Empty Words and Empty Hearts

New at Polemos
Self Deception
Audio Links

1. Empty Words
   Matthew 7:21-23
   John MacArthur
2. Empty Hearts
   Matthew 7:24-29
   John MacArthur

The Anatomy of Secret Sins

New at Polemos
Some Good Quotes
Secret Sins

“…sin is like a candle in a lantern, where the shining is first within and then bursting out at the windows, or like boils and ulcer­ous humors that are scabs and scurvy stuff. They are first within the skin, and afterwards they break out to the view on the outside. So it is with sin. It is a malignant humor and a fretting leprosy, diffus­ing itself into several secret acts and workings within the mind. Then it breaks abroad and dares adventure the practice of itself to the eye of the world. Though that sin may never see the light, it is still like a child who is alive, but buried in the womb. Yet as that child is a man—a true man there closeted in that hidden frame of nature—so sin is truly sin, though it never gets out beyond the womb that conceived and enlivened it...”

-Obadiah Sedgwick (1600-1658) The Anatomy of Secret Sins

“…secret sins will become public sins if they are not cleansed. It is with the soul as it is with the body wherein diseases are first bred and then manifested. And if you suppress them not in their root, you shall shortly see them break out in the fruit. It is like fire that catches the inside of the house first, and there, if you do not suppress it, will make a way to get to the outside. "Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin" Jam 1:15). Beloved, remember this: though the first ground of sin is within the heart, yet the propensity of sin is to come forth into public. The child in the womb does not have stronger throes to get out of its private lodging than sin secretly wrought to fly into open and manifest action…”

-Obadiah Sedgwick (1600-1658) The Anatomy of Secret Sins

“Brethren, how many are there who apparel themselves in the secret thoughts of abhorred wickedness, but even in the secret actings of the same, as if there were no God to look on them, nor conscience to spy on them, nor Judg­ment Day to arraign them! Oh, how infinitely odious you must be in the eyes of that holy God, who dare to court Him in public, and yet dare to provoke Him to His face thus in private. You are like a whorish strumpet who dissembles marvelous affections to her husband abroad, and yet at home she will violate the covenant of her God be­fore her husband's eyes. So you pretend so much for God before com­pany, and yet in private you will presume to sin before His face! He sees you, and your conscience knows that right well.”

-Obadiah Sedgwick (1600-1658) The Anatomy of Secret Sins

“…hypocrisy, which is a screen to your sin, a holy cover for an unholy heart and practice. [This] makes the sinner so much the more vile in God's eyes, by how much the more that he not only sins against God, but wrests, as it were, something from God to cover and palliate his rebellion against Him.”

-Obadiah Sedgwick (1600-1658) The Anatomy of Secret Sins

Self

I love getting comments and emails, even the occasional angry, nasty ones (which, by the way, almost always seem to come from the intellectually “enlightened” atheists among us).

But I received the following comment on a recent post and I just wanted to clear up a couple things quick. Here is most of the comment:

“I respectively disagree with your statement that reads, “Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self”. You can look like you have knowledge of God if you are following someones lead and you are mimicking what they are doing. You do not know why or what they are doing, but everyone else is copying them, you feel that you are just going along with everyone so that you will belong or be part of the group.

But if you have knowledge of “self” you will understand and know who you are. You do not need the group you can stand alone and feel confident in knowing who you are, you are where you want to be no one is leading you. If you would like to learn more about “self” read the latest study on this subject, get a copy of The Power of Self Separation you will enjoy reading it….”

To begin with I just wanted to say that I did not write this, this is a quote from John Calvin written four hundred some years ago. I thought it was fairly clear and straight forward but maybe I was wrong.

What Calvin was saying in this statement is that we as human beings cannot know ourselves or understand ourselves as we really are until we have begun to see God as he really is as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. When we begin to perceive something of the holiness of God in all of His attributes then, and only then, will we begin to see that we are utterly unholy, unrighteous, undeserving of His goodness and patience and only deserving of His wrath for our self-centered rebellion against Him.

By nature we fallen human beings tend to love ourselves, think highly of ourselves, worry about ourselves and be centered on ourselves. Even those who commit suicide are thinking too much about themselves and not about how they can obey God, honor God and help those around them. Self is our greatest problem and we simply cannot see self properly until we begin to see God properly.

If you really want to understand the truth about self you would be much better off reading the Bible.

Christians...In Hell?

New at Polemos
Tracts
Self Deception

In Matthew chapter seven, our Lord tells us that many of those who claim to follow Him will find out when it is all too late that they were deceived. They thought that they were Christians, they thought that they were on their way to heaven, they thought that they knew Christ and they thought that they were practicing religion, but Christ tells that they were "practicing lawlessness" and that He never knew them. From the very gates of heaven they find themselves cast into the pit of Hell forever.

This passage begs all of us who profess to know the Lord to ask a very sobering question: if a deceived person by definition does not perceive his true condition, how do we know that we are not one of them?

• Christians...In Hell?
  Jonathan Bunnett