Thomas Chalmers: The Expulsive Power of a New Affection

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There are two ways in which a To remove from the human heart its love of the world, either by proving the world's vanity or by showing another object, God, as more worthy of its worship. Bring you a different voice from history in a sermon that they delivered today. We're going back to the early 1800s.

in Scotland to hear a sermon by Thomas Chalmers. Joel, usually when we open an episode, we begin by talking about, you know, the man in the episode, the person who preached it, but this time we're actually going to say a short word about the sermon itself. The sermon is kind of unique. Its name is awkward. Look, the name is not the best. The expulsive power of a new affection. Uh i you know, it's not a great bumper sticker sermon name, right?

Uh but the sermon itself it comes highly recommended. It comes many, many different people that you may be familiar with, people ranging all the way from John Piper to Douglas Wilson have recommended and said it this is a good sermon. Yet the man who recommended it to us he did a long time ago, he worked kind of for a

sex rehab clinic of some kind where they helped, you know, men and women who were, you know, who had cheated on their spouses or were addicted to pornography or different things like that. And this was a sermon they would have them read. To help them better understand how to replace their lust with a love for God.

uh b been doing that that not just in that area, but doing just encouraging people to let go of the world and to have a better love for God for over two hundred years and we think that it's a really good sermon. Yeah, Chalmers he's a man that some people describe as just being out of of the place out of his time, he was so not like the rest of the people around him. One man at the at the time said that Chalmers didn't belong, end quotes, to an era, but that he single handedly created a new one.

He was well known uh in his day by all, even Karl Marx, complained about him, despite the fact that Chalmers deeply cared for the poor and was an advocate of their His is kind of a strange story. He was born in 1780, and by the age of twelve he was going to university, and you might say that this sounds like, you know, your classic prodigy, your pat classic boy genius who goes into ministry at a young age.

And while that's partially true, the thing is that Chalmers he wasn't a believer until much later. He wasn't a Christian, a genuine believer at this time. So Scotland in the sev late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds was under the sway of a mindset and this this the va the system was called moderatism.

I I had a really hard time finding a good definition of what moderatism is. Like sometimes I'd find definitions from our era of like what a moderate is, but not I'm looking I was looking for stuff from 200 years ago, like what was what they would have called it. But basically it was this movement that aimed to take some of the theological stuff from the Reformed movement at the time and combine it with the intellectual enlightenment.

So but so they were kind of talking about God in these high and lofty terms, these theological terms, but they were also really enamored with the Enlightenment. They were basically of the idea that you should never get too emotionally invested in religion. and that you can learn a lot about God from the natural world, the world around you, and that's just as important for learning about God as the Bible itself. And there was an underlying kind of anti-Bible, anti-genuine faith m run through it.

Um, and this was the educational world that Chalmers grew up under. Everyone around him was more interested in the what the Enlightenment thinkers had to say and kind of just parroted the church answers on things'cause they felt that was what they were supposed to do. very few people were actually passionate about the things of God. And for him,

The ministry was just a way to get a job, to advance himself, to kind of move forward in the academics. He was not doing this out of a love for Christ or a love for God. In fact, he didn't believe that Jesus Christ was sacrificed on our behalf. He said that's a silly idea. The only way you could possibly really grow closer to God was by your own virtue, by being a good person. That was his belief. That was a quote that he had from that era.

Moderatists believed that they needed to be good people, but they believed no one should act too radical in their faith or ever get swept up in a religious fervor.

that religious drive should give way to rationality and you may even know people like this. You may be hearing this and thinking of people that you know because this is you know, even though no one would call themselves a moderatist today, we all know people who are very skeptical and are very, you know, calm in their nature and are not gonna and not that that's always bad, but there can be a time when they're too skeptical and they become skepti sceptical of the faith itself.

People who are more interested in the el intellectual side of life and have very little interest in the heart. So he definitely had a a a d a dislike of the genuine faith authenticity. And to give you an idea, one of the things he used to warn people of

was he would tell them, Don't read John Newton. He's too radical. He'll get you too swept up in your face. So that should give you the kind of idea of where he was landing. Yes, this this was the path that Chandler's was on, and he continued on that path

throughout his his twenties, i it wasn't until he was twenty six that we see uh God starts at lay the pieces in his life that he uses to bring him to him uh and unfortunately as he experiences lot of his life it comes through a lot of tragedy. Throughout his later twenties His brother and his sister would end up dying of tuberculosis, and he was the family clergyman, and so he was responsible for caring for them in their final days, and his brother would ask him to read Puritan sermons.

to him on his deathbed and Chalmers thought it was a bit silly, he thought he was a bit too good for it, you know, kinda looked down on that type of writing, but he did so for his brother. and his sister would ask him to sing Psalms to her every night. Before she died, he had sang through the entire book of Psalms at least five times, he said. Then he got sick in eighteen oh nine,

and he had some close calls with death too, but during his recovery another family member, a sister, passed away. All this made him re examine his life, rethink his lifestyle, rethink everything about who he was, who God was. It made him come to terms with what he really believes and what's real or not. And while reading a book by William Wilberforce, the abolitionist that we mentioned in our episode on John Newton,

He was he's he said he had a conversion experience. That that was what what uh opened his eyes towards the true gospel, um, and he gave his life to Christ. A little bit of irony because John Newton is the one who raised and you know brought William Wilberforce to Christ. He grew up in his church and You know, he was telling people not to read John Newton and it was a John Newton disciple that got him so full circle. Just c exactly that John Newton will get you in the end after all. Um

Once once he became a Christian, he was a different man. He was not that same guy at all. He was known for his passionate pursuit of math and science and He would skip church work a lot. He even said like you only need to put in two days for church and you can put in five days everywhere else and you'll be fine. That guy was gone and now he was focused.

He immediately started laying plans to like help grow a Bible track society. He became extremely passionate about missions to the point that he would eventually be the director of the London Missionary Society. He eventually got moved to a larger church'cause he was a different man, he was faithful.

And at this larger church he r had a parish of it was thousands of people and he only had s eight elders to work with at the time. He was completely overwhelmed and yet he made it his goal to visit every single house of every single person in that area and he managed to visit twenty two hundred houses in just two years.

He also started hosting midweek services. He got more elders for the team. He taught his elders how to run Sunday schools so they could get out there. And there was, I think by the end of his term here, he was running something like 50 Sunday schools. Uh he's founded a Christian school itself.

At the meantime, he also taught all of his people to like, let's be aggressive, let's go get the people where they are, make sure they have no excuse. And he was teaching them how to do all these different things. uh just an incredible uh anybody would have c called him just a really great pastor doing a really amazing job. And and this would have normally been where you went and this is his story.

Um, but then he kinda he just he takes a twist in a direction that was very different, one I wasn't wait expecting. Yeah, it makes sense in retrospect, but at the time it was a very shocking change of career pass, because just as his church in Glasgow seemed to be exploding with power, he left it. He walked away from it.

Chalmers left to be a professor at a local university. He wanted to he wanted to teach. Again, this moderatism movement was deep in the local universities there in Scotland during this era. And He wanted to combat it in a way. He wanted to teach these kids um something better, a better way of looking at life. He figured that even though his church was successful, He could help make many more churches successful by raising better ministers.

And in the five years that he taught, he saw hundreds of students and taught them to love missions, and he encouraged the first students. Church of Scotland missionary Alexander Duff to go to India. He also taught names you might have heard on Revived Thoughts before. People like Robert Murray McShane and the Binar brothers were also students of his.

McShane said that Saturday mornings they'd go to pray with Chalmers, and then he would take them to the poorest parts of towns where they'd serve and share the gospel. Things were going well with Chalmers here at the different universities and and it seemed like this was a successful move. Everything was going great and some of these names you've heard of probably at least partially because of his influence on them.

But things started to change in eighteen thirty four, at the time Chalmers was leading this extensive big campaign for the church to ra that raised millions of pounds to build churches all over Scotland. There were still places where you could live in Scotland and there would be no church for you to go to. And so these people without a church

And his goal was to make it I mean Chalmers' goal was to make it so that there was no Scots person who didn't have a church they could go to, you know, nearby, basically. And he was in the middle of doing that, but then something big happened, um a dispute that kind of r kind of changed the direction of things. And it was this idea basically who had the right to decide the leadership of the church?

Was it up to the congregation to agree to who their new minister was? Or could the British government by force tell the Church of Scotland, Hey, put this guy in power? And that might seem like a strange thing. for a lot of us today, I mean two hundred years removed from that. That would be so strange of a

king in another country who kinda rules our country told us our minister had to be this guy, even though we said we didn't want him. But that was really what was going on at Scotland at the time. Like that was a real issue. Who had jurisdiction over the ministers and the leadership And at the time

The churches said, hey, we don't want we want to be able to, you know, have choose our own leaders and it somehow ended up getting didn't get passed in the House of Lords or something like that. And so they were told, no, you can't veto who we send to be your minister. You have to kind of go with us. And this ended up turning into a really big thing. And this led to the churches leaving the Church of Scotland. Not all of them, but a large part of them did. Chalmers

helped was a huge force in this rallying people and saying, We're gonna leave the Church of Scotland and start our own church called the Free Church of Scotland and it was formed. Forty percent of the ministers of the Church of Scotland at the time joined them, including all the missionaries

And pretty much all the Gaelic speaking kind of people I wanna say backwater, but the people living more out in the country that it would have been considered that way, all of those people joined Chalmers and left uh the church of s the official state sanctioned, you know, Church of Scotland at the time. And it would end up they would end up starting eight hundred of their own new churches and a new theological college. uh n joining what would be called the free church movement and also

starting another movement to the side called the Evangelical Alliance, which also came from this. A whole bunch of stuff came from this. Chalmers was involved with a whole lot of different things. And that's one thing too. We're kind of doing a brief, brief highlight.

