SUPPORT GSPS |
The Gold, Silver, Precious Stones team appreciates your contributions in support of this work. Please send your correspondence to:
Gold, Silver, Precious Stones
P.O. Box 240
Harvest, AL 35749
|
|
|
|
"Seeking, Repenting, and Believing, II Chronicles xx:1-3," The Gospel Messenger (1879)"
THERE ARE DEGREES OF FEAR: we may fear and yet control that fear, and we may fear and find that it controls us in spite of ourselves. Of the latter sort it was that prompted Jehosaphat and Judah to seek the Lord. Felix trembled when Paul preached to him but it was a fear he could control and he of course put it off to another time; but the fear begotten in the hearts of the people by the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, was one that could not be put off, and made them cry out in anguish of soul, “Men and brethren, what must we do?” Of the same kind was that wrought in the heart of the jailor at Phillippi, causing him to tremblingly cast himself down before Paul and Silas, crying, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” This fear was an unbidden and unwelcome guest, but a necessary, in fact, an essential one to seeking the Lord; there would be no real and successful seeking without it, nor any real controlling fear of our own natural will.
Notice the cause of Jehosaphat’s fear: it was produced by a combination of irresistible powers either of which was stronger than he was; the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. They had invaded his land in combined force and come up face to face to him. He knew they were enemies before, but he had not felt their power to destroy him nor his weakness to defend himself as he did now. So it is with a convicted sinner; he knew of sin before, but thought he could arise, grapple with and subdue it at any moment, but when it is presented to him in force by the Spirit; when it comes up into his land and invades the place of his rest, he fears it and feels it as he never did before, and is made to cry as David did, “Lord deliver me from my enemy for he is stronger than I am.”
This fear cannot be resisted nor put off, and from very necessity we seek the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, or the work of grace in the heart. If it is not irresistible, it is worthless; the fear must control the sinner, else he will control it. If Jehosaphat could have driven these combined forces back he would have done it, but that he knew to be impossible, as Peter sinking in the sea knew when he cried to the Lord. They neither put this fear in their hearts, neither could they cast it out. Whilst they would not have willed this fear, this fear wrought in them a will to be saved, so that they sought the Lord “with their whole hearts.” |
|
