psalter No. 113:11 sings;

“And as for me in uprightness
Thou dost uphold me well.
And settest me before Thy face
Forever more to dwell.”

To most of the people that are cut off by the angel of death, eternity signifies an eternal night; lost forever. O, what a terrible thought! A person would really lose his mind if we truly realized what it shall be to be forever separated from God and to be under His wrath and indignation, without any relief and without any hope of deliverance. When God removed His common grace and no longer answered Saul, then he fell upon his own sword, and Judas hanged himself, and both sank down into outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Yet it is necessary that here in this life it becomes eternity for us. It is said at times, “He exchanged time for eternity” and that really takes place at the death of every person, but that also takes place with God’s elect when God calls them effectually and irresistably from death to life. While living in our natural state, we are dead in trespasses and sins, but when God’s precious Spirit quickens us, then we begin to live. That spiritual life is the life of God. That is the original life which man lived in the state of rectitude, i.e. life in communion with God, to love God above all and his neighbor as himself; to delight himself in God, “His delight is in the law of God and in His law doth he meditate day and night,” (Psalm 1:2).

By His perfect obedience to the law of God upon which eternal life had been promised, Christ as the Spring and Fountain of life obtained that life. He entered into death and swallowed up death in victory. For that reason the apostle Paul declares in II Tim. 1:10 that by His resurrection from the dead He has brought life and immortality to light. In regeneration, that life is wrought by the Holy Spirit in the heart of all God’s favorites and that life desires the glorification of God with the acknowledging of His Thrice Holy Name. That life desires to end in God as the Giver of all good and perfect gifts, with everything that God gives and imparts both in nature and in grace and that comes to them through the channel of Jesus’ blood.

And now the summer season lies behind us again. Amid all the threatening judgments, God has still given seed for the sower and bread for the eater. God has still given fruitfulness, rain and sunshine. God has blessed the fields and granted us abundant fruit. The trees were laden with all manner of pleasant fruits. In general, our livestock was not affected by any special disease and in the social realm, industry was blessed so that to a degree there was prosperity in our land, and that notwithstanding all the Godprovoking sins and great dissatisfaction which is seen everywhere, and which manifests itself in all the strikes which are constantly called in one state more than in the other. Also with regards to the weather, but the end of it all is: Have you lacked anything? Nay, Lord; He loads us daily with His benefits.

It should surprise us that the whole world is not yet in flames, since everywhere there is unrest among the nations of the world, and there is no more peace to be found. Within our own land the disturbances increase, and from all sides troubles threaten. If God does not prevent it, our nation shall destroy itself. Besides that, the land is being visited with tornadoes and floods by which thousands were driven from their homes.

O earth, earth, earth, hear the Word of the Lord. Still the longsuffering of the Lord has not yet made an end. If the Lord had dealt with us according to the greatness and multitude of our sins and ingratitude, then we would no longer exist. The Lord could have justly destroyed and removed us like the mire in the streets but His compassions have not yet failed. His faithfulness was new every morning. God’s longsuffering and forbearance was truly great. When we look at self (and really we need not go farther) it should amaze us that the Lord has not yet made a full end with us.

God has not yet removed His Word from us; it may still be read and preached. The way of salvation is still being proclaimed to a wretched creature. The only Name given under heaven to salvation is still being proclaimed. But, alas, in general, and we must not forget ourselves, we think so little of what we have become in our deep fall in Adam. We are dead sinners, damned sinners, cursed sinners and lost sinners, rejectable and damnworthy in self, even to our last breath. From this tree no more fruit forever.

Would that we lost our name and that we became before God what we really are. Our greatest want and misery is that we are more converted than unconverted, more Pharisee than publican, more high than low, more proud than meek, more hardened than humbled, more dead than alive, more enemy than friend, more full than empty, more rich than poor.

Ah friends, where shall I end? When by the discovering light of the Holy Spirit we may learn to know the plagues of our heart, then nothing is left in us but to loathe and abhor ourselves. May the Lord humble us in truth and uprightness of heart. Mouth and lip work cannot please God.

