Will you kindly turn with me prayerfully to
the first words in 1 Peter chapter 4,
the first passage in this very wonderful chapter.
I'm not going to read it now altogether,
but we shall be looking at verses 1
to 7 with the exception of verse 6.
Let me introduce the theme of it by
reading from the first verse.
Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm
yourselves also with the same attitude, because he
who has suffered in the body is done
with sin.
Now that introduces us to our theme tonight.
As a result, he does not live the
rest of his earthly life for evil human
desires, but rather for the will of God.
For you have spent enough time in the
past doing what pagans do, living in debauchery,
lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry.
They think it strange that you do not
plunge with them into the same flood of
dissipation, and they heap abuse on you.
But they will have to give account of
him who is ready to judge the living
and the dead.
And then verse 7.
The end of all things is near.
Therefore be clear-minded and self-controlled, so
that you can pray.
May the Lord help us as we meditate
upon this very comprehensive passage, describing the more
negative aspect of the Christian life and calling.
If you go on in this chapter, you
will find that Peter balances the negative with
the positive, as the Scriptures invariably do.
But there are times when it is necessary
for us to concentrate upon the negative, and
I believe this is such an occasion.
The Christian has made a decisive act of
refusal and rejection, even in his acceptance of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
You cannot accept Christ without rejecting that which
is contrary to Christ.
The Christian is presented with alternatives.
In the choice of the one, he rejects
the other.
And Peter is here describing a way of
life that we, consciously or otherwise, we reject,
we set on one side when we receive
Jesus Christ as Lord.
Some of us, in coming to Christ, are
very much aware of this.
Others make the positive act of faith in
Christ without fully appreciating all that is involved.
But as Paul reminds the Thessalonians, there is
the negative and the positive.
There is the turning away from idols in
order to serve the living God.
There is the call to faith in Christ
and thus to come near to him and
cling to him and walk with him.
There is the call to leave that which
is evil, so that, according to common parlance,
we are a converted people.
We are a people who have turned around
and we now walk in the direction which
is quite different from the one we normally,
we usually and by nature walked in.
We walk in a different way.
Our faces are now toward the city which
has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Doubtless, these Christians of the first century were
no less subject than we are to the
taunt that our opting out of the baser
indulgences that feed the beast in us was
but a crazy perversion of things on our
part.
Surely this is not necessary.
You don't have to deny the world and
the flesh and the devil to become a
Christian.
Why not have a little bit of both
worlds?
Why not really play safe and have a
leg, have a foot in both worlds?
Some of you here tonight have been tantalized
and have been maligned and have been misused
by those very words, in those very words.
So too were these early Christians.
Peter brings the issue to the bar of
rational judgment and he insists that the whole
time process, past, present, future, gives the lie
to the worldlings viewpoint that we should cling
to the world we have and get all
we can of it and never abandon it.
That is a lie.
And Peter would insist that the whole time
process, past, present, future, assures us that the
only rational thing to do is to say
take the world, but give me Jesus.
Nearer my God to thee, even though it
be a cross that raiseth me.
This is not only our duty, but this
is the right thing to do and this
is the only way of peace and of
joy and of fulfillment.
Now I want to turn briefly tonight to
this argument of the time processes or the
time process.
First of all I want you to notice
Peter's argument from the past.
Verse 3 in the NIV reads thus, You
have spent enough time in the past doing
what pagans choose to do.
Now Peter is speaking, he is addressing Christians.
And the first thing he says to them
is this, You people, he says whoever you
are, you spent enough time and too much
in the past doing the kind of things
that pagans love to do.
There is no reason on earth why you
should spend your present time or any time
given you in the future doing this kind
of thing.
The past was enough and too much.
Clearly this is one of the inspired understatements
of scripture.
The apostle is obviously speaking ironically here.
You see a Christian is necessarily a person
who has experienced a change of heart that
has led to a change of life and
behavior and a change in his mode of
evaluating things.
And if he has tasted and seen that
the Lord is good then he ought to
be, she ought to be in a position
to let the world go by.
