“Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah, and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had utterly destroyed them all.”—2 Chronicles 31:1.
It is a pleasant sight to behold the thousands assembled together for the worship of God, but it is lamentable to reflect, how often the reverence which is exhibited in the sanctuary is lost when the thresh-hold is passed. How frequently the most earnest address of the preacher is forgotten, and becomes as “the morning cloud, and as the early dew.” We very often go up to the house of God, and imagine that we have done our duty when we have gone through the round of the service: self-satisfied, we return each man to his home. Oh that we would remember that the preaching of the gospel is but the sowing! afterward the reaping must come. To-day we do, as it were, lay the first stone of an edifice; and henceforward that edifice must be built, stone by stone, through your daily practice, until at last the top-stone is brought forth with shoutings of joy and gladness. Well said the Scotch woman, when her husband asked her, on her return from the house of God sooner than usual, “Wife, is the sermon all done?” “Nay, Donald,” said she; “it is all said; but it is nae begun to be done.” There was wisdom in her pithy saying, a wisdom which we too frequently forget. Praying is the end of preaching. Reformation, conversion, regeneration—these are the ends of the ministry, and a holy life should be the result of your devout worship. We have read in your hearing the story of the great Passover, which was held in the days of Hezekiah. One almost envies the men of that, time; we might almost wish that we could be carried back some thousands of years, that we might have been there to see the solemn sacrifices, to behold the priests, as with joyous countenances they sang the praises of God, and to have mingled in that countless throng, which stood at one hour to listen to the Levite, at another hour gathered round the priest; again, at another season clapped their hands for joy at the sound of the golden trumpets, and then outvied the trumpets by the magnificent sound of their vocal praise. But, beloved, when that scene had vanished, and the multitude had gone to their homes, Hezekiah might have sat down and wept if there had not been a fitting effect from so great a gathering. Isaiah the prophet, I doubt not, was one of the gladdest in all the crowd. Oh, how his noble heart beat for joy, and how eloquent was his seraphic tongue when he preached among the people, and cried, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” But sad indeed would his heart have been, notwithstanding all the delightful excitement of the day, if he had not seen some glorious consequences result from the ministrations and from the great gatherings of the people. In our text we are informed, that the Passover did not end with the seven days twice-told of its extraordinary celebration. The Passover, it is true, might end, but not its blessed effects.
Now there are three effects which ought always to follow our solemn assembly upon the Lord’s day, especially when we gather in such a number as the present, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving. We should go home and first break our false gods; next, cut down the very groves in which we have been wont to delight, and after that break the altars which though dedicated to the God of Israel, are not according to Scripture, and therefore ought to be broken down, albeit, they be even dedicated to the true God.
I. To begin then, the true result of all our gatherings should be, in the first place, to BREAK TO PIECES ALL OUR IMAGES. “Thou shalt have none other gods before me.” Every place is before God. Every thing is before his face and open to him. Therefore by this command we understand that we are in no way, and in no sense to have another god, but the Lord our God. What! do you ask, are we a nation of idolaters? Can this text pertain to us? Would not this be a proper rebuke to address the Hindostanee, or to speak to the benighted inhabitants of the center of Africa? Might we not exhort them to serve Jehovah and to dash the gods of their fathers in pieces? Assuredly we might. But imagine not that idolatry is confined to nations of a swarthy hue. It is not in Africa alone that false gods are worshipped; idols are worshipped in this land also, and by many of you. Yea, all of us, until renewed by divine grace, worship gods which our own hands have made, and we do not fear, and love, and obey the living God with our entire and exclusive homage. Once however, let grace be received into the heart, let the soul be renewed by the Holy Spirit, once drink in the free life of Jesus, and these false gods must be broken in pieces at once.
The first god who is worshipped among us is one called self-righteousness. The Pharisees were the high priests of this god; they burnt incense every morning and every evening before him, but he has ten thousand times ten thousand worshippers still left. Among your respectable classes of society he is the received divinity. If a man be respectable, he thinks it all-sufficient. Among your moralists, this is the great god before which they bow down and worship. Nay, among sinners themselves, men whose character is not moral, there is, nevertheless, found an altar to this god within their hearts. I have known a drunkard self-righteous, for he has declared that he did not swear; and I have known a swearer self-righteous, for he trusted he should be saved because he did not steal. Until we are brought to know our own lost and ruined condition, self-righteousness is the god before which every one of us will prostrate ourselves. Oh, my dear friends, if we have worshipped God in this house to-day, let us go home determined to aim a blow, by the help of God, at self righteousness; let us go home and prostrate ourselves before God, and cry—
“Vile and full of sin I am.”
“Lord, I confess before thee, that I have no good works in which to trust, no self-righteousness on which I can rely. I cast my boastings away; I come to thee as a poor, guilty, helpless sinner; ‘Lord, save, or I perish.’” That is the way to dash down this god. Paul once worshipped this mighty one, and worshipped him so well, that, after the “most straitest sect of his religion, he lived a Pharisee.” Never, in his opinion, so good a man as himself. He served this god with all his mind, and soul, and strength. But, once upon a time, as he was going to Damascus to sacrifice to this god with the blood of believers in Christ, the Lord Jesus looked upon him out of heaven, and said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Prostrate tell Saul, and down went his self-righteousness too. Afterwards, you might hear him say, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” May we all go home thus, and pull down our self-righteousness. Stop a moment, I am not quite sure that we can do this all at once. My self-righteousness I feel in my own heart, as something like those colossal statues of Egypt, and when I try to break it in pieces, I can but disfigure it; I manage to break a chip off here and a chip off there, but still there stands the statue, not in all its former symmetry, but still there. At any rate, if you and I cannot wholly get rid of our self-righteousness, let us never lay down the axe and the hammer until we have destroyed it. Let us go home to-day and have another blow at this old foe; let us go home to have another dash at the colossal god, and let us take up the chisel and the hammer, and once more try to disfigure him. This is the proper result of the ministrations of God’s Word, to destroy and cut in pieces, and utterly break down our self-righteousness.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
