There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
To sanctify our nature, to plant in us all holy principles and dispositions, and to increase every grace in us.
Now may the God of peace himself sanctify me completely, and may my whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of my Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls me is faithful; he will surely do it. 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24(ESV)
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit away from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Psalm 51:10-12(ESV)
Write your law on my heart and put it within me, Jeremiah 31:33(ESV) that I may be a letter from Christ, written by the Spirit of the living God, not on a tablet of stone but on a tablet of human heart; 2 Corinthians 3:3(ESV) that the law of my God being in my heart, none of my steps may slip; Psalm 37:31(ESV) and that I may delight to do your will, O God; Psalm 40:8(ESV) may delight in the law of God in my inner being. Romans 7:22(ESV)
O that I may become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which I desire to be committed, as into a mold, Romans 6:17(ESV) that my whole soul may be leavened by it; Matthew 13:33(ESV) and that I may not be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewal of my mind; Romans 12:2(ESV) may not be conformed to the passions of my former ignorance, but as an obedient child, may be holy in all my conduct, as he who called me is holy. 1 Peter 1:14-15(ESV)
Nehemiah 11:1-12:26 In this week’s study, we look at the importance of what it means to be a Christian in our neighborhoods, particularly in the great urban centers of the world.
Theme
Impacting Our Cities
4. A religious base. The fourth characteristic of Nehemiah’s effort to revitalize Jerusalem was that he had a religious base. The chapter begins with an account of how one in ten Jewish lay persons was chosen to relocate, but little is said about them. The bulk of the chapter (and the next chapter) detail the families of priests, Levites and other religious leaders who settled in the city. The emphasis is there.
Why? Obviously because Nehemiah knew, as we also should know, that a community holds together only by some higher allegiance or priority and that the only truly adequate base for real brotherhood or community among people is devotion to God. Without this the people soon become little more than competing or warring factions. Barber puts it well:
A strong religious commitment is essential if a democratic form of administration is to succeed. Without adequate spiritual values it is hard, if not impossible, to retain the idea of obligation and responsibility. Individualism cannot long be held in check by the concept of a calling embodying good works and self-restraint. When this control is weakened, legislation takes the place of spiritual convictions and becomes the foundation of the community. And with the increase in legislation there is a corresponding increase in bureaucracy with a minimizing of efficiency and a diminution of personal worth.1
Jerusalem had a religious base. Therefore, the cohesion and efficiency of the people as well as a strong sense of personal worth were high.
But enough of Nehemiah’s plan. I said at the beginning that we also must populate our cities Christianly. How shall we do this? What should be our plan? I suggest that what we need to establish in our cities are models of Christian community. This goal should have the following essential elements.
1. We must live in the cities. Not every Christian needs to live in our cities, but far more should live in them than do. How many? It is hard to say. In Nehemiah’s day, in which the economy was largely agricultural, the figure was one in ten, plus others who lived in the cities round about. In America in our day, where the economy is industrial and service based rather than agricultural, fifty percent of the general population live in cities. That suggests that at least fifty percent of the Christian population should also. But since this percentage is going up—estimates of 90 percent by the year 2000, only a decade away—and since we want to be ahead of the times rather than lagging behind them, we should probably lead the way with an even higher percentage of evangelicals relocating to the urban areas.
Our goal should be a Christian presence in each block of each major city. My model for this is that of E. V. Hill, pastor of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church of Los Angeles. Hill is one of the great urban leaders of our time. Before he entered the Christian ministry he lived in Texas where he was a ward leader for the Democratic party. His assignment was to get out the vote for Democratic candidates, and his chief strategy for doing this was to have a block captain for each block of his ward. On election days the block captains were to contact each resident of their blocks to make sure they voted. When Hill came to Los Angeles he asked himself why he should not do that for the kingdom of God, if he had done it for the Democrats. Why not have a Christian block captain for every block of Los Angeles?
It is not so absurd as you might think. How many blocks do you suppose are in the city of Los Angeles? The answer is about 9000. In E. V. Hill’s area of the city, south central Los Angeles, the number is 3100. That is what Pastor Hill’s church tackled. By the time I first heard him tell about this goal the church had already established a Christian presence in 1900 blocks of their area.
The same magnitude of statistics should prevail for the residential areas of most other U.S. cities.
Would such an effort be felt? It would.
1Cyril J. Barber, Nehemiah and the Dynamics of Effective Leadership (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1976), 155.
Study Questions
Why was a religious base necessary to revitalize Jerusalem?
What happens in a democracy if it does not rest on a biblical foundation?
Application
Reflection: How do we see our own democracy weakened by our nation’s rejection of biblical principles?
For Further Study: Download for free and listen to James Boice’s message, “A Christian World-View.” (Discount will be applied at checkout.)
For Further Study: The book of Nehemiah has a great deal to teach us about the character of God and the Christian life. James Boice’s study is marked by careful attention to the text, as well as thoughtful and relevant application. Order your paperback copy of Nehemiah, and receive 30% off the regular price.
Rather than mentally formulating your argument so you can pounce whenever they take a breath, let’s look at 10 ways to peacefully talk to an atheist about Christianity.
1. Ask God to send them to you.
1. Ask God to send them to you.
SLIDE 1 OF 10
If God calls us to be His ambassadors, then we can know He will also help us in our calling. Rather than marching ahead of Christ to do battle with an unsuspecting atheist, spend time seeking God through Bible study and prayer, and then ask Him to send them to you.
The more time you spend with Jesus, the more His heart and compassion for the lost will become your heart. John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” This should be the example we follow as proclaimers of Truth.
When your mind is washed with the water of the Word, you can have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). Think of it! That means instead of your own perception of how God would have you approach an atheist, you can become so in tune with God that His heart becomes your heart for those blinded by Satan’s schemes.
The other day a woman bagging my groceries shared with me details of her life. As she spoke, I avoided engaging in a conversation. I was in a hurry and so taking time to interact would be inconvenient. However, as she talked, God convicted me of my selfishness. Soon I was listening intently to the details of her less-than-fulfilling life.
When your neighbor tells you they’re an atheist, rather than putting up your dukes for a theological debate, realize how God has shown everyone He exists (see Romans 1). Your kindness and interest in him as a person might open the door for you to kindly share biblically-founded reasons to believe in God.
People need to feel valued for who they are. If they feel like you’re just some crazy Christian waiting to pounce on them to recruit them to your religion, or to prove wrong their atheistic beliefs, they’re less likely to hear anything you have to say.
You’d be surprised how many people feel lonely, invisible, and without value. Having an inkling of hope that there’s a God who created, knows, and cares for them might seem far-fetched. But through you, God can cause them to long to believe it is true––even if their response may seem otherwise.
Is their marriage in trouble, their kid gone sideways, or are they facing financial or health issues? God has ways of using life’s challenges to bring people to the end of themselves to ponder the purpose of life. When this happens they might become interested in hearing the gospel.
My husband says I’m a “fixer.” That means whenever I hear someone’s in trouble, I immediately go into mode: how can I help you fix this? As a pastor Steve often comes to me saying, “I’m gonna share something with you, but I’m not asking you to fix it. I just want you to be praying.”
All to say, when an atheist tells you about their struggle or lack of fulfillment in life, rather than jumping to rescue them, step back and realize God might have caused it to bring them to the end of themselves to turn to Christ. This doesn’t mean you don’t pray with them, bring them a meal, and walk with them through the trial, but rather your involvement is to lovingly show them Christ is the answer to all of life’s problems.
Remember God is the one who calls us to be His ambassadors. And to what God calls us, He promises to equip us.
James 1:5 encourages anyone who lacks wisdom to ask God and He will abundantly supply it. So the next time you find yourself in a conversation with an atheist, ask God for wisdom to know how He would have you share your faith.
The example in Revelation 12:11 shows how Christ’s followers had, “overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.” Never underestimate the power of a changed life. It simply cannot be refuted.
If you came to Jesus at a young age, you still have a powerful testimony. You don’t need a “look how bad I was before Jesus” story. Rather, take time to ponder who you’d be without Christ. Who are you on your worst day? What is your sinful bent when you’re not walking in obedience to God?
Because of Christ in you, the hope of glory, you’re not enslaved to your sinful tendencies. This is an incredibly powerful testimony and offers hope to anyone who God is drawing to salvation. Sadly, observing the powerful testimony of a changed life may one day be the reason many atheists will be without excuse on judgment day.
The Word of God is powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). So you must memorize it. You must!
When talking with an atheist, you’d be surprised how much Scripture the Holy Spirit will bring to mind and speak through you if you’ve done your part in memorizing it. It is God’s Word––not your opinion––that cuts to the heart of one He is drawing to repentance.
As a side note, if you’re a parent, take extra care to help your children memorize Scripture. When they have God’s Word hidden in their hearts, the Spirit can use it to guide, convict, and persuade them when they might be influenced by an atheist friend or a professor (see Psalm 119:11-16).
It’s easy for Christians trying to persuade an atheist to enter into “debate mode”. And if you’re looking for an argument, most atheists are happy to oblige. If they can get you riled up, your anger only helps to confirm in their minds that your belief makes you no different than them.
For many atheists, if they can get a Christian to engage in a heated argument, they feel justified if they feel they have won the argument. In a sense they’re arguing with you to convince themselves.
Keep your voice calm. Speaking in a respectful, kind, and loving manner will make a far greater impact than raising your voice or becoming combative.
Remember your goal is not to seal the deal. If God has brought across your path one whom He is drawing to Christ, it’s not up to you to persuade them to surrender––that’s the Spirit’s work.
Realize that sometimes you’re planting a seed. Other times you’re watering what someone else planted. And once in a wonderful while, God lets you harvest a soul He has been wooing to repentance.
Jesus’ instructions to His disciples hold the same weight to us: “Let your light shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). This amounts to more than just being a good person who does good things.
When your actions stem from the power of the Spirit, your works shine brightly Christ’s character. Then others will be either offended by Jesus (which the Bible warns will happen), or it’ll be the light that draws non-believers to learn how knowing God saves us and equips His followers to live with purpose and passion.
And when we are grounded in a deep love for God, our loving actions toward each other and the world will so reflect Christ’s selfless love, that it will be difficult to ignore. Remember, you’re not trying to convince atheists they’re wrong. Your goal is to help them see they are treasured so much by their Creator that He sent His only Son to rescue them from the clutches of sin’s curse, and live a life filled with purpose and passion in relationship with Christ.*
*If you would like to know more about God’s love for you and His desire to have a relationship with you, or you know someone who needs to hear, please watch/share this video of Rhonda Stoppe explaining how you can know God.
In this popular blast from the past, J. Warner discusses the essential nature of the Church. What does the Bible teach about the nature of Church? Are there certain non-negotiable essentials that all of us, as Christians, must believe about the Church in order to call ourselves Christians? Are there any over-arching principles that God has given us to help us live as a community of God? In this oft-requested podcast, J. Warner discusses the essential doctrinal truths related to the “Communion of Saints”. You can also subscribe to the Cold-Case Christianity Weekly Podcast on iTunes, or add the podcast from our RSS Feed.
If a person knows about God and knows about absolute truth, how does he come to accept it? How can I help that person care about that truth, not just know about it?
That is a good question. I’m so glad God brought this question my way because I’ve been struggling through this myself lately too. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll share with you what He’s been teaching me.
I struggle with this question often because I’m a teacher at heart. I love to learn, assimilate, process, summarize, and pass it on to others. God has just built me to do that very thing. Granted, I’m not the best in the world at it, but I do the best I can for the glory of God. What frustrates me the most is when I do my job in helping someone understand something but then they don’t care about it. I feel like I’ve done all I can, and so it leaves me at a loss. I’m not sure if this is exactly the situation you’re facing, but it sounds similar.
There are three things I’ve been learning about this:
Teaching facts by themselves is not enough. I understand this is trite, but I’ll say it anyway: people want to know how much you care before they care how much you know. This doesn’t mean we have to spend five years developing a relationship with a person first before we share the truth with them. This can simply play out in the attitude we take in our teaching/sharing. Are we truly doing it for their benefit or for ours? How can we share in a way that makes it crystal clear we’re doing it because we love them?
The church is diverse for a reason. If you are into teaching like me, then you need to make sure you are functioning in a healthy, well-balanced church where all the spiritual gifts are allowed to be exercised. God wired me to teach, and forever that is who I’ll be. I can work on the relational side until I’m blue in the face, but that will never be my strength. This isn’t to say I can’t improve and get better at it, but teaching information is just what I do best. The reason God has gifted us differently is so that we would learn how to depend on each other. I’m better at the informational side of ministry, but others are better at the relational side. If you are going witnessing, it may be wise to go in pairs so that there is one of each type! Learn from those that are relationally oriented around you at your church. Allow them and encourage them to exercise their gifts – exhortation, service, helping, mercy, etc. The church really shines when everyone is exercising their own unique gift. It may be helpful for you to introduce this person to one of your friends at church who is more relational.
Ultimately, it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. I’ve come to the humbling conclusion that my praying for someone is more powerful than my teaching someone. As much as I want to make my teaching and presentation as clear as possible, in the end the only way someone’s eyes are opened and the information actually gets to their heart is if the Holy Spirit is at work. So, I would encourage you to pray for this person over and over and over again. God wants us to be persistent in prayer.
[Adam’s unedited bio from his website: About Adam Lloyd Johnson – Convincing Proof] Adam Lloyd Johnson has served as the president of Convincing Proof Ministries since 2023. Prior to that, Adam was a university campus missionary with Ratio Christi at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He has also taught classes for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and has spent time living and teaching at Rhineland Theological Seminary in Wölmersen, Germany. Adam received his PhD in Theological Studies with an emphasis in Philosophy of Religion from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2020. Adam grew up in Nebraska and became a Christian as a teenager in 1994. He graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and then worked in the field of actuarial science for ten years in Lincoln, Nebraska. While in his twenties, he went through a crisis of faith: are there good reasons and evidence to believe God exists and that the Bible is really from Him? His search for answers led him to apologetics and propelled him into ministry with a passion to serve others by equipping Christians and encouraging non-Christians to trust in Christ. Adam served as a Southern Baptist pastor for eight years (2009-2017) but stepped down from the pastorate to serve others full-time in the area of apologetics. He’s been married to his wife Kristin since 1996, and they have four children – Caroline, Will, Xander, and Ray. Adam has presented his work at the National Apologetics Conference, the Society of Christian Philosophers, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the International Society of Christian Apologetics, the Canadian Centre for Scholarship and the Christian Faith, the American Academy of Religion, and the Evangelical Theological Society. His work has been published in the Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics, Philosophia Christi, the Westminster Theological Journal, the Canadian Journal for Scholarship and the Christian Faith, the journal Eleutheria, and the journal Religions. Adam has spoken at numerous churches and conferences in America and around the world – Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, Boston, Orlando, Denver, San Antonio, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. He is the editor and co-author of the book A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties? published in 2020 by Routledge and co-authored with William Lane Craig, Erik Wielenberg, J. P. Moreland, and others. He is most recently the author of the book Divine Love Theory: How the Trinity is the Source and Foundation of Moralitypublished by Kregel Academic in 2023.
Ver. 26. A new heart also will I give you.—The necessity of a new heart:— I. THE WORK WHICH IS HERE PROMISED.
A work of spiritual purification. The gains of business, the pleasures and enjoyments of the world, the vanities and follies of time; of these we may, and of these many do, make a God. Now when the Lord takes a sinner to Himself, and calls him out of that state in which he is by nature, He says, “From all your idols will I cleanse you.” He cleanses, both from the power and the guilt of them. The love of sin is now destroyed, as well as the guilt of it taken away. The great end of the Gospel is thus accomplished (Eph. 5:26, 27).
As a work of inward regeneration. Man is often content with outward reformation, but the Lord goes to the seat of the evil. The heart of man is hard by nature. There may be, and there is, in many persons much kindness towards their fellow-creatures; much affection towards their friends, and all around them; but the heart is hard towards God. How unfeeling is it under the Divine dispensations. Warnings and invitations are given; judgments from God of the most awful nature are pointed out; the dying love of Christ is preached and heard; the sweet and encouraging promises of the Gospel are held forth; but still these are met with cold indifference, or possibly with disdain! Melted by the love of Christ, he grieves over sin; he hates himself on account of it, and both prays and strives against it. A wrong temper causes him more sorrow now, than cursing or drunkenness did in former days. In short, old things are passed away, all things are become new.
A work of outward reformation. If the Lord gives a new heart, it follows as a necessary consequence that there must be a willingness to walk in His statutes. Was a man, before this change, addicted to sinful practices? They will be given up. Did be keep sinful company? It will be forsaken. He is not indeed perfect, for perfection is a plant which grows not in this lower world; it flourishes only in the paradise above. Sin will cleave to him, for it is his nature; but the sin which the Christian does, he allows not; it is his grief; he prays and he struggles against it. When the heart of stone is changed to a heart of flesh, there is a total alteration both in the motives and habits of a man. II. THE AUTHOR OF THIS WORK.
Man cannot be the author of it. It is far above human power. It is opposed to all the prejudices, passions, and inclinations of man.
God alone is the Author of it. He may, and does use instruments; and, in various ways, brings about this change; but the work is His. III. THE BLESSED PRIVILEGES FLOWING FROM THIS WORK.
He acknowledges them as His people. “They shall be My people,” not in that general sense in which all the world belongs to Him by right of creation; but His peculiar people, His “chosen ones”; those over whom He delights to do good; over whom He rests in His love; making them His care, and enriching them with all spiritual blessings; and all this from His free grace and mercy.
They claim Him as their God. Mark the steps which lead to this blessed privilege. God sprinkles clean water; He purifies the heart of the sinner; He renews it, and puts into it right dispositions, and then they walk in His statutes. This promise then ensures a supply of all that His people can possibly need or desire. Are they weak? I will be their God to strengthen them. Are they guilty? I will be their God to pardon them. Are they ignorant? I will be their God to teach them. Do they mourn? I will be their God to comfort them. Are they mortal? and do they sometimes look upon the grave with trembling? What are the words of God on this subject? (Hos. 13:14) (J. G. Breay, M.A.) The heart all wrong made all right:— I. THE ROTTENNESS OF THE HUMAN HEART.
Every unregenerated heart is unclean. “From your filthiness will I cleanse you.” Our hands may be clean as water can wash them, and our garments as white as snow; and yet our inward nature be polluted. Sin is not like wine, that gets better by being kept. It gets worse and worse. The Arabs have a fable that once a camel came to the door of a tent and thrust in his nose. Not being resisted, he thrust in his feet. There being no hindrance, he came half way in. After a while he got all the way in. The Arab said to the camel, “This tent is too small for two.” Then the camel said to the Arab, “If that be so, you had better leave.” So sin comes into the heart further and further, until it takes full possession. It is not satisfied until it has pushed the soul into an eternal prison-house, and slammed-to the door, and shoved the bolts, and turned the locks of an everlasting incarceration.
The text represents the heart as idolatrous. “From all your idols will I cleanse you.” If we do not worship the God in heaven, we worship something on earth. This man worships pleasure. This one, applause. This one, money. This one, his family. That to which a man gives his supreme thought and affections is his idol. Like Dagon, how often it falls down, crushing its worshippers. God will have no rivals.
