2 Corinthians 13:5. Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Here is your duty set before you, particularly you who intend to commemorate the death of Christ at His table on Sabbath. You have your duty here. If you are in earnest, you cannot but be exercised and concerned about how things stand between your souls and God. Those who go carelessly to the table of the Lord, it will not profit them. No, they eat and drink judgement to themselves. Now says Paul, Let a man examine himself and eat of this bread. This is a duty. God has grace to give, but you have your duty set before you here. Let us search and try ourselves and turn to the Lord. This should be our daily exercise; we should not go to bed at night without thinking upon the state of our souls. The redemption of the soul is precious. “And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Pet 4:18). You have many in this city who bear the mark of the beast on their foreheads, but we who are professed Christians were early devoted to God by the dedication of our parents. We are called Christians; are we what we profess to be?
Here your duty is set before you: to examine yourselves, for you must come to the Word of God; and take words with you in prayer. You have the Bible, the law and the testimony; do not go to any other source. Go to the Word; bring your life and conversation to the Word; bring your faith and practice to the Word. Let this glass – this mirror – be brought before your eyes, and when you come to the Word, bring conscience; let it have its proper exercise. Let conscience do its duty – it will either accuse you or excuse you. A guilty conscience is a thorn in the flesh, a wounded spirit; a tender conscience cannot bear sin. Seek to have the Holy Spirit with you. Go about your duty with your own spirit and you will be deceived. When you pray for the Spirit, remember you are in the presence of Jehovah. How many murder their souls! How many did you see yesterday running from ordinances as if the devil was driving them, with no concern for their souls? When we come to see the state of our souls, we see our need of a Saviour, a Mediator, a Surety.
Finlay Cook (1778-1858) was the Free Church minister of Reay in Caithness and the elder brother of Archibald Cook (1789-1865). He and Alexander Moody Stuart were the assisting ministers at a communion season in April 1848, in John Knox Free Church, Glasgow, where Jonathan Ranken Anderson was the minister. These sermon notes have never before been published. They are a hearer’s notes of a sermon preached on the Friday evening of the communion. The notes have been transcribed from volume 9 of the Renton series of manuscript notes of Anderson’s sermons in the Free Presbyterian Library in Glasgow. The Renton series is named after George Renton, who eventually became an elder at John Knox’s Tabernacle. He had been a hearer of Anderson’s in the Church of Scotland before the Disruption. The Renton volumes are the most important series of the transcriptions of Anderson’s sermons. They appear to be the originals from which the other three groups of transcripts have been copied. Some of the Renton volumes, besides providing notes of Jonathan Ranken Anderson’s preaching, also include, in the period when he was a Free Church minister, notes of the sermons of assisting ministers at communion seasons and on other occasions when he was absent. The Renton volumes contain notes of 56 sermons, almost all by Free Church ministers, which have never been published. RM
1. Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith.
What is it to be in the faith? I am called a Christian; I was baptised; I am a member of the visible Church; but am I in the faith? Am I born again? Am I regenerated by grace? Has the Spirit of God begun a good work in my soul? Without this I have got a faith without Christ, a graceless faith. This is the first step: has the Holy Spirit begun a good work? Then the dead soul has been quickened – the guilty soul has been convinced of its state, of its sin and misery and brought into the faith of the gospel through the strait gate of regeneration. Without this we cannot be “in the faith”. We may have the faith of the world, a historical faith which devils have, or a temporary faith, but we will turn away and get harder and harder, sinning more and more.
Now this one point; do not leave it, I pray you. Pray for the Spirit to shine upon you, to show you things in His own light. You will never get into the mystery of the gospel till you are thus in the faith; till then Christ will never be precious to you. You may have your heads full of knowledge, but your hearts will never be changed, your conscience will never be purged from dead works, your affections will never be brought to Christ – till you are brought out of the black womb of nature, till you are brought away from the old covenant, and are not under the law but under grace.
To be “in the faith” is to have a different spirit from the world. We have the image of the devil when we come into the world, but we must have another spirit. But if Christ is in you, the Spirit is life; the Spirit is in you as a well of water springing up into everlasting life. He gives you grace and helps your infirmities; He strengthens you, opens your eyes, unstops your ears; the lame leap like a hart; the tongue of the dumb sings. Now you have the lively ordinances of the gospel-prepared table – preparing you for another world. Examine yourselves on this: Are you separate from the world? Be faithful to yourselves; you must be in the world at your toil and labour, but heart and affections must be separated from the world. You must be a stranger in it – not of the world. Jehovah has written vanity on all things under the law. O the happiness of the people whose God is the Lord! There is no happiness for the sinner but in a crucified Saviour.
