How Saints May Help the devil # 1

How Saints May Help the devil # 1

"That thou mayest bear thine own shame, and mayest be confounded in all that thou hast done, in that thou art a comfort unto them" (Ezekiel 16:54).

It is not a comfortable state to be at enmity with God, and the sinner knows this. Although he perseveres in his rebellion against the Most High, and turns not at the rebuke of the Almighty, but still goeth on in his iniquity, desperately seeking his own destruction, yet is he aware in his own conscience that he is not in a secure position. Hence it is that all wicked men are constantly on the look out for excuses. They find these either in pretended resolutions to reform at some future period, or else in the declaration that reformation is out of their power, and that, acting according to their own nature, they must continue to go on in their iniquities. When a man is willing to find an excuse for being God's enemy he need never be at a loss. He who hath to find a fact may find some difficulty; but he who would forge a lie may sit at his own fireside and do it. Now, the excuses of sinners are all of them false; they are refuges of lies; and therefore we need not wonder that they are exceedingly numerous, and very easy to come at.

One way in which sinners frequently excuse themselves is by endeavoring to get some apology for their own iniquities from the inconsistencies of God's people. This is the reason why there is much slander in the world. A true Christian is a rebuke to the sinner, wherever he goes he is a living protest against the evil of sin. Hence it is that the worldling makes a dead set upon a pious man. His language in his heart is, "He accuses me to my face; I cannot bear the sight of his holy character; it makes the blackness of my own life appear the more terrible, when I see the whiteness of his innocence contrasting with it." And then the worldling opens all his eyes, and labors to find a fault with the virtuous. If, however, he fails to do so, he will next try to invent a fault; he will slander the man; and if even there he fails, and the man is like Job, "perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil;" then the sinner will, like the devil of old, begin to impute some wrong motive to the Christian's innocency. "Doth Job serve God for nought?" said the devil. He could find no fault with Job whatever, his character was untainted and unblemished; but, says he, "he keeps to his religion for what he gets by it." I reckon it to be a glorious accusation when we are falsely charged with being religious for the sake of gain. It shows that our enemies have no other charge that they can bring against us. They have ransacked all the flies of their calumny, and they can find nothing tangible, and this is the last they can bring - an imputation upon the motive of the man who has no other motive in all the world than to glorify his God and win sinners from destruction. In this, then, let us glory. If sinners slander us, it is because we make them uneasy. They see that our lives are a protest against them; and what can they do? They must somehow or other answer the bill which we have filed against them in Heaven's Chancery, and they do it by issuing a rejoinder against us, and bringing us in as defendants in the case. We glory in this, that we are defendants who can prove our innocence, and we are not ashamed to stand before God to have our motives tried. There is much I say to cheer us in the fact of such a libel. We know the work is done. We are sure our shots have told on their armor, when they are driven to return on us their calumnies and the venom of their wrath. Now we know that they feel the might of our arm, now we know that we are not like them, mere drivellings and dwarfs. They have felt our might, and against it they kick, they foam, they forth their wrath. In this, I say, we glory. We have smitten them hard, or else they would not rise against us in this fashion.

Alas! Alas! however, sinners have not always to use calumny and lies. It is too true that the church has given a real bona fide cause to the wicked for excusing themselves in their sin: the inconsistencies of professors, the want of heart in piety, the absence of devout earnestness, have given sad grounds to the ungodly to justify themselves in their sin. It is upon this melancholy subject that I am about to enter this morning, and may God grant unto all His people who shall feel convicted in their consciences, the spirit of mourning and contrition, that they vex themselves before God, and confess this great iniquity that they have done, namely, that they have comforted sinners in their sin by  their own inconsistency, and have justified the wicked in their rebellion by their own rebellings and revoltings.

This morning I shall deal thus with the subject. First, I shall point out the fact - the different acts of Christians which have helped to comfort sinners in their sin; and then, secondly, I shall observe the consequences of this evil - how much the world at large has been injured by the deeds of professed followers of Christ; and then I shall come with a solemn warning bringing out the great battering ram, to dash against these refuges of lies and moreover crying with a loud voice to those who are the faithful servants of Christ, to withdraw their hands, and no longer to assist in keeping up the Jericho in which the wicked have entrenched themselves.

~Charles H. Spurgeon~

(continued with # 2)