The text represents the heart as stony, or insensible. I prove it by the fact that we do not realise the truth of what we have already said. If we had any appreciation of our unclean and idolatrous nature, could we be as unmoved as we are? We are insensible. I saw men walking through the Louvre Gallery, in Paris, half asleep. No flash came to their eyes, no flush to their cheeks, no exclamation to their lips, amid the most thrilling triumphs of painter’s pencil and sculptor’s chisel. And so, until grace touches our soul, we walk through the great picture gallery of the Gospel; and the wonders of Christ and the glories of heaven strike no thrill through the heart. II. THE HEALING PROCESS THAT GOD PROPOSES FOR EVERYONE. “I will sprinkle,” &c. It is a change from black to white, from down to up, from the highway to hell to the highway of heaven. The whole nature made over again. Here are men who once rejected the Bible, cared not for God, talked against high heaven; but now all their hopes are hung on one strong nail: the Nail of the Cross. One Form is to them more glorious than any other: the Form of the Son of God. “I take Him,” they cry. “Through joy and sorrow, through fire and flood, for time and for eternity. None but Jesus!” They would stick to Him though the guillotine flashed its bloody knife in their faces. They have a new heart. New in its sentiments, hopes, affections, ambitions. (T. De Witt Talmage.) The power and dominion of God over the heart:— I. GOD HATH SUPREME DOMINION OVER THE HEARTS OF MEN.
He furnishes the hearts of men with qualifications suited to their several offices and employments, which He assigns them in the course of His providence.
He moderates and controls the most unruly passions, and renders them subservient to His own glory.
He sends spiritual judgments into the hearts of men.
He also shows His supreme dominion over the hearts of men, by renewing and sanctifying the various powers of their souls.
He restores order to the affections, and places them upon their proper objects.
He likewise inclines the heart to those things which are well-pleasing in His sight, and brings it into a willing subjection to His law. II. GOD MERCIFULLY REMOVES EVERY OBSTACLE THAT MIGHT OBSTRUCT HIS POWERFUL GRACIOUS OPERATION. The stony heart, which God graciously promises to take away, is remarkable—
For insensibility. (1) It is insensible to the majesty and glory of God, impressed on the works of His hands, and to His power and presence displayed in His providential dispensations. (2) It is insensible to the spirituality and excellence of the Divine law, and to the wonderful discoveries made in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
For obduracy. The hearts of all men are naturally possessed of this bad quality, which is greatly augmented by sinful habits, which, when indulged, provoke God to permit them judicially to harden themselves more and more.
For inflexibility. The stony heart is not easily bent to comply with the gracious purposes which God hath in view to execute. It will not be persuaded to accept of the rich mercies which He offers to bestow, nor obey the directions of His Word.
For resistance. The stony heart strongly resists the instruments employed to soften and render it tender. The merciful designs of providence are counteracted. Even the convictions and impulses of the Holy Spirit are resisted. III. GOD PROMISES TO WORK A GREAT CHANGE IN THE HEARTS OF HIS PEOPLE.
The spiritual and gracious qualities conveyed to the soul, by the fulfilment of this promise, are called a new heart and a new spirit; because they come in place of the old things which pass away, and are very different from them. By the new heart and the new spirit, we are made partakers of the Divine nature, and renovation after the image of Christ is begun, which is afterward gradually carried forward under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The eyes of the mind are enlightened, and a new light shines into it, whereby it is filled with the knowledge of God’s will. Divine truths are seen in their native beauty, displaying the manifold wisdom of God, and the unsearchable riches of Christ; they penetrate to the bottom of the heart, they are embraced with sincere affection, and have a transforming influence on the heart and life.
God also promises to give you an heart of flesh—which seems to intend, a heart the reverse of the stony heart, which He takes away. (1) The heart of flesh is a sensible heart, that perceives the great importance and excellence of spiritual and Divine things. (2) The heart of flesh is a soft and tender heart, that is deeply impressed with a sense of the Divine goodness and the manifold mercies of God. (3) The heart of flesh is likewise flexible and pliant to the holy will of God. (4) The heart of flesh makes no resistance to God, as doth the stony heart.
“And I will put My Spirit within you.” By the Spirit may be meant, the Holy Ghost, who dwelleth in the people of God as in His temple, the Comforter whom Jesus Christ promises to send from the Father, that He may abide with them for ever, even the Spirit of truth—who dwelleth with you and shall be in you (John 14:16, 17). As a Spirit of power, He strengthens with all might in the inner-man; as a Spirit of supplication, He helps their infirmities, and teaches them to pray; in every respect acting as a Spirit of holiness, sanctifying them wholly, and enabling them to perform duties in another and more spiritual manner than ever before. As the promised Comforter, He supports and comforts; so that as their sufferings abound, their consolations by Christ are made to superabound. As a Spirit of wisdom and revelation, He discovers the deep things of God, that we may know the things freely given us of God. As a Spirit of adoption, He enables us to cry, Abba, Father, and to draw near to God with filial freedom and confidence. IV. THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PRECIOUS PROMISES WHICH ARE HERE GIVEN, IS ATTENDED WITH BLESSED EFFECTS AND CONSEQUENCES. Those who have the Spirits of God put within them, shall be made to walk in God’s statutes, and to keep His judgments and do them. The statutes of God are the rule by which they shall walk, His judgments point out the work which they ought to do. By both expressions the Word of God is intended, which is given to be a lamp to our feet, and a light to our goings, and to show us what is good, and what the Lord our God requireth of us. In these statutes and judgments, God promises that those in whom He puts His Spirit shall walk. In Scripture, walking is often mentioned in a figurative sense, to denote a person’s habitual temper and practice.
Walking in God’s statutes is a voluntary, agreeable employment to those who have received a new heart and spirit. They delight in the law of the Lord after the inward man, and in the ways of His commandments which they have loved. In doing the will of their heavenly Father, they find far more real pleasure and satisfaction than in sensual pleasures, worldly riches, and great temporal honours.
Walking in God’s statutes is a diligent and progressive business. There may be, no doubt, some accidental obstructions and checks made to growth in grace, and progress in holiness; still, however, faith and love, and other graces, increase and grow up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (W. M‘Culloch.) The Lord’s New Year’s gifts to hardened sinners:— It is recorded that when Sir Walter Raleigh knelt on the scaffold with his neck on the block waiting for the axe of the executioner to behead him, the latter said, “Does your head lie easy, Sir Walter?” The brave man replied, “It matters not, my friend, how my head lies, provided my heart is right.” I. A NEW HEART. The old heart is compared in this verse to a stone. What use is there then in preaching to such as are in heart senseless? The love of Christ is a solvent to soften the heart which is hard as a stone; and the Holy Spirit then shall mould it into the image of the Saviour. In a cathedral at Rome I saw what I thought to be most precious stone; but, placing my hand upon that huge slab, I found that it was wood, painted like marble. A stone is known by its coldness; and we know a man is unconverted by his coldness to God and to his fellow-men. A few men possess natural benevolence; but many are as cold as a stone to the appeals of the helpless and the suffering. When the new heart is received their disposition is changed; they are tender and compassionate to the sufferer, and weep with the sorrowing. A man with a stony heart who loves money wonders why another gives his time and his money so generously, day after day, to the cause of God and of his fellow-men; and he says to himself, “Why, the Christian does this as if he really enjoyed it! I like to get money; but he seems to be most pleased when he is giving it!” The reason is that the Christian has received a new heart; and, loving God and his fellow men, it is his delight to minister to them of his time and substance. The new heart does not grudge what it gives; because it loves. II. A NEW SPIRIT. The old spirit readily conforms itself to the world; and it seeks to run with the stream. But when God gives the new spirit, we are ruled by the mind that was in Jesus; and though there were only one Christian in an opposing world, that Christian would be against the world. The old spirit thinks it cannot resist sin, and it yields to it as a necessity of his nature; but when God gives the new spirit, it breaks the gyves of Satan, and cries, “I am free; and will not longer submit to my besetting sin; I am to cast aside every weight, so that I may run the race that is set before me.” The old spirit trusts in outward circumstances, in money, and in men; but when we receive the new spirit we trust in the power of our God. The old spirit does not know the sweetness of communion with God. But the new spirit delights to pray; it is a privilege rather than a duty. The old spirit also is corrupt. It is like the polished veneer that is placed over the decayed wood which smells with the dry rot. But when the new spirit is received the Christian is all glorious within. III. A NEW PILOT. “I will put My Spirit within you.” IV. A NEW LIFE. “And cause you to walk in My statutes.” We shall not be dragged to heaven: ours is a willing service. It is a walk, not a limp. Christ heals perfectly. V. NEW RULES. “Ye shall keep My judgments.” The finger-post points out your way at the corner of the road, and you do not hesitate to walk in the path pointed out, because you believe that finger-post to tell the right direction. Likewise, the finger-post of the Bible is a sufficient security for us to keep in the path of righteousness. VI. NEW EMPLOYMENT. “And do them.” How sweet to be assured that God will give us power to do His will! Pray with increasing faith, “Thy will be done”; and expect the ability and the resignation to do it. You shall do His will! Rejoice! VII. GOD’S GUARANTEE. “I will do it: I will give it you.” The Lord means what He says. Cannot you trust Him? Whosoever will may receive the gifts offered by our loving Father. (W. Birch.) Covenant blessings:— I. Observe, first, we have here to all God’s covenanted people, or in other words, to all believers, a promise of PREPARATION FOR THE SPIRIT’S INDWELLING. This promise is as a cluster of nuts, or a bough with many golden apples. Like the cherubim of Ezekiel it has four faces, all smiling upon the heirs of salvation. Like the New Jerusalem it lieth four-square. It is a quadruple treasure worthy of four-fold consideration.
The first of the four blessings is the gift of a new heart. Observe where the inward work of grace begins. All man’s attempts at the betterment of human nature begin from without, and the theory is that the work will deepen till it reaches that which is within. They profess to emancipate the man from the grosser vices, trusting that the reform will go further, that he will be brought under superior influences, and so be elevated in mind and heart. Miserable physicians are they all. Their remedies fail to eradicate the deep-seated maladies of humanity. God’s way of dealing with men is the reverse. He begins within and works towards the exterior in due course. Look at our brooks and rivulets which have been by a lax legislature so long delivered over to the tormentors to be blackened into pestiferous sewers; if we want to have them purged it is of small avail to cast chloride of lime and other chemicals into the stream; the only remedy is to forbid the pollution, to demand that manufactories shall not poison us wholesale, but shall in some other manner consume their useless products. The voice of common sense bids us go to the original cause of the defilement and deal with it at its sources. That is just what God does when He saves a sinner, He begins at the origin of the sinner’s sin and deals with His heart. Blessed be God, He is omnipotent enough to give us new hearts, He has wisdom enough to renew us, He has purity sufficient to cleanse us, He has abounding mercy to bear with us.
Turn, now, to the second blessing—“A new spirit will I put within you.” The natural man is correctly and strictly speaking a compound of soul and body only. The first man, Adam, was made a living soul; and, as we bear the image of the first Adam, we are body and soul only. It is our own belief that in regeneration something more is done than the mere rectifying of what was there: there is in the new birth infused and implanted in man a third and more elevated principle,—a spirit is begotten in him; and, as the second Adam was made a quickening spirit, so in the new birth we are transformed into the likeness of Christ Jesus, who is the second Adam. The implantation, infusion, and putting into our nature the third and higher principle is, we believe, the being born again. Regarded in this light, the words before us may be regarded as an absolute and unconditional promise of the covenant of grace to all the seed that a new spirit shall be put within them. But, if we view it as some do, we shall then read it thus—the ruling spirit of man’s nature shall be changed. The spirit which rules and reigns in Godless, Christless men, is the spirit of a rebellious slave, the spirit of self. But, when the Spirit of God comes upon us, to make our spirit a fit place for His residence, He takes away the spirit of the slave, and gives us the spirit of a child, and from that moment the service of God becomes a different thing: we do not serve Him now because we are afraid of the whip, but nobler motives move us; gratitude binds us to the Lord’s service, and love gives wings to the feet of obedience. Now the Lord is no more regarded as a tyrant, but as a wise and loving parent. Whatever He may do with us, we rejoice in His wisdom and goodness. We view Him no longer with suspicion and dread, but with confidence and joy.
A third and further blessing of the text is the removal of the stony heart. “I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh.” I do not think the Lord removes at once the evil heart out of any man’s flesh; there it remains to be fought with, like the Canaanites in Canaan when Israel had entered there, to prove us and to try us, but He does take away the stony heart at once. The stony heart is a hard heart. We have heard of many expedients for softening hard hearts, but none of them are of any avail. You may make a man weep over his dead child or his dead wife, till his eyes are red, but his heart will be black for all that. Men’s hearts are changed by quite another agency than oratorical or rhetorical appeals to the natural affections.
The fourth promise of the preparation of the heart for the indwelling of the Spirit is this: “I will give you a heart of flesh,” by which is meant a soft heart, an impressible heart, a sensitive heart, a heart which can feel, can be moved to shame, to repentance, to loathing of sin, to desiring, to seeking, to panting, to longing after God; a tender heart, a heart that does not require a thousand blows to move it, but, like flesh with its skin broken, feels the very faintest touch,—such is the heart which the Holy Spirit creates in the children of God. It is a teachable heart, a heart willing to be guided, moulded, governed by the Divine will: a heart which, like young Samuel, cries, “Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth”:—an obedient heart, ready to be run into the mould, plastic beneath the sacred hand, anxious to be conformed to the heavenly pattern. II. THE INDWELLING OF THE HOLY GHOST.
Observe, first, that the Lord says, “I will put My Spirit within you.” God Himself, the Eternal Spirit in propria persona, in His own person, resides and dwells within the renewed heart. The mystery of the incarnation is not greater than that of the Holy Ghost’s indwelling, nor does it appear to me to involve more condescension. I marvel at Christ’s dwelling with sinners, and I marvel equally at the Holy Ghost’s dwelling in sinners.
Note a little word also in the text worthy of your attention. “I will put My Spirit within you.” It is not the spirit of angels, it is not the spirit of good men, it is God’s own Spirit who takes up His residence in every sinner’s heart when God renews it. “My Spirit.” And, perhaps, this may allude to the fact that this is the self-same Spirit which abode without measure in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Observe also carefully the words, “within you.” This is marvellous. Augustine, when reflecting upon the various glories which come to God, and the benefits which accrue to men through redemption, none of which could have been revealed without the fall of Adam, exclaimed, “O beata culpa!” “O happy fault”; and I have the self-same expression trembling on my lips. Where sin abounded grace has much more abounded. III. THE BLESSED RESULTS which come from all this. The indwelling Spirit leads every man in whom He reigns into obedience to the ways of God. The soul that possesses the Spirit becomes active. It walks. It is not passive, as one carried by main force; it works because the Spirit works in it, “to will and to do of His own good pleasure.” The Holy Ghost leads us to holy habits, for, mark the phrase, “I will cause you to walk in My ways.” Mere excitement may produce momentary zeal, and transient morality, but habitual holiness is the fruit of the Spirit. Note, next, the delight it implies. “I will cause you to walk in My ways,” not as a man who toils, but as one who walks at ease. The believer finds it as sweet to walk in God’s ways as Isaac felt it sweet to walk in the fields at eventide. It implies, too, holy perseverance; the words have the meaning of continuing to follow after holiness. It is a small matter to begin, but to hold out to the end is the testing point. The text promises to us a complete obedience,—“I will cause you to walk in My statutes, and to keep My judgments.” A Christian man is obedient to God,—he minds the first table; he is just to man,—he does not despise the second table. And the Holy Ghost also works a holy care for righteousness in the soul. “I will cause you to keep My judgments”;—that is, to have an exactness of obedience, a precision, a deliberation, a willingness to find out God’s will, and a care to attend to it in every jot and tittle. Now, to what a delightful consummation has our text conducted us. It began with a renewed heart, and it ends in a purified life. It commenced with taking away the stone and giving the flesh; now it gives us the life of Christ written out, in living characters in our daily practice. Glory be to God for this! (C. H. Spurgeon.) A new heart:—
No problem, whether of religion or philosophy, of nature or revelation, more transcends the power of human reason to solve than that of the existence of moral evil in the world.
In what consists the nature of this evil? What is its essence? In nature, it subsists in a heart not in accordance with the Divine law. In essence it is a moral depravity; a moral corruption; a perversion of the understanding and the affections in regard to moral truth and duty; a discord among the harmonies of our moral being, and a slavish subjection to the appetites of our bestial nature in opposition to the nobler promptings and requirements of our higher, our godlike, nature.
Is there any escape from this evil—any remedy for it on man’s behalf? And if so, in what, and where, and how may it be obtained? “A new heart will I give you.” God makes for us a way of escape; God provides the remedy, and we are made the beneficiaries of it by God’s bestowal upon us of a new heart. I. THIS GIFT OF GOD, A NEW HEART. A new heart contrasts with the old. The old heart is alienated from God; the new heart cleaves to God with supreme affection of love. The old heart is sold under sin; the new heart is redeemed from all iniquity. The old heart is accompanied by carnal-mindedness, which is death; the new heart by spiritual-mindedness, which is life and peace. II. HOW DOES GOD BESTOW THIS GIFT? God gives this new heart, not by destroying the freedom of human will and agency, but by emancipating it from every condition of slavery. By the unspeakable gift of His Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins, by the influence and agency of His Holy Spirit, enlightening us in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, and regenerating our natures, and by His blessing upon the means of grace which He has appointed, God confers this gift of a new heart upon all those who believe in Jesus, and who walk by the Spirit, according to revealed truth, in the use of the appointed means of grace, and in obedience to God’s law. III. HOW DOES THE NEW HEART MANIFEST ITSELF IN THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ITS RECIPIENT? It effects an entire change in them. There are new objects of life and new attributes of character consequent upon the desires, affections, and purposes of a new heart. His life is a continual proof and illustration of the power of the Gospel to save, and his character is a beautiful example of purity of thought, simplicity and integrity of purpose, kindliness of demeanour, beneficence of deeds, and faithfulness in the discharge of every duty toward God and man. (W. T. Findley, D.D.) A new heart:— I. A NEW HEART IS A CONTRAST TO THE OLD. II. A NEW HEART IS PRODUCTIVE OF NEW EFFECTS.
Repentance.
Holiness. III. A NEW HEART IS CONNECTED WITH NEW PRIVILEGES (ver. 28). If Jehovah be our God, there is not a real good that is not ours. We have Him for the portion of our souls. We are interested in the exercise of all His perfections. His love is inviolably and eternally fixed upon us. His wisdom is incessantly engaged in making all things work together for our good. His power is ever operating to defend us from essential injury. His universal presence becomes an uninterrupted source of peace and a never failing occasion of comfort. We have access to Him and communion with Him. He is our Father, our Guide, our Friend. IV. A NEW HEART IS THE WORK OF GOD. V. A NEW HEART IS THE GIFT OF GOD. Application—
What an important subject on which to examine ourselves. It is possible to be mistaken—and a mistake here is fatal.
How vain are the attempts men make to do without a new heart.
Let the most guilty be encouraged to seek this blessing as the gift of God in Christ Jesus; and the most hardened to hope for it as the work of God, if He be sought as the Author of it.
Let every man know that he inevitably and justly perishes if he neglects it—despises it—or presumes that he can be saved without it.
