Four things we can’t hear
Posted at Reformation Scotland:
God is always true to His word, and He has given us “exceeding great and precious promises.” But what happens if we neglect to accept what He is giving us, or overlook His gifts and leave them largely unused? Andrew Gray pointed out that God who gives the gift of Jesus Christ and the gift of the precious promises of the everlasting covenant, gives also the gift of the grace of faith — and it is by using faith that we make use of the other two gifts. Our spiritual lethargy and inactivity leave us vulnerable to spiritual harm. In the following updated extract from one of his sermons, Andrew Gray identifies four tragic consequences of failing to use God’s gifts, before encouraging us with six golden pillars which God’s promises rest on.Four evil silences
These four most sad lamentable evils fall on us because we make such little use of the glorious and excellent gifts God gives us — Christ and His promises and faith.A silent conscience
Although we are so prone to commit iniquity, yet our consciences do not speak nor reprove us. And if at any time they do speak, we are often so deaf that we cannot hear them.
A silent rod
A second evil is the evil of a fierce rod. We do not even recognise the voice of one rod, and the God who has appointed it. God is not opening our ears to discipline, nor enabling us to accept instruction.
Silent mercies
The mercies we receive from God, we do not understand their language. Are not our mercies like barbarians to us, speaking to us in an unknown tongue? Yet there is not a rod nor a mercy that we meet with, but it would have a voice if we would only understand it.
A silent God
Alas, this is the cap-stone of all — a silent God, who does not hearken to the voice of our cries, but turns away the face of His throne, covering Himself with a cloud in His anger, so that our prayers cannot pass through to Him. Alas! May not every Christian of this time cry out, “Call me no more Naomi, but call me Mara, because the Lord hath dealt bitterly with me!”
In short, these things are our lamentation — that we live without sight of God, and we live without sight of ourselves — and all this so because we live without sight of these precious gifts, Christ and His promises.
