Be Not Deceived: God Is Not Mocked.
We have all lived long enough to know what it is to be deceived. We
have been deceived by our friends, by our enemies, our neighbors,
our relatives. Ungodly companions have deceived us. At every turn of
life we have been imposed upon in one way or another.
False teachers have crossed our path, and under pretence of doing us
good, have poisoned our mind with error. They have held out hopes to
us that have proved false; apples of Sodom, fair without, but full
of ashes within. They have told us that there is no God, no future
life, no judgment to come; or they have said that all men will be
saved, that there is ample time to repent, that we may be saved by
doing the best we can.
Sin has deceived us. Every sinner is under a delusion. Sin meets him
smilingly, and holds out to him pleasures and delights that are not
pure and lasting.
During our meetings in Boston a young man came into the Tabernacle.
He looked around, and he thought to himself the people that came
there were great fools--those who had business, and comfortable
homes, and good clothes. He had nothing in the world--he was a
tramp, and went in there to keep himself warm. But to think that
people who had homes would come and spend their time in listening to
such stuff as I preached was more than he could understand.
One night after he had been coming there for two weeks, I happened
to point right down where he was sitting, and I said, "Young man, be
not deceived!" God used that as an arrow. He began to think about
himself. His mind went back to the time when he had a good situation
in Boston; when he was a young man getting a good salary; when he
was in good society, and had a great many friends.
Then he looked at his present condition. His friends were all gone,
his clothes were gone, his money was gone; and there he was, an
outcast in that city. He said to himself, "I have been deceived,"
and that very hour God waked him. He wanted to get friends to pray
for him; but as he was not able to buy a piece of paper, or pay for
a postage stamp, he got an old piece of soiled paper, stood up in
the street, and wrote a request to be read in the Tabernacle, that
if God would save a poor, lost man like him, he wanted to be saved.
That prayer was answered. As in the case of Nebuchadnezzar, his
friends gathered around him again, and the Lord restored him to
position and to society. His eyes were opened to see how he had been
deceived.
Satan.
How many men all over the world are being deceived by the god of
this world! It has been asserted that during the late Franco-German
war, German drummers and trumpeters used to give the French beats
and calls in order to deceive their enemies. The command to "halt,"
or "cease firing," was often given by the Germans, it has been said,
and the French soldiers were thus placed in positions where they
could be shot down like cattle.
Satan is the arch-enemy of our souls, and he has often blinded our
reason and deceived our conscience by his falsehoods. He has often
come as an angel of light, concealing his hideousness under a
borrowed cloak. He says to a young man: "Sow your wild oats. Time
enough to be religious when you grow old." The young man yields
himself to a life of extravagance and excess, under the false hope
that he will obtain solid satisfaction; and it is well if he awakens
to the deception before his appetites become tyrants, dragging him
down into depths of want and woe. Satan promises great things to his
victims in the indulgence of their lusts, but they never realize the
promises. The promised pleasure turns out to be pain, the promised
heaven a hell.
Beware lest Satan deceive you as he deceived Eve in the beginning.
"There is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of
his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it."
Our Heart.
But we have been deceived by our own heart most of all. Who has not
proved the truth of the Scripture: "The heart is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked; who can know it?" How many times we
have said that we never would do a certain thing again, and then
have done it within twenty-four hours! A man may think he has
fathomed its depths, but he finds there are further depths he has
not reached. What gross self-deception is due to it! "He that
trusteth in his own heart is a fool," said Solomon. Luther once said
he feared his own heart more than the Pope and all the cardinals.
Many a weeping wife has come to me about her husband, saying: "He is
good at heart." The truth is--that is the worst spot in him. If the
heart was good, all else would be right. Out of the heart are the
issues of life. Christ said: "From within, out of the heart of men,
proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts,
covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye,
blasphemy, pride, foolishness." That is Christ's own statement
regarding the unregenerate heart.