Of Chalmers' life, but let me tell you, politically, scientifically, this guy had a huge effect all over the place in a many different ways. And we're only kind of running you through just the very fast enough version of this that you can understand it. When uh we in we maybe in the future we can do other episodes by Chalmers and kinda get more into his life because he had a really interesting one and had a huge effect of big impact on the world.

But I think a bet I think that one of the best ways to show the impact he had is when he died in the late like eighteen forties. He it is said, it might not be true, but it is said that one out of two people, half the town of Edinburgh, came to his funeral to see, you know, see him off, see his, you know, see his body go to

That is a huge number of people. I mean, Edinburgh was not a small town. And so imagine if half the people in your town came to your funeral. That's the kind of impact he had. It was huge. The whole world was in shock. And he was world famous. People in America knew about him. People in Britain knew about him. William Wilberforce, the guy whom he got saved by, people, he said that very famously, the whole world has gone mad in love with the preaching of Thomas Chalmer.

And so he was just a world known name at the time and his death was an extreme blow to just, you know, tons of different people were surprised by it. But just that idea that half the town would come to your funeral, that That tells you the kind of impact and legacy he left and it in the the number of people who wrote about him after he died. Robert Murray McShane, these people who mentioned him so fondly and were so uh were just such big fans of his after being his student.

I think Part of the reason he was so effective was was because of the lesson we can learn from this sermon. He had learned to really let go of the world And the world's way of doing things, he learned to let go of that moderatism where he wasn't gonna go a hundred percent in for the Lord and in for God and he realized, no, the most important thing I do is love the Lord and preach the gospel to the souls around me.

Our text is first John two. Love nothing. neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. There are two ways in which a teacher may attempt to remove from the human heart its love of the world. Either by proving the world's vanity, so that the heart will want to withdraw its love from an object that is not worthy of it, or by showing another object, God, as more worthy of its worship.

The heart will be convinced not to quit an old affection, which will have nothing to follow it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one. My purpose is to show that from our nature, the first method is altogether wrong and ineffective, and that the better method will alone work for the rescue and recovery of the heart from the wrong loves that dominate over it. Love is seen in two different ways. The first is when its object is at a distance, and then it becomes love in a state of desire.

The second is when its object is in possession, and then it becomes love in a state of indulgence. Under the impulse of desire, man feels himself urged onward in some path or pursuit of activity for its gratification. The energy of his mind is put to work towards this object.

In the steady direction of one great and engrossing love, his attention is pulled away from the many pursuits into which it would normally wander, and the powers of his body begin to reject the idleness in which it would have preferred to languish. And that time is now crowded with work that, without an object, it would have likely wasted in a drivel of successive hours of worthlessness and weariness. Although hope does not always prevail, and success does not always crown this career of work.

But in the midst of the work, and with the ups and downs of occasional disappointment, the machinery of the whole man is kept in a sort of pleasant state of play. And this is a mood and temper which is most agreeable to man.

even to the point that if, through the removal of that desire, which forms the beginning of all this movement, the machinery were to stop, and nothing replaced the desire, Then the man would be left with all his need for action in a state of painful and unnatural abandonment. A sensitive being suffers harm if, after having rested from his fatigue, he continues to work without any enjoyment or passion for these activities.

If he possesses the capacity of love without having an object of love, or if he has spare energy without an object or task, then the misery of such a condition is often known by him who has retired from business. Or those who retire from law, or who are even retired from dangerous occupations such as the hunt or the gaming table. Such is the demand of our nature for an object to pursue that no trophies of previous success can extinguish this desire of our heart.

And so it is that the most prosperous merchant and the most victorious general and the most fortunate hunter, when the work of their respective careers has come to a close, are often found to languish in the midst of all that accompanied. They feel out of their trusted and familiar elements. It is quite in vain with such an embedded appetite for employment in man, to attempt cutting away from him the spring or the foundation of one job without providing him with another.