Let us adore God for having made known so wonderful and gracious a method of restoring our fallen nature. (Essex Remembrancer.) The new heart:— Behold a wonder of Divine love. When God maketh His creatures, one creation He regardeth as sufficient, and should they lapse from the condition in which He has created them, He suffers them, as a rule, to endure the penalty of their transgression, and to abide in the place into which they are fallen. But here He makes an exception; man, fallen man, created by his Maker, pure and holy, hath wilfully and wickedly rebelled against the Most High, and lost his first estate, but behold, he is to be the subject of a new creation through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. I. THE NECESSITY FOR THIS GREAT PROMISE. You will notice that God does not promise to us that He will improve our nature, that He will mend our broken hearts. No, the promise is that He will give us new hearts and right spirits. Human nature is too far gone ever to be mended. If only a wheel or two of that great thing called “manhood” were out of repair, then He who made man might put the whole to rights; He might put a new cog where it had been broken off, and another wheel where it had gone to ruin, and the machine might work anew. But no, the whole of it is out of repair; there is not one lever which is not broken; not one axle which is not disturbed; not one of the wheels which act upon the others. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot, to the crown of the head, it is all wounds and bruises and putrifying sores. Consider for a moment how bad human nature must be if we think how ill it has treated its God. I remember William Huntingdon says in his autobiography, that one of the sharpest sensations of pain that he felt after he had been quickened by Divine grace was this, “He felt such pity for God.” I do not know that I ever met with the expression elsewhere, but it is a very expressive one; although I might prefer to say sympathy with God and grief that He should be so evil entreated. Let us look back upon our past lives—how ungrateful have we been to Him! We have never returned His mercies into His bosom with gratitude and thankfulness; but we have let them lie forgotten without a single hallelujah, from our carelessness concerning the Most High, that He had entirely forgotten us, and that therefore we were trying to forget Him. It is so very seldom that we think of Him that one would imagine that surely He never gave us occasion to think of Him. But worse than this, we have not only been forgetful of Him, but we have rebelled against Him. We have assailed the Most High. Oh! it is a mercy that He is God and changeth not, or else we sons of Jacob would long ago have been consumed, and justly too. You may picture to yourselves, if you like, a poor creature dying in a ditch. I trust that such a thing never happens in this land, but such a thing might happen as a man who had been rich on a sudden becoming poor, and all his friends deserting and leaving him; he begs for bread and no man will help him, until at last, without a rag to cover him, his poor body yields up life in a ditch. This, I think, is the very extreme of human negligence to mankind; but Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was treated even worse than this. Ah, if you think of human nature as it acts towards God, you will say indeed it is too bad to be mended, it must be made anew. Again, there is another aspect in which we may regard the sinfulness of human nature: that is its pride. It is the very worst phase of man—that he is so proud. What a strange thing it is to see a sinful, guilty wretch proud of his morality! and yet that is a thing you may see every day. A man who is an enemy to God, proud of his honesty, and yet he is robbing God; a man proud of his chastity, and yet if he knew his own thoughts, they are full of lasciviousness and uncleanness; a man proud of the praise of his fellows, while he knows himself that he has the blame of his own conscience and the blame of God Almighty. Ah, human nature, this is, then, thine own condemnation, that thou art insanely proud, while thou hast nothing to be proud of. Write “Ichabod” upon it. The glory has departed for ever from human nature. Let it be put away, and let God give us something new for the old can never be made better. It is helplessly insane, decrepid, and defiled. Furthermore, it is quite certain that human nature cannot be made better, for many have tried it, but they have always failed. A man trying to improve human nature, is like trying to change the position of a weathercock, by turning it round to the east when the wind is blowing west; he has but to take his hand off and it will be back again to its place. But, once again, you will easily perceive we must have a new heart when you consider what are the employments and the enjoyments of the Christian religion. The nature that can feed on the garbage of sin, and devour the carrion of iniquity, is not the nature that ever can sing the praises of God and rejoice in His holy name. And yet once again God hates a depraved nature, and therefore it must be taken away, before we can be accepted in Him. II. THE NATURE OF THIS GREAT CHANGE WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT WORKS IN US.
It is a Divine work from first to last. To give a man a new heart and a new spirit is God’s work, and the work of God alone. We have heard of some kind of insects that have lost their limbs, and by their vital power have been able to recover them again. But take away the seat of the vital power—the heart; lay the disease there; and what power is there that can, by any possibility, rectify it, unless it be a power from without—in fact, a power from above?
It is a gracious change. When God puts a new heart into man, it is not because man deserves a new heart—because there was anything good in his nature, that could have prompted God to give him a new spirit. The Lord simply gives a man a new heart because He wishes to do it; that is His only reason.
It is a victorious effort of Divine grace. God will have the sinner, if He designs to have him. God never was thwarted yet in any one of His purposes. Man does resist with all his might, but all the might of man, tremendous though it be for sin, is not equal to the majestic might of the Most High, when He rideth forth in the chariot of His salvation. He doth irresistibly save and victoriously conquer man’s heart.
It is instantaneous. To sanctify a man is the work of the whole life; but to give a man a new heart is the work of an instant. Other parts of salvation are done gradually; but regeneration is the instantaneous work of God’s sovereign, effectual, and irresistible grace. III. HOPE AND ENCOURAGEMENT TO THE VILEST OF SINNERS.
There are some who are seeking after mercy; for many a day you have been in prayer in secret, till your very knees seemed sore with the oftenness of your intercession. Your cry to God has been, “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.” Let me comfort you by this reflection, that your prayer is already heard. You have a new heart and a right spirit: perhaps you wilt not be able to perceive the truth of this utterance for months to come, therefore continue in prayer till God shall open your eyes, so that you may see that the prayer is answered; but rest assured it is answered already. The Lord hath begun a good work in thy heart, and He will carry it on even unto the end. All these feelings of thine are more than thou ever couldst have attained of thyself. God has helped thee up this Divine ladder of grace, and as sure as He has brought thee up so many staves of it, He will carry thee to the very summit, till He grasps thee in the arms of His love in glory everlasting.
There are others, however, who have not proceeded so far, but you are driven to despair. The devil has told you that you cannot be saved; you have been too guilty, too vile. Any other people in the world might find mercy, but not you, for you do not deserve to be saved. Have I not tried to make it as plain as the sunbeam all through this service, that God never saves a man for the sake of what he is, and that He does not either begin or carry on the work in us because there is anything good in us? The greatest sinner is just as eligible for Divine mercy as the very least of sinners. He can take you, a thief, a drunkard, a harlot, or whoever you may be; He can bring you on your knees, make you cry for mercy, and then make you lead a holy life, and keep you unto the end. “Oh!” says one, “I wish He would do that to me, then.” Well, soul, if that be a true wish, He will. (C. H. Spurgeon.) A new spirit will I put within you.—The invaluable gift:— The gifts of God are unspeakably great; should we attempt the enumeration they would appear like the stars of heaven, or the sands on the shore for multitude. When the author of the Spectator recovered from a dangerous illness he penned a delightful hymn, in which he expresses the transports of his soul, and the wonder, love, and praise which a sense of the Divine mercies awakened in his grateful mind. But if such language was the result of a survey of God’s providential goodness, how should the believer exult in the gift of a Saviour, and in that last, best blessing, the enlightening and sanctifying Spirit by which He is revealed to the heart! I. WHAT THIS INVALUABLE BLESSING INCLUDES, AND WHAT WE ARE TO UNDERSTAND BY A NEW SPIRIT.
God engages to bestow that grace upon us of which we were altogether undeserving.
In the bestowment of this blessing we invariably see the providence and word of God preparing the way for its reception. (1) It includes a renewed and sanctified mind. (2) A sorrowful and penitential disposition. (3) A humble, resigned, and obedient spirit. II. THE REASONS AND GROUNDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT WE HAVE TO SEEK THIS BLESSING.
Think of the character of Him who gives this new spirit.
Consider that this is a free gift.
Reflect on the many instances in which this blessing has been conferred on individuals as undeserving as ourselves.
The perfection of our moral character depends on obtaining it. Enriched with this treasure, we can never be poor or unhappy; nor is it in the power of men or devils to make us miserable.
By individually seeking this precious gift we shall be instrumental in promoting the advent of Christ’s kingdom, and in hastening that blessed consummation which the Church of God so earnestly desires. (Essex Remembrancer.) The new heart bestowed:— I. THE OLD HEART REMOVED.
The senselessness of the unconverted heart.
The resistance of the unconverted heart.
The impenetrableness of the unconverted heart.
The coldness of the unconverted heart. An unconverted man will have a very tender and warm heart about earthly things. If he loses a wife, or a child, or some valuable property, oh, what intense warmth of feeling do we instantly behold! But when we tell him about the death of Christ, or the love of the Holy Spirit, he takes no more notice of what we say than the cold pavement of the street would listen to a beggar’s petition. II. THE NEW HEART GIVEN.
Your new heart is sensitive. “The spiritual man,” we are told, “discerneth all things.” You are sensitive of spiritual pains and of spiritual pleasures. You are especially sensitive with respect to sin.
Your new heart is flexible. It can bend in accordance to God’s will.
Your new heart is easily impressed. Its fleshy tablets are always waiting to receive the writing of the Lord’s commands.
Your new heart is well known for its warmth of feeling. Once it saw no beauty nor comeliness in Jesus; but now that it is renewed, it cries, “Thou art the King of glory, O Christ”: “Thy name is as the ointment poured forth”: “In Thee, O Jesus, have I righteousness”: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee”: “Thou art the chiefest among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” III. The AUTHOR OF THE CHANGE. Clean water is here used as the emblem of the blood of Christ, and of the work of the Holy Spirit. When the blood of Christ is applied to our conscience through faith, it cleanses us from all dead works; and the Holy Spirit, when applied to all the powers of your soul, purifies it from the love and dominion of sin. Conversion work is all God’s work; insomuch that, wherever God’s Spirit converts men by the ministry, He there may be said to raise up children to Abraham out of stones. There He makes water to gush out of rocks; and there He makes dead and dry bones to live. (C. Clayton, M.A.) A new heart:— I. THE OLD PRINCIPLE WHICH MUST BE GOT RID OF. “A stony heart.” Of course this is a figure when you speak of a man’s heart, because you do not speak of that which beats in a man’s frame, but of his will and affections. Likewise a stony heart is a figure used to describe one who knows not Christ, and cannot until it is removed. What is a stone? A stone is a thing upon which you can make no impression. You may strike it with a hammer, or a sword, or any other weapon, but you can make no impression upon it; so with a stony human heart, no arguments or anything we can do will influence it. There are some hearts we cannot reach, they seem harder than the nether millstone. Until God touches the hard heart it has no feeling; and there are men and women now who figuratively go to that stony rock of Calvary, whereon Christ died for our sins, and even come to services like these in which we literally go there with Him, and yet do not feel touched in their hearts. II. A NEW PRINCIPLE WHICH IS TO BE GIVEN US. There are two ways in which people may be said to have anything new. First, when it is absolutely new. When the Ark of God was to be brought back, a cart was to be made by the Divine Will, and it has to be a new cart, entirely out of new materials. So in the New Testament we are told Joseph of Arimathea laid our Lord in a new tomb, wherein yet never anyone had lain. There is another sense in which a thing is made new, that is, when it is renewed, for that comes to the same thing. This is what happens when a man’s heart is renewed, and turned to God. You may meet a man, and say, “I see no change in him,” and yet that man has been renewed by the Spirit of God. This, then, is the new principle that God will give; and it is “a new heart,” and when that happens the whole man is changed. Again, when a man’s will is renewed he is made to say, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” And a man’s affections are renewed, and even his memory is renewed. That memory, that used to be running off on other things, now returns to God. III. THE DIVINE GIVER. It is the work of Omnipotence. He can make the heart love and glow with life. When He does this work it is done in an instant. A man at the receipt of custom, who was as busy as any of you, was called by Christ, and Matthew arose and followed Him in a moment. He said also to Zacchæus, “Make haste and come down,” “and he made haste and came down.” It was done in a moment. And when Lydia sat listening to Paul’s address we are told that “the Lord opened her heart,” and then she attended to the words spoken by Paul. And when Saul was entering into Damascus to persecute the Christians in that city, carrying with him letters from the high priest at Jerusalem, a voice asked him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” God touched his heart, and it was done in a moment. IV. IT BRINGS GREAT GLORY TO GOD. It is greater than creating a world. Someone has said. “It was great to speak a world from nought”; but it is a greater work when He comes down to that heart which He first made in His own image, and which sin has marred and ruined, and promises to dwell there, than the work of creation. (Canon Fleming.) I will take away the stony heart.—The stony heart removed:— I. THE STONY HEART AND ITS DANGERS.
Why is the heart of man compared to a stone at all? (1) Like a stone it is cold. You may heat a stone for a little season if you thrust it into the fire, but for how short a time will it retain its heat; and though it glowed just now, how very soon it loses all its warmth and returns again to its native coldness. Such is the heart of man. It is warm enough towards sin; it grows hot as coals of juniper towards its own lusts, but naturally the heart is as cold as ice towards the things of God. You may think you have heated it for a little season under a powerful exhortation, or in presence of a solemn judgment, but how soon it returns to its natural state! (2) Like a stone it is hard. You get the hard stone, especially some sorts of stone which have been hewn from granite-beds, and you may hammer as you will but you shall make no impression. I have seen the great hammer of the law, which is ten times more ponderous than Nasmyth’s great steam hammer, come down upon a man’s heart, and the heart has never shown the slightest signs of shrinking. (3) Again, a stone is dead. You can find no feeling in it. Talk to it; it will shed no tears of pity, though you recount to it the saddest tales; no smiles will gladden it, though you should tell it the most happy story. Now, though man’s heart is not like this as to natural things, yet spiritually this is just its condition. (4) Man’s heart is like a stone, because it is not easily to be softened. Lay a stone in water as long as you will and you shall not find it readily subdued. There are some sorts of stone that yield to the stress of weather, especially in the smoky atmosphere and the sulphurous vapours of London; certain stones crumble to decay, but the stone of a man’s heart no climate can affect, no weather can subdue; it grows harder whether it be the soft sunshine of love or the harsh tempest of judgment that falls upon it. (5) It is utterly senseless, incapable of receiving impressions. Iremember an anecdote of Dr. Gill which hits this nail on the head. It is said that a man came to him in the vestry of his chapel and said, “Dr. Gill, you have been preaching the doctrine of human inability; I don’t believe you. I believe that man can repent and can believe, and is not without spiritual power.” “Well,” said the doctor, “have you repented and believed?” “No,” said the other. “Very well, then,” said he, “you deserve double damnation.” And so I say to the man who boasts that he has not such a hard heart as this—have you laid hold of Christ? have you come to Him? if you have not, then out of your own heart be you condemned, for you deserve double destruction from the presence of God for having resisted the influences of God’s Spirit and rejected His grace.
The danger to which this hard heart is exposed. (1) A hard heart is exposed to the danger of final impenitence. If all these years the processes of nature have been at work with your heart, and have not softened it, have you not reason to conclude that it may be so even to the end? And then you will certainly perish. (2) Hearts that are not softened grow harder and harder; what little sensibility they seemed to have at last departs. (3) Then further, a man who has a hard heart is Satan’s throne. There is a stone, they tell us, in Scotland, at Scone, where they were wont to crown their old kings: the stone on which they crown the old king of hell is a hard heart; it is his choicest throne; he reigns in hell, but he counts hard hearts to be his choicest dominions. (4) Then again, the hard heart is ready for anything. When Satan sits upon it and makes it his throne, there is no wonder that from the seat of the scorner flows all manner of evil. (5) Besides that, the hard heart is impervious to all instrumentality. John Bunyan, in his history of the Holy War, represents old Diabolus, the devil, as providing for the people of Mansoul a coat of armour, of which the breastplate was a hard heart. Oh! that is a strong breastplate. Hard hearts are the devil’s life-guards. When he once gets a man in an armour of proof—that of a hard heart—“Now,” says he, “you may go anywhere.” II. A HEART OF FLESH, AND ITS PRIVILEGES.
What is meant by a heart of flesh? It means a heart that can feel on account of sin—a heart that can bleed when the arrows of God stick fast in it; it means a heart that can yield when the Gospel makes its attacks—a heart that can be impressed when the seal of God’s word comes upon it; it means a heart that is warm, for life is warm—a heart that can think, a heart that can aspire, a heart that can love—putting all in one,—a heart of flesh means that new heart and right spirit which God giveth to the regenerate.
But wherein does this heart of flesh consist; wherein does its tenderness consist? (1) There is a tenderness of conscience. Men who have lost their stony hearts are afraid of sin, even before sin they are afraid of it. The very shadow of evil across their path frightens them. And then, after sin—here comes the pinch—the heart of flesh bleeds as though it were wounded to its very core. Before sin, and in sin, and after sin, it smarts and cries out to God. (2) In duty as well as in sin the new heart is tender. “Only let me know my Master’s will and I will do it.” (3) A heart of flesh, again, is tender with regard to suffering. A heart of flesh would give its very life-blood if it might but snatch others from going down to the pit, for its bowels yearn and its soul moves toward its fellow-sinners who are on the broad road to destruction. Have you, oh, have you such a heart of flesh as this?
The privileges of this renewed heart are these. “ ’Tis here the Spirit dwells, ’tis here that Jesus rests.” The soft heart is ready now to receive every spiritual blessing. It is fitted to yield every heavenly fruit to the honour and praise of God. A soft heart is the best defence against sin, while it is the best preparative for heaven. A tender heart is the best means of watchfulness against evil, while it is also the best means of preparing us for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The nature of the change in conversion:— I. THE OLD HEART IS TAKEN AWAY, AND A NEW ONE PUT IN ITS PLACE. The head was justly considered by ancient philosophers to be the residence of the intellectual faculties, where the soul, presiding over all, sat enthroned, as in a palace. On the other hand, they regarded the affections as having their home in the heart, that other great organ of our system. Within the breast, love and hatred, grief and joy, aversion and desire, generosity, jealousy, pity, revenge were supposed to dwell; and thus (to dismiss the metaphor), that substitution of one heart for another which is promised in the text, just implies a thorough change in the character and current of our affections. Now, a change may be simply a reform; or, extending deeper and taking a wider range, it may pass into a revolution. Conversion is not a mere reform. No. It changes the heart, the habits, the everlasting destiny of an immortal being. To be sensible of our need of a new spirit, to feel that this old heart will not mend nor make better, is one of the first steps in salvation; and the deeper our impression of this truth, the more diligently shall we labour, and the more earnest shall be our prayers to be renewed day by day. II. THE VIEW WHICH OUR TEXT GIVES OF THE NATURAL HEART. It is a heart of stone. “I will take the stony heart out of your flesh.”