Some years ago a remarkable picture was exhibited in London. As you
looked at it from a distance, you seemed to see a monk engaged in
prayer, his hands clasped, his head bowed. As you came nearer,
however, and examined the painting more closely, you saw that in
reality he was squeezing a lemon into a punchbowl!
What a picture that is of the human heart! Superficially examined,
it is thought to be the seat of all that is good and noble and
pleasing in a man; whereas in reality, until regenerated by the Holy
Ghost, it is the seat of all corruption. "This is the condemnation,
that light is come into the world, and men _loved darkness rather
than light_."
A Jewish rabbi once asked his scholars what was the best thing a man
could have in order to keep him in the straight path. One said _a
good disposition;_ another, _a good companion;_ another said
_wisdom_ was the best thing he could desire. At last a scholar
replied that he thought _a good heart_ was best of all.
"True," said the rabbi, "you have comprehended all that the others
have said. For he that hath a good heart will be of a good
disposition, and a good companion, and a wise man. Let every one,
therefore, cultivate a sincerity and uprightness of heart at all
times, and it will save him an abundance of sorrow." We need to make
the prayer of David--"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a
right spirit within me!"
God Is Not Mocked.
Bear in mind, the God of the Bible has never deceived anyone, and
never can, and never will; that is the difference between the God of
the Bible and the god of this world. He beholds the ways of men; He
looks into their hearts; He knows their secret ways; they need not
tell Him or try to conceal anything from Him.
However successfully we may deceive or be deceived by ourselves or
others, we cannot deceive Him. Adam and Eve tried it in Eden when
they hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah amongst the trees
of the garden. Saul tried it when he spared the best of the sheep
and oxen of the Amalekites under the pretence of sacrificing them to
God. Ananias and Sapphira tried it when they kept back part of the
price of the land they sold. "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to
lie unto (deceive) the Holy Ghost? * * * Thou hast not lied unto
men, but unto God."
Men try it every day. They have got it into their heads that God can
be mocked. Because they can deceive their pastor, and their
employer, and their friends, they think they can deceive God. They
put on false appearances, they use empty words, they perform unreal
service, they make idle excuses, they indulge in all kinds of
hypocrisy. But it is of no avail. God cannot be imposed upon. He
sees the corruption inside the whited sepulchre.
Warning to Christians.
It is worth noticing that this warning was given by Paul to
Christian men--converts in the Galatian church. After all, a man is
not all the time deceived about the grosser sins. The drunkard
realizes in his sober moments what must be the end of a course of
intemperance. Loss of self-respect and of the esteem of friends, the
marks he soon begins to bear in his body--unsteady hands and
discolored features--these things are the quick harvest of
drunkenness, and may easily be detected as they ripen. The
licentious man, also, reaps the early fruit of his sin in diseases
of the body, which are often effective warnings against continuing
in such a dangerous path. But with "respectable" sins it is
different. A man may be sowing for years, and not even realize it
himself.
You remember that in the parable of the sower some seeds fell among
thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them. Our Master,
expounding this parable, said: "He that received seed among the
thorns is he that heareth the word: but _the care of this world and
the deceitfulness of riches_ choke the word, and he becometh
unfruitful." Who would have expected this result of the world or of
riches? But it has been said that Christ never spoke of riches
except in words of warning. We are not apt to regard them in that
light to-day. Men are trampling each other down in the pursuit of
wealth. "Be not deceived." He who sets his heart upon money is
sowing to the flesh, and shall of the flesh reap corruption.
"Adversity hath slain her thousands, but prosperity her tens of
thousands."
"What is the value of this estate?" said a gentleman to another, as
they passed a fine mansion surrounded by fair and fertile fields.
"I don't know what it is valued at; I know what it cost its late
possessor."
"How much?"
"His soul."
An English clergyman was called to the death-bed of a wealthy
parishioner. Kneeling beside the dying man the pastor asked him to
take his hand as he prayed for his upholding in that solemn hour,
but he declined to give it. After the end had come, and they turned
down the coverlet, the rigid hands were found holding the safe-key
in their death-grip. Heart and hand, to the last, clinging to his
possessions, but he could not take them with him.