Having Christ in all his grace and in
all his glory and in all the privileges
that accompany his coming into our lives.
Really the world and its sins and its
mode of living, says Peter, is really and
intrinsically wrong.
So wrong that it is indefensible and incompatible
with our new life to walk according to
the standards of this world.
The very memory of his past indulgences in
the gratification of the flesh should shock and
nauseate a regenerate Christian against going that way
continually or returning to it.
Now in order to get this point across
the Apostle does two things of strategic importance
that I want to mention.
The first is this.
He reminds these Christians here that the way
of life from which he has been weaning
them away in the course of this epistle
was nothing other than the expression of their
pagan philosophy and unbelief.
Before they were Christian their way of life
was purely pagan.
Now if you have the King James Version
I think it may tend to mislead us
a little bit there.
The NIV says you have spent enough time
in the past doing what pagans do.
In the King James the reference is to
what Gentiles did, the way of the Gentiles,
the behavior of the Gentiles, as if it
referred ethnically to the Jews.
Well the point is not so much that
they lived as Gentiles rather than as Jews.
The point is that they lived as pagans
rather than in accordance with the will of
God.
Now you have only to say what Peter
says here.
You have time enough in the past to
do all that men want to do in
a pagan world.
You've only to say that in order to
see its reasonableness.
It was enough and too long for a
man who is now a Christian to have
spent his past non-Christian days in living
as a pagan.
That's involved in our confession of faith.
If that is not so there was no
reason why we should have trusted Christ in
the first place.
There was no reason for our repentance.
There was no reason for our conversion.
There was no reason for anything we've done
unless that was enough.
If we were convinced by the Holy Spirit
and convicted then the significance of that convincing
and convicting was this is enough and too
much.
We need to turn and turn by the
grace of God we did.
Obviously then the reference would be a dagger
thrust to any Jewish Christians who are here
reading Peter's words.
They've not only abandoned the high standards of
Jewish morality but some of them seem to
have been even as Christians, Christian Jews forsaking
the standards of Christianity as well.
They've fallen below two standards not only that
of the law but the standard of Christ.
Lest this general thrust fail to achieve the
end in view however you notice that the
inspired apostle feels constrained to specify the kind
of morally distasteful characteristics that marked the contemporary
life of the pagan society around him.
He mentions the kind of things that were
done.
You lived in license and debauchery, drunkenness, revelry
and tippling and the forbidden worship of idols.
That's the New English Bible version.
Doesn't really matter which one you have.
They're all gross evil sins and they shock
you if you're a Christian and the Holy
Spirit is living in your heart.
All of which you see, all of which
adds to the pungent word that Peter says
here.
It was enough to live this way in
the past not to go back to these
things again.
You are now called to live according to
the will of God.
To go back to these things is altogether
contrary to common sense as well as to
your own new nature as a Christian.
I don't propose now to examine the precise
nature of these sordid sins.
Suffice it now to note and to mark
the principle underlying Peter's approach.
He mentions them by name.
Now I've read them but I'm not going
to dwell on them.
But I want you to notice that Peter
mentions them by name.
And the longer I live the more do
I come to conclude that there is some
very sound psychology in this.
I believe that this is very important.
It is a principle which tempted Christians ought
more often to resort to.
When Satan and society are pulling at your
heart and enticing you into some kind of
sensual involvement, boldly write down that sin by
name and look it straight in the eye.
You say to me that sounds crazy to
me.
Why on earth should we do a thing
like that?
I'll tell you.
For the simple reason that modern man has
so manipulated our language that sins are not
called by their proper names tonight.
I don't want to dwell at any length
on this.
Perhaps it would be worthy of something at
greater length someday.
But let's just take the obvious.
Theft by overcharging in business has become sharp
practice.
Homosexuality has become gay living.
And if there is anything which is contrary
to gay living it is that.
Adultery has become extramarital sex.
Lust has become freedom or permissiveness.
Now the fact that I'm not going any
further doesn't mean to say that I can't.