A stone is cold. Coldness is its characteristic. Hence, the lapidary, by using his tongue to test the temperature, can tell whether the seeming jewel is paste or a real gem. Hence, also, when our eye has been deceived by the skill of the artist, the sense of touch has informed us that what seemed a marble pillar was only painted wood. There is reason, therefore, in the common saying, As cold as a stone. But what stone so cold as that which sin has lodged in man’s breast? We are by nature lovers of pleasure, not of God. He is not the object of our love, but of our aversion. And what return do we make to Jesus for His warm and matchless affection? The carnal mind is enmity against God; is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
A stone is hard. Fire melts wax, but not stone; water softens clay, but not stone; a hammer bends the stubborn iron, but not stone. It resists all these agents; and, emblem of a heart crushed, but unsanctified by affliction, a stone may be broken into fragments, or ground to powder, yet its atoms are as hard as ever. The man who remains unmoved under a ministry of mercy, who is insensible at once to the most appalling and appealing lessons of providence, who fears no more than a rock the thunders that peal and the lightnings that play round his brow, and feels no more than a rock the influences that fall like summer sunbeams from the face of a gracious Saviour, is manifestly beyond all human power. I would despair of his salvation, but for the omnipotence and benevolence of God; and because I know that He, who of the stones of the street could raise up children to Abraham, can change that heart of stone into a heart of flesh.
A stone is dead. It has no vitality, nor feeling, nor power of motion. Look at this statue; however skilful the sculptor’s chisel, there is no life here; no speech breaks from these cold lips; the limbs seem instinct with power, yet they never leave their pedestal; no fire flashes in these dull grey eyes, nor passions burn within that stony breast; the stone is deaf, and dumb, and dead. Spoken to, it returns no answer; wept over, it sheds no tears. III. IN CONVERSION GOD GIVES A NEW SPIRIT.
By this change the understanding and judgment are enlightened. Time and eternity are now seen in their just proportions, in their right relative dimensions; the one in its littleness, and the other in its greatness. When the light of heaven rises on the soul, oh, what grand and affecting discoveries does she make of the exceeding evil of sin, of the holiness of the Divine law, of the infinite purity of Divine justice, of the grace and greatness of Divine love. On Sinai’s summit and on Calvary’s Cross, what new truths and what sublime scenes open to her astonished eyes!
By this change the will is renewed. Bad men are worse, and good men are better than they appear. Yes, better; for in conversion the will is so changed and sanctified that, although a pious man is in some respects less, in other respects he is more holy than the world gives him credit for. The attainments of a believer are always beneath his aims; his desires are loftier than his deeds; his wishes are holier than his works. Give other men their will, let them have full sway and swing for their passions, and they would be worse than they are; give him the full power to do as he would, and he would be better than he is. And thus, if you have experienced this gracious change, it will be your daily grief that not only are you not what you know you should be, but what you wish to be. The fruits of holy peace are reaped with sharp swords on the field of war; and this conflict within you proves that grace, even in its infancy a cradled Saviour, is engaged in struggling with and strangling the old Serpent.
By conversion the temper and disposition are changed and sanctified. It is with the believer under the influences of the Spirit as with fruit ripening beneath the genial power of dews and sunbeams. Hard at first, its substance grows soft; sour at first, its juices become sweet; green at first, it assumes in time a rich and mellow colour; at first adhering tenaciously to the tree, when it becomes ripe it is ready to drop at the slightest touch. So with the man who is ripening for heaven. His affections and temper grow sweet, soft, mellow, loose from earth and earthly things. IV. IN CONVERSION GOD GIVES A HEART OF FLESH. “I will give you a heart of flesh.”
In conversion man gets a warm heart. Let us restrict ourselves to a single example. When faith embraces Him, how does the heart warm to Jesus Christ! There is music in His very name. “His name is as an ointment poured forth.” All the old indifference to His cause, His people, and interests of His kingdom has passed away; and now these have the warmest place in a believer’s bosom, and are become the objects of its strongest and tenderest affections.
In conversion a man gets a soft heart. As “flesh,” it is soft and sensitive. It is flesh; and can be wounded or healed. It is flesh; and feels alike the kiss of kindness and the rod of correction. It is flesh; no longer like a stone, hard, obdurate, impenetrable to the gentle influences of heaven. To change the figure, once a hard block of ice, it has been melted by the beams of the sun, and turned into flowing water.
In conversion a man gets a living heart. The perfection of a saint’s life is death; is to be dead to sin, but alive to righteousness, alive to Christ, alive to everything which affects His crown and kingdom. With Christ living in his heart, the believer feels that now he is not his own, and belongs no longer to himself. As another’s, and purchased at a great price, the grand object of his life is Christ’s. He wishes that he could look on the seductions of the world, and sin’s most voluptuous charms, with the cold, unmoved stare of death; and that these had no more power to kindle a desire in him than in the icy bosom of a corpse.
By conversion man is ennobled. Religion descends like an angel from the throne of God, to burst our chains. She raises me from degradation, and bids me lift my drooping head and look up to heaven. Yes, it is that very Gospel, by some supposed to present such dark, degrading, gloomy views of our destiny, which lifts me from the dust and the dunghill to set me among princes, on a level with angels, in a sense above them. To say nothing of the nobility grace imparts to a soul which is stamped anew with the likeness and image of God, how sacred, how venerable does even this body appear in the eye of piety! Angels hover round its walls, and the Spirit of God dwells within. What an incentive to holiness, to purity of life and conduct, lies in the fact that the body of a saint is the temple of the living God!—a truer, nobler temple than that which Solomon dedicated by his prayers, and a greater even than Solomon consecrated by his presence. (T. Guthrie, D.D.) The heart of stone; or, the soul without religion:— I. THE SOUL OF MAN IS, LIKE THE STONE, A MYSTERY. Here is a stone. I see it, weigh it, feel it. But what is it? Colour, weight, and tangibility are not entities. These are mere qualities which belong to entities. By these qualities we may recognise the entities and form an opinion respecting them. In this sense the stone, itself a mystery, may be looked on as a type or picture of every soul, saved or unsaved. Every soul feels, reasons, and think;—and yet the soul is neither feeling, reason, nor thought: these are more qualities which form no part of its essence. In itself it is a mystery. II. THE SOUL OF THE UNREGENERATE, HOWEVER, IS, LIKE THE STONE, VERY HARD.
All stones are not equally hard, though hardness is a characteristic of each.
Neither are all souls equally without feeling or moral susceptibility, though all are sadly deficient in this respect. This is illustrated— (1) By the cruel practices of Pagan nations. Infanticides, parricides, self-torture, human sacrifices, Sutteeism. &c. (2) By the indifference of those who are not Pagans—even Christians, to the welfare of others. (3) By the difficulty invariably found of awakening the soul to an earnest inquiry for its own personal and highest interest. III. THE SOUL OF THE UNREGENERATE IS, LIKE THE STONE, NOT WHAT IT ORIGINALLY WAS. The stone has not been always as hard as it is now. Every pebble or grain of sand was once a part of a great rock, and that rock itself a soft material; but heat, pressure, and time combined made it hard. Even flint existed in a soft and pulpy form. Similar is the history of your soul, my unregenerated brother. It was once soft, tender, and full of felling, though now it is hard. This is proved— (1) From the universal traditions of men. (2) From man’s intuitive ideas of the moral nature of God. (3) From the infallible testimony of the Scripture. IV. THE UNREGENERATED SOUL HAS, LIKE THE STONE, BEEN GRADUALLY HARDENED. Even Nero, who assassinated his mother, set fire to the Roman capital, and brought to an untimely grave in misery thousands of men, women, and innocent children, had once a tender heart, like others. “Would to God I could not write!” was his feeling exclamation once when a death warrant was presented to him for signature. V. THE UNREGENERATED SOUL, LIKE THE STONE, BEARS IN ITSELF A FAITHFUL RECORD OF ALL THE POWERS WHICH HAVE HELPED TO MAKE IT WHAT IT IS. In the stone, some of its particles are spherical, showing that once, after having been broken from the mother rock, they were for centuries under the action of flowing water; others are crystallised, showing that once they were in a state of solution; others are organic, showing that they were once the seat of vegetable or animal life. In the form and composition of these particles we find a record of the various changes through which the stone has passed, as well as the numerous influences which have been at work in the effecting of those changes. The soul of man is similar. In eternity it may be possible to trace distinctly in every soul in heaven or hell a faithful record of all the influences which, on earth, have ever tended to elevate or degrade it. VI. THE UNREGENERATED SOUL, LIKE THE STONE, MAY BE SOFTENED BY THE APPLICATION OF APPROPRIATE ELEMENTS. The flint may be reduced to pulp by chemical re-agents, and moulded like the clay to any form. The hardest metals may be dissolved. So may also the hardest heart. The love of Christ is the dissolving element for souls. (Evan Lewis, B.A.) Change of heart:— I. THE OLD AND STONY HEART. There are some who tell us that the heart of man by nature is like a sheet of white paper or parchment, that you may inscribe on it whatever you please. We are bound to say, from our experience, this is not the condition of our hearts. We are conscious in ourselves that we were born with inclinations to evil; and that, as the fruit of inward corruption and depravity, our lives have been exceedingly defective and blemished everywhere, and that we have been disobedient to the Lord. The heart is said to be stony, that is, to be hard; and it remains so although we try it by every system, every principle, and every revelation of God, which would be adapted to impress and to make it feel, feel deeply and poignantly, if it were not a stone. Take the stone and bring it out to the light of heaven, and let the sunbeam fall on it—it does not feel; bring it again and let the dews of heaven distil on it, the rain of Divine mercy baptize it, take it to a fountain and let the waters play on it—it is a stone still; carry it into the Garden of Eden, and let all that is lovely there, all that is blooming in that place, created by Divine wisdom and goodness, be presented before it—it is a stone; shiver with lightning, it is a stone still; grind it to powder, it is a stone still—and that is the figure of the heart. It must be changed: God must take away the heart of stone and give the heart of flesh. II. THE CHANGE AND RENOVATION OF THE HEART IS THE WORK OF GOD.
We do find, we think, the doctrine in question very strongly stated in this passage: it looks as if God were all in all in this matter. The word I occurs four times.
The agency of heaven upon the heart of man is, without doubt, silent and inscrutable, and in many respects mysterious. But then, we ask, is it not equally so in elemental nature—in the world by which we are surrounded—in all the animal tribes—in our own bodies?
Throughout Scripture the change in the heart is ascribed to God.
This presents to our mind a very beautiful and important view of genuine religion. It is not of man’s creation—it is not the product of human genius—it is not that with which we can invest you, or you have any power to invest yourselves. You must receive it as the gift of Divine power—as the operation of Divine love—as the creation of God’s mercy.
God has promised to exert His power, and to give His Spirit, in order to this end. III. WHEN GOD UNDERTAKES IT, HE MAKES IT NEW AND RENDERS IT ALIVE TO EVERY DIVINE AND CELESTIAL IMPRESSION. But what is the change, what is the new heart which God gives? The man with a new heart will say, in penitence, humility, and shame, “I have broken the law, I have gone astray, I have done what I ought not, I have left undone that which I ought to have done, to me belong shame and confusion of face.” There is the heart changed. Bring him to judgments, those which happen round about him, and it will awake him from his slumber, and induce him to trim his lamp, and gird his loins, and to stand ready and prepared for whatever the will of God may be. There is a feeling heart in that man. Bring him to God’s mercies, mention them, recount them, let them be enumerated, and he exclaims, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name.” I am not worthy the least of them all, and yet He makes them towards me to abound. Bring him to nature, show him the creation, and he will say, “the heavens declare God’s glory, and I am glad of it, and the firmaments show forth His handiwork”; and he will recognise Deity everywhere, and in all this. Tell him of God’s dispensations towards him in his own life, and he will be thankful for every deliverance that has been wrought, and for every seasonable and remarkable interposition. IV. THE ADVANTAGES AND THE BLESSEDNESS OF THIS RENEWED STATE.
In the changed state itself there is incomparable enjoyment.
And if we have this change of heart we shall certainly be victorious at the last. We shall find the new nature struggling with the old; the old will grow weaker and weaker, and the new stronger and stronger; but the time draweth near when that which is corrupt and depraved and defiled shall fall of itself and be dropped for ever, and the new nature shall be revealed in its refulgence and beauty, not as delinquent to be punished, but as victorious to receive the crown of life. (J. Stratten.) Gradual hardening of the heart:— Many of you have no doubt seen the dripping wells at Matlock Bath. The caves are like an old curiosity shop. There are all kinds of objects. Drop by drop the water falls, until things that once were soft, and could have been bent as easily as a cane, have become as stiff and hard as stone. Slowly and surely the work goes on. And so it is with our life. The heart does not become hard all at once. The stony heart:— The “stony heart” refers obviously to a curious custom of the ancient Egyptians. When a dead body was embalmed, the heart along with the other internal organs was taken out, and in the cavity where it had been a large scarab was placed. This was a representation in stone of a beetle that was worshipped by the Egyptians, because it sprang from the fertilising mud left behind by the annual overflow of the waters of the Nile. It seemed to be created directly by the rays of the sun, and was therefore regarded as a symbol of life springing from death. Myriads of this sacred beetle wrought in all kinds of material have been found in Egyptian tombs. Ezekiel, as is abundantly evident in his prophecies against Egypt, was intimately acquainted with the manners and customs of that country. He therefore borrows his image from an Egyptian source.… It suggests to us not only the hardness and lifelessness of a common stone, but also the peculiar shape and superstitious use of a special sacred stone. It was with the Jews as it was with an Egyptian mummy. They were spiritually dead, and the tender living heart had disappeared and a heart of stone had been substituted. (Hugh Macmillan, D.D.) Transformed to stone:— We read in ancient Greek fable of the Gorgons, who had the power of turning mortals into stone by a look. There are still Gorgons in existence that can turn to stone the hearts of those who look upon their alluring forms and listen to their flattering speeches. The love of money, the love of pleasure, are great Medusas that change by their evil spells the warm heart that cherishes them into a piece of rock, without sensibility or sympathy. (Ibid.) And I will give you an heart of flesh.—A heart of flesh:— A heart of flesh is known by its tenderness concerning sin. To have indulged a foul imagination, or to have allowed a wild desire to tarry even for a moment, is quite enough to make a heart of flesh grieve before the Lord. The heart of stone calls a great iniquity nothing, but not so the heart of flesh.
The heart of flesh is tender of God’s will. My Lord Will-be-will is a great blusterer, and it is hard to subject him to God’s will; but when the heart of flesh is given, the will quivers like an aspen leaf in every breath of heaven, and bows like an osier in every breeze of God’s Spirit. The natural will is cold, hard iron, which is not to be hammered into form; but the renewed will, like molten metal, is soon moulded by the hand of grace.
In the fleshy heart there is a tenderness of the affections. The hard heart does not love the Redeemer, but the renewed heart burns with affection towards Him. The hard heart is selfish, and coldly demands, “Why should I weep for sin? Why should I love the Lord?” But the heart of flesh says: “Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee; help me to love Thee more!” Many are the privileges of this renewed heart; “ ’Tis here the Spirit dwells, ’tis there that Jesus rests.” It is fitted to receive every spiritual blessing, and every blessing comes to it. It is prepared to yield every heavenly fruit to the honour and praise of God, and therefore the Lord delights in it. (C. H. Spurgeon.) The heart of flesh:— It is a peculiar feature in our holy religion that it begins its work within, and acts first upon the heart. The Holy Spirit does not attempt to improve human nature into something better, but lays the axe at the root of the trees, and declares that we must become new creatures, and that by a supernatural work of the omnipotent God. True religion begins, then, with the heart, and the heart is the ruling power of manhood. The heart is more nearly the man than any other of the faculties and powers which God has bestowed upon our nature. The heart, when renewed by grace, is the best part of manhood; unrenewed, it is the very worst. Æsop, when his master ordered him to provide nothing for a feast but the best things in the market, brought him nothing but tongues, and when the next day he ordered him to buy nothing but the worst things in the market, still brought nothing but tongues; and I would venture to correct or spiritualise the story, by exchanging hearts for tongues, for there is nothing better in the world than hearts renewed, and nothing worse than hearts unregenerate. I. THE TENDERNESS HERE INTENDED IS ABSENT IN THE UNREGENERATE. They frequently have a natural sensitiveness; some persons who are not converted are very tender indeed, as mothers to their children, as fathers to their offspring, as friends to friends; and God forbid that we should say anything amiss concerning that which is good in human nature after its kind, but that is widely different from the spiritually tender heart. In all unregenerate men there is a lack of the real spiritual tenderness of which I have to speak, though all are not equally hardened. In all, for instance, there is a natural stoniness of heart. We are not born into this world perfect, so that when sin meets us it receives a kindly reception, and is not dreaded and shunned as it should be. The heart by nature is like the nether millstone, and its hardness is increased by contact with the world. Familiarity with sin doth not breed contempt for it, but often causes a measure of contempt for the law which forbids it. This world is a petrifying spring, and all who are of the world are being petrified in its stream, and so are growing harder and harder as the years roll on. Moreover, men harden themselves by their own sins. Like a stone falling, sin gains impetus and increased velocity. As labour renders the hand hard, so sin makes the heart callous, and each sin makes the stony heart yet more like adamant. At the same time, all the circumstances around an unregenerate man will be perverted to the same result. If, for instance, a man prospers, nothing is more hardening to the heart than long prosperity. The opposite condition of circumstances will, through sin, produce the same result. Affliction hardens those whom it does not soften. And, alas! alas! that we should have to add it, holy influences will come to complete this hardening, and carry it to a still higher degree. The sunlight of the Gospel shining upon hearers either melts them into repentance or else hardens them into greater obstinacy. Yet, further, when an unregenerate man dares to put on a Christian profession, this is perhaps the most rapid and certain process for consummating the devil’s work; for if a man will be audacious enough to join himself with the saints while he is indulging in private sin; if he will continue to come to the communion table when he knows that his basest lusts are still indulged; and if, moreover, he has the face to boast of being a child of God when he knows that he is an utter stranger to Divine grace, why, such a man is the raw material out of which Satan can make a Judas. II. WHEREVER TRUE TENDERNESS IS FOUND IT IS A SPECIAL GIFT OF THE NEW COVENANT. A heart of flesh is a boon of sovereign grace, and it is always the result of Divine power. No heart of stone was ever turned into flesh by accident, nor by mere providential dispensations, nor by human persuasions. Neither is such a change wrought by man’s own actions. How shall a stone, being a stone, produce in itself flesh? The Spirit of God must change the nature, or the heart of stone will never become a heart of flesh. Note that the first works of the Spirit of God upon the soul tend towards this tenderness, for when He comes to a man He convinces him of sin and so softens him; the man convinced of sin does not laugh any longer at sin, neither does he despise the wrath of God on account of it. When the soul comes to be really saved, and to obtain peace through Jesus Christ, one great mark of its salvation is tenderness in heart. Oh, what a place for tenderness the Cross is! When for the first time our eye beholds the Saviour, we, weep; we look and live, but we also look and mourn that we pierced the Lord. The fact that He loved us and gave Himself for us is enough to dissolve a heart of iron, if it could once know it. Now, as these first works of the Spirit of God in conviction and conversion lead to tenderness, so is it true of all the Divine operations which follow in due course. The whole tenor of the Gospel is towards tenderness. I cannot recollect a promise, I cannot recall a doctrine, I cannot remember a fact connected with the Gospel, which could make a believer hard-hearted. Can you? So is it with every Christian grace. All the Christian virtues promote warmth and tenderness of heart. You cannot be strong in piety unless you are tender in heart. Are you a child? Can a child be good if it be indifferent, haughty, obstinate, and stony-hearted towards its parents? Are you a servant? Who is a good servant but he that is tender of his master’s reputation, and anxious to fill his lord’s command? Are you a soldier? Where is there a good soldier that is not jealous of his captain’s honour, and careful lest by any means he should break the martial law? There must be tenderness. It is an essential point. III. THIS TENDERNESS, WHEN IT IS GIVEN, IS OBSERVABLE UNDER SEVERAL ASPECTS. The man who has a heart of flesh given him becomes sensitive to fear. He trembles at the thought of a holy God in arms against him. The renewed heart is afraid of what other men call little sins, and flees from them as from a serpent. Again, a tender heart becomes sensitive as to the decisions of its enlightened conscience. The Christian feels that it is a horrible thing to sin against God, against the Saviour’s love, and against the influence of the indwelling Spirit, and he starts back from sin, not only because he is afraid of the punishment, but because he is wounded by the sin itself. As smoke to the eyes, as thorns to the flesh, and as gall to the palate, such is sin to the heart of flesh. Then, again, the new heart, the fleshy heart, becomes sensitive of the Divine love. The renewed heart feels that the love of Christ constraineth it, and it judgeth “that if Christ died for all, then were all dead, and that He died for all, that they which live should not live henceforth to themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again.” Moreover, the heart becomes sensitive henceforth to holy grief. When it has erred it chastens and humbles itself for having grieved the Saviour: it takes revenge upon itself if sin has been indulged. Withal it becomes sensitive to joy, and oh the joy which a Christian feels, to which the ungodly man must for ever be a stranger! Heaven itself seems to flash along every nerve when the heart is steeped in fellowship with Jesus. And so we become sensitive with pity for others. I would give nothing for your religion if you do not desire others to share in it; if you can, without emotion, think of a soul being damned, I fear that it will be your own lot. Where this tenderness of heart is carried to a high point, as it ought to be in every Christian, the believer becomes delicately sensitive concerning the things of God. A Christian’s heart should resemble a sensitive plant, which the moment it is touched folds up its leaves, as a sailor reefs his canvas; or like a wound in a man’s flesh, which is pained by the faintest brush. Spiritual sensitiveness is fulness of life; insensibility is death. To feel the slightest motion of the Holy Spirit is a sign of high spirituality. IV. TENDERNESS OF HEART IS TO BE GREATLY PRIZED AND EARNESTLY CULTIVATED. Beloved, do not try to get rid of soul-alarm and conviction and sin, except in God’s way. You will never prize the Saviour until you loathe yourself; you will never love His blood until you have been ashamed of the crimson of your own sin. Go to Jesus and put your trust in Him, and harden not your heart against Him. Next, I speak to you, O child of God. Cultivate tenderness of heart more and more. Be very humble, lie very low: be more and more conscious of your natural guilt, and repent daily more earnestly. (Ibid.)