The whole heart and habit will rise in resistance against such an undertaking. The habit cannot be displaced as to leave nothing but a negative and cheerless vacancy behind it. But it may be replaced as to be followed up by another habit of employment to which the power of some new affection has constrained her. It can be willingly suspended, for example, on any single evening, should the time be needed for another important activity, such as preparing for church.

But only the overwhelming power of a second desire will do what no strong words, however forcible, on the folly and worthlessness of the first, ever could. And it is the same in the great world. We will never be able to arrest any of its leading pursuits by a naked demonstration of their vanity. It is vain to think of stopping one of these worldly pursuits in any other way but by encouraging one to another pursuit.

In attempting to bring a worldly man, intent and busy with the pursuit of his objects, to a standstill. We have not merely to deal with the charm which he gives to these objects, we also have to deal with the pleasure which he feels in the pursuit of them. It is not enough then that we stop the charm through a moral and eloquent and affecting proof of its delusion.

We must address to the eye of his mind another object, with a charm powerful enough to remove the first of its influences, and to engage him in some other activity with as much influence. It is this which stamps an impotency on all moral and pathetic declarations about the insignificance of the world.

A man will not consent to the misery of being without an object just because that object is trivial, or of being without a pursuit, because that pursuit terminates in some frivolous or worthless end. For then he will voluntarily submit himself to torture, because then he will have no object or thing to desire or love. To be without desire and without work completely is a state of violence and discovery.

So then, the present desire with its corresponding work is not going to be removed simply by destroying it. It must be by substituting another desire and another line or habit of work in its place. And the most effective way of withdrawing the mind from one object is not by turning it away to an empty vacuum, but by presenting to its regards another object still more alluring.

These statements apply not merely to love considered in its state of desire for an object not yet obtained, They also apply to love considered in its state of indulgence or gratification with an object already in possession. It is rare that any of our tastes disappear by a mere process of extinction. At least it is very seldom that this is done through the work of reason. Work may be extinguished by excessive pampering, but it is almost never done by the mere force of mental determination.

But what cannot be destroyed may be replaced, and one taste may be made to give way to another, and to lose its power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind. It is true that the boy ceases at some point to be the slave of his appetite, but it is because a manlier taste has now brought it into subordination. The youth ceases to idolize pleasure, but it is because the idol of wealth has become stronger and gotten his heart.

The love of money ceases to have the mastery over the heart of many a thriving citizen. But it is because they are drawn into, through the whirl of city politics, another affection that has taken over his moral system. He is now lorded over by the love of power. There is not one of these transformations in which the heart is left without an object. Its desire for one particular object may be conquered, but as to the heart's need to have an object to desire, that is unconquerable.

It's because of this that one cannot willingly be overcome by the tearing away through a simple separation. It can be done only by the application of something else to which it may feel the desire of a still stronger and more powerful preference. Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have something to lay hold of.

And which, if taken away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind as hunger is to the natural. It may be dispossessed of one object, or of any, but it cannot be left with nothing to wash.

Let there be a breathing and a sensitive heart, but without a liking and without affinity to any of the things that are around it, and in a state of cheerless abandonment, it would be alive to nothing but the burden of its own consciousness. And feel it to be intolerable. It would make no difference to his owner, whether he dwelt in the midst of a happy grand world, or placed beyond the outskirts of creation, and dwelt a solitary unit in dark and unpeopled nothingness.

Heart must have something to cling to, and never by its own voluntary consent will it so remove itself of its attachments that there will not be one remaining object that can draw its desire. The misery of a heart so lacking of all desire is strikingly exemplified in those who have satiated all desire. And have been so overwhelmed with the variety and the power of the pleasurable sensations they have indulged in, that they are at length worn out of all capacity for pleasure altogether.

The disease of boredom is more frequent in the French metropolis, Paris, where amusement is more exclusively the occupation of the higher class. Than it is in the British metropolis, where the longings of the heart are directed more by the resources of business and politics. There are the acolytes of fashion and trends who have now become the victims of fashionable excess. The very vastness of their pleasures has at last extinguished their power to feel enjoyment.

Who, with the gratifications of art and nature on command, now look upon all that is around them with an eye of tastelessness. who, plied with the delights of sense and of splendour to the point of weariness, are now incapable of higher delights, They have come to the end of all their perfection and, like Solomon of old, found it to be vanity and tyranny.

The man whose heart has been turned into a desert can vouch for the insupportable agony which must ensue when one worship is plucked away from the heart without another to replace it. It is not necessary that a man receive pain from anything in order to become miserable. It is enough if he looks with distaste upon everything. And in the asylum, which is the home of minds out of joint, and where the organ of feeling as well as the organ of intellect has been impaired.