“A broken spirit is to God
A pleasing sacrifice;
A broken and a contrite heart
Thou, Lord, wilt not despise.”
Psalter No. 144:4

The only true sacrifice that was well pleasing to God was brought by Christ upon Golgotha’s cross. We must learn experimentally and practically that which the Lord declares in Isaiah 40:16: “And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering.” We must find death in everything in order that we shall seek and find our cleansing and salvation outside of ourselves in Christ Jesus. The covenant of works must fall away in order that the covenant of grace shall take its place, and that we personally may be taken up and adopted therein. Then Christ shall be our Head, our Surety and Mediator. Yea, that Blessed One of the Father has been given for a Covenant of the people. When we can find in us nothing but sin, misery and guilt, then we shall find in Him all that is necessary for life and godliness. Those people can never again be happy with self. But what then? They are happy only in Christ, the unspeakable gift of God, II Cor. 9:15, and they give thanks unto the Father which hath made them meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, Col. 1:12.

Then comes a time that we begin to loathe ourselves, and that even our prayers become sin, and that we abhor all that pharisaical praying and thanking which is only a stench in God’s holy nostrils. Then such a soul that may know himself a little says, “Lord, do not let this thanksgiving day be a day of provocation because all I can bring is nothing but the blind, lame and sick,” Mal. 1:8. Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone that believes. But He is also the only sin offering, burnt offering, peace offering, thank offering, meat and praise offering. The Father testified of His Son, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased,” Matt. 3:17. That is the end of all our selfwilled religion. We fall away and our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, but in the Lord are righteousness and strength. And to Him shall men come, Isaiah 45. Then such a soul says, “Lord, bring me there”, and

“O let my supplicating cry,
By Thee my gracious Lord be heard.
Give wisdom and deliver me,
According to Thy faithful word.”
Psalter No. 342:1

Then those people are made perfect by one offering in and through Christ. The Kingdom of God cometh not with observatons. It does not consist in crying, “Lord, Lord” but in doing the will of God. “And this is the will of God that sent Me, that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on Him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him at the last day,” John 6:40. But those are things which cannot be picked up from the street, or given to ourselves. It is hid from the wise and the prudent but it is revealed unto babes. They are the secrets of the Lord and they are with them that fear Him and He will show them His covenant, Psalm 25:14. It is given by grace to God’s children. And now we read in God’s precious Word that the Jews murmured but the heathens accepted God’s Word.

May all these words which I wrote down with many defects and shortcomings make everyone of us really concerned. It is all foolishness to the natural man and to the religious man, and the self-righteous and self-satisfied man spits upon it,

despises and slanders that doctrine, but to God’s miserable, poor, stripped and robbed people, it is a breath of the soul. Those people find out that if it had to depend upon them, everything would be lost forever. But now it is all firm in God, the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Happy are those souls who by faith may cast the anchor of hope within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus. Heb. 6:19, 20. When David had to keep a day of thanksgiving then it was not, “Lord, I thank Thee for this and I thank Thee for that,” but only, “And what can David say more unto Thee? For Thou, Lord, knowest Thy servant.” That was all. And friends, all that superficial thanksgiving and praising with which our age is filled is absolutely of no value. Just cast it to the moles and the bats. It is all empty, so dead and cold. Those people thank God for something of which they never had any felt need and for that which they never received.

The disciples once asked the Lord Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” The farther God’s child advances on the way to heaven, the more he shall learn that he can neither pray nor thank as he should. The farther? Yea, I will just add this to it. It shall be a wonder, an unspeakable wonder, when we may be at the beginning.

Everything here is only in part, in principle. But the deeper we are discovered by that dear and precious Holy Spirit, the more we shall become disappointed with self. We are so impotent, so heartless, so listless, in need of nothing, so impressionless and wicked, that we must say, “Lord, it is a wonder that You do not leave me to myself.”

True conversion is a continual discovery, a deeper experience of our fall, but also of the establishing by Christ, the Second Head of the Covenant, in Whom all the fulness dwells but also the riches of wisdom and knowledge. For that reason the apostle calls to the oppressed Hebrews in Heb. 13:15, “By Him” (that is through that Christ) “therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His Name”. That is in principle the true thanksgiving day.