Exell, J. S. (1906). The Biblical Illustrator: Ezekiel (pp. 428–443). Francis Griffiths.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.Revelation 21:4
Yes, we shall come to this if we are believers. Sorrow shall cease, and tears shall be wiped away. This is the world of weeping, but it passes away. There shall be a new heaven and a new earth, so says the first verse of this chapter; and therefore there will be nothing to weep over concerning the Fall and its consequent miseries. Read the second verse and note how it speaks of the bride and her marriage. The Lamb’s wedding is a time for boundless pleasure, and tears would be out of place. The third verse says that God Himself will dwell among men; and surely at His right hand there are pleasures forevermore, and tears can no longer flow.
What will our state be when there will be no more sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain? This will be more glorious than we can as yet imagine. O eyes that are red with weeping, cease your scalding flow, for in a little while ye shall know no more tears! None can wipe tears away like the God of love, but He is coming to do it. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Come, Lord, and tarry not; for now both men and women must weep!
If Romans is the greatest letter ever written, then chapter 8 is the greatest chapter in the greatest letter. It’s the Everest of Paul’s monumental epistle.
In Romans 8, Paul makes several amazing claims about the gospel:
God frees us from sin (Rom. 8:2)
God raises us from the dead (Rom. 8:11)
God adopts us as sons and makes us his heirs (Rom. 8:17)
Having made these claims, he hits the pause button to ask, “What then shall we say to these things?” (Rom. 8:31). In other words, What do you think? What does it mean? What conclusions can we draw?
And then Paul answers his question by asking…
5 questions every believer should ask
These five questions ought to be the first questions we ask when we come to Christ. And they are questions we should return to again and again, for they keep us in the grace of God.
These five questions are awesome. But don’t panic. This is not a test. These are rhetorical questions with obvious answers.
Q1: Who can be against us?
If God is for us, who is against us? (Romans 8:31)
“God is for us” means your heavenly Father is totally committed to your success. Boom!
Some fear that God is against us, but the Scriptures declare that he is for us (Ps. 56:9, 118:6). Knowing that God is on your side and you can’t lose gives you confidence to take risks. You’ll walk into the lion’s den with a holy swagger and face the furnace without fear. You will say, “God is with me, I will not be burned” (see Is. 43:2).
Who is against us? No one, obviously, because anyone who picks on you is picking on a child of God. This does not mean you won’t encounter opposition. But those who oppose God’s children are picking a fight they cannot win. Those who rise against you will come from one direction and flee in seven (Deut. 28:7).
Q2: What good thing will God withhold from us?
He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him over for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32)
Paul’s letter to the Romans could be called the Christmas Epistle because it reveals God’s good gifts to us, including justification (Rom. 3:24), righteousness (Rom. 5:17), eternal life (Rom. 6:23, 8:11), perseverance (Rom. 15:5), spiritual gifts (Rom. 1:11, 12:6), the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5), and his own Son. There is no good thing that God withholds from us.
Q3: Who can accuse us?
Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? (Romans 8:33a)
Any accusations against you come from one of three sources: your conscience, the devil, or the world. You can be sure that no accusation comes from the One who is for you and justifies you.
God’s throne is a place of grace, not judgment (Heb. 4:16). Should any accusations come against you, you can be confident that a mighty Advocate will speak in your defense (see next verse).
Q4: Who can condemn us?
God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? (Romans 8:33b–34)
God is in the justifying business, not the judging business. He doesn’t condemn you for being wrong, but he removes all your sins, declares you innocent, and adopts you into his family.
Since God is for you and justifies you, no one can condemn you or bring a successful charge against you (Rom. 8:1, 33). In Christ, you are eternally unpunishable and uncondemnable.
Q5: Who can separate us from God’s love?
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:35)
No one can come between you and Christ’s love for you. If all the lawyers of the world were to present undeniable evidence of your wrongdoing and wretchedness, your Savior would still love you, defend you, and say, “You are mine.” If you were the only sinner who ever lived, he would still go to the cross for you.
The Good Shepherd will always come for the one lost sheep.
—
The Grace Commentary is a great place to find answers to common questions, like these:
Prior to certain scientific discoveries, most people thought that the universe had always been here, and no need to ask who or what may have caused it. But today, that’s all changed. Today, the standard model of the origin of the universe is that all the matter and energy in the universe came into being in an event scientists call “The Big Bang”. At the creation event, space and time themselves began to exist, and there is no material reality that preceded them.
So a couple of quotes to show that.
An initial cosmological singularity… forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity… On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.
Source: P. C. W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology,” in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (Berlin: Springer Verlag ).
And another quote:
[A]lmost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.
Source: Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, The Isaac Newton Institute Series of Lectures (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 20.
So, there are several scientific discoveries that led scientists to accept the creation event, and one of the most interesting and famous is the discovery of how elements heavier than hydrogen were formed.
Nucleosynthesis: forming heavier elements by fusion
The term nucleosynthesis refers to the formation of heavier elements, atomic nuclei with many protons and neutrons, from the fusion of lighter elements. The Big Bang theory predicts that the early universe was a very hot place. One second after the Big Bang, the temperature of the universe was roughly 10 billion degrees and was filled with a sea of neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons (positrons), photons and neutrinos. As the universe cooled, the neutrons either decayed into protons and electrons or combined with protons to make deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen). During the first three minutes of the universe, most of the deuterium combined to make helium. Trace amounts of lithium were also produced at this time. This process of light element formation in the early universe is called “Big Bang nucleosynthesis” (BBN).
The creation hypothesis predicts that there will be specific amounts of these light elements formed as the universe cools down. Do the predictions match with observations?
Yes they do:
The predicted abundance of deuterium, helium and lithium depends on the density of ordinary matter in the early universe, as shown in the figure at left. These results indicate that the yield of helium is relatively insensitive to the abundance of ordinary matter, above a certain threshold. We generically expect about 24% of the ordinary matter in the universe to be helium produced in the Big Bang. This is in very good agreement with observations and is another major triumph for the Big Bang theory.
Moreover, WMAP satellite measurements of mass density agree with our observations of these light element abundances.
Here are the observations from the WMAP satellite:
Scientific observations match predictions
And here is how those WMAP measurements confirm the Big Bang creation event:
However, the Big Bang model can be tested further. Given a precise measurement of the abundance of ordinary matter, the predicted abundances of the other light elements becomes highly constrained. The WMAP satellite is able to directly measure the ordinary matter density and finds a value of 4.6% (±0.2%), indicated by the vertical red line in the graph. This leads to predicted abundances shown by the circles in the graph, which are in good agreement with observed abundances. This is an important and detailed test of nucleosynthesis and is further evidence in support of the Big Bang theory.
“An important and detailed test”.
For completeness, we should learn how elements heavier than these light elements are formed:
Elements heavier than lithium are all synthesized in stars. During the late stages of stellar evolution, massive stars burn helium to carbon, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, and iron. Elements heavier than iron are produced in two ways: in the outer envelopes of super-giant stars and in the explosion of a supernovae. All carbon-based life on Earth is literally composed of stardust.
That’s a wonderful thing to tell a young lady when you are on a date: “your body is made of stardust”. In fact, as I have argued before, this star formation, which creates the elements necessary for intelligent life, can only be built if the fundamental constants and quantities in the universe are finely-tuned.
Now, you would think that atheists would be happy to find observations that confirm the origin of the universe out of nothing, but they are not. Actually, they are in denial.
Here’s a statement from the Secular Humanist Manifesto, which explains what atheists believe about the universe:
Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.
For a couple of examples of how atheistic scientists respond to the evidence for a cosmic beginning, you can check out this post, where we get responses from cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, and physical chemist Peter Atkins.
You cannot have the creation of the universe be true AND a self-existing, eternal universe ALSO be true. Someone has to be wrong. Either the science is wrong, or the atheist manifesto is wrong. I know where I stand.
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (5:10–12)
Of all the beatitudes, this last one seems the most contrary to human thinking and experience. The world does not associate happiness with humility, mourning over sin, gentleness, righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, or peacemaking holiness. Even less does it associate happiness with persecution. Some years ago a popular national magazine took a survey to determine the things that make people happy. According to the responses they received, happy people enjoy other people but are not self-sacrificing; they refuse to participate in any negative feelings or emotions; and they have a sense of accomplishment based on their own self-sufficiency. The person described by those principles is completely contrary to the kind of person the Lord says will be authentically happy. Jesus says a blessed person is not one who is self-sufficient but one who recognizes his own emptiness and need, who comes to God as a beggar, knowing he has no resources in himself. He is not confident in his own ability but is very much aware of his own inability. Such a person, Jesus says, is not at all positive about himself but mourns over his own sinfulness and isolation from a holy God. To be genuinely content, a person must not be self-serving but self-sacrificing. He must be gentle, merciful, pure in heart, yearn for righteousness, and seek to make peace on God’s terms—even if those attitudes cause him to suffer. The Lord’s opening thrust in the Sermon on the Mount climaxes with this great and sobering truth: those who faithfully live according to the first seven beatitudes are guaranteed at some point to experience the eighth. Those who live righteously will inevitably be persecuted for it. Godliness generates hostility and antagonism from the world. The crowning feature of the happy person is persecution! Kingdom people are rejected people. Holy people are singularly blessed, but they pay a price for it. The last beatitude is really two in one, a single beatitude repeated and expanded. Blessed is mentioned twice (vv. 10, 11), but only one characteristic (persecuted) is given, although it is mentioned three times, and only one result (for theirs is the kingdom of heaven) is promised. Blessed apparently is repeated to emphasize the generous blessing given by God to those who are persecuted. “Double-blessed are those who are persecuted,” Jesus seems to be saying. Three distinct aspects of kingdom faithfulness are spoken of in this beatitude: the persecution, the promise, and the posture.
THE PERSECUTION
Those who have been persecuted are the citizens of the kingdom, those who live out the previous seven beatitudes. To the degree that they fulfill the first seven they may experience the eighth. “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). Before writing those words Paul had just mentioned some of his own “persecutions, and suffering, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra” (v. 11). As one who lived the kingdom life he had been persecuted, and all others who live the kingdom life can expect similar treatment. What was true in ancient Israel is true today and will remain true until the Lord returns. “As at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also” (Gal. 4:29). Imagine a man who accepted a new job in which he had to work with especially profane people. When at the end of the first day his wife asked him how he had managed, he said, “Terrific! They never guessed I was a Christian.” As long as people have no reason to believe that we are Christians, at least obedient and righteous Christians, we need not worry about persecution. But as we manifest the standards of Christ we will share the reproach of Christ. Those born only of the flesh will persecute those born of the Spirit. To live for Christ is to live in opposition to Satan in his world and in his system. Christlikeness in us will produce the same results as Christlikeness did in the apostles, in the rest of the early church, and in believers throughout history. Christ living in His people today produces the same reaction from the world that Christ Himself produced when He lived on earth as a man. Righteousness is confrontational, and even when it is not preached in so many words, it confronts wickedness by its very contrast. Abel did not preach to Cain, but Abel’s righteous life, typified by his proper sacrifice to the Lord, was a constant rebuke to his wicked brother—who in a rage finally slew him. When Moses chose to identify with his own despised Hebrew people rather than compromise himself in the pleasures of pagan Egyptian society, he paid a great price. But he considered “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt” (Heb. 11:26). The Puritan writer Thomas Watson said of Christians: “Though they be never so meek, merciful, pure in heart, their piety will not shield them from sufferings. They must hang their harp on the willows and take the cross. The way to heaven is by way of thorns and blood.… Set it down as a maxim, if you will follow Christ you must see the swords and staves” (The Beatitudes [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1971], pp. 259–60). Savonarola was one of the greatest reformers in the history of the church. In his powerful condemnation of personal sin and ecclesiastical corruption, that Italian preacher paved the way for the Protestant Reformation, which began a few years after his death. “His preaching was a voice of thunder,” writes one biographer, “and his denunciation of sin was so terrible that the people who listened to him went about the streets half-dazed, bewildered and speechless. His congregations were so often in tears that the whole building resounded with their sobs and their weeping.” But the people and the church could not long abide such a witness, and for preaching uncompromised righteousness Savonarola was convicted of “heresy,” he was hanged, and his body was burned. Persecution is one of the surest and most tangible evidences of salvation. Persecution is not incidental to faithful Christian living but is certain evidence of it. Paul encouraged the Thessalonians by sending them Timothy, “so that no man may be disturbed by these afflictions; for you yourselves know that we have been destined for this. For indeed when we were with you, we kept telling you in advance that we were going to suffer affliction; and so it came to pass, as you know” (1 Thess. 3:3–4). Suffering persecution is part of the normal Christian life (cf. Rom. 8:16–17). And if we never experience ridicule, criticism, or rejection because of our faith, we have reason to examine the genuineness of it. “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake,” Paul says, “not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear to be in me” (Phil. 1:29–30). Persecution for Christ’s sake is a sign of our own salvation just as it is a sign of damnation for those who do the persecuting (v. 28). Whether Christians live in a relatively protected and tolerant society or whether they live under a godless, totalitarian regime, the world will find ways to persecute Christ’s church. To live a redeemed life to its fullest is to invite and to expect resentment and reaction from the world. The fact that many professed believers are popular and praised by the world does not indicate that the world has raised its standards but that many who call themselves by Christ’s name have lowered theirs. As the time for Christ’s appearing grows closer we can expect opposition from the world to increase, not decrease. When Christians are not persecuted in some way by society it means that they are reflecting rather than confronting that society. And when we please the world we can be sure that we grieve the Lord (cf. James 4:4; 1 John 2:15–17). When (hotan) can also mean whenever. The idea conveyed in the term is not that believers will be in a constant state of opposition, ridicule, or persecution, but that, whenever those things come to us because of our faith, we should not be surprised or resentful. Jesus was not constantly opposed and ridiculed, nor were the apostles. There were times of peace and even popularity. But every faithful believer will at times have some resistance and ridicule from the world, while others, for God’s own purposes, will endure more extreme suffering. But whenever and however affliction comes to the child of God, his heavenly Father will be there with him to encourage and to bless. Our responsibility is not to seek out persecution, but to be willing to endure whatever trouble our faithfulness to Jesus Christ may bring, and to see it as a confirmation of true salvation. The way to avoid persecution is obvious and easy. To live like the world, or at least to “live and let live,” will cost us nothing. To mimic the world’s standards, or never to criticize them, will cost us nothing. To keep quiet about the gospel, especially the truth that apart from its saving power men remain in their sins and are destined for hell, will cost us nothing. To go along with the world, to laugh at its jokes, to enjoy its entertainment, to smile when it mocks God and takes His name in vain, and to be ashamed to take a stand for Christ will not bring persecution. Those are the habits of sham Christians. Jesus does not take faithlessness lightly. “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:26). If we are ashamed of Christ, He will be ashamed of us. Christ also warned, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for in the same way their fathers used to treat the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). To be popular with everyone is either to have compromised the faith or not to have true faith at all. Though it was early in His ministry, by the time Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount He had already faced opposition. After He healed the man on the Sabbath, “the Pharisees went out and immediately began taking counsel with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him” (Mark 3:6). We learn from Luke that they were actually hoping Jesus would heal on the Sabbath “in order that they might find reason to accuse Him” (Luke 6:7). They already hated His teaching and wanted Him to commit an act serious enough to warrant His arrest. Our Lord made it clear from His earliest teaching, and His opponents made it clear from their earliest reactions, that following Him was costly. Those who entered His kingdom would suffer for Him before they would reign with Him. That is the hard honesty that every preacher, evangelist, and witness of Christ should exemplify. We do the Lord no honor and those to whom we witness no benefit by hiding or minimizing the cost of following Him. The cost of discipleship is billed to believers in many different ways. A Christian stonemason in Ephesus in Paul’s day might have been asked to help build a pagan temple or shrine. Because he could not do that in good conscience, his faith would cost him the work and possibly his job and career. A believer today might be expected to hedge on the quality of his work in order to increase company profits. To follow His conscience in obedience to the Lord could also cost his job or at least a promotion. A Christian housewife who refuses to listen to gossip or to laugh at the crude jokes of her neighbors may find herself ostracized. Some costs will be known in advance and some will surprise us. Some costs will be great and some will be slight. But by the Lord’s and the apostles’ repeated promises, faithfulness always has a cost, which true Christians are willing to pay (contrast Matt. 13:20–21). The second-century Christian leader Tertullian was once approached by a man who said, “I have come to Christ, but I don’t know what to do. I have a job that I don’t think is consistent with what Scripture teaches. What can I do? I must live.” To that Tertullian replied, “Must you?” Loyalty to Christ is the Christian’s only true choice. To be prepared for kingdom life is to be prepared for loneliness, misunderstanding, ridicule, rejection, and unfair treatment of every sort. In the early days of the church the price paid was often the ultimate. To choose Christ might mean choosing death by stoning, by being covered with pitch and used as a human torch for Nero, or by being wrapped in animal skins and thrown to vicious hunting dogs. To choose Christ could mean torture by any number of excessively cruel and painful ways. That was the very thing Christ had in mind when He identified His followers as those willing to bear their crosses. That has no reference to mystical devotion, but is a call to be ready to die, if need be, for the cause of the Lord (see Matt. 10:35–39; 16:24–25). In resentment against the gospel the Romans invented charges against Christians, such as accusing them of being cannibals because in the Lord’s Supper they spoke of eating Jesus’ body and drinking His blood. They accused them of having sexual orgies at their love feasts and even of setting fire to Rome. They branded believers as revolutionaries because they called Jesus Lord and King and spoke of God’s destroying the earth by fire. By the end of the first century, Rome had expanded almost to the outer limits of the known world, and unity became more and more of a problem. Because only the emperor personified the entire empire, the caesars came to be deified, and their worship was demanded as a unifying and cohesive influence. It became compulsory to give a verbal oath of allegiance to caesar once a year, for which a person would be given a verifying certificate, called a libellus. After publicly proclaiming, “Caesar is Lord,” the person was free to worship any other gods he chose. Because faithful Christians refused to declare such an allegiance to anyone but Christ, they were considered traitors—for which they suffered confiscation of property, loss of work, imprisonment, and often death. One Roman poet spoke of them as “the panting, huddling flock whose only crime was Christ.” In the last beatitude Jesus speaks of three specific types of affliction endured for Christ’s sake: physical persecution, verbal insult, and false accusation.