It is not in the cell of loud and frantic shrieking where we will meet with the epitome of mental suffering. But it is the individual who watches in wretchedness all his fellows, but who, throughout the whole expanse of nature and society, meets not an object that has any power to capture or to interest it. Who, neither in earth beneath nor in heaven above, knows of a single charm to which his heart can send forth one impulse of desire.

To whom the world, in his eye, is a vast and empty desolation. It has left him nothing but his own consciousness to feed upon, dead and detached to all that is around him, and alive to nothing but to the load of his own small and useless existence. It will now be seen perhaps why it is, that the heart keeps its present affections with so much tenacity. It will not consent to be made so desolate.

The strong affection, whose dwelling place is there in the heart, may be compelled to give way to another occupier. But unless another stronger than he has power to dispossess and to succeed him, he will keep his present lodgement securely. The heart would revolt against its own emptiness. It could not bear to be left in a state of waste and cheerless staleness.

The moralist to try such a process of dispossession as this upon the heart is thwarted with the American Express Platinum Card, I can unlock experiences like no other. Since I'm always booking my next trip, I'd love that I can. on travel. Plus, I get a resie benefit, so you know I'm hitting the restaurants everyone's talking about.

And you can find out your welcome offer after you apply, which could be as high as 175,000 points. For experiences like no other, there's nothing like platinum. Learn more at AmericaneExpress.com/slash explore dash platinum. Terms apply. You have all heard that nature abhors a vacuum. This is the nature of the heart, that, though the room which is in it may change one inmate for another, it cannot be left void without the pain of an intolerable suffering.

It is not enough then to argue the folly of an existing affection. It may not even be enough to acknowledge the threats and the terrors of some coming consequences from the indulgence of that desire. The heart may still resist everything that would cause them to fall into a state so much at war with all its appetites as that of downright inactivity. So, to tear away affection from the heart, so as to leave it bare of all its love and of all its desires, is a hard and hopeless undertaking.

And it would appear the only engine powerful enough to cause dispossession is to bring another more powerful affection in to replace it. We do not know a more sweeping ban upon the love of nature than that which is delivered by the apostle in the verse before us. To call a man into that who has not yet entered the great and overpowering influence of regeneration.

To call him to withdraw his love from all the things that are in the world is the same as calling him to give up all the affections that are in his heart. The world is all the natural man has. He has not a taste nor a desire that does not point, not to something placed within the confines of his visible world. He loves nothing above it, and he cares for nothing beyond it. And to ask him to not love the world is to pass a sentence of expulsion on all the inmates of his life.

To guess at the magnitude and the difficulty of such a surrender, let us only think of how arduous it is to convince him not to love money, which is but one of the things in the world. You might as well try to get him to set willful fire to his own property. This he might do with sore and painful reluctance, if he saw that the salvation of his life hung upon him. But this he would do willingly if he saw that a new property of tenfold value was instantly to emerge from the wreck of the old one.

In this case, there is something more than the mere displacement of an affection. There is the overbearing of one affection by another. But to desolate his heart of all love for the things of the world, without the substitution of any love in its place, is to him a process of unnatural violence. It is to destroy all the things that he has in the world and give him nothing for their return.

We hope that by this time you understand the impossibility of a mere demonstration of this world's insignificance. Its sole practical effect, if it had any, would be only to leave the heart in a state which is insupportable. You may remember the fond and unbroken tenacity with which your heart has often returned to pursuits over the utter frivolity of which it sighed and wept over as recently as yesterday.

The calculations of your short-lived days may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding. And from his stories of your future deathbed, the preacher may cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all your pursuits of earthliness. And as he describes before you the fleeting generations of men and the absorbing grave, where all the joys and interests of the world hurry to their sure and speedy oblivion.

You may be touched and concerned by his argument, and feel for a moment as if on the eve of a practical and permanent release from all of this vanity. But the next day comes, and the business of the world, and the objects of the world, and the moving forces of the world come along with it. And the machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must have something to grasp or something to adhere to, brings it under a kind of moral necessity to go back to life as it was before.

And in utter repulsion towards a state so unwelcome as that of being frozen out both of delight and of desire, does it feel all the warmth and the urgency of its day to day life? Nowhere in the habit and history of the whole man can we detect so much as one symptom of the new creature. So that the church, instead of being to him a school of obedience, has been a mere sauntering place for the luxury of a passing and theatrical emotion.

And the preaching, which is mighty to compel the attendance of multitudes, which is mighty to quiet and to sober up the hearers into a kind of tragic sensibility. And which is mighty in the play of acting and vigor, that it can keep up the imagination, but it is not mighty in the pulling down of strongholds in the heart. The love of the world cannot be expelled by a mere demonstration of the world's worthlessness.