Because the list goes on and on and
on.
And you see what's happened?
Satan has so got hold of us that
we've taken the sting out of truth.
And we've changed our vocabulary in order to
pacify our own consciences when we are tempted
to sin.
And we don't call the things by name.
I say to you as a believing man
and a believing woman, when the devil comes
after you and when the world entices you
and your passions are aroused and you're about
to do this that or the other, name
it as God names it.
Call it by its own biblical term as
God has christened it.
Look it in the eye.
See if you can then leap over the
hurdle in disobedience and in rebellion.
And I know of men and women who
have been saved from terrible rebellion by this
very principle of looking it straight in the
eye and saying what does the Word of
God call this?
This argument from the past is most telling
therefore when considered by a truly Christian person.
Men who have come under a strong conviction
of sin at the threshold of their Christian
lives especially, especially.
And those who have humbly acknowledged the Spirit's
assessment as being right and proper should see
the reasonableness of this appeal of the Apostles.
It was enough that you went that way
in the past.
Don't live that way anymore.
Now do as your Lord did.
He died in order thereafter to live to
the will of God.
You and I need to die and to
suffer, to be crucified, to reckon ourselves dead
in order to live the rest of our
lives not to the will of man or
to the flesh but to the will of
God.
That's what he said.
It's the argument from the past.
Let me put it very bluntly.
If in your heart of hearts tonight you
have to confess before God you don't need
to confess it before us.
But if in your heart of hearts you
have to confess that you have lived and
you are guilty of some of these debasing
sins that Peter mentions and Paul mentions elsewhere
tell God now.
Don't you think that was enough and more
than enough?
And if you cannot say that then you
need to ask yourself a question whether the
Spirit of God is having his way in
your life.
The argument from the past.
The argument from the future.
We are obviously to understand that the Christians
who are here at rest and commanded not
to live any longer according to human passions
had actually lived in that way in days
gone by.
Probably prior to their conversion.
There may have been exceptions but this would
appear to have been the general rule.
Here as in ancient Corinth as you remember.
The might and mercy of God had been
excavating and reclaiming individuals from the most sordid
and debasing mode of living.
You will doubtless remember Paul's reminder to the
Corinthians.
Don't be deceived he says.
Neither the immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor
homosexuals nor thieves nor greedy nor drunkards nor
revilers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of
God.
And such were some of you.
But you were washed you were sanctified you
were justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our
God.
But such were some of you.
The grace of God moves triumphantly into all
kinds of moral conditions in order to rescue
the perishing and to transform the rebellious into
obedient children of God.
He does that.
Such is the infinite grace of God that
it comes into our morally decadent society and
calls men from the most hideous evil to
be children of God and servants of his.
Never was Corinth an exception.
The same thing has been happening all over
the world throughout the course of time.
Now the conversion of men in such circumstances
often resulted in almost total break between them
as new Christians and their old companions.
The companions that were theirs before they became
believers.
How else could it be?
If they lived on that level before they
became Christian now it became impossible to walk
in that way of life.
Therefore they came such a complete break that
they could no longer do much more than
be civil towards one another.
As far as the Christian is concerned, his
old friendships or her old friendships are now
a mission field.
But they cannot live together.
They can't do the things they once did
anymore.
Life has changed now.
The Christian has a new sense of values
and a new sense of duty and a
new sense of calling.
And so Peter says very well what some
of you here tonight know very well.
They, that is your old friends in sin,
they are surprised that you do not now
join them in the same wild profligacy and
they abuse you.
Of course they do.
This is proof of the change that has
taken place in your life.
This is proof that something of God has
taken place in your life.
But you gotta suffer for it.
As we well know this is a fairly
general experience among Christians who are converted from
this mode of living.
When men feel constrained to break away from
a way of life in which they have
been involved over the years, they automatically imply
that such a mode of life that they've
left behind, such a mode of life was
wrong.
And their old time friends think this is
a bad judgment upon us.
And so they don't like you for it.