PHYSICAL PERSECUTION
First, Jesus says, we can expect physical persecution. Have been persecuted (v. 10), persecute (v. 11), and persecuted (v. 12) are from diōkō, which has the basic meaning of chasing, driving away, or pursuing. From that meaning developed the connotations of physical persecution, harassment, abuse, and other unjust treatment. All of the other beatitudes have to do with inner qualities, attitudes, and spiritual character. The eighth beatitude speaks of external things that happen to believers, but the teaching behind these results also has to do with attitude. The believer who has the qualities required in the previous beatitudes will also have the quality of willingness to face persecution for the sake of righteousness. He will have the attitude of self-sacrifice for the sake of Christ. It is the lack of fear and shame and the presence of courage and boldness that says, “I will be in this world what Christ would have me be. I will say in this world what Christ will have me say. Whatever it costs, I will be and say those things.” The Greek verb is a passive perfect participle, and could be translated “allow themselves to be persecuted.” The perfect form indicates continuousness, in this case a continuous willingness to endure persecution if it is the price of godly living. This beatitude speaks of a constant attitude of accepting whatever faithfulness to Christ may bring. It is in the demands of this beatitude that many Christians break down in their obedience to the Lord, because here is where the genuineness of their response to the other beatitudes is most strongly tested. It is here where we are most tempted to compromise the righteousness we have hungered and thirsted for. It is here where we find it convenient to lower God’s standards to accommodate the world and thereby avoid conflicts and problems that we know obedience will bring. But God does not want His gospel altered under pretense of its being less demanding, less righteous, or less truthful than it is. He does not want witnesses who lead the unsaved into thinking that the Christ life costs nothing. A synthetic gospel, a man-made seed, produces no real fruit.
VERBAL INSULTS
Second, Jesus promises that kingdom citizens are blessed … when men cast insults at them. Oneidizō carries the idea of reviling, upbraiding, or seriously insulting, and literally means to cast in one’s teeth. To cast insults is to throw abusive words in the face of an opponent, to mock viciously. To be an obedient citizen of the kingdom is to court verbal abuse and reviling. As He stood before the Sanhedrin after His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was spat upon, beaten, and taunted with the words “Prophesy to us, You Christ; who is the one who hit You?” (Matt. 26:67–68). As He was being sentenced to crucifixion by Pilate, Jesus was again beaten, spit upon, and mocked, this time by the Roman soldiers (Mark 15:19–20). Faithfulness to Christ may even cause friends and loved ones to say things that cut and hurt deeply. Several years ago I received a letter from a woman who told of a friend who had decided to divorce her husband for no just cause. The friend was a professed Christian, but when she was confronted with the truth that what she was doing was scripturally wrong, she became defensive and hostile. She was reminded of God’s love and grace, of His power to mend whatever problems she and her husband were having, and of the Bible’s standards for marriage and divorce. But she replied that she did not believe the Bible was really God’s Word but was simply a collection of men’s ideas about God that each person had to accept, reject, or interpret for himself. When her friend wanted to read some specific Bible passages to her, she refused to listen. She had made up her mind and would not give heed to Scripture or to reason. With hate in her eyes she accused the other woman of luring her into her house in order to ridicule and embarrass her, saying she could not possibly love her by questioning her right to get a divorce. As she left, she slammed the door behind her. The woman who wrote the letter concluded by saying, “I love her, and it is with a heavy heart that I realize the extent of her rejection of Christ. Painful as this has been, I thank God. For the first time in my life I know what it is to be separate from the world.” Paul told the Corinthian church, whose members had such a difficult time separating themselves from the world, “For, I think, God has exhibited us apostles last of all, as men condemned to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men” (1 Cor. 4:9). Paul drew the expression “become a spectacle” from the practice of Roman generals to parade their captives through the street of the city, making a spectacle of them as trophies of war who were doomed to die once the general had used them to serve his proud and arrogant purposes. That is the way the world is inclined to treat those who are faithful to Christ. In a note of strong sarcasm to enforce his point, Paul continues, “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are prudent in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are distinguished, but we are without honor” (v. 10). Many in the Corinthian church suffered none of the ridicule and conflict the apostle suffered because they prized their standing before the world more than their standing before the Lord. In the world’s eyes they were prudent, strong, and distinguished—because they were still so much like the world. God does not call His people to be sanctified celebrities, using their worldly reputations in a self-styled effort to bring Him glory, using their power to supplement His power and their wisdom to enhance His gospel. We can mark it down as a cardinal principle that to the extent the world embraces a Christian cause or person—or that a Christian cause or person embraces the world—to that extent that cause or person has compromised the gospel and scriptural standards. If Paul had capitalized on his human credentials he could have drawn greater crowds and certainly have received greater welcome wherever he went. His credentials were impressive. “If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more,” he says. He was “circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee” (Phil. 3:4–5). He had been “caught up to the third heaven, … into Paradise” (2 Cor. 12:2, 4) and had spoken in tongues more than anyone else (1 Cor. 14:18). He had studied under the famous rabbi Gamaliel and was even a free-born Roman citizen (Acts 22:3, 29). But all those things the apostle “counted as loss for the sake of Christ, … but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:7–8). He refused to use worldly means to try to achieve spiritual purposes, because he knew they would fail. The marks of authenticity Paul carried as an apostle and minister of Jesus Christ were his credentials as a servant and a sufferer, “in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure” (2 Cor. 11:23–27). The only thing of which he would boast was his weakness (12:5), and when he preached he was careful not to rely on “superiority of speech or of wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:1), which he could easily have done. “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,” he told the Corinthians. “And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (vv. 2–5). We live in a day when the church, more than ever before, is engaged in self-glorification and an attempt to gain worldly recognition that must be repulsive to God. When the church tries to use the things of the world to do the work of heaven, it only succeeds in hiding heaven from the world. And when the world is pleased with the church, we can be sure that God is not. We can be equally sure that when we are pleasing to God, we will not be pleasing to the system of Satan.
FALSE ACCUSATION
Third, faithfulness to Christ will bring enemies of the gospel to say all kinds of evil against [us] falsely. Whereas insults are abusive words said to our faces, these evil things are primarily abusive words said behind our backs. Jesus’ critics said of Him, “Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners” (Matt. 11:19). If the world said that of the sinless Christ, what things can His followers expect to be called and accused of? Slander behind our backs is harder to take partly because it is harder to defend against than direct accusation. It has opportunity to spread and be believed before we have a chance to correct it. Much harm to our reputations can be done even before we are aware someone has slandered us. We cannot help regretting slander, but we should not grieve about it. We should count ourselves blessed, as our Lord assures us we shall be when the slander is on account of Me. Arthur Pink comments that “it is a strong proof of human depravity that men’s curses and Christ’s blessings should meet on the same persons” (An Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1950], p. 39). We have no surer evidence of the Lord’s blessing than to be cursed for His sake. It should not seriously bother us when men’s curses fall on the head that Christ has eternally blessed. The central theme of the Beatitudes is righteousness. The first two have to do with recognizing our own unrighteousness, and the next five have to do with our seeking and reflecting righteousness. The last beatitude has to do with our suffering for the sake of righteousness. The same truth is expressed in the second part of the beatitude as on account of Me. Jesus is not speaking of every hardship, problem, or conflict believers may face, but those that the world brings on us because of our faithfulness to the Lord. It is clear again that the hallmark of the blessed person is righteousness. Holy living is what provokes persecution of God’s people. Such persecution because of a righteous life is joyous. Peter identifies such experience as a happy honor.
And who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.” (1 Pet. 3:13–18)
With those words, the apostle extols the privilege of suffering for holiness, and thus of sharing in a small way in the same type of suffering Christ endured. In the next chapter, Peter emphasizes the same thing.
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing; so that also at the revelation of His glory, you may rejoice with exultation. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.… If anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed, but in that name let him glorify God.… Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.” (4:12–14, 16, 19)
When we are hated, maligned, or afflicted as Christians, the real animosity is not against us but against Christ. Satan’s great enemy is Christ, and he opposes us because we belong to Jesus Christ, because He is in us. When we are despised and attacked by the world, the real target is the righteousness for which we stand and which we exemplify. That is why it is easy to escape persecution. Whether under pagan Rome, atheistic Communism, or simply a worldly boss, it is usually easy to be accepted if we will denounce or compromise our beliefs and standards. The world will accept us if we are willing to put some distance between ourselves and the Lord’s righteousness. In the closing days of His ministry Jesus repeatedly and plainly warned His disciples of that truth. “If the world hates you,” He said, “you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me” (John 15:18–21). The world went along for thousands of years before it ever saw a perfect man. Until Christ came, every person, even God’s best, were sinful and flawed. All had feet of clay. To see God’s people fail and sin is often taken as an encouragement by the wicked. They point a finger and say, “He claims to be righteous and good, but look at what he did.” It is easy to feel smug and secure in one’s sinfulness when everyone else is also sinful and imperfect. But when Christ came, the world finally saw the perfect Man, and all excuse for smugness and self-confidence vanished. And instead of rejoicing in the sinless Man, sinful men resented the rebuke that His teaching and His life brought against them. They crucified Him for His very perfection, for His very righteousness. Aristides the Just was banished from ancient Athens. When a stranger asked an Athenian why Aristides was voted out of citizenship he replied, “Because we became tired of his always being just.” A people who prided themselves in civility and justice chafed when something or someone was too just. Because they refused to compromise the gospel either in their teaching or in their lives, most of the apostles suffered a martyr’s death. According to tradition, Andrew was fastened by cords to a cross in order to prolong and intensify his agony. We are told that Peter, by his own request, was crucified head down, because he felt unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus. Paul presumably was beheaded by Nero. Though John escaped a violent death, he died in exile on Patmos.
THE PROMISE
But compared to what is gained, even a martyr’s price is small. Each beatitude begins with blessed and, as already suggested, Jesus pronounces a double blessing on those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, which is for His own sake. The specific blessing promised to those who are so persecuted is that theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The citizens of the kingdom are going to inherit the kingdom. Paul expresses a similar thought in 2 Thessalonians 1:5–7—“This a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire.” I believe that the blessings of the kingdom are threefold: present, millennial, and eternal. Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29–30). First, we are promised blessings here and now. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, and was imprisoned. But the Lord raised him to be the prime minister of Egypt and used him to save His chosen people from starvation and extinction. Daniel was thrown into a den of lions because of his refusal to stop worshiping the Lord. Not only was his life spared, but he was restored to his high position as the most valued commissioner of King Darius, and the king made a declaration that “in all the dominion of my kingdom men are to fear and tremble before the God of Daniel; for He is the living God and enduring forever” (Dan. 6:26). Not every believer is rewarded in this life with the things of this life. But every believer is rewarded in this life with the comfort, strength, and joy of His indwelling Lord. He is also blessed with the assurance that no service or sacrifice for the Lord will be in vain. As a sequel to his book Peace Child, Don Richardson has written Lords of the Earth (Glendale, Calif.: Regal, 1977). He tells the story of Stan Dale, another missionary to Irian Jaya, Indonesia, who ministered to the Yali tribe in the Snow Mountains. The Yali had one of the strictest known religions in the world. For a tribe member even to question, much less disobey, one of its tenets brought instant death. There could never be any change or modification. The Yali had many sacred spots scattered throughout their territory. If even a small child were to crawl onto one of those sacred pieces of ground, he was considered defiled and cursed. To keep the whole village from being involved in that curse, the child would be thrown into the rushing Heluk River to drown and be washed downstream. When Stan Dale came with his wife and four children to that cannibalistic people he was not long tolerated. He was attacked one night and miraculously survived being shot with five arrows. After treatment in a hospital he immediately returned to the Yali. He worked unsuccessfully for several years, and the resentment and hatred of the tribal priests increased. One day as he, another missionary named Phil Masters, and a Dani tribesman named Yemu were facing what they knew was an imminent attack, the Yali suddenly came upon them. As the others ran for safety, Stan and Yemu remained back, hoping somehow to dissuade the Yali from their murderous plans. As Stan confronted his attackers, they shot him with dozens of arrows. As the arrows entered his flesh he would pull them out and break them in two. Eventually he no longer had the strength to pull the arrows out, but he remained standing. Yemu ran back to where Phil was standing, and Phil persuaded him to keep running. With his eyes fixed on Stan, who was still standing with some fifty arrows in his body, Phil remained where he was and was himself soon surrounded by warriors. The attack had begun with hilarity, but it turned to fear and desperation when they saw that Stan did not fall. Their fear increased when it took nearly as many arrows to down Phil as it had Stan. They dismembered the bodies and scattered them about the forest in an attempt to prevent the resurrection of which they had heard the missionaries speak. But the back of their “unbreakable” pagan system was broken, and through the witness of the two men who were not afraid to die in order to bring the gospel to this lost and violent people, the Yali tribe and many others in the surrounding territory came to Jesus Christ. Even Stan’s fifth child, a baby at the time of this incident, was saved reading the book about his father. Stan and Phil were not rewarded in this life with the things of this life. But they seem to have been double-blessed with the comfort, strength, and joy of their indwelling Lord—and the absolute confidence that their sacrifice for Him would not be in vain. There is also a millennial aspect to the kingdom blessing. When Christ establishes His thousand-year reign on earth, we will be co-regents with Him over that wonderful, renewed earth (Rev. 20:4). Finally, there is the reward of the eternal kingdom, the blessing of all blessings of living forever in our Lord’s kingdom enjoying His very presence. The ultimate fruit of kingdom life is eternal life. Even if the world takes from us every possession, every freedom, every comfort, every satisfaction of physical life, it can take nothing from our spiritual life, either now or throughout eternity. The Beatitudes begin and end with the promise of the kingdom of heaven (cf. v. 3). The major promise of the Beatitudes is that in Christ we become kingdom citizens now and forever. No matter what the world does to us, it cannot affect our possession of Christ’s kingdom.
THE POSTURE
Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (5:12)
The believer’s response to persecution and affliction should not be to retreat and hide. To escape from the world is to escape responsibility. Because we belong to Christ, we are no longer of this world, but He has sent us into this world to serve just as He Himself came into this world to serve (John 17:14–18). His followers are “the salt of the earth” and the “light of the world” (Matt. 5:13–14). For our salt to flavor the earth and our light to lighten the world we must be active in the world. The gospel is not given to be hidden but to enlighten. “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (vv. 15–16). When we become Christ’s salt and Christ’s light, our salt will sting the world’s open wounds of sin and our light will irritate its eyes that are used to darkness. But even when our salt and light are resented, rejected, and thrown back in our face, we should rejoice, and be glad. Be glad is from agalliaō, which means to exult, to rejoice greatly, to be overjoyed, as is clear in the King James Version, “be exceeding glad.” The literal meaning is to skip and jump with happy excitement. Jesus uses the imperative mood, which makes His words more than a suggestion. We are commanded to be glad. Not to be glad when we suffer for Christ’s sake is to be untrusting and disobedient. The world can take away a great deal from God’s people, but it cannot take away their joy and their happiness. We know that nothing the world can do to us is permanent. When people attack us for Christ’s sake, they are really attacking Him (cf. Gal. 6:17; Col. 1:24). And their attacks can do us no more permanent damage than they can do Him. Jesus gives two reasons for our rejoicing and being glad when we are persecuted for His sake. First, He says, your reward in heaven is great. Our present life is no more than “a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 4:14); but heaven is forever. Small wonder that Jesus tells us not to lay up treasures for ourselves here on earth, “where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal” (Matt. 6:19–20). Whatever we do for the Lord now, including suffering for Him—in fact, especially suffering for Him—reaps eternal dividends. God’s dividends are not ordinary dividends. They are not only eternal but are also great. If God “is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20), how much more abundantly is He able to grant what He Himself promises to us? We often hear, and perhaps are tempted to think, that it is unspiritual and crass to serve God for the sake of rewards. But that is one of the motives that God Himself gives for serving Him. We first of all serve and obey Christ because we love Him, just as on earth He loved and obeyed the Father because He loved Him. But it was also because of “the joy set before Him” that Christ Himself “endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2). It is neither selfish nor unspiritual to do the Lord’s work for a motive that He Himself gives and has followed. Second, we are to rejoice because the world persecuted the prophets who were before us in the same way that it persecutes us. When we suffer for Christ’s sake, we are in the best possible company. To be afflicted for righteousness’s sake is to stand in the ranks of the prophets. Persecution is a mark of our faithfulness just as it was a mark of the prophets’ faithfulness. When we suffer for Christ’s sake we know beyond a doubt that we belong to God, because we are experiencing the same reaction from the world that the prophets experienced. When we suffer for our Lord we join with the prophets and the other saints of old who “experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground” (Heb. 11:36–38). Though the world is not worthy of their company, every persecuted believer is. To be persecuted verities that we belong to the line of the righteous. Our assurance of salvation does not come from knowing we made a decision somewhere in the past. Rather, our assurance that the decision was a true decision for Jesus Christ is found in the life of righteousness that results in suffering for the sake of Christ. Many will claim to have preached Christ, cast out demons, and done mighty works for His sake, but will be refused heaven (Matt. 7:21–23). But none who have suffered righteously for Him will be left out. The world cannot handle the righteous life that characterizes kingdom living. It is not understandable and acceptable to them, and they cannot stomach it even in others. Poverty of spirit runs counter to the pride of the unbelieving heart. The repentant, contrite disposition that mourns over sin is never appreciated by the callous, indifferent, unsympathetic world. The meek and quiet spirit that takes wrong and does not strike back is regarded as pusillanimous, and it rasps against the militant, vengeful spirit characteristic of the world. To long after righteousness is repugnant to those whose fleshly cravings are rebuked by it, as is a merciful spirit to those whose hearts are hard and cruel. Purity of heart is a painful light that exposes hypocrisy and corruption, and peacemaking is a virtue praised by the contentious, self-seeking world in words but not in heart. John Chrysostom, a godly leader in the fourth-century church preached so strongly against sin that he offended the unscrupulous Empress Eudoxia as well as many church officials. When summoned before Emperor Arcadius, Chrysostom was threatened with banishment if he did not cease his uncompromising preaching. His response was, “Sire, you cannot banish me, for the world is my Father’s house.” “Then I will slay you,” Arcadius said. “Nay, but you cannot, for my life is hid with Christ in God,” came the answer. “Your treasures will be confiscated” was the next threat, to which John replied, “Sire, that cannot be, either. My treasures are in heaven, where none can break through and steal.” “Then I will drive you from man, and you will have no friends left!” was the final, desperate warning. “That you cannot do, either,” answered John, “for I have a Friend in heaven who has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ ” Chrysostom was indeed banished, first to Armenia and then farther away to Pityus on the Back Sea, to which he never arrived because he died on the way. But neither his banishment nor his death disproved or diminished his claims. The things that he valued most highly not even an emperor could take from him.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1985–1989). Matthew (Vol. 1, pp. 219–233). Moody Press.
