Category: Bible

Reason #4: Why a Sinner Ought to Turn to God without Delay

Silva

It has been a difficult few days.  In my last post I referenced a death in the family and my involvement in the final preparations, a memorial and shepherding people through their grief.  It was both a privilege and a burden.  To do all of this, I had to travel to a place where “raw life” happens.  Suburban, Southern living rarely gets visibly raw; of course life in the south (like anywhere else) gets very difficult but it is usually kept under the surface, out of the light.  In fact, I often bemoan these things to people.  I complain that the South can be a difficult place to minister since there is still so much cultural Christianity though the veneer might be thinner than it used to be.  Still, to live and work in a place where that veneer is absent presents a different kind of difficulty.  It was to this kind of place, where it was visible and it was paraded, that I went.

Providentially, Baxter highlights some of the very challenges that I witnessed in my recent travels: people who love their sins and as a result will not turn to God thinking they still have time to wallow in it.  No, life’s timer expires often when we least expect it.

Your delaying shows that you love not God and that you prefer your sin before him and that you would never part with it if you could have your will.  For if you loved God, you would long to be restored to his favour and to be near him and employed in his service and his family….And it is a sign also that you are in love with sin: for else, why should you be so loath to leave it?  He that would not leave his sin and turn to God till the next week or the next month or year would never turn if he might have his desire.  For that which makes you desirous to stay a day or a week longer do indeed make you loath to turn at all.

We underestimate the power of sin to keep us in its grip.  We linger over mixed wine too long because it smells inviting and it tastes sweet.  The time to turn from sin is always now.

Turn to God without delay,

Pastor Gabe

Reason #3: Why a Sinner Ought to Turn to God Without Delay

Silva

“He’s dead.”  Mercifully that kind of statement in the pre-dawn hour of the day doesn’t come too often.  Today, however, it came.  I’ve been wandering in and out of my senses ever since.  I’ve been dealing with matters of life and death for many years now – mostly, life, if I had to do an informal survey.  I mostly help people grapple with and handle the fast-balls and curve-balls and sliders that come in their lives.  Sometimes, I help others make sense of death.  Today, it’s been my turn.

Providentially, Baxter’s reason #3 for turning to God without delay has to do with recognizing from what we turn.  We turn from the devil, from the vain and fleeting hopes of this world and from the seductions inspired by our own flesh.  I’ll cite him in a moment but as the wave of death washes over me today, I am speechlessly thankful that though the salt of this wave stings the wound in my heart (and that of my family), I do not grieve without hope.  In fact, I know how this story ends.  It’s like re-watching a really sad movie and experiencing that acute sadness while knowing how it ends.  It doesn’t really lessen the sadness, it just gives it purpose.  The Bible tells us that to be one with Jesus Christ by faith means we will grieve for only a time and the grief caused by our enemies: death, the devil and our flesh, will give way to joy.  God promised.

Consider also from what you are called to turn; and then judge whether there be any reason of delay.  It is from the devil, your enemy; from the love of a deceitful world, from the seductions of corrupted brutish flesh; it is from sin the greatest evil.  What is there in sin that you should delay to part with it?  Is there any good in it?  Or what hath it ever done for you that you should love it?  Did it ever do you good?  Or did it ever do any man good?  It is the deadly enemy of Christ and you that caused his death and will cause yours and is working for your condemnation, if converting and pardoning grace prevent it not….It is cause of all the miseries of the world, of all the sorrows that ever did befall you and the cause of the damnation of them that perish; and do you delay to part with it?

Oh, heaven soon.

Pastor Gabe

Reason #2: Why a Sinner Ought to Turn To God Without Delay

Silva

Richard Baxter does us a great service by first reminding us that to turn is to turn to the Blessed God.  We trust in Jesus Christ to save us, govern us, and deliver us.  We do not turn to a system of self-help or self-salvation but to a Person and a Friend.  It is also true that to turn to God means that we are turning from lifestyles that the Puritans equated to the beasts of the field to a life of rational nobility.

Here’s reason #2:

Consider also to what it is that you must turn.  Not to uncleanness but to holiness; not to the sensual life of a beast but to the noble rational life of a man, and more noble heavenly life of a Christian; not to an unprofitable worldly toil but to the most gainful employment that ever the son of men were acquainted with; not to the deceitful drudgery of sin but to that godliness which is profitable to all things….Why a life of holiness is nothing but living unto God; to be conversant with him as the wicked are with the world and to be devoted to his service as sensualists are to the flesh.  It is to live in the love of God and of our Redeemer and in the foretaste of his everlasting glory and of his love and in the sweet forethoughts of that blessed life that shall never end and in the honest self-denying course that leads to that blessedness.

We are truly deceived if we believe that to live otherwise is in our best interests and the best interests of those around us.

Turn now to God and live.

Pastor Gabe