What was wrong when you did such and
such a thing?
What was wrong when you came our way?
What was wrong when you joined with us?
Come on, join us again and be merry.
Now it is against this kind of background
that the Apostle bids these Christians consider their
actions in the light of future events.
Sarcasm and abuse may be exceedingly hard to
bear at times.
But if it is seen in the light
of the future, it will serve to assure
them that however cruel such an experience may
be, it is nevertheless the only reasonable thing
to do.
Face it and accept it.
Any alternative is wholly unreasonable in the light
of what God has revealed.
Let's notice what Peter says here.
One, it is evident that Peter is thinking
especially of the persecutors and the accusers and
abusers of the saints when he says of
those pagans, they are surprised that they do
not now join them in the same wild
profligacy and they abuse you.
But they will give account to him who
is ready to judge the living and the
dead.
Get that.
They are surprised that you do not now
join them, yes, and they abuse you.
But they will give account to him who
is ready to judge the living and the
dead.
Now perhaps the most important thing to note
here is this.
God's assessment of the actions and attitudes of
these people and of ourselves is something that
cannot be escaped.
The divine assessment of our actions, yours and
mine, as much as the actions of these
people refer to here, God's assessment cannot be
escaped.
And God's judgment cannot be avoided.
That's what Peter is saying.
You see, we must sooner or later accept
the judgment of God upon our lives.
The fact that the Christian has done so
already in this present age, that's what we
do when we repent and when we turn
to Christ.
We accept the judgment of God upon our
lives here and now.
We acknowledge that we are sinners.
We acknowledge that we are unworthy.
We acknowledge that we deserve the wrath of
God.
And we turn to Christ for refuge and
for forgiveness.
But you see, involved in that is the
acceptance of the divine judgment.
And therefore we shall not come into judgment,
but we are passed from death to life.
But now, if you don't accept God's judgment
upon your sin in this life, then you
will have to accept it beyond this life.
The pagan may now reject the divine value
judgments, and he may well cling to his
own sinful way of living.
He may do so to the very end
of his earthly pilgrimage, so that he has
saturated his body and his mind and his
soul with the most sordid things of this
fallen earthly life.
But the game is not over.
He may fondly think so, but the game
is not over yet.
Where God's judgments have not been accepted this
side of death, they will have to be
faced beyond death.
God is judge of the dead as well
as of the living.
That's what Peter says.
And allying this passage then is the basic
and undeviating apostolic conviction that God simply cannot
be flouted.
His opposition to sin and his pledged condemnation
of it is of such an order that
we simply cannot escape it.
Death does not bypass the throne of God.
Take your own life hoping to escape something
beyond death.
You still have to come up to the
throne, the great white throne of God.
There is no escape.
God has ordained it so.
The order of the universe is such.
There is no way to bypass the judgment.
Persecuting pagans will therefore be required to answer
for their sordid way of life in general,
as well as for their abuse of the
Christians in particular.
And on yonder side of death, where they
will have to face the facts, there is
no fountain where sin is washed away.
Where the tree falls, it lies.
Better confess your sin in this world where
forgiveness is to be found for the penitent
than move into a world where the books
have been closed and the door is closed
and judgment is unrelieved.
And secondly, if Peter uttered these words of
verses four and five with his eye especially
on the persecutors, he probably wrote the opening
words of verse seven with his thoughts largely
upon the persecuted.
In verse seven he says, the end of
all things is at hand.
And I believe whatever else is involved there,
there is a note of hope for those
who are being persecuted, who are being taunted,
who are being abused by their old-time
friends, and who are being harassed to come
back into the world, back into its sins,
back into its evil way of living.
It's all right, says Peter, without saying it
very deliberately.
It's an aside as it were, but the
end of all things is at hand.
And those who taunt you today will not
be here tomorrow.
We Christians must ever live our lives, you
see, in the light of the end.
We must always do that, or we don't
see things in biblical perspective.
The faith we have embraced comprises the revelation
that God has given, as well as the
redemption he has accomplished.