Christ is the praying and thanking High Priest. As the Surety of the Covenant, He had in the state of His humiliation a praying and thanking life. His greatest prayer day was in the garden of Gethsemane, and His greatest thanksgiving day in Isaiah 53:11, “He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied,” etc., etc. He still lives at the right hand of the Father to pray always for His people. “And unto Thee shall the vow be performed,” Psalm 65:1, still continues in heaven for all His favorites; and whereas we cannot give ourselves the essence thereof, that dear Spirit must give the practice thereof in our hearts. That is the desire, the longing, the expectation of all the people that have a longing for God. Those people have learned that God expects nothing of them and that they can give nothing to the Lord, but they desire that He may receive all honor, praise, thanks and adoration. He is worthy to be served, honored and feared for His own sake. May we, too, receive in our heart by the Holy Spirit what David had received when he declared in Psalm 116:12, “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me?”

O my beloved, all that superficial trumpeting of the nominal Christian and outward professor is so hollow and void. It does not touch the heart and there is not the least impression of the total unworthiness of the creature. With David it came from the heart and that man was perplexed amid all the benefits from God. His heart was broken under it.

God was not obliged and we were not worthy that the Lord loaded us daily with His benefits. Because of our original and actual sins, we cannot lay claim to any of God’s blessings, but in His condescending goodness the Lord opens His hands kindly and benevolently and satisfies the desire of every living thing.

God sent us many blows during the year that lies behind us. His afflicting and smiting hand is stretched out over the whole world. God has spoken in various ways to the inhabitants of the world, but alas, there is neither voice nor any that regardeth. The hardness and indifference increases more and more. The spirit of communism gains ground over the whole world and in a audacious manner penetrates the world, the homes and the church so that there is no respect for anything. Man is God, and the man of sin manifests itself ever more in the most abominable wickedness. Death is no longer feared and eternity no longer frightens man, and man no longer regards God and His commandments. No one seeks after God Who giveth psalms in the night. The disregard of God and the forsaking of God is observed everywhere; the iniquities multiply and the love of many waxes cold.

Judgment begins at the house of God and the visible church lies hopelessly divided and disunited, and who favors the dust thereof? If we only had eyes to see and a heart to observe the voice of God! Woe to them when I shall have departed from them. Should that not cause our hearts to tremble and fill our soul with sorrow? But it seems that the judgment has certainly been determined. The breach is still being spoken of and the defects of the church are widely discussed, but who mourns for the spoiling of the daughter of My people?

Who is really being placed in the breach? Who is given grace to submit to it? Who is able to get to the right place with it? If that should happen, then it would become manifest in the fruit, in the personal adoption of the guilt and of the assumption of the same. God would return again with mercies; but it is so that we go our own way and, be it said reverently, God goes His own way, too.

Where are the Samuels that call upon the Lord? Where are the Hezekiahs that spread out the letters before the face of the Lord and with torn clothes lie in sackcloth and ashes before the Lord? Where are the Nehemiahs who with true divine zeal testify against sin, cast forth the household stuff of Tobiah, and who had the gates of the city shut so that the sabbath should be sanctified?

It is true, God shall never depart entirely with His Spirit from His church, but it is as a longdeparted preacher mentioned in a Prayer day sermon, “although there is still a ministration of knowledge and gifts, but where is the ministration of the Spirit?” That ministration becomes manifest in the true conversion of the sinner in the severing from Adam, in the incorporation and restoration through the glorified justice in Christ Jesus. Where is the church a seasoning salt and an illuminating light?

The world is in the church whereas formerly the church was in the world. O, may it yet become a lively humble acknowledging, being broken and contrite by sin and guilt as in Lamentations 4:1, 2, “How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.”

“The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!” Even the realization is so far gone. Truly the conditions are very dark.