But can it be replaced by the love of something that is more worthy? Can the heart be given to admit another, who will subordinate the world and bring it down from its heights of power? If the throne which is placed there must have an occupier, and the tyrant that now reigns has occupied it wrongly, won't he have to give way to the lawful sovereign?

He who appears with every charm that can secure his entrance, and takes to himself his great power to subdue the moral nature of man. And will he not reign over it? In a word, if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great object is to fasten it in positive love to another, Then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the first, but by addressing the mental eye to the worth and excellence of the new object.

that all old things are to be done away and all things are to become new. To obliterate all our present affections by simply expelling them, and so as to leave the seat of them unoccupied, would be to destroy the old character and to substitute no new character in his place.

But when they take their departure upon the welcome of a new visitor, and when they resign their sway to the power and the predominance of new affections, This, we trust, will explain the operation of that charm which accompanies the effectual preaching of the gospel. The law of God and the love of the world are two affections, not merely in a state of rivalship, but in a state of war, and so irreconcilable that they cannot dwell together in the same heart.

We have already affirmed how impossible it was for the heart to cast the world away from it and so reduce itself to a wilderness. And the only way to dispossess it of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one. Nothing can exceed the magnitude of the necessary change in a man's character.

When called as he is in the New Testament, to love not the world, no, nor any of the things that are in the world, for this so comprehends all that is dear to him in existence as to be equivalent to a command of self annihilation. For the same revelation which dictates so mighty an obedience places within our reach a mighty instrument of obedience.

It brings admittance to the very door of our heart, an affection which, once seated upon its throne, will either subordinate every previous inmate or throw it away. It places before the eye of the mind he who made the world. Through the gospel we behold God, so that we may love God. It is there and there only where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to sinners.

There only can our desire not become chilled into apathy through that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is not made to him through the appointed mediator. It is the bringing in of a better hope where we can draw near to God. To live without hope is to live without God. And if the heart is without God, then the world will then have all the power. It is God, apprehended by the believer as God in Christ, who alone can dethrone it from this power.

It is when he stands free from the terrors which belong to him as an offended lawgiver that we are enabled by faith, which is his own gift, to see his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. And to hear his pleading voice as it protests goodwill to men. And when we are brought into God's children through the faith that is in Christ Jesus, the spirit of adoption is poured on us.

It is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desire. This is the only way in which deliverance is possible. And that faith which is revealed to us from heaven is also the instrument of the greatest of all moral and spiritual achievement.

So we can see what it is that makes the most effective kind of pretext. It is not enough to hold out to the world's eye the mirror of its own imperfections. It is not enough to come forth with the demonstration, however powerful and dramatic, of the delusional character of all its enjoyments. It is not enough to travel the walks of experience along with you and speak to your own conscience and remind you of the deceitfulness of the heart.

There are many bearers of the gospel message who lack cleverness of natural discernment. And many who lack the power of description to destroy folly, and who lack the talent of moral illustrations enough to present you with a vivid and faithful sketch of all the follies of society. But even with that lack in his ability to represent it all in beautiful details, he may still be the instrument of eradication. Let him be just a simple and faithful explainer of the Gospel Testament.

Let him only report with accuracy the truths which revelation has brought to him from a distant world. and, unskilled as he is in the work of explaining the heart with the power of a novelist, to create a graphic and impressive picture of the worthlessness of its many effects. But let him only deal in explaining well those mysteries of doctrine on which the best of novelists have given over to derision for lack of creativity.

But with the tidings of the gospel as his mission, he may wield the only weapon that can extinguish worldly. Some, as if by the hand of a magician, have brought out to view the mistakes and lurking desires which belong to the world. The simple minister may not be able to do this, but he has a truth in his possession, which into whatever heart it enters will move like the rod of Aaron and swallow them all up.

And though he is unqualified, through him is deposited that heavenly influence under which the tastes of the old man are destroyed. He becomes a new creature in Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us not cease then to work, the only instrument of powerful and positive ability to rid you of the love of the world. Let us try every legitimate method of finding access to your hearts for the love of him who is greater than the world.

For this purpose let us, if possible, clear away that shroud of unbelief which so hides and darkens the face of the deity. Let us insist on his claims to your affection. And in the way of gratitude or in the way of love, let us never cease to affirm that wondrous plan, the purpose of which was to reclaim a sinful world to himself. And here, let us turn our attention to the doubts of the worldly man.

When he brings his own sound and secular experience to bear upon the high doctrines of Christianity, and when he looks on regeneration as a thing impossible, Feeling as he does, the stubborn feelings of his own heart and casting an intelligent eye on the equal stubborn tendencies of all who are around him, Then he declares the crucifixion of the old man and the resurrection of a new man in his place to be in downright opposition to all that is known and wished.

