PANTS ON FIRE?

PANTS ON FIRE?

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Proverbs [ESV] 15:9-12 … Sheol and Abaddon lie open before the LORD; how much more the hearts of the children of man! A scoffer does not like to be reproved; he will not go to the wise.

  Quinnipiac polling group sometimes presents a name to individuals being quizzed allowing only a single word response. In a recent word-association poll the pollsters said one presidential candidacy seekers name and then record the one word responses: First place “liar.”, second place “dishonest”, third place “untrustworthy”. (For the record, this person is still one of the leading runners.)

  Reading the reporting on the Quinnipiac poll initially reinforced my preexistent cynical decades old dislike of the politician . . . until God’s Holy Spirit reminded me that His eye is on the sparrow, that candidate, and me!

  Needing more of, I read Spurgeon’s February 14, 1858 Sunday morning sermon on the topic. I share with you the first paragraph: “YOU HAVE OFTEN smiled at the ignorance of heathens who bow themselves before gods of wood and stone. You have quoted the words of Scripture, and you have said, "Eyes have they [idols] but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not." [Psalms 115 & 135] You have therefore argued that they could not be gods at all, because they could neither see nor hear, and you have smiled contemptuously at the men who could so debase their understandings as to make such things objects of adoration. May I ask you one question—but one? Your God can both see and hear: would your conduct be in any respect different, if you had a god such as those that the heathen worship? Suppose for one minute, that Jehovah, who is nominally adored in this land, could be (though it is almost blasphemy to suppose it) smitten with such a blindness, that he could not see the works and know the thoughts of man: would you then become more careless concerning him than you are now? I trow not.[to believe, think, or suppose] In nine cases out of ten, and perhaps in a far larger and sadder proportion, the doctrine of Divine Omniscience, although it is received and believed, has no practical effect upon our lives at all. The mass of mankind forget God: whole nations who know his existence and believe that he beholds them, live as if they had no God at all. Merchants, farmers, men in their shops, and in their fields, husbands in their families, and wives in the midst of their households, live as if there were no God; no eye inspecting them; no ear listening to the voice of their lips, and no eternal mind always treasuring up the recollection of their acts. Ah! we are practical Atheists, the mass of us; yea, all but those that have been born again, and have passed from death unto life, be their creeds what they may, are Atheists, after all, in life; for if there were no God, and no hereafter, multitudes of men would never be affected by the change; they would live the same as they do now—their lives being so full of disregard of God and his ways, that the absence of a God could not affect them in any great degree. Permit me, then, this morning, as God shall help me, to stir up your hearts; and may God grant that something I may say, may drive some of your practical Atheism out of you. I would endeavor to set before you, God, the all-seeing one, and press upon your solemn consideration the tremendous fact, that in all our acts, in all our ways, and in all our thoughts, we are continually under his observing eye.”

  Then there is the more simply stated questions about pants worn.

EBB4