Now examine yourselves as to what foundation you are on. We have heard of only two foundations, one the sand and the other the rock. Am I building on the sand: the sands of my own duties, or my own opinions, or am I building on the rock? “On this rock will I build My Church.” Here is the foundation laid in Zion for the sinner as brought there by faith. How are you in the faith? If you are in the faith, you are on the sure foundation and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
This is the safety of the believer: you must dig deep here, through all your sinful propensities, through all your good works, through all your good opinions of yourselves. You must dig till you reach the rock. This is the work of God in the soul. You may have a name as a Christian, but what is the good of your name if you are not in Christ. You are in a pardoned state if you are in the faith. You will not be miserable if your sins are pardoned; you are freely justified; you have the blood of Christ applied to your souls; you are at peace with God though the Lord Jesus Christ. This is your safety. Examine yourselves. Faith is a fighting grace, a feeding grace, a resting grace. Bring yourselves to the trial.
2. Prove your own selves.
Try yourselves. How? Where? What? When? When did the good work begin in my soul? When did the Spirit begin this work? Dig deep: when was it that God convinced you by the law? The believer must have two mirrors. In the mirror of the law, you will see your face – your black face, your ugly face, the image of the old man in your souls. But in the mirror of the gospel you will see the beautiful face of Jesus – the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. There you will see Him to be a suitable Saviour – no other will do.
Now have you ever seen any evil in sin? There is an evil in it – sin put us on the same footing with the devils. When was I brought to see myself as a sinner, brought to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, brought to the brink of the pit, just ready to fall until He said, “Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom”? This is in the day of God’s power – power that saves the dead. No power can awaken a dead soul but the power of Jehovah by His Word and Spirit. Now ask, Where was it? How was it? When was it? Be faithful to yourselves. “Know ye not” – are you still ignorant of yourselves? Have you been in Christ’s school yet? Have you been Christ’s scholar? You were once in Satan’s school, were you not? Till God begins His good work, Satan is there and what does he say? There is no fear; you will not die. Break the Sabbath; you will not die. Curse and swear; be a hypocrite; you will not die.
What does God say? “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Now examine yourselves: who do you believe? Have you been in the school of the law? You know something of yourselves – what you have been doing and with whom do you have to do. You must come to the school of the gospel. “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly.” When did you begin to know yourself as a poor, guilty, helpless sinner?
“Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, and say, Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite. And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. None eye pitied thee, to do any of these unto thee, to have compassion upon thee; but thou wast cast out in the open field, to the loathing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live. I have caused thee to multiply as the bud of the field, and thou hast increased and waxen great, and thou art come to excellent ornaments: thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare. Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord God, and thou becamedst Mine” (Ezk 16:1-8).
You are in the school of Christ if you know yourselves. You must come to the school of the cross, to the school of temptation to know yourselves, then you must come to the school of experience of yourselves – experience of your corrupt nature and evil heart. You will know your weakness when you come to see your need of strength from above. You will know more of your worthlessness and shortcomings in everything, and that you must be saved by grace or not at all.
Examine whether Christ is in you. Wonderful: Christ in heaven and Christ in you. “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” “Ye in Me, and I in you.” Christ must be in us or the devil must be in us. Christ must come in and cast the strong man out. Christ must bring the Spirit to your soul and make you “poor in spirit”. If Christ is in you, you see that God is sovereign; there is Christ in you. If you see the “love of the Father”; Christ is in you. If you have zeal for His glory, weanedness from the world; Christ is in you. But also Christ among you; do you have Christ in your prayers, in your family worship? It is a poor worship without Christ. You do not like to go to bed without prayer, but how many go easy to bed without Christ. Now this is the point, examine yourselves: Is Christ in our preaching? Is Christ in our sessions, presbyteries, assemblies, courts of justice, parliaments? If not, who is in them? Who rules? The devil rules where Christ is not.
“Except ye be reprobates.” If reprobate, this should make us tremble. “Thou puttest away all the wicked of the earth like dross: therefore I love Thy testimonies” (Ps 119:119). “Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them” (Jer 6:30). There are two marks of those who are not reprobates: (1.) They live a life of faith on the Son of God. (2.) They walk in the fear of God all the day long. “Although my house be not so with God; yet He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although He make it not to grow” (2 Sam 23:5). This is the comfort of every believer.