Persecuted for Christ
Matthew 5:10–12
The Bible says, in many different passages, that true disciples of Jesus Christ will be persecuted. It is inevitable, a natural consequence of exhibiting true Christian character. And yet, any honest assessment of the Christian church in America must point up that although the country itself is far from being Christian and is ungodly, nevertheless there is very little persecution of Christians today. Undoubtedly there is racial persecution for some. There is persecution in politics and sometimes, I suppose, in business. But there is very little persecution for most Christians, at least openly. What is wrong? Is it possible that the Bible is wrong? Or are Christians today simply not showing forth the type of righteous character that Jesus said results in persecution? Once, on the Bible Study Hour, I asked Dr. Harold Voelkel, a missionary for many years in Korea, about persecution in this country as contrasted with the terrible persecution of Christians that he had observed overseas. He answered, “Well, I see no persecution here at all.” For most Christians this is true, and this is true in spite of the clear implications of the Beatitudes that persecution will come to one who lives as Christ has indicated. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:10–12).
Persecution Inevitable
Some person will object that those verses do not actually teach that persecution is inevitable. I agree that they do not teach that you as a Christian as the result of everything you do, will be reviled and suffer every day for righteousness’ sake. On the other hand, the verses do conclude the list of statements that delineate the Christian’s character, and the natural implication is that the one who lives like this will be persecuted. It is an amazing and provocative statement. And yet, it is as much a description of the Christian as the words: poor in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. Moreover, this is exactly the way in which the disciples of the Lord received the statement. Peter, who heard the Lord give this sermon, later quotes the beatitude twice in his first epistle: once in 3:14 (“But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed”), and once in 4:14 (“If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you”). And it is this epistle that most stresses the inevitability of suffering. Peter writes, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ” (4:12–13). Paul, who had himself endured much persecution, says the same. To Timothy he wrote, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). In Philippians he says, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him” (1:29). He wrote to the Christians at Thessalonica, after a period of persecution in that Macedonian city, “so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. You know quite well that we were destined for them. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know” (1 Thess. 3:3–4). All these writers would have agreed in an instant that even in the most tolerant country the cross would never cease to be a symbol for derision and intense hostility, and they would have urged that the absence of persecution (as well as its presence) should drive a believer quickly to his knees.
For Righteousness’ Sake
Now at no point in the entire list of beatitudes is it more necessary to be careful to indicate exactly what is meant by Christ’s statement, for there is no beatitude which has been more often misunderstood and misapplied than this one. For what is the Christian persecuted? That is the heart of the teaching. The answer lies in the phrase “because of righteousness,” and in the parallel phrase in the following verse, “because of me.” It does not say, “Blessed are those who are persecuted,” as though the Lord Jesus Christ was sanctifying any persecution that might occur at any time and at any point in history. It says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.” This means, “Blessed are they who are persecuted because, by God’s grace, they are determined to live as I live.” This means that there is no promise of happiness for those who are persecuted for being a nuisance, for Christians who have shown themselves to be objectionable, difficult, foolish, and insulting to their non-Christian friends. This is not the thing about which Christ was speaking. A humorous example of this nonsanctified type of persecution is given by Joseph Bayly in an imaginary story about Christian witnessing called The Gospel Blimp. It is a satire, of course. It is wildly exaggerated. But, unfortunately, in many of the attitudes represented it is all too true of much so-called Christian activity. The believers in an imaginary town conceive the idea of witnessing by means of a blimp which is to fly over the town trailing gospel signs and dropping tracts and leaflets called “bombs.” It is a silly idea; no one is ever converted by it. But for a while at least the town is tolerant. Tolerance changes to hostility, however, when the promoters of the project add sound equipment to the blimp and begin bombarding their neighbors with gospel services broadcast from the air. At this point, according to Bayly, the “persecution” begins. And the town newspaper prints an editorial that reads:
For some weeks now our metropolis has been treated to the spectacle of a blimp with an advertising sign attached at the rear. This sign does not plug cigarettes or a bottled beverage, but the religious beliefs of a particular group in our midst. The people of our city are notably broad-minded, and they have good-naturedly submitted to this attempt to proselyte. But last night a new refinement (some would say debasement) was introduced. We refer, of course, to the air-borne sound truck, that invader of our privacy, that raucous destroyer of communal peace.…
That night the sound equipment of the blimp is sabotaged, and the Christians call it persecution. Well, it is not persecution. That is Mr. Bayly’s point. It is a provoked response to an unjustified invasion of privacy. And, similarly, it is not persecution today when Christians are snubbed for pushing tracts onto people who do not want them, insulting them in the midst of a religious argument, poking into their affairs when they are not invited, and so on. Christ was speaking of the persecution of those who are abused for the sake of his righteousness. Moreover, the beatitude does not mean, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for wrongdoing.” This should almost go without saying. But it cannot be left unsaid for the simple reason that most persons (including Christians) will always attempt to justify a wrong act by loud cries of unjustified persecution or prejudice. Peter wrote, “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler” (1 Peter 4:15), for he knew that Jesus was speaking of a persecution for the sake of righteousness. Then, too, it is not persecution for being fanatical. When the Jewish court in Jerusalem tried Michael Roban for attempting to burn down the Mosque of Al Aqsa in the temple enclosure of the city, it was not persecuting him. His act was a fanatical act, and it was not performed for the cause of Christ’s righteousness or for the sake of conformity to him. Finally, the persecution about which Jesus spoke is not persecution evoked by following a cause, even—and you must understand me rightly here—for following Christianity. Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has written correctly on this point, “I say that there is a difference between being persecuted for righteousness’ sake and being persecuted for a cause. I know that the two things often become one, and many of the great martyrs and confessors were at one and the same time suffering for righteousness’ sake and for a cause. But it does not follow that the two are always identical.… I think that in the last twenty years there have been men, some of them very well known, who have suffered, and have even been put into prisons and concentration camps, for religion. But they have not been suffering for righteousness’ sake.… This is not the thing about which our Lord is talking.” Well, then, if the verse does not mean being persecuted for being objectionable, or doing wrong, or being fanatical, or endorsing a cause, what does it mean? What does it mean to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for Christ’s sake? Simply put, it means to be persecuted for being like the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Jesus said that those who are persecuted for being like him will be happy. And what is more, those who are like him will always be persecuted. When Jesus came into the world in his righteousness he exposed the evil of the world, and men hated him for it. Before he came men could get away with hypocrisy, lying, dishonesty, selfishness, greed, and a long list of other vices. They could excuse themselves by pointing out that other men were like themselves and that they were better in some of these respects than others. After he came, all these vices were revealed for what they were, just as the filth of a sewer is revealed by thrusting a strong light into one of its openings. Men hated the exposure of their inner hearts and natures, and they killed Christ for exposing them. In a similar way, they will hate any exposure of their evil nature that comes from the evidences of the righteousness of Christ in his followers. That is why Jesus said, “No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.… If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates me hates my Father as well” (John 15:20–23). Is there anything in your conduct that reveals Christ’s righteousness? Is Jesus Christ seen in your character? It is true that we live in a country that has adopted many Christian values, tolerance being among them, and so has risen to a level where persecutions are not likely to be what they were in the early Christian centuries. But it is also true that much of our Christianity has sunk to a level where it is hardly noticed. The world has become tolerant of us. But we have become far more tolerant of the world. There is sometimes precious little true Christian character visible. Have you ever put the principles of Christ’s righteousness into action in your home, your job, or your business? You might reply, “I am up against a situation in my factory that is so rotten and has been going on for so long that if I did the righteous thing I’d be fired.” A man came to Tertullian once with the same problem. His business interests had been conflicting with his loyalty to Jesus Christ. He told of the problem. He ended by saying, “What can I do? I must live.” “Must you?” asked Tertullian. Even in Tertullian’s day the believer’s choice between righteousness and a livelihood was to be righteous.
Happiness through Persecution
Now this beatitude not only describes the nature of the Christian’s persecution, persecution for the sake of righteousness, it also promises happiness to the one who is so persecuted. How can persecution add to a Christian’s happiness? Let me suggest two ways in which it is possible. First, persecution is evidence that the believer is united to Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you” (John 15:19). If we are persecuted for Christ’s sake, we can be happy in this proof that we are his and are united to him forever. Second, if we are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, we can be certain that the Holy Spirit has been at work in our hearts, turning us from our sin and our sinful ways to Christ’s way, and is making progress in molding us into his sinless image. We can be happy in that. If you have known examples in your life of the persecution about which we have been talking—by taking an honest path at work, by refusing to compromise on quality or service, by remaining pure when friends and acquaintances are profligate—you can rejoice at this evidence of God’s gracious and supernatural working.
The Little People
This brings us to the end of our exposition of this eighth and last beatitude. We should add a word now for those who are not and who never will be great martyrs for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. That includes most of us. What about us? Well, we may be certain that God sees the little martyrs as well as the great ones, and that he is as pleased—sometimes more pleased—with the small sacrifices and small insults patiently borne for his sake as he is with the far more spectacular persecutions. Think of the persecutions of Job—not the loss of his family and possessions by a series of calamities caused by Satan, this was not persecution—but the persecution he suffered from his friends who accused him of sinning greatly because of his sudden and tragic losses. What historian would ever have mentioned Job? None! No ancient historian would have thought twice about him. You can be certain that if Job had risen to wealth in New York City and had later died in poverty in Harlem, his name would not even have made the obituary columns of the New York newspapers. Yet the struggles of Job in his persecutions were viewed by God and angels. It may take more grace and it may be a greater victory for a man to spend forty years of his life at the same desk in the same office watching other men being promoted over him because he will not do some of the things that are demanded of officers in his company than it would take for a John Hus to be burned at the stake for his testimony. And it may be more of a victory for a housewife to stay at home, raising her family in the things of the Lord while her nit-picking neighbors laugh at her for being humdrum and unglamorous, than it would be for a Joan of Arc to die at Rouen. We may all take comfort in this, and turn to Christ for the victory. If we have not known persecution, even in little ways, let us search our hearts before him. And let us ask for that righteousness of character that will either repel men or draw them to our blessed Savior.
How to Rejoice in Persecutions
Matthew 5:12
The most striking part of Christ’s eighth and last beatitude is the command that the Christian is to rejoice in persecutions: “Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” How puzzling! For these questions immediately arise in the mind of any thoughtful reader: “How are we to rejoice in persecutions? How does one rejoice when unjustly insulted, scorned, or condemned?” These are valid questions, and the answer is well worth pondering. How does a Christian rejoice in persecutions? I am convinced that the only valid answer to that question is—by knowledge.
Knowledge
In order to understand this it is necessary to recognize that some battles in the Christian life can be won in no other way than by knowledge—not by reason, not by feelings, but by knowledge. A young man goes to college and meets a girl with whom he falls in love and whom he would like to marry but who is not a Christian. He wants to marry her, but he should not. The Holy Spirit within him is telling him so. As a result a terrific battle is in progress. How is he to win it? Well, it is certain that he will never win it by trusting his feelings, for his feelings are what have created the problem in the first place. He will not win it by reason, for the human mind is subtle, and he will always find ten reasons why he should marry her for every one why he should not. Neither can he win the battle by trusting his conscience. The human conscience can be bent to do almost anything we want it to do; in this case it can even be bent to immorality. There is only one way in which the young man will win the victory in this situation, and that is by clinging to the knowledge of God’s will that he has received from Scripture. He must say, “Lord, I do not want to give this particular girl up. I can think of a dozen reasons why I do not need to give her up. I can even make my conscience tell me that I should not give her up. But I know that I must. And because of that I will do it.” The young man must make an intellectual decision. And this means that, apart from any other factor, he must determine simply to walk in the way that he knows God would have him to go. It is exactly the same when a Christian is in the midst of persecution. And what is more, almost every verse in the Bible that refers to persecution implies this. If you are enduring persecution, perhaps from your friends or your family, you dare not trust your feelings. There are times when Christians feel on top of the world even when they are suffering. But this is not always true. It is just as probable, perhaps more so, that the Christian will feel sad and dejected, as Elijah did under the juniper tree. If you trust your feelings, you will rejoice at best only at times and then only partially. Neither can you trust your reason, for the reasoning power of a Christian is often that which is most shaken in the midst of persecution. Have you ever noticed how the apostle Paul described his mental state in the midst of his many persecutions? He writes about it in 2 Corinthians, telling us that confusion of his reason was at least part of the problem. He says, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:8–9). Along with being troubled, persecuted, and cast down, Paul also says that he was often perplexed. And hence he had learned that he could not trust even his own great powers of reason in the midst of troubles and persecutions. If we cannot trust our feelings and if we cannot trust our reason, what can we Christians trust in order that we might rejoice in persecutions? We can only trust the knowledge that we have of God’s purposes in persecution and his control of suffering. And this is a knowledge gained only through Scripture. The victory is intellectual. It is only knowledge that will calm the Christian’s troubled heart and allow the supernatural joy of God’s Spirit to triumph in the midst of his suffering.
Identity with Christ
What are the things that a Christian can know that allow him to rejoice in persecutions? There are at least five. The first one is this: The Christian must know that through persecutions God is demonstrating his identity with Christ. This is the point of all the verses that teach that if we suffer with Christ we also shall be glorified with him. And it is behind Christ’s observation in our text, “For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” We can see an example of this in what it means to be an American today in areas of the Near East where America’s present foreign policy is disliked and sometimes hated. Several years ago I was present in one of the Near Eastern countries in the company of two friends. One of them was another American with whom I had journeyed around the better part of the Mediterranean. The other was a Christian pastor who was born and raised in that country. We Americans thought very little of things we were doing as we toured the sights, but some of those things, although innocent in themselves, worried him. There were places where he did not want us to linger, objects we were not to photograph, subjects that he did not want us to speak about in public. In answer to our confused questions he explained that at the moment anti-American feeling was running high and that an innocent act, however well motivated, might be dangerously misconstrued. He said that this strong feeling was not directed so much against us personally as against our nation. In just the same way the world always will be bitterly opposed to Jesus Christ and to his foreign policy, and it will hate his ambassadors. To the citizens of “his country,” however, the persecution will merely be evidence of their identification with him. They will know that it places them in the great company of those who have been similarly persecuted, and the persecution itself will be a matter of honor. It was this knowledge that gave joy to the first Christians ever to be persecuted. They were Peter and John, and perhaps some of the other apostles, and they were beaten for the sake of their testimony in Jerusalem. We read, however, that after they were beaten, “The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 5:41–42). Persecution is evidence of the believer’s identification with his Lord.
Purification
The second part of a Christian’s knowledge that will help him to rejoice in persecution is the knowledge that God often uses persecution to perfect the believer. In the great wisdom of God, persecution is often the means by which the Christian is helped along the road to practical holiness and thereby made a little more like Jesus. Peter knew this. He had known it personally, and he had seen it in the lives of his converts. Hence, when he wrote his first letter to those in Asia who were experiencing persecution, he wrote this about it: “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:6–8). Peter was saying that for the Christian, persecution (and also suffering in general) is the crucible in which God the refiner purifies us and removes the dross from our lives. Let me give you another illustration. Dr. Billy Graham tells of a friend of his who went through the Depression in the 1920s, losing a job, a fortune, a wife, and a home. But he was a believer in Jesus Christ, and he tenaciously held to his faith even though he was naturally depressed and cast down by circumstances. One day in the midst of his depression he stopped to watch some men doing stonework on a huge church in the city. One was busy chiseling a triangular piece of stone. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked. The workman stopped and pointed to a little opening near the top of the spire. “See that little opening up there near the spire?” he said. “Well, I’m shaping this down here so that it will fit in up there.” The friend said that tears filled his eyes as he walked away from the workman, for it seemed that God had spoken to him personally through the workman telling him that God was shaping him for heaven through his ordeal. Peter said, “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 5:10–11). David tells us in one of the Psalms that before he was afflicted he went astray but that after the affliction he kept God’s word (Ps. 119:67). Most certainly, persecution was a significant factor in the spiritual growth of each of these men. Persecution is also a factor in God’s dealings with his children today. Because of this truth we may face persecution with all joy, knowing that after we have gone through its furnace we shall be more like Jesus, our Savior.
Radiant Christianity
The third truth that will help a Christian to rejoice in persecution is the truth that persecution allows the Christian an opportunity to show forth the supernatural radiance of the Christian life. If everything is going well with you and you rejoice, what makes you different from the nonbelievers who are in the world? Nothing at all! They too rejoice when circumstances are favorable. If you are able to rejoice when things are not favorable, however, then Jesus Christ may be clearly seen in you, and the supernatural power of the Christian faith is made manifest. Persecution is the dark background for the supernatural radiance of this life. Again, this truth is best illustrated by a story. Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Mathews and their daughter Lilah were the last missionary family of the China Inland Mission to leave China after the Communist takeover at the end of the Second World War, and the story of their last two years in China is one of great persecution. For the better part of their two-year captivity in China they lived in one small room. Their only furniture was a stool. They could not contact their Christian friends for fear of subjecting them to reprisals for befriending aliens. Their funds were cut off by the government except for the smallest trickle. The only heat they had came from a small stove which they lit only once each day to boil rice for dinner. Even the fuel which they used was made by Mr. Mathews from the refuse that animals deposited around the streets. For a time the couple submitted to the treatment stoically, asking all the while that God would soon deliver them from China. At last a turning point came in their outlook. They realized that Jesus Christ had come from heaven, not merely submitting to the will of his Father, but delighting in it. And they saw that their own experience was comparable. It was an opportunity for the radiance of joyful obedience to be manifested in them and in which their conduct could be a supernaturally effective witness. After this they came to rejoice and even to sing hymns. And they came to accept the privilege of suffering for the sake of Christ with as much joy as they later experienced when they learned of their pending deliverance. It was a similar knowledge of the opportunities afforded by persecution that taught Hugh Latimer to cry out to Nicholas Ridley as they were both led to the stake in Oxford, England, in 1555, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as (I trust) shall never be put out.” And he was right. For the behavior of Christians in persecutions was then and often still is a great testimony to God’s grace.