And that revelation insists that the end is
very important.
It insists that the real horizon stretches beyond
the apparent meeting point of sea and sky.
Oh, I remember as a boy going to
the seaside how tantalized I was, and how
unbelieving when they told me that the sea
went out further than the horizon.
I thought the sky was a kind of
curtain behind the water.
Didn't you ever think like that?
Was I altogether unusual?
But I couldn't see how anybody could get
beyond that.
And I remember arguing with youngsters of my
own age, I don't remember how old I
was, but it's just impossible, until we saw
a boat go out and go beyond the
horizon, and then later come back again.
And then we knew that some point had
been proved.
The horizons that we see are not the
end of things.
There's something beyond what I can see.
You see, pagans think of the end somewhere
around the place where the heart stops beating,
and a man or a woman stops breathing.
That's the end.
No, Moses, the Bible, the end is not
there.
The end is beyond that, beyond the curtains.
And Christian men and women need to live
their lives in the light of the end,
which is beyond the curtains.
As far as these early Christians were concerned,
that meant that they must learn to look
at such issues as living according to the
flesh, and enduring the sarcasm and even persecution
of their old-time friends in the light
of the end.
Oh, they're hard to bear now, but you
will be glad that you heeded the word
of God when you come to the end
of the road.
Everything must be looked at and considered in
the light of the ultimate.
The pagan's vital miscalculation is that he has
wrongly identified the end.
He has usually placed it, as we've said,
far too near the now, the here and
now.
It is amazing how the serious acceptance of
this view of things will transform our sense
of values.
Complacency and moral complicity can scarcely thrive beneath
the glare of the end.
There should be some place in your life
and mine from day to day, from week
to week, where we regularly bring our lives
under the glare of the eternal throne of
God, and consider our mold of activity, our
actions, our attitudes, our words, our ambitions, what
we're doing, what we're thinking, the mode of
living, our relationships.
Consider everything in the light of the end.
My friend, if you're not doing that, you're
not living biblically.
And it is only when you bring the
whole of your life here and see it
in the light of eternity, it is only
then that you can see things in perspective
and be sane and sober as Paul, as
Peter tells us a little later on.
Peter told the saints nearly two thousand years
ago that the end of all things was
at hand.
No little discussion has surrounded that statement, involving
all kinds of interpretation of the apostles' words.
Perhaps the main point he wanted to make
was this.
I'm not going to argue with anybody who
thinks differently, but I'm sure he meant this
much, that since Jesus Christ has come, we
are living in the last days of the
last day.
We are living in the very last age.
Everything else led up to the coming of
Christ, the first coming of Christ.
And everything now leads up to the second
coming and the consummating of what he came
to do in the first place.
The night is far spent, says Paul in
writing to the Romans, the day is at
hand.
Little children, says John, it is the last
hour.
We are living near the end.
Having made reference to Noah towards the end
of the last chapter, it may well be
that at this point Peter was thinking of
his Lord's warning in Luke 27, as it
was in the days of Noah, he says,
so will it be in the days of
the Son of Man.
They ate, they drank, they married, they were
given in marriage until the day when Noah
entered the ark, and the flood came and
destroyed them all.
Why, you see, they were not doing things
that were altogether wrong.
What were they doing?
Well, they ate and they drank.
It doesn't say that they drank what they
shouldn't drink.
They married.
Marriage is an ordinance of God.
They were given in marriage.
In other words, they went on with their
ordinary life, but they never considered the end.
They went on as if life was going
to be just like this forever, nothing more.
Suddenly, as to the rich man, God says,
this night I will require your soul from
you.
You and I must live in the light
of the end, my friend.
Christian people, if you are persecuted, if you're
harassed, and I know some of you are,
now listen, do this.
See yourself in the light of the end
and see the wounds you're bearing in the
light of the end and see the sins
of your enemies in the light of the
end.
Psalm 73 brings out this amazing thought, doesn't
it, of how the psalmist was so puzzled
by the way that the unrighteous flourished until
he says, I saw their end.