Outwardly the blessings were many this year, enough for everybody to thank the Lord for them, but where does it bring us? It is to be feared that we change the blessings into a curse, because we waste them upon vanities and upon our lusts and go awhoring from the Lord and evermore depart from the right ways of the Lord and devote the blessings to the gods of this world and of the times which provokes God to anger and kindles His wrath. Man makes himself ripe for the judgment, and as an ox for the day of slaughter. From all sides, God is being scorned, provoked and defied by the workers of iniquity until God can no longer tolerate it, and shall arise, and by His might put all His enemies to flight, and to cause those that love Him to inherit sustenance and He will fill their treasures.

Young and old, great and small, high and low, may our eyes be opened to the seriousness and the distress of the times. May there be a breaking with sin and a departing from iniquity, and a sincere returning to the Lord in our personal, family, ecclesiastical and national life.

May we yet learn to put our mouth in the dust so that we may learn to make supplication to our Judge. It could be the last Thanksgiving Day for you and for me here upon this earth. The Judge standeth before the door. God is getting weary with sin, but also loathes that religion where it is generally nothing else than a bewitching by the devil and a denying of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. Today a cry is heard to unite. We must seek unity. They say in this so-called highly enlightened age that our fathers were wrong and short-sighted. If Luther and Calvin were still alive, they would acknowledge their errors. We are, so they say, really not so far apart. It is only imaginary. We should cry out with the wife of Phinehas, “The glory is departed from Israel.” We are returning to paganism and the true doctrine of salvation is trampled upon and abandoned. It is only a warming at our own fire and a walking in the light of the sparks of our own fire which we have kindled (Isa. 50). O, may that Spirit of judgment and of burning be granted to us once more before we shall sink down into eternal destruction, since only the righteousness of Christ delivers from death and God is only glorified in His own work.

Everything of man’s work burns up but God’s work remains to all eternity. That work shall never be broken nor destroyed. Everything, yea everything, both out and inwardly is opposed to that. In cooperation and connection with the world and our own flesh and depravity, the devil leaves nothing untried. But He Who has begun that good work shall also finish it to the day of Jesus Christ. The last word is with the King of kings and Lord of lords.

And finally, we will not enlarge upon it further. Shall it ever become a true Thanksgiving Day to us, then a Prayer Day must precede it as the poet sang in Psalter No. 47:3:

“They cried and trusting in Thy Name
Were saved, and were not put to shame.”

The time is short. The coming of the Lord draws nigh. May we learn to hasten for our life’s sake. Though we should gain the whole world, it would not profit us if we had to lose our soul.

The world passes away and the lust thereof and no satisfaction is found in anything that the world affords. The older we become, the more we become aware that a round world cannot fill a triangular heart.

More and more we hear the cry, “It is not with me.” We must be drawn out of the present evil world by an almighty act of God. We must be apprehended, so that we apprehend. Our soul must be saved and delivered, and be bound in that bundle of life that lies all night between God’s breasts, covered with the righteousness and holiness of Jesus Christ. Then, yea, then shall it be well: then shall it be well for time and eternity. Then we shall live, while lying in the dust of true self-absement; and being united to Christ by faith we shall commence that eternal Thanksgiving Day.

May the Lord grant that to you and to me for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GOD’S PEOPLE BENT TO BACKSLIDING Part III

In Hosea 11:7 the Lord complains: “My people are bent to backsliding from Me.” Through past articles we have examined the backsliding of the church in general and the backsliding of God’s people in particular. Last time we followed a child of God into his ever-deepening “rut” of backsliding: (1) observing it begin in the inner closet of secret prayer, (2) seeing it spread to include all the means of grace, and (3) watching it intensify through a multiplying of inner corruptions. In this follow-up article I promised to show more of the “rut” of backsliding in the life of God’s people before we begin to look at the means, steps, and contents that God uses in healing this cancerous disease within His elect.

(4) the soul-dampening and soul-damaging spread of a whole host of inner corruptions “bends” God’s people to even further backsliding, yielding the unprofitable fruit of increased WORLDLINESS. Although God’s child shall never go back to live with the world, yet the world often comes back to live with them, secretly encroaching upon the soul through many disguises and unsuspected temptations. The world can steal its way back into the soul through a wide variety of masks, such as a proper regard for business or diligence in lawful callings, and will even quote scriptural commandments and examples, assuming the form of an angel of light. Inch by inch and stroke by stroke Satan seeks to paint the world gray and even white in the heart of the believer, covering up its former hated blackness.