If the thought of death and what comes after it crosses their mind at all, it is not with a change so radical as that of being born again. They never imagine preparing for their afterlife. They may have some vague conception of its being quite enough that they behave themselves in some decent and tolerable way relative to their obligation.

Believe that by the strength of some social moralities, they will be taken safely from this world, even though in this world they had nothing to do with this being named God. But they believe they will be taken to that world where God is, and they will spend all eternity in his presence. They agree on all that is said of the utter vanity of time, but they resist every attempt made upon the heart of man. They in fact regard such an attempt as an enterprise that is altogether lofty.

Now, it is altogether worthy of being insulted by those men who so dislike spiritual Christianity and in fact deem it an impractical accomplishment. No surprise that they feel the work of the New Testament to be unable to give them strength, so long as they hold the words of the New Testament to be beneath their intelligence. Neither they nor anyone else can dispossess the heart of an old affection, but by the expulsive power of a new one.

And if that new affection is the love of God, neither they nor anyone else can be made to bring it, unless the deity demonstrates it himself. He alone draws the heart of the sinner towards. Now it is their unbelief which screens from the discernment of their minds his image. They do not see the love of God in sending his son to the world. They do not see the expression of his tenderness to men by sparing him not, but giving him up to death for us all.

They do not see the sufficiency of atonement, or the sufferings that were endured by him who bore the burden the sinners should have borne. They do not see the blended holiness and compassion of the Godhead, that he passed by the transgressions of his creatures, yet could not pass them by without payment. As it is, they cannot get rid of their old affections, because they are out of sight from all those truths which have influence to raise a new affection.

They are like the children of Israel in the land of Egypt, when required to make bricks without straw. The man who believes in the true doctrines will readily bow to the true demands of Christianity. When he is told to love God supremely, this may startle someone, but it will not startle him to whom God has been revealed in peace.

When told to shut out the world from his heart, this may be impossible with him who has nothing to replace it, but not impossible with him who has found in God a sure and a satisfying portion. When told to withdraw his affections from the things that are beneath, this lays an order of self-extinction upon the man, for he doesn't know another place in the whole sphere of his world to which he could transfer.

But it is not grievous to him whose view has been opened up to the loveliness and glory of the things that are above. For he finds a gathering radiance upon his soul, as he looks onwards in faith to the things that are unseen and eternal. It is the atonement of the cross, reconciling the holiness of the lawgiver with the safety of the offender, that has opened the way for a sanctifying influence into the sinner's heart.

And he can get an impression from the character of God, now brought near and now be at peace with him. Separate the demand from the doctrine, and you have either a system of righteousness that is unworkable or a barren orthodox. Bring the demand and the doctrine together, and the true disciple of Christ is able to do the one through the other strengthening him. The motive is adequate to the movement. And the called obedience of the gospel is not beyond the measure of his strength.

The shield of faith and the hope of salvation and the word of God and the girdle of truth. This is the armor that he has put on. And with these the battle is won and the victory is reached, for the man stands on the high ground of a new field. The object of the gospel is both to pacify the sinner's conscience and to purify his heart. And it is of importance to note that what mars one of these objects mars the other also.

The best way of casting out an impure affection is to bring in a pure one, and by the love of what is good to expel the love of what is evil. So it is that the freer the gospel, the more sanctifying the gospel is. And the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more would it be felt as a doctrine according to holiness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that he renders back again.

On the tenure of do this and live, a spirit of fearfulness is sure to enter, and the jealousies of a legal bargain chase away all confidence from the intercourse between God and man. And the creature striving to be square and even with his creator is in fact pursuing all the while his own selfishness instead of God's glory.

And with all the conformities which he labours to accomplish, the soul of obedience is not there. The mind is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed under such a system will it ever be. It is only when, as in the gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a present, without money and without price, that the security which man feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance.

Or that he can delight in him as one friend delights in another, or that any free and generous understanding can be established between them. The one rejoicing over the other to do him good, the other finding that the truest gladness of his heart lies in the impulse of gratitude, by which it is awakened to the charms of a new moral existence. Salvation by grace, salvation by free grace, salvation not of works, but according to the mercy of God.

Salvation on such a footing is just as indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and the weight of ungodliness. Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the gospel, and we raise a topic of distrust between man and God. We take away the power of the gospel to melt and to reconcile. For this purpose, the freer it is, the better it is.

That very thing which so many dread as the germ of antinomialism or legalism is in fact the germ of a new spirit and will push against. Along with the light of a free gospel, does there enter the love of the gospel? And in proportion as we take away the freeness, we are sure to chase away the delight. And never does a sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained to deny ungodliness.