You may be very broken hearted because you're
a good man or a good woman.
You're seeking to honor the Lord.
Your business is not doing well.
You're not getting the promotion that you expected.
In fact, you would say everything's going against
you.
My friend, do exactly what the old psalmist
did.
Follow his thoughts in Psalm 73, and when
he went into the house of God and
put the matter before God, he says, then
I saw their end, and I realized it.
You need to see your enemies in the
light of the end, and you need to
see yourself in the light of the end,
and when you see things in the light
of the end of the wicked and of
the just, respectively, then life becomes not only
tolerable, but you will have a saline property
in your judgments that will enable you to
be sane in days of trial.
Mayer, in his commentary, refers to the fact
that when Hugh Latimer, the martyr, the Anglican
martyr, was summoned to stand his last trial
before his very vindictive foes, he was somewhat
careless in replying to the questions that were
addressed to him, as if he couldn't care
less.
And of course, in one sense, he couldn't
care less because he was not afraid to
die.
He knew that all was well with him,
and all was well between him and his
Lord, and in that sense, he couldn't care
less.
But he was careless about his words.
At least, he was thus careless, we read,
until, and now I quote, during a pause,
he caught the sound of a pen, a
quill, behind the curtain, writing down, apparently, every
word he was saying.
From that moment on, says Mayer, he weighed
his every word with care.
Can you hear the pen moving?
Can you hear the quill behind the heavenly
curtain?
Do you remember the Savior saying that for
every spare or evil word that men will
ever say, they will give an answer.
You and I must live our lives in
the light of the end.
And that just gives me a moment in
closing to speak of the argument from the
present.
I can't deal with it as it ought
to be dealt with, but I want you
to notice verse 7.
The end of all things is at hand.
Be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer.
That's the RSV, or according to the NIV,
be clear-minded and self-controlled, so you
can pray.
Now let me summarize this.
What Peter is here saying is this.
Look, he says, you've had enough time living
according to the passions of your fallen nature.
There is the argument from the past and
there is the argument from the future.
Now, he says, there is the argument from
the present.
What is the argument for the present?
This.
If you don't do it, if you don't
consider your ways and abstain from evil passions,
your mind will not be clear and you
will not be able to be so controlled
that you can pray.
But in a smaller nutshell still, what Peter
is saying is this.
Unless you and I abstain from the passions
of this evil nature of ours, you and
I can't pray properly.
In other words, our life with God in
the here and now, in the present, is
not what it ought to be.
Sin, you see, becomes like a curtain between
us and God and it at least makes
him appear remote.
I say at least.
I can't go into all that sin does,
but it makes God appear remote from us.
The scriptures are full of this in one
way or another.
The book of Proverbs says, if one turns
away his ear from hearing the law, even
his prayer is an abomination unto the Lord.
You all remember the words of Isaiah, behold
the Lord's hand is not shortened that it
cannot save or his ear heavy that it
cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated between
you and your God and your sins have
hid his face from you.
See the point?
Many of us bemoan that we can't pray
better.
We can do this and we can do
that, but we can't pray.
We are not growing in our prayer lives.
God is not as near to us as
we thought he ought to be.
My friend, pose this question.
Is it because you are indulging in the
passions of the flesh?
Is it because you're still going with the
world in a way of debauchery and evil
and things that are displeasing to God?
Then he's not the sense of his nearness
vanishes.
You see, he's a holy God still.
When the Lord's people thus rebel and refuse
to be corrected, then the position hardens to
a menacing degree.
Listen to these words.
I'm drawing to a close.
Then they will call upon me, but I
will not answer them.
They will seek me diligently, but they will
not find me because they hated knowledge and
they did not choose the fear of the
Lord, would have none of my counsel and
despised all my reproof.
Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their
way.
This is a disastrous road to travel.
For the further you go, the more distant,
indistinct and remote does God become to you
until at last he has become dwarfed by
circumstances.
And it's become so little in your sight
that he's unworthy of your obedience, unworthy of
your worship.