When Lot chose the plains of Sodom and Gomorrah against the will of God, it was not long before his tent was “pitched towards Sodom”. In the end, he came into the city—not with his heart, but yet, with his feet he came to a place where he had no business being. So far it can come in the life of God’s backsliding people. Their soul is vexed in the world but they themselves still drink in too much of the world’s vain customs, fashions, pleasures, and modes of thinking.

Increased worldliness causes them to begin to live again as if this life were forever, and no longer as dying people in a dying world. It does not bother them now when they waste an hour. They are no longer watchful and ready, but rather, begin to yield step-by-step to a spirit of compromise. Gradually the love of worldly things begins to gain some ground, taking away proportionately the love of God from their soul, for no two desires can be more opposite and antagonistic than love to God and love to the world. Ultimately, one must kill the other. It is impossible that they both exist with equal force in the same soul; the one or the other must be supreme—they cannot occupy the same throne. Love to God will expel love to the world; love to the world will deaden the soul’s love to God. “No man can serve two masters”: it is impossible to love God and the world, to serve Him and mammon.

How can a child of God maintain his spirituality unimpaired, his love uninjured, his robe unspotted, his walk irreproachable, when he secretly admits the world into his heart? How can he exemplify the life of a pilgrim and a sojourner when he becomes more of a stranger in heaven than on earth? How can the former constant flame of love to God not be dampened when the “hem” of the world’s garments are more often touched than the “hem” of Christ’s garments?

People of God: is it not true? Does not the Goddishonoring sin of earthly-mindedness rob the throne of grace of its attraction, dampen zeal in spiritual duties, diminish delight in the communion of saints, and encourage unbelief, covetousness, worldly ambition, and human applause to become the rival passions of the soul?

Does not Satan’s reasoning become easier to fall prey to in direct proportion to worldly-mindedness? Do you not become more and more blind to his devices at such times? Do you not gradually begin to even reason like the world: “this sin is not so bad as that,” or “that child of God goes along with this so I should be free to do so, too”?

Satan unceasingly labors to bring God’s people from sin to sin and temptation to temptation, always striving to keep them blind to his work and to the entire road of backsliding. What are a few of his goals which he uses worldliness to obtain?

(a) Destruction of Divine power, as in the case of Samson, “I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him,” (Judges 16:20).

(b) Blindness toward spiritual decay, as in the case of Ephraim, “Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not; yea, grey hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth it not,” (Hos. 7:9).

(c) The wiping out of all distinctions between the godly and the worldly, contrary to Malachi 3:18, “Then shall ye discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not.”

In short, it can come so far that increased worldliness within God’s people will even be noticed by the world. The world can easier talk with them again. The world is glad that they are not so “overly religious” anymore. Sometimes even worldly people may be surprised what a backsliding child of God will now do, or, at least allow.

Is not the Lord right: “bent to backsliding”?

(5) Backsliding can come so far that even BROTHERLY LOVE (one of the “lowest” marks of grace, I. John 3:14) seems to all but disappear amongst God’s people. Then the communion of saints becomes an unnecessary doctrine, practically speaking. The spirit within becomes: “For the most part I can make do with myself on earth, leaving God in heaven, and His people in their own homes.” So even God’s people can become strangers one to another instead of fellow-pilgrims.

Then conflicts, troubles, disputes, and self-exaltations multiply. Of course, they convince themselves it is over the truth, but deep in their consciences they know it is more personality conflict and an “up-in-the-tree-with-Zacchaeus” spirit than it is over the Word of God. Otherwise, how could they get along so well for so many years before? Instead of covering one another’s faults, opportunities to talk against one another and defend their own name are gladly made use of.

People of God: must you not say with shame that there is more running up against one another, instead of humbly running with one another as John ran with Peter? Is there not more suspecting and despising the work of God in one another than esteeming the other better than one’s self?

Secret prayer, the means of grace, inner corruptions, worldliness, brotherly love—must we go yet further, people of God? Is it not enough to convince us: “I am the man”? Oh, to receive grace to put our hand in our own bosom and pull it out as the guilty one: “Lord, it is I. I am bent to backsliding from Thee.”