A man may be proud, and his very sin reckoned a virtue. Hear what
the Word of God says: "Haughtiness of eyes and a proud heart is
sin"; "every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the
Lord."
These are the mistakes men make. They are leading respectable lives,
and they think that all is well. They do not recognize the taint of
corruption upon many of the most cherished objects of their hearts.
Christian professors, most of all, need to beware lest they are
being deceived.
Neglect.
How watchful men should be of their thoughts, their practices, their
feelings! The reason of deception is, for the most part, neglect.
Men do not stop to examine themselves, to lay their hearts and minds
bare as in the sight of God, and judge themselves by His most holy
will. A man need not shoot himself in order to commit suicide: he
need only neglect the proper means of sustenance, and he will soon
die. Where an enemy is strong and aggressive, an army is doomed to
sure defeat and capture unless a sharp look-out is kept, every man
wide awake at his post of duty.
It has been noticed that there are more accidents in Switzerland in
fine seasons than in stormy ones. People are apt to undertake
expeditions that they would not take under less favorable
conditions, and they are less careful in their conduct. And so it is
that moral and spiritual disaster usually overtakes men when they
are off their guard, careless against temptation. They become proud
and self-reliant in seasons of prosperity, whereas adversity drives
them to the living God for guidance and comfort.
Dr. Johnson once said that it is more from carelessness regarding
the truth than from intentional lying that there is so much
falsehood in the world.
Hence the necessity of continual watchfulness. The Persians had an
annual festival when they slew all the serpents and venomous
creatures they could find; but they allowed them to swarm as fast
and freely as ever until the festival came round once more. It was
poor policy. Sins, like serpents, breed quickly, and need to be
constantly watched.
And we ought to watch on every side. Many a man has fallen at the
very point where he thought he was safest. The meekness of Moses has
passed into a proverb. Yet he lost the Promised Land, because he
allowed the children of Israel to provoke him, and "he spake
unadvisedly with his lips." Peter was the most zealous and defiant
of the disciples, bold and outspoken; yet he degenerated for a short
time into a lying, swearing, sneaking coward, afraid of a maid.
There is an old fable that a doe that had but one eye used to graze
near the sea; and in order to be safe, she kept her blind eye toward
the water, from which side she expected no danger, while with the
good eye she watched the country. Some men, perceiving this, took a
boat and came upon her from the sea and shot her. With her dying
breath, she said:
"Oh! hard fate! that I should receive my death-wound from that side
whence I expected no harm, and be safe in the part where I looked
for most danger."
Let danger and need drive you closer to God. He never slumbers or
sleeps, and in His keeping you will be safe. Seize hold of Him in
prayer. "Watch and pray."
Christianity Not Responsible.
Christianity is not responsible for the deception that exists among
its professing disciples. The illustration has been used before that
you might just as reasonably hold the Cunard company responsible for
the suicide of a passenger who jumps overboard one of their vessels
at sea. Had the person remained on the vessel, he would have been
safe; and had the disciple remained true to his principles, he would
never have turned out a hypocrite. Was anybody ever more severe in
denouncing hypocrisy than Christ? Do you want to know the reason
why, every now and then, the church is scandalized by the exposure
of some leading church member or Sabbath school superintendent? It
is not his Christianity, but his lack of it. Some secret sin has
been eating at the heart of the tree, and in a critical moment it is
blown down and its rottenness revealed.
The Deception Can Not Last Forever.
It is impossible for the deception to last forever. Lincoln had a
saying that you may be able to deceive all the people some of the
time, and some of the people all of the time, but you will not be
able to deceive all the people all of the time. Death will uncover
the deception, if it has not been detected sooner; and the
unfortunate victim will stand, undeceived, in the presence of a God
who cannot be mocked.
WHEN A MAN SOWS, HE EXPECTS TO REAP.
"_Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the
earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and
latter rain_."--James v: 7.