To do any work in the best manner, we should make use of the fittest tools for it, and we trust that what has been said may serve to some degree for the practical guidance of those who would like to reach the great moral achievement of our text. But they feel that the tendencies and desires of nature are too strong for them.

We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our heart than to keep in our hearts the love of God. And no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God than building ourselves up on our most holy faith. That denial of the world, which is not possible to him, that descends from the gospel testimony, is possible even as all things are possible to him that believes. To try this without faith is to work without the right tool of the right instrument.

But faith works by love. And the way of expelling from the heart the love which transgresses the law is to admit into its being the love which fulfills the law. Imagine a man to be on a ledge, looking down on this green world. And that when he looked towards it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and all the blessings which earth can afford scattered throughout every foundation.

And there was the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the pleasant homes, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy circle of society. Imagine this to be the general scene upon one side of his thoughts, and that on the other side of his thoughts, beyond the verge of the godly planet on which he was situated, he could describe nothing but a dark and fathomless unknown.

Do you think that he would bid a voluntary and happy bye-bye to all the brightness and all the beauty that were before him upon earth, and then commit himself to the frightful solitude forever? Would he leave its populated dwelling places and become a solitary wanderer through the fields of non existence? If space offered him nothing but a world...

Would he for it abandon the homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so close to his heart? Wouldn't he cling to the regions of sense and of life and of society and shrink away from the desolation that was beyond it? Wouldn't he be glad to keep his firm footing on the territory of this world and to take shelter under the silver canopy that was stretched over it? But if during the time of his contemplation some happy cloud and glimpse of heaven floated by.

And from there it burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing glories and its sounds of sweeter melody. Oh, and he clearly saw that there was a purer beauty resting upon every field there, and a more heartfelt joy spread itself among all the families and homes there. And he could discern there a peace and a piety and a benevolence which put a moral gladness into every heart.

And united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other. And there was the supreme and benevolent father of them all. And if he could see that pain and mortality were unknown there, and above all the signs of welcome were hung up, and a way of communication was made for him. Do you believe that what was before the wilderness would become the land of invitation and joy to him? And that now the world he knew before would be the wilderness.

What a fog could not do can now be done by a space teeming with beautiful scenes and heavenly societies. And though the existing tendencies of the heart may be strong for the world that is near and visibly around us, still if another stood revealed to the prospect of man Either through the channel of faith or through the channel of his senses, then without violence done to the frame of his moral nature, he would die to the present world and live for the lovely world.

Thank you for listening to today's episode of Revived Bots. Today's sermon was narrated by Pastor John D. Brand of Grace Community Church. Big thanks. Uh it's always nice when we get people with genuine, uh, historically accurate accents. Uh which we don't we don't we don't get that often, so it's nice to have a an actual Scott

Scottish person uh s you know, preaching a Scottish sermon. All right, Joel, we are almost there. We are at our our at the end of another year of revived thoughts, and that means we are also doing what we've done the past couple years, which is Finding out what are the top episodes, the top sermons of the year, the the episodes of Revived Thoughts that people enjoyed the most or grew the most from or we learned the most from and

This year we want to know also what you think is the best episode. What is it that you who are listening to this episode right now, maybe while you're Doing some laundry or working out or however going to work, whatever it is you're doing right now, we wanna hear what episode did you enjoy the most? We're gonna put it up on our Facebook, put it up on our

Twitter, the other places, send them a message, vote for or sh or just kind of shout out what episode you like and the ones that we get the most of, we'll kinda read the comments and we'll see where you guys land. See if the sermons that we like are also the same sermons that you like so much as we kind of get ready to round out our Top 10 lists. So please go on to social media if you haven't already liked us or responded to stuff up there. You should. It's getting more active. I

I don't wanna brag, but I do think it's my very clever memes that are helping us out. There there's a lot of memes that come from Troy. So if you don't like them or they offend you, that's from Joel, but that's good. Um but yeah, so feel free to join our page and get involved with that. But also tell us which episode, which sermons, what things you really enjoyed this year, and we will definitely mention it when we do our top ten episode at the end of the year.

Yeah, so in w you know, we're we're on all social medias but Facebook is by far where we're the have have the biggest following, have the biggest community there of people that Um we'll comment and chat on stuff so um and we know some people are There's a few followers out there on Twitter. I Phil and a few of you other guys are really keeping us strong on Twitter.

Awesome. But yeah, we'll get we'll get a uh yeah, what is your favorite episode or you know, your favorite moment of revive thoughts? Post posted here. Soon and hop on there and reply to that and we'll read it out on the air at the end of the year when we do our 2021 wrap-up episode. This is Troy and Joel, and this is Revive Thoughts.

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