Disclaimer: I hesitated posting this. Please be assured that it is not directed at anyone who reads this blog. I was simply blessed by it because, it affirms that we cannot "detect" a pretender; only God sees the heart. There are some who sit in pews every Sunday knowing full well that the are pretenders. In fact, they are such good pretenders that they fool everyone around them. But, they cannot fool God. Perhaps, if more sermons like this were preached today, the pretenders would not feel as comfortable warming the benches. Perhaps, if more sermons like this were preached today, more pretenders would be genuinely converted by the awesome reality and power of God.
"Pretender, you are fair to look upon; your conduct outwardly upright, amiable, liberal, generous and Christian--but you indulge in some sin which the eye of man has not yet detected.
But, pretender, we say unto you, you are a fool to think of harboring a secret sin; and you are a fool for this one reason, that your sin is not a secret sin- 'it is known' and shall one day be revealed; perhaps very soon.
Your sin is not a secret! The eye of God has seen it! You have sinned before his face! You have shut the door, and drawn the curtains, and kept out the eye of the sun, but God's eye pierces through the darkness! The brick walls which surrounded you were as transparent as glass to the eye of the Almighty! The darkness which did gird you was as bright as the summer's noon to the eye of him who beholds all things.
Don't you know, O man, that "all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do?" As the priest ran his knife into the entrails of his victim, discovered the heart and liver, and whatever else did lie within, so are you, O man, seen by God, cut open by the Almighty!
You have no secret chamber where you can hide yourself. You have no dark cellar where you can conceal your soul. Dig deep, yes, deep as hell, but you cannot find earth enough upon the globe to cover your sin. If you should heap the mountains on its grave, those mountains would tell the tale of what was buried in their bowels. If you could cast your sin into the sea, a thousand babbling waves would tell the secret out. There is no hiding it from God!
Your sin is photographed in high heaven! The deed when it was done was photographed upon the sky, and there it shall remain, and you shall see yourself one day revealed to the gazing eyes of all men--a hypocrite, a pretender, who sinned in fancied secret, observed in all your acts by the all-seeing Jehovah.
O what fools men are, to think they can do anything in secret!
This world is like the 'glass hives' wherein bees sometimes work-- we look down upon them, and we see all the operations of the little creatures. So God looks down on us and sees all. Our eyes are weak; we cannot look through the darkness. But his eye, like an orb of fire, penetrates the blackness, and reads the thoughts of man, and sees his acts when he thinks himself most concealed.
Oh! it were a thought enough to curb us from all sin, if it were truly applied by us-"You, God, see me!"
C.H. Spurgeon
"Pretender, you are fair to look upon; your conduct outwardly upright, amiable, liberal, generous and Christian--but you indulge in some sin which the eye of man has not yet detected.
But, pretender, we say unto you, you are a fool to think of harboring a secret sin; and you are a fool for this one reason, that your sin is not a secret sin- 'it is known' and shall one day be revealed; perhaps very soon.
Your sin is not a secret! The eye of God has seen it! You have sinned before his face! You have shut the door, and drawn the curtains, and kept out the eye of the sun, but God's eye pierces through the darkness! The brick walls which surrounded you were as transparent as glass to the eye of the Almighty! The darkness which did gird you was as bright as the summer's noon to the eye of him who beholds all things.
Don't you know, O man, that "all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do?" As the priest ran his knife into the entrails of his victim, discovered the heart and liver, and whatever else did lie within, so are you, O man, seen by God, cut open by the Almighty!
You have no secret chamber where you can hide yourself. You have no dark cellar where you can conceal your soul. Dig deep, yes, deep as hell, but you cannot find earth enough upon the globe to cover your sin. If you should heap the mountains on its grave, those mountains would tell the tale of what was buried in their bowels. If you could cast your sin into the sea, a thousand babbling waves would tell the secret out. There is no hiding it from God!
Your sin is photographed in high heaven! The deed when it was done was photographed upon the sky, and there it shall remain, and you shall see yourself one day revealed to the gazing eyes of all men--a hypocrite, a pretender, who sinned in fancied secret, observed in all your acts by the all-seeing Jehovah.
O what fools men are, to think they can do anything in secret!
This world is like the 'glass hives' wherein bees sometimes work-- we look down upon them, and we see all the operations of the little creatures. So God looks down on us and sees all. Our eyes are weak; we cannot look through the darkness. But his eye, like an orb of fire, penetrates the blackness, and reads the thoughts of man, and sees his acts when he thinks himself most concealed.
Oh! it were a thought enough to curb us from all sin, if it were truly applied by us-"You, God, see me!"
C.H. Spurgeon
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