He's become so small and so distant and
so remote.
You're not quite sure whether there is a
God at all.
And I tell you, there are many people
who are on fire for God and sat
in the pew that you were sitting at
some time or other, but they've lost it.
And they've lost it because sin came between
them and God and they allowed it to
stay there.
It's as serious as that, my friends.
We're talking about realities.
And you and I know if we're honest
with one another, but God can become indistinct
and remote from us because we allow sin
to come between us.
It says, Peter, you can't pray then.
Keep sane, keep sober.
That's one of the translations of these two
words.
Sin makes you insane.
You don't see things God's way.
And that's the ultimate insanity.
Sin makes you drunk.
You're not sober.
And the drunken man doesn't know whether he's
walking straight or not.
He thinks he is, but he's in his
own dreamland.
And you become spiritually drunk when you allow
the sins of society to creep into your
soul and to live there.
Says one of the commentators, C.
B.
Cranfield, to be sober unto prayer means avoiding
all that would fuddle the mind.
I don't often use that word, but it's
a good word, isn't it?
Fuddle the mind.
Did you know that sin fuddles your way
of thinking?
All that would fuddle the mind, impair alertness,
warp the vision, obstruct communion with God, whether
in temperance of the body or preoccupation with
the cares of the world and the deceitfulness
of riches, or plain, smug self-righteousness, or
whatever else it may be.
We are to take heed, says Cranfield.
Watch and pray, for we know not when
the time is.
In closing, may I speak to someone, to
anyone, who may have to say tonight in
your heart of hearts, yes, but this is
exactly what I've done, what I shouldn't do.
And I bear in my own soul tonight
the consequences.
God is distant from me.
Prayer is unreal to me.
I've not considered things in the light of
the end.
I've always thought of the here and now.
I wanted my satisfactions here and now, right
now, and I couldn't wait, and I've got
them.
And the aftermath is in my life.
I can't pray.
God is distant.
Oh, precious, precious word of God to the
penitent.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us, notice that, and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness.
The blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanseth
us from all sin.
You need that, my friend.
This is the only place where you and
I can turn, and this is the only
place where once again we can discover the
nearness of God, the sweet realities of prayer
become effectual.
It is at the cross of Christ.
To the rest of you, in particular, I
end in quoting a hymn which I came
across the other day by A.
M.
Plumtree, Keep thyself pure, when lusts assail, When
flesh is strong and spirit frail, Fight on,
a fadeless crown thy need, Thy body as
thy captive lead.
Keep thyself pure, thrice blessed, Thrice blessed he
whose heart from taint of sin is free,
His feet shall stand where saints have trod,
He with rapt eyes shall see his God.
O Holy Spirit, keep us pure.
Grant us thy strength when sins allure, Our
bodies are thy temple, Lord, Be thou in
thought and act adore.
Let us pray.
Lord God Almighty, God of our fathers and
God and Father of our Lord Jesus, You
know us by name and You know us
by our fame.
You know all about us, what is true
and what is false.
You know all about us, what is hidden
to the human eye and what is not.
You know all about us.
Forgive us who are penitent in Your presence
for the things done in the body of
which we are sincerely sorrowful and acknowledge before
You now.
Cleanse us from sin and its defilement.
Purge out the dross from our spirits and
renew a right spirit within us.
Oh, wash us that we may be clean.
Forgive us also, O Lord, that we have
so dallied with evil, that we have often
been a prey to wicked men and women.
Rather than be to them the light we
should have been and the salt, we have
made ourselves open to sin by not obeying
Your word and being filled with Your spirit
and being led by Your truth.
Oh, God, we pray that You will enable
us to put on the whole armor of
Your word and spirit that having done all
things we may be known among those who
stand, standing in the grace of Christ our
Lord.
Thus lead us out into a new week
and into a new day and we pray
that as we go we may go in
the knowledge that You are with us and
go in the knowledge that You are the
God who makes all things new and we
can start again with You.
So let it be for the glory of
Your name, through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Amen.