Beware of laxity of principle, loss of consecration, communion and fellowship. Bitterness, lust, envy, divisions, schisms, false doctrines, rivalries, contentions, lethargy, apathy, inactivity, worldliness, want of love to Christ and souls, diminished gatherings to prayer, less earnest pleading, and consecrated living, fall off of congregations, want of the power of the Holy Ghost, defect in doctrine, heresy, lukewarmness, no conversions, no visits from the Lord. Stop grasping at things just to increase your status among your peers. Clinging to stuff will only complicate your life unnecessarily. Jesus was punished infinitely for your sins.
Soon there will be a terrible sound in your ears of the approaching vengeance of God. Flee to Christ for mercy. If you reject Christ, there will be no refuge for you. Self-will, carnal desires, pride, self-seeking, carnality, and wrath. Our inward and outward walk must be eagerly watched or we'll vex the Holy Spirit. Bloated Pharisee, empty formalist. Formality, hypocrisy, pretense. Polluted, depraved. Sin poisons the well head of our soul. Sin is in the brain, we think wrongly; Sin is in the heart, we love that which is evil. Sin distorts the judgment, perverts the will, and corrupts the memory. We remember a dirty joke or worldly song, but forget a sermon or Bible verse. Human nature enjoys loose pleasures, and listens to lascivious songs. Don't be greedy, grasping, covetous. Foul language, unchaste conversation, lascivious spirit, wicked private life, lewd speech, wicked acts must be forsaken.
Turn your strongest, heartiest and most fervent desires towards God and Christ. Enlarge your desire toward Christ. Let your ambition be all for God. Let your hunger and thirst be after righteousness. Let your aspirations and longings be all towards holiness, and the things that will make you like Christ. Give Jesus your principal desires. Pleasure seekers, unchaste persons, hardened reprobates, delusions, mischief, infidelity, anarchy. Concentration, consistency, unity are necessary to usefulness. Obedience, purity, holiness, usefulness, praise. Guile - trickery, fraud, crafty, deception, insidious cunning, dishonesty.
Gossips and chatterers need to take a turn at exaggeration other people's virtues. Have a quick eye to see the best qualities of others, and be blind to their failings and faults. Human nature says, "do whatever it takes to retire in style." Religionists mock God by a fruitless profession. Do something for the truth, disseminate the Gospel, sow the precious seed. Heartless professors never pray for others. Ask Jesus for noble desires and aspirations. We need more and more grace to lead godly, sober, honest, holy lives. God's Righteousness makes us pure in heart and changes our desires. The desires and longings of fallen nature must be put off. Submit all your desires to God.
Evil passions and corrupt desires must be resisted. Faith or presumption; regeneration or reformation; holiness or morality; zeal or fanaticism; grace or fancy; Christ and His Cross or human works and merits; human imagination or divine Revelation. Human self-will, fancy, self-flattery. Jesus showed the Pharisees that thoughts, imaginations, motives, desires, memory, attitude, intellect, Everything must be brought into subjection to the will of God. Desire to love Jesus more. Have aspirations after closer fellowship with Jesus. Be zealous to make known the truth of the Gospel. Be just in judgment, aspiration, and desire. Sin chills our prayers, freezes our praise, hampers our usefulness. Human nature looks to vain philosophy, self-righteousness, vain imaginations, superstition, idle fancies. Seek Heaven, escape Hell, trust Christ, love God, walk in the Spirit. Never play games with eternal realities.
Self-worship is the lowest worship indeed, a groveling deity. Cheerful allegiance to the King of Kings. The very thought of evil is sin, an unclean imagination pollutes the heart, a wanton desire is guilt. Personal obedience to the will of God pleases Him. Happy Loyalty to the Risen King. Complete acquiescence to the words of God. Perfect forgiveness towards all mankind, intense desire to live in perfect peace. Unrenewed human nature is a fretful and restless thing. The carnal mind has sinister motives, crooked intentions, sullen rebellion, murmurings, hard thoughts of God. Quarreling, fault-finding, grumbling, fretting, discontented, unthankful. Sullen or submissive. Complete submission to the divine will. Don't be grumbling and grasping. The pursuits of this world, self-seeking, and selfish worldliness will leave you empty and desperate.
The Gospel in four words - "I will give you." Matthew 11:28 - That is the Gospel. Will you come and have Jesus? Jesus wants nothing from you, except your sins. Your evil passions and propensities must be renounced. The carnal mind secretly indulges the baser foul passions. Worldly men perniciously resolve to indulge their lusts; they live to gratify your own lusts, and soon become sunken in loathsome lusts and vices. Do the right, serve God, live for Heaven and Eternity. Care little about man's esteem, abhor the pride of life; live above the world and carefulness. Be care-free, but not care-less. Men love the wages of iniquity, the pleasures of the flesh, the pride of life, the conceit of self-salvation. Men will love anything rather than God. Men alibi their respectable sins. Be clean rid of every tendency to do evil, no affection toward evil, no fear of relapse. Human nature's tendency is toward bigness, parade, show of power. Without Christ you are in awful peril. The carnal mind is warped and bent toward evil. If you love sin, your life will be gloomy, despondent, despairing, and depressed. Unthankful sluggards avoid the Truth. You have lived to gratify your own lusts, and you have delighted in defying God's laws.
Human nature is indifferent to divine truth. Human nature seeks for easy of body, indulgence of appetite, joy of being admired, power and position. Be balanced and proportionate in your Christian walk, not lopsided. The Gospel is too humbling, too pure, too free. Impenitent heart, unrenewed will, disobedient main, unholy private life, clean desires. Outward morality and correctness of conduct cannot save you from sin. Superficial religion doesn't require self-denial. Prove the purity of your motives. Repent of sin itself, because your sin is against a gracious pardoning God, a holy law, a tender Gospel, and the bleeding Savior.
