I want to take some time today, friends,
to address a sore subject with many in
the churches today.
My topic today is the backslider.
I know in my own life when I
have been in a backslidden condition.
I was both useless to God and miserable
with myself.
The most miserable person in the world is
a backslider.
For nothing will bring him true satisfaction or
fulfillment.
Here now is a backslider described.
Sin has been welcomed.
Sin has been regular.
Sin has been enjoyed.
Sin has lost its shame.
And sin has been looked for and longingly
and lovingly embraced and is dear to the
heart.
The taste for spiritual things is gone.
Real spiritual truth is disliked and true preaching
is not endured.
Rather, it is hated and avoided.
Prayer becomes merely self-centered and selfish for
one's own pleasure, advancement and gain.
The intimacy with Christ is lost.
Love of Christ has diminished.
Conviction of the Holy Spirit is quenched because
of sin.
This way, a backslider can sin with reckless
abandon and enjoy his sin and even delight
in it, whereas in former times the believer
delighted in his God and lived for things
of eternal worth.
Proverbs 14.14 declares this about the backslider.
The backslider in heart shall be filled with
his own ways.
So a backslider is full of himself and
full of the world.
His own self-gratification comes first and is
foremost in his life.
But a backslider is a miserable person to
live with, often in a foul mood and
critical of others and possessing an unforgiving spirit
and a spirit of hatred and bitterness toward
others.
The Bible becomes merely a tool to the
backslider to encourage him in sin by continually
resorting to 1 John 1.9 as relief
from judgment to continue in sin.
And although the Word of God is true
in that if we confess our sins, he
is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins, the backslider has no intention to part
with his most beloved sin by true repentance.
So the last part of that verse does
not apply to him and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness.
A backslider is more concerned with pleasing himself
rather than pleasing God.
A backslider will begin to hate the people
of God and avoid their company.
A backslider knows nothing about his danger and
is totally unaware of the great and grave
danger of being removed by sudden death and
thrust into eternity to face the Lord Jesus
Christ while standing knee deep in the ashes
of a wasted life.
A church, a denomination, and a nation can
be so far away from the heart of
a holy God and in a state of
spiritual stupidity that the only thing which will
awaken and alarm them to their great danger
is a sudden manifestation of God's convicting presence
in revival, whether it's personal or corporate or
national.
Apart from this, a backslider walks on slippery
places, ready to fall at any moment, 2
Peter 2.20 warns.
For if after they have escaped the pollutions
of the world through the knowledge of the
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again
entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is
worse with them than the beginning.
A backslider runs the risk of being suddenly
removed by God before falling into complete apostasy.
A backslider has been sidelined by sin and
is completely useless to God in his barren
condition, which bears no fruit nor vital testimony.
A backslidden church within a community will have
no spiritual influence upon that wicked community.
A backslider in the secular workplace will blend
in with the lost and not stand out
for God or the gospel.
A backslider will have a religious life, but
without the power, his witness will lack divine
authority like Lot and Sodom.
His religious duties are done out of habit
rather than love to God, and his works
have no lasting spiritual fruit or influence upon
a generation.
He is a vapor without a scent, a
shadow without any distinction.
He is like Jeremiah's basket of fruit, rotten
in the sun, good to nobody and good
for nothing.
A backslider joins the company in Revelation 2
.4, whose members had walked away from a
hot pursuit of God and turned to the
world because thou hast left thy first love,
meaning Jesus no longer held the first place
of priority in their lives and in their
affections, but became secondary or lesser.
But the backslider is ignorant to his great
danger before an offended God, and the backslider
has a weakened testimony for God and falls
into the company of Demas, whom Paul said
of, For Demath hath forsaken me, having loved
this present world, and is departed.
And almighty God will only bear so long
with the backslider, for God is a God
who must punish sin, and a holy God
will not tolerate unrepentant sin in a believer
long nor bear with it forever.
Either the backslider will fall on his face
before God, broken in humility and shame, seeking
the grace of true repentance, and be reclaimed
back to God in a walk of intimacy
and obedience to him, or bear the unforeseen
consequences of that grievous disobedience to God in
sin.
A backslider runs the risk of ending his
days in spiritual apathy and indifference to the
things that matter for eternity, and will heap
up for himself wood, hay, and straw at
the judgment seat of Christ.
We see the sad ending of a king
who began well, but who did not finish
well in the life of King Solomon, of
whom 1 Kings 11.4 describes.
For it came to pass, when Solomon was
old, that his wives turned away his heart
after other gods, and his heart was not
perfect with the Lord his God, as was
the heart of David his father.
Let us pray.