# The danger of indulging and living in any known sin



## NaphtaliPress (Sep 26, 2021)

From David Dickson's Sermons on Jeremiah's Lamentations published last year from an unpublished manuscript of sermons on the whole book.

Reactions: Like 8 | Edifying 4


----------



## LadyCalvinist (Oct 2, 2021)

Very timely. I don't know how many times I have heard "Christians" say that it is fine for them to sleep with boyfriend/girlfriend because Jesus love them so it is okay Or it is fine to take the name of the Lord in vain. They have no understanding of the hideousness of sin.


----------



## Reformed Covenanter (Oct 2, 2021)

The keywords in this extract are "and are not striving against it", which is something that those who wish to wallow in their doubt could easily skip over.

Reactions: Like 1


----------



## earl40 (Oct 3, 2021)

Reformed Covenanter said:


> The keywords in this extract are "and are not striving against it", which is something that those who wish to wallow in their doubt could easily skip over.



I will be brutality honest here. With our favorite sins we hardly strive, but give a half hearted attempts all to often. Does this mean we will not see heaven? Of course not, for the half hearted attempts will eventually become striving attempts if The Lord grants us the advantage of growing older.


----------



## NaphtaliPress (Oct 3, 2021)

Dickson's warning above should be paired with this use.

Reactions: Like 2


----------



## Jeri Tanner (Oct 3, 2021)

earl40 said:


> I will be brutality honest here. With our favorite sins we hardly strive, but give a half hearted attempts all to often. Does this mean we will not see heaven? Of course not, for the half hearted attempts will eventually become striving attempts if The Lord grants us the advantage of growing older.


Of late I’ve been helped by preaching to understand more, and feel more alarmed about, my “favorite” sins. And still I feel I make little progress! But I am more awake and never want to go back to being placid about them.

Reactions: Like 2


----------



## earl40 (Oct 3, 2021)

Jeri Tanner said:


> Of late I’ve been helped by preaching to understand more, and feel more alarmed about, my “favorite” sins. And still I feel I make little progress! But I am more awake and never want to go back to being placid about them.



Nice growing old together isn't it.

Reactions: Funny 1


----------



## JH (Oct 3, 2021)

I think it is also profitable to remember that when we grieve the Spirit of God we ought not to marvel that we lack assurance, because it is he that bears witness to us that we are children of God. If I may also, without laying pillows under the heads of the indifferent towards sin (as Rutherford would put it), share an excerpt from Philpot's letters regarding his conflict with sin.

"Popularity, too, has its dangerous charms, and large congregations please the carnal mind. But I think I am so well weighted and ballasted by temptations and sins, that popularity has less charms for me than many. A man full of evil, and that continually, has not much to be proud of, and his fear is lest God should stop his mouth or cut him down for his presumption. As a farmer you are not very proud of your diseased lambs, and as a preacher I cannot be very proud of my diseased prayers and sin-stained sermons. Neither can I boast much of my daily backslidings, hardness of heart, discontent, vileness, and abominable filthiness. *I at times know not what will become of me, and fear I shall live and die a reprobate. I find sin has such power over me, and, though I call on the Lord again and again for deliverance, seem to be as weak as ever when temptation comes.*

I love it, I hate it; I want to be delivered from the power of it, and yet am not satisfied without drinking down its poisoned sweets. It is my hourly companion and my daily curse, the breath of my mouth and the cause of my groans, my incentive to prayer and my hinderer of it, that made a Saviour suffer and makes a Saviour precious, that spoils every pleasure and adds a sting to every pain, that fits a soul for heaven and ripens a soul for hell. Friend Joseph, canst thou make out my riddle? "Is thy heart as my heart?" said one of old. Then come up into my chariot. We shall quarrel by the way unless 'as in water face answereth to face, so does the heart of man to man.'

[Spiritually speaking] black men will not form a good regiment with white ones, and clean hands will not do to show dirty hands with. I believe I shall never live and die a Pharisee. I must come in amongst the sinners, the ragged regiments of adulterous Davids, idolatrous Manassehs, swearing Peters, persecuting Sauls, fornicating Corinthians, railing thieves, and self-abhorring publicans. Pardon, to the innocent, is a word of six letters — and that is all. Redemption, to the self-saved, is a Bible term — no more; and some of them say it is a universal term, and others a particular term; and the one quotes an Arminian, and the other a Calvinistic text, and with these sticks they belabour one another's heads. Whilst a lost, sin-bitten, bulrush, howling, half-desperate, ditch-plunged, black-hearted wretch, up to the neck in guilt, cries for its individual application as his only remedy and only hope."

Many may wonder, how could any pastor ever say such things? And I think if we're intellectually honest, many of us could say the same regarding our inclination, and even desires to sin. But the reason that a reprobate refrains from sin is to avoid damnation; the reason that a believer refrains from sin is because he knows it grieves, even offends Christ, whom suffered because of it. It is when we lose sight of the worth of Christ, it is then that we choose sin (whether it be acts of commission, or omission). Happy Lord's Day to all.

Reactions: Like 2 | Wow 1


----------

