By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
THOSE who are still in a state of nature imagine, and often say, that they have a good heart. The reason, however, is, that they have not been taught by the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, are ignorant of the fact revealed in Scripture that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The child of God, through being taught from above, is learning, as he grows older, this solemn truth, so that his heart is a real plague to him, and is increasingly made aware of his need of the prayer of the Psalmist, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” This is a prayer which, if he consults his feelings, he does not find answered, and very often this fact causes the true Christian to write hard things against himself. When he first began to entertain a hope that Christ was his Saviour he fully expected that, as time went on, he would begin to feel better and more like his profession, but alas, it now seems to be the very reverse. Many things appear and try to assert themselves which he thought were dead long ago, so that it is very difficult for him to believe that his experiences can be consistent with being in a state of grace, and yet if he turns to the Word of God and to what is written concerning the Lord’s people, he will find that these hard experiences are the same as God’s people had in every age of time.
One of the plagues of the heart of a true Christian is, wandering thoughts in solemn duties. I daresay that the most of us have heard of the godly man who was promised a fine horse if he would repeat the Lord’s Prayer without entertaining a vain or wandering thought. He did not go far in the duty when he began to wonder if he would get the saddle also. This is characteristic of the prayers and other duties of the Lord’s people, and because of this they often address themselves in the language of Scripture, “How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee.” That the Psalmist was a true child of God they would never question; that he was afflicted with wandering and vain thoughts is very apparent, for he had to say, “I hate vain thoughts,” which shows that he had an experience of them. The more that these vain thoughts intrude themselves into the mind and duties of a living Christian the more he hates them, and this, in itself, is a mark of growing in grace.
It is not only that vain thoughts are a plague as they intrude themselves into a Christian’s solemn duties, but they are a plague when they carry him into forbidden fields. He can say with Peter, “The time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries,” but that is the language of the new creation. The old nature has a language of its own, and its manner of speech is to present before the mind scenes and actions of long ago, and in such a way as to insinuate themselves into one’s thoughts so that at times one is carried away with them ere he is aware of it. Very often the first intimation that a Christian has of anything being wrong is when he loses the presence of God and a dead formalism settles down upon him, leaving him satisfied with the dead carcass of a mere profession. It is only when he becomes aware of this that he begins to examine himself and discovers that it was his vain thoughts that led him into forbidden fields, and there he sees reasons for adoring the goodness and mercy of God who watched over him in such a way that these thoughts did not break out into actions. This will cause him often to pray, “Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way.”
Another matter which is a plague to the heart of the new man is how little progress he makes in the right way. God’s language concerning the children of Israel was: “O that there was such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever” (Deut. v. 29). God’s spiritual Israel find it part of the plague of their heart that they have not the fear which they would love to have of God, or the reverence which they should have for those things wherein He reveals Himself, and, consequently, that their knowledge of Him is much below what it should be when they consider all that has been done for them. Thus they can find no comparison for themselves but those to whom the Apostle was writing when he said, “For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat” (Heb. v. 12).
The plague of the heart is also bearing fruit in how little impression the Word read or preached makes on them. They compare the present with the past in their experience, and find that the former days were better than the latter ones and are constrained to cry with Job: “O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness.” They wistfully look back to times when they had a feast of fat things full of marrow, and when the Lord revealed Himself to them in His Word, and they had meltings of heart. The means of grace were then a Bethel where they met with the God of Israel face to face and were enabled to rejoice. It is different now; instead of the days of the Son of Man which they then experienced in their souls they have darkness, hardness and sorrow. They go to the Bible and it is a sealed book, the preaching of the Word seems to them to lose its point, and, in secret duties, their heavens are as brass and their earth as iron.
The source from which all the plagues of the heart of the child of God comes is the carnal mind, of which we read that it is death. It is “enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” It attacks the living soul on every possible occasion, continually waiting for an opportunity to bring it into bondage and to mar all duties in which it is engaged. Being in league with Satan, it is ever ready to treat with him and to obey his suggestions, and if it possibly can, it will keep the Christian from a close walk with God and cause him to have much distraction in duties. This requires ceaseless vigilance on the part of the new creature, and as that vigilance is kept up, there is an ever increasing and painful knowledge of the presence of the enemy within the gate, causing the mournful complaint to be uttered: “Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Keder! My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace.”
With all the plagues with which the carnal mind afflicts the gracious soul, full well he knows that Israel’s God is without variableness or shadow of turning, and that the blame for his condition cannot be laid at God’s door, and because of their love to Him none of His people will blame Him. They smite upon their own bosoms and say, My folly makes it so. Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child of God, and there he discovers the cause of his sad condition. Can the foolish and wicked heart be improved? Will the carnal mind be changed? No! Nothing will do but a new heart, and therefore the plague of heart which the true Christian experiences sends him often with an errand to the Throne of Grace, and keeps him going there till he draws his last breath in the world, and then the plague of his heart will never trouble him any more throughout eternity.