“Bent to backsliding”: what are the awful fruits of such gross sinfulness? Allow me to mention just three.

(a) THE INJURING OF GOD’S THRICE-HOLY AND WORTHY NAME. Backsliding seeks to fight against the holy and worthy Name of the Father—that Father Who has turned a deaf ear to the cries of His Son in Gethesemane, even withdrawing Himself from His well-beloved One on Golgotha, in order that His backsliding people never backslide themselves into hell. Oh, to be made deeply conscious that backsliding opposes the holy and worthy Name of the Son—that Son Who bore the full weight of all the sins of His people to the satisfaction of Divine justice, the vindication of Divine truth, the revelation of Divine love, the magnification of Divine law, and the glorification of Divine attributes. How it should wound God’s people daily: “I am a backslider against Him Who gave His whole self, blood-drop by blood-drop, for six long hours while the mockers stood before Him, saying, ‘Come down if Thou be the Christ’, and above all, while the Father withdrew Himself from His Only-begotten.” Even more. We backslide also against the holy and worthy Name of the ever-working, ever blessed Spirit—always trying to resist his influences, to trample underfoot His labors, to withstand His inward groanings, to fight against His convicting, His drawing, His teaching, His cleansing, His leading, and even His comforting, preserving, and confirming work. Is there a backsliding reader who must cry out: “How, how is it possible that I am so thoroughly bent to backsliding against such a holy and worthy Triune God”?

(b) THE SUFFERING OF GOD’S PEOPLE THEMSELVES is a most bitter fruit of their own backsliding. Backsliding causes it to become within more dead than alive, more enmity than love, more rebellious than reconciled, more false peace than real peace, more hypocrisy than sincerity, more opinions than reality, more doctrine than truth, more Pharisee than publican, more theology than the God of theology, more Christianity than Christ, more earth than hell or heaven, more excusing than repenting, more prayerless prayers than prayerful praying, more tongue than heart, more building up than cutting off, more proud than meek, more rich than poor, more full than empty, more converted than unconverted, more crown than cross, and more believers in self than believers in God. There is no end to it.

(c) THE DECAY OF THE ENTIRE CHURCH flows out of the backsliding of God’s people. When God’s people are no longer examples in the midst of the Lord’s congregation and are even divided within their own small circles, then backsliding has come so far that “practical atheism” results. Then the Lord’s serious warning falls on deaf ears: “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent,” (Rev. 2:4–5).

What a warning for the church of Ephesus! God’s people were destroying the congregation. The candlestick was in danger of being removed from that congregation forever on account of the backsliding of God’s people.

It is not only Ephesus. It is us, too. The backsliding of the church, and of God’s people within the church, is cutting deep furrows into the welfare of the congregations.

Do you know what the greatest problem is? I do not become guilty under it. We may complain about the dark times, the sad condition of the church and of God’s people, but what does the Lord say of such complaints? They are nothing more than dead complaints in His eyes if we do not become the cause of the deadness and darkness: “I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turned to his course as the horse rusheth into the battle,” (Jer. 8:6).

Where are the Jeremiahs in our congregations that come into guilt with it—the Jeremiahs that can say with heart and soul: “For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I AM BLACK; astonishment hath taken hold on me,” (Jer. 8:21)?

Dear reader, can you say with God’s people that your backsliding has cut bitter furrows in your life—tear-furrows and sorrow-furrows in the depths

of your soul, cutting your soul into a thousand pieces before the Lord, causing you to cry out, “O God, what a fool, what a backsliding wretch I am. How is it possible that I can never rise above that awful word, ‘bent to backsliding’, even when I consider all Thy goodness, callings, and warnings?”

“Oh, that I could take my heart and cast it out far from me, abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. ‘Oh that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain (slain within and without) of the daughter of my people!’ “ (Jer. 9:1).

When that may become reality with a true, godly sorrow not to be repented of, the first step towards the healing of backsliding has already begun, but that healing we hope to consider next time, the Lord willing.

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