Rewards in Heaven
There are two more truths that a Christian should also know in order that he may rejoice in persecutions. The first is the promise of rewards. Jesus said, “Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven” (Matt. 5:12). There are many Christians who consider even the thought of rewards to be ignoble. But that is because they are thinking only of material or self-exalting things. Actually, the rewards are far more likely to be spiritual—fellowship with Christ and proximity to him—and they cannot be the least bit self-exalting, for even they flow from God’s grace. Do not make your Christianity something so ethereal that you think your conduct should be above the thought of rewards. That is not how the believers of other ages prospered. Abraham looked for a city, with foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Moses chose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season because “he was looking ahead to his reward” (Heb. 11:26). Even Jesus “who for the joy set before him endured the cross, … and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). He said, “Rejoice … for great is your reward in heaven.” Finally, the Christian can rejoice in the knowledge that the Lord Jesus himself is particularly near him in the moment of severe persecution. Do you remember the story of the three Hebrew young men who were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace? Their names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, whom the king named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Three men! But when the king looked into the furnace he said, “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?… Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods” (Dan. 3:24–25). In the same way Jesus Christ is particularly near those who are persecuted for his sake, and they can have great joy in this knowledge.
Victory in Persecution
When a Christian can anchor himself in a knowledge of the five great truths that have just been explained, persecution can result in rejoicing. And the rejoicing will—this is the culminating point—lead to greater knowledge. Job knew suffering and great persecution. But he triumphed through knowledge, and the persecution itself led on to more knowledge. At the beginning Job knew that he had nothing in himself and that he had no rights at all before God. When God allowed the most severe blows of life to fall upon him, Job thrived in the knowledge that there was yet the corresponding grace of God and the inextinguishable love of God for himself. As the trials continued, he came to know that God was testing him and purifying his faith, and he rejoiced in that knowledge. Finally, he learned that God was revealing himself to him in a new way, and he came to expect an even fuller revelation. For Job, knowledge was the key to spiritual victory and his knowledge actually grew because of it. So should it be for every persecuted Christian.
Boice, J. M. (2002). The Sermon on the Mount: an expositional commentary (pp. 49–60). Baker Books.
“It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.” —Thomas Jefferson (1775)
Presidential Medal of Freedom for Kirk: On what would have been Charlie Kirk’s 32nd birthday yesterday, President Donald Trump hosted a ceremony at the White House to posthumously award Kirk with America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Kirk’s widow, Erika, accepted the medal on her husband’s behalf and stood with Trump as he officially proclaimed the day a national day of remembrance. Trump wrote, “Today, our Nation honors the immortal memory of Charlie — a father, a husband, a Christian martyr, and a titan of the American conservative movement. … Every day, Charlie devoted himself to a set of simple causes: Defending the truth, encouraging debate, and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He was gracious and articulate beyond measure, always welcomed opposing perspectives, and never deviated from his noble goal of bridging our political, cultural, and philosophical divides.”
Kirk haters’ visas revoked: Marco Rubio’s State Department has been exercising its right to revoke visas throughout the year and for the right reasons. The most recent round of revocations came after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. At least six visas were revoked for those who celebrated Kirk’s death. One Argentine who is no longer welcome in the U.S. commented that Charlie “devoted his entire life spreading racist, xenophobic, misogynistic rhetoric.” A German unwisely said, “When fascists die, democrats don’t complain.” The State Department issued a simple comment on the revocations that sums it up nicely: “The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans.”
A fugitive resides in Letitia James’s Norfolk house: In another ironic twist in the “no one is above the law” plot of Letitia James, it appears that her “tenant” in her Virginia mortgage fraud home is a fugitive from the law. James’s niece, Nakia Thompson, who has lived in the Norfolk home since 2020 with her three children, absconded from North Carolina, where she was wanted for grand larceny, burglary, and abuse of a child. The highest law enforcement official in New York not only allegedly broke federal laws herself but also helped her niece evade the law. James is accused of falsifying information on every mortgage document for the past 42 years on three different properties. Contrary to what CNN says, not everyone in America commits mortgage fraud, nor should prosecutors of the law be helping their family flee from it.
State Dept. senior advisor aided ChiComs: A State Department senior advisor and Department of War contractor has been accused of unlawfully retaining top-secret national defense information and meeting with Chinese government officials. Considered an expert in India and South Asia, Ashley Tellis began working for the State Department in 2001. According to court documents, Tellis had thousands of documents at his home in Vienna, Virginia, marked “TOP SECRET” and “SECRET.” He is also accused of getting a coworker to print multiple classified documents for him and having several meetings with Chinese officials.
Mexican cartels place bounties on DHS agents: Last week, we covered a story about a Latin Kings gangster placing a $10K bounty on the head of Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino. The Department of Homeland Security has now released information that cartel efforts to kill American law enforcement officers are far more widespread. $2,000 has been offered for the doxing of federal agents, $5,000-$10,000 is the reward for assaulting or kidnapping them, and a $50,000 price has been put on the heads of top immigration officials. Agents have been ambushed, surveilled by drones, and sent death threats. In Chicago, armed gang “spotters” have been tracking ICE movements from the rooftops in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods. Secretary Kristi Noem calls the cartel actions an “organized campaign of terror” and promised to double down on the ongoing Chicago crime crackdown.
Federal crime crackdown in Memphis nets over 850 arrests: The crime crackdown in Memphis has secured over 850 arrests, seized 175 guns, and found 44 missing children in its first two weeks. U.S. Marshals, FBI and DEA agents, and National Guardsmen arrived in the city last month to begin the operation. At a joint news conference on Tuesday, Gov. Bill Lee and Mayor Paul Young announced that the operation will continue indefinitely and forever “change the world of violent crime in the city.” Mayor Young announced that, before the operation began, there were 10,000 suspects wanted on felony warrants in the city. Young highlighted the benefits to North Memphis residents, such as children feeling more secure in playing outside and programs that offer services to groups at risk of falling into a criminal lifestyle. Lee emphasized the National Guard’s role in providing visible deterrence in high-crime areas.
CA bans sale of Glock-style guns: Second Amendment advocacy groups have sued California after Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1127, which bans the sale of new-designed Glock and Glock-style pistols in the Golden State. Democrat lawmakers argue that it is necessary to prevent semiautomatic pistols from being converted into fully automatic firearms via a modification, which has already been banned. The law does not ban the sale of used older-model Glocks. The NRA is joined by the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and two other individuals in the lawsuit. Decrying the “crusade against constitutional rights,” John Commerford, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, observed, “Once again, they are attempting to violate landmark Supreme Court decisions and disarm law-abiding citizens by banning some of the most commonly owned handguns in America. This flagrant violation of rights cannot, and will not, go unchecked.”
Oregon health spending for migrants dwarfs budget of state police: In the 2025-2027 timeframe, Oregon officials plan to spend $1.5 billion in state and federal taxpayer dollars on healthcare for illegal immigrants and only $717 million on the Oregon State Police. Roughly 25% of the funding will come from the federal government. Medicaid formally bars illegals from receiving benefits, but Oregon’s accountants use creative methods to get around that, including taxing Medicaid insurers to obtain matching federal funds and then returning the taxed money. Illegal aliens in Oregon don’t even need to prove long-term residency to get benefits, which explains how spending on illegals has ballooned 1,100% in four years. Senate Democrats have shut down the government over healthcare for illegals, but apparently, blue states have already been providing it.
Trump’s NIH funding bat lab in CO: “It’s like a bad sequel,” stated Sen. Joni Ernst upon learning that the National Institutes of Health has decided to fund a bat virus research lab in Colorado. “Same plot. Same cast of characters, but a bigger budget!” Ernst added. “We cannot repeat the mistakes of COVID. I will be working to stop these mad scientists and their batty experiments once and for all.” The lab in question is located at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. The lab intends to breed a variety of bat species for the express purpose of researching bat-based viruses, such as Ebola, Nipah, and coronaviruses. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has previously expressed criticism of this type of research in the past, asking just a year ago, “I don’t understand how do you prevent a pandemic with this research?” CSU states on its website that its lab “has no plans to conduct gain-of-function infectious disease research with bats that could increase the transmission of a virus or other pathogens to humans.” It is not clear why Dr. Bhattacharya has apparently changed his mind.
Headlines
Phase two of Israel-Hamas deal on hold until all hostages returned (Jerusalem Post)
Major media outlets rebuff new Pentagon press policy (WSJ)
Young Republicans’ vile group chat praising Hitler, joking about rape exposed (NY Post)
Teens who jumped ex-DOGE staffer Edward Coristine avoid jail, sentenced to probation (NY Post)
Los Angeles County declares local state of emergency over ICE raid surge (Fox News)
Lawsuit filed challenging the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act (Shooting News Weekly)
Trans identification in free-fall among young people (Not the Bee)
Humor: Democrats vow to keep government shut down until someone notices (Babylon Bee)
What is bravery? It’s continuing to fight for something even when you are afraid.
María Corina Machado is a 58-year-old former member of the Venezuelan Parliament and industrial engineer who has been fighting against dictators since 2002. In response to President Hugo Chávez, she started a nonprofit called Súmate whose sole purpose was to inspire her fellow countrymen to become politically aware and to fight against Venezuela’s downward spiral.
In 2010, she was elected to Parliament. For her outspokenness against the regime, government thugs beat her up and broke her nose in 2013 — but she did not back down. Her fearlessness has earned her the nickname “Iron Lady.”
In 2024, President Nicolás Maduro decided he could safely rig the election once again and allowed the people to vote, though he made sure to bar Machado from being able to run. Undaunted, she set up a proxy candidate, Edmundo González, to represent the opposition party. Machado organized witnesses, took pictures of all the voter tallies, and uploaded the results to the Internet. González won 70% of the vote.
Did Maduro step down from power? Not at all. He had set himself up as a drug kingpin and a leading regional narco terrorist. He is raking in the dough while the children of Venezuela are starving, the country has a moribund economy, and its people have no freedoms. Maduro’s strategy to silence Machado was to issue a warrant for her arrest.
Machado has been in hiding ever since, though she still keeps the fires of liberation burning through clandestine means of communication. Last week, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless efforts to bring freedom back to her country, which is drowning in socialism.
Many were initially disappointed with this choice, especially when considering that President Donald Trump just ended the Israel/Hamas war and had diffused multiple other global conflicts during his first 10 months back in the White House. To her credit, Machado posted this message on social media, accepting the award but dedicating her prize to President Trump:
This recognition of the struggle of all Venezuelans is a boost to conclude our task: to conquer Freedom. We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy. I dedicate this prize to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his decisive support of our cause!
In snubbing Trump, the Nobel Committee accidentally underscored its own hypocrisy and validated the actions of Trump regarding his explosive approach to Venezuelan drug runners heading toward the U.S. Trump and Machado are natural allies in this fight against Maduro, and with her response, Machado brilliantly made ameliorating the horrors of living under a narco terrorist dictator a global priority.
Leftists were outraged that Machado would turn such an honor into a tribute to President Trump.
They are also mad that Machado once appealed to Israel for help in Venezuela.
Machado, in a rare and recent interview with Venezuelan filmmaker and writer Jonathan Jakubowicz, said:
Twenty-six years ago, Venezuelan youth fell in love with a socialist in Hugo Chávez. When people pointed to Cuba as a warning, they said, “Venezuela is not Cuba. And Cuba is not real socialism.” But here we are — worse than Cuba. Socialism always follows the same pattern. It elevates the state above the citizen, strips away your autonomy, your conscience, your dignity, your ability to choose. And it does so with a seductive lie. It whispers of equality, but the only equality it delivers is at the bottom — where everyone is dragged down together. That has been the case in every nation, on every continent, in every culture where it has been tried. The result is always the same: a gigantic state that crushes the people beneath it, and once it takes hold, it is terribly hard to remove.
She then warned the United States — where the lure of socialism is becoming ever more mainstream (see New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani) — that socialism is the path to destruction.
And it is why I say to the American people: Do not be seduced. Socialism is the sexiest path to losing your freedom. Guard your freedom jealously. Defend it fiercely. Because freedom is not just an American promise — it is the hope of the world.
These are powerful words from a brave woman who is putting everything on the line to save her country and its people.
Nate Jackson: Obama, the Lecturer-in-Chief, Goes Podcasting — The former president’s legacy is being thoroughly repudiated by his successor, albeit in ways that build on the same destruction of “norms” begun under Obama.
Michael Swartz: Wikipedia Gets Some Competition — None other than Elon Musk has floated an alternative to the internet’s encyclopedia giant because it has been overtaken by left-wing propaganda disguised as information.
Sophie Starkova: Christian Genocide in Nigeria Is Still All Too Real — “They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country,” noted atheist Bill Maher. “Where are the kids protesting this?”
Thomas Gallatin: The Virginia Scramble — The Old Dominion State’s gubernatorial race has entered the home stretch, with Democrat Abigail Spanberger feeling the heat as Republican Winsome Earle-Sears closes the gap.
Linda Moss Mines: The Big Man in the White House — What was accomplished during William Howard Taft’s one term as president of the United States?
“We don’t want, you know, kangaroo courts and trumped-up charges. … We want, like, our court system and our Justice Department and our prosecutors … and our FBI to be, just, playing things straight and looking at the facts and not meddling in politics the way we’ve seen lately.” —Barack Obama
Blowhard
“I know what it feels like to be attacked for just doing your job. But I also know what it feels like to overcome adversity. And so, I stand on solid rock. And I will not bow. I will not break. I will not bend. I will not capitulate. I will not give in. I will not give up.” —New York Attorney General Letitia James
Village Idiot
“I think that [Trump] is afraid of smart, informed, strong women. … I think that strong women scare him and infuriate him. And I’m one of them.” —Rosie O’Donnell
Delusions of Grandeur
“It’s good that President Trump adopted and built on the plan the Biden Administration developed after months of discussion with Arab partners, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.” —former Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Useful Idiots
“To achieve a lasting peace, Israel must abandon its current extremist course and move toward a genuine two-state solution. … Israel did not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, killing or wounding almost 237,000 Palestinians.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders
“Tragically, the United States provided most of the weapons used for this horrendous destruction. … This must never happen again.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders
“They’re probably being treated better than the average Gazan, because they are the pawns and the chips that Hamas had.” —CNN’s Christiane Amanpour regarding Israeli hostages
“Palestinian officials will tell you that they believe Israel has been … arresting as many as they can … to amass as many bargaining chips as possible for these negotiations.” —NBC News’s Daniele Hamamdjian
Moving the Goalposts
“For two years, prominent leftist Democrats have been screaming their heads off to get a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and now they’ve finally got one. But suddenly, it’s as if the issue just doesn’t interest them anymore. It’s like a Men in Black neuralyzer has wiped the issue of the Gaza Strip from their memories. It’s shameless, hilarious, and deeply revealing about how the Democratic Party perceives issues and America’s role in the world.” —Jim Geraghty
Plain and Simple
“The hostages are home because Israel slapped Hamas and Hezbollah to Pluto, and President Trump hit Iran so hard that they coughed up bones. Weakness invites the wolves. Every. Single. Time.” —Sen. John Kennedy
Re: The Schumer Shutdown
“I think it’s the leaders of these radical leftist groups that are leading Chuck Schumer around as if he has a nose ring. They don’t have a platform they can run on. They don’t have a policy that is palatable to the American people. They were roundly refuted, of course, in the last election, and they’re wandering in the wilderness. When you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything. And that’s what you’re seeing right now.” —House Speaker Mike Johnson
Observations
“For decades the Democrats have promoted the unholy trinity of envy, greed and entitlement. This tells people that if they make bad choices in their personal and professional lives the government will bail them out with money from others who made the right decisions.” —Cal Thomas
“Americans don’t just disagree on policies. In three key areas, they disagree on the principles that lead to the creation of those policies. … Look throughout human history. Profound disagreements like these have usually been settled with conquest and force, not logic and rhetoric. Preventing that from happening here requires zero tolerance for political violence.” —Victor Joecks
Paging the Vatican
“There is no through line between abortion and the death penalty. One kills innocent life. The other balances the eternal scales of justice.” —Christine Flowers
Belly Laugh of the Day
“At least I didn’t say governor.” —Donald Trump after accidentally calling Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney “president”
ON THIS DAY in 1878, the nation’s first electric company, Edison Electric Light Company, was incorporated by Thomas Edison.
Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray for the protection of our uniformed Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Lift up your Patriot Post team and our mission to support and defend our legacy of American Liberty and our Republic’s Founding Principles, in order that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.
President Trump warns Hamas “if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them… perhaps violently;” Hamas is failing to return all of the remaining hostage bodies as it was supposed to under the ceasefire deal; Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his wife Sara visit some of the returned hostages and some of them are speaking for the first time, as some thank Trump; Chris Mitchell talks about the reaction in Israel to Trump’s warning to Hamas, the possibility Israel and Hamas could start fighting again, who will govern Gaza, the connections Israelis throughout the country have with the hostage families, and if the end of the war and the return of the hostages has reunited a divided Israel; Trump gives the late Charlie Kirk the nation’s highest civilian honor, and says his influence on young conservatives and faith in America was “unmatched;” and our Studio 5 interview with Dallas Jenkins about the new animated series, “The Chosen Adventures.”
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NEWS: China launches its harshest Christian crackdown in years — arresting dozens of pastors from one of the country’s largest underground churches. Plus, Turkey labels Christians “national security threats,” deporting missionaries and pastors without charges.
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FOCUS STORY: Oracles of God — a powerful new film exploring how the Gospel was preserved and compiled, debuting at a time when spiritual revival is spreading across America.
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MAIN THING: Italy reignites the battle over cultural identity with a new bill proposing a nationwide ban on Islamic face coverings — a bold move that could reshape Europe’s religious freedom debate.
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LAST THING: 2 Timothy 3:16-17 — “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…”
Russia has warned that any attacks on its cities using U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles from Ukrainian territory could lead to retaliatory strikes against the United States itself. The statement was made by Alexei Zhuravlev, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Defense Committee, as quoted by Gazeta.ru.
Zhuravlev emphasized that Tomahawk cruise missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads and that it is impossible to determine during flight whether a launched missile is nuclear-armed. This, he warned, drastically increases the risk of miscalculation and escalation.
The lawmaker noted that even when the United States transfers Tomahawk systems to its NATO allies, Washington retains operational control over their use. Therefore, he argued, if such missiles appear in Ukraine, they would effectively be operated by American personnel. Zhuravlev also reminded that these missiles were developed in the early 1980s, giving Russian air defense systems decades to adapt to their capabilities.
Alongside Stephen A. Smith and Bill O’Reilly, Cuomo will discuss the nation’s foremost concerns with members of the Trump administration, leaders from both political parties and other special guests.
Notable contributors include:
White House border czar Tom Homan
Former U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
Adam Mockler, political podcaster with MeidasTouch
The discussion will also include questions from a live audience.
How to watch NewsNation’s ‘CUOMO’ town hall
To watch, find your NewsNation TV channel or stream the event on YouTube TV, Hulu, Sling, Fubo or DIRECTV.
The event will be simulcast on The CW, and an encore presentation will be available on NewsNation at 11 p.m. EDT.
Bill Maher continues to tip-toe his way out of the left’s echo chamber as he called out the genocide of Christians taking place in Nigeria, noting this was not something […] The post appeared first on The Western Journal .
Cheryl Hines, wife of RFK Jr., walked into the lion’s den yesterday, appearing on “The View” where the hosts apparently wanted to talk about her husband and not her.
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