A dreadful description of the hardened state of the proud forgers of lies!

Posted : 2 May, 2013 02:18 AM

Psalm 119:70 Their heart is as fat as grease; but I delight in Your law.





A dreadful description of the hardened state of the proud

forgers of lies! Yet not of their state only, but of every sinner, who stands out in willful rebellion against God. The

tremendous blow of almighty justice has benumbed his heart,

so that the pressure of mountains of sin and guilt is unfelt! The

heart is left of God, "seared with a hot iron," and therefore

without tenderness; "past feeling;" unsoftened by the power of

the word: unhumbled by the rod of providential dispensations,

given up to the heaviest of all spiritual judgments! But it is of

little avail to stifle the voice of conscience, unless the same

power or device could annihilate hell. It will only "awake out of

sleep, like a giant refreshed with wine," and rage with ten-fold

interminable fury in the eternal world, from the temporary

restraint, which for a short moment had benumbed its energy.

Willful resistance to the light of the gospel, and the strivings of

the Spirit, constrained even from a God of love the message

of judicial abandonment-"Make the heart of this people fat,

and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see

with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with

their heart, and convert, and be healed." Who then among us

will not cry-From hardness of heart, and contempt of Your

word and commandment, Good Lord! deliver us! (Litany.)

Tenderness is the first mark of the touch of grace, when the

heart becomes sensible of its own insensibility, and contrite

on account of its own hardness. 'Nothing'-said Jerome, in a

letter to a friend-'makes my heart sadder, than that nothing

makes it sad.' But when "the plague of our own heart" begins

to be "known," and becomes a matter of confession,

humiliation, prayer; the promise of "a new heart" is as life from

the dead. The subject of this promise delights in God's law;

and this amid the sometimes overwhelming power of natural

corruption, gives a satisfactory witness of a change "from

death unto life."

Christian! can you daily witness the wretched condition of the

ungodly, without the constraining recollection of humiliation

and love? What sovereign grace, that the Lord of glory should

have set His love upon one so vile! What mighty power, to have raised my insensible heart to that delight in His law,

which conforms me to the image of His dear Son! Deeply

would I "abhor myself:" and gladly would I acknowledge, that

the service of ten thousand hearts would be a poor return for

such unmerited love. What, oh, "what shall I render to the

Lord!"-Prayer for them who are still lying in death-praise for

myself quickened from death. But what can give the vital

breath, pulse, feeling, and motion? "Come, from the four

winds, O breath; and breathe upon the slain, that they may

live."

Let us apply, for the purpose of daily self-examination, this

description of the heart, either as given up to its natural

insensibility, or as cast into the new mold of delight in the law

of God. Such an examination will prove to us, how much even

renewed souls need the transforming, softening influences of

grace. "The deceitfulness of sin hardens the heart" to its

original character, as fat as grease, unfeeling, incapable of

impression, without a Divine touch. O Lord, let not my heart

be unvisited for one day, one hour, by that melting energy of

love, which first made me feel, and constrained me to love.



by

Charles Bridges

http://grace-ebooks.com/

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