“Do you feel in danger? are you afraid of losing the word, of missing it, as Paul says, “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God” (Heb. 12:15); lest professing it, he should not process it? Then this prayer will suit you, it will suit you as an individual; and if we as a people realize our weakness and our enemies, and the devils that are within us and without us, it will be a suitable prayer to us: “Take not the word of truth away from us.” If the Lord should walk among us, what would He see? May He grant there may be no prevailing heresy, no prevailing evil to provoke Him to threaten to remove the candlestick. I can but say, as I have said before, we are in a solemn time; and the Lord’s absence is very, very visible to some people, and the lack of power is mournfully felt and acknowledged by some. What He will do with us as a nation, what will become of the churches that profess the truth, I do not pretend to say; but I do, speaking in a general way, believe that solemn times are upon us, and that the churches will know it. “All the churches shall know that I am He which searcheth the reins and hearts” (Rev. 2:23). The whole world shall know it, for the center of the world is the church. There will begin the judgments of God. May, then, this be our prayer, may this be our petition, poor people we are, we need it; ministers need it, greatly need it. They may be supposed to have some knowledge of truth, but it will only be dry and sapless and useless, if they only speak out of naked knowledge. Hearers need it; they may think they can discern the truth, but they may be blind all the while. So we need the Holy Spirit greatly, to do for us that for which the psalmist here prays, and for which he prays in another place in different words, “Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” Let the gospel continue, let it be in power and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance in our hearts and in our midst. Amen.” – J. K. Popham
Category Archives: J. K. Popham
Holy Religion
Does God hate sin? Yes. Then that hatred finds a vent into the very heart of Christ.
Is God love? Yes. Then that love is expressed in the coming and the obedience and the death of Christ.
Is God a justifier of the ungodly? Yes, and that He does show Himself to be in the Lord Jesus; for He freely justifies all who believe in Him through the atoning work of Christ.
Is God familiar with sinners? Yes, He is familiar with them as He is seen and known and approached and heard in the Lord Jesus.
So there is the image of God shining in the hearts of poor sinners.
My dear friends, this holy religion is the religion we must have if we are going to heaven. Nothing short will do. The god of this world will blind our minds and eyes to this and set them on many things that please us, but the Holy Spirit’s teaching will bring us off from all these things to this glorious gospel. Why, how can some of us forget when we first saw God. I cannot forget when I first saw Him and trembled; when I said to myself, “Where that God is I shall never be.” His perfection in some measure shined upon my heart. How different when the other perfections shine in Jesus Christ! The perfections of Deity which are not seen in the law as it is a commanding law and is itself a covenant of works, are His love, His patience, His power, His compassion, His forgiveness; these do not shine in the law. The law has no sound of them, gives no hint of them, knows nothing about them. It knows this, a holy God, and it approves of a pure creature, a pure creature being a man who perfectly obeys the law; that is all the law knows with respect to its approval. It knows a sinner and it condemns him, and that is all it can do in itself. Disapproval. It condemns sin wherever it finds it, and curses for it. You must stand before God, and if you are under the law you must be measured and judged by it. If you enter into eternity under the law there is no word for you out of the gospel. All you will hear is the law in its sentence, because you have not obeyed it. What a terrible thing it will be to die under the law! What a fearful thing! Who can measure the fearfulness of it? Who can measure the condemnation of it? Who can fully imagine what it will be to be before God’s eye and before His majesty, justly condemned out of the mouth of God to dies? Now if those blessed perfections, with the added ones I have named, shine into our hearts, we die in quite another state, and stand before God in quite another state, happy, accepted, holy, forgiven, justified, sanctified; therefore eternally happy, filled with bliss. Nothing will do this but the glorious gospel of the blessed God, the glorious gospel of Christ as He is the image of God.
The glorious gospel of Christ with respect to the work of Christ. The work of Christ was this, to satisfy God and thereby save His people. It won’t seem much to you when I say this if you are not dissatisfied with yourself, if you are not convinced of who and what God is; but if you know yourself, if you know who God is, if you know what you are, then it will be wonderful that there should be a Man, the Man Christ Jesus who is true almighty God, who undertook, being able to die, to satisfy God, please Him and so save you.
Fight the Good Fight
From J. K. POPHAM:
“Fight the good fight of faith” with respect to the forgiveness of sins. This is by the blood of Jesus Christ only. “Could my tears for ever flow,” no efficacy would be in them. It is no easy thing to press your case upon God’s notice in humble sincere confession of sin when your guilt appears blacker than the confines of hell, and when innumerable sins done in your heart if in no other way, rise up against you! When under some feeling apprehension of God’s holiness, you feel you may and ought not to think of approaching so holy a Being, then, with all these things, press your case. “Urge thy suit through all unfitness.” This needs true faith, the faith of God’s own operation, “the faith of God’s elect.” Be not terrified, seeker, from the throne of God’s heavenly grace. When you seek to approach Christ and there rise up against you innumerable sins, flee not away from tha
t throne if you are told you will not be welcomed. Yield not to unbelief when the enemy says, “There is no use in this seeking,” and perhaps when he says, and says truly, “You have been seeking for so long and have not found, therefore yield and give up, and no longer seek.” Even then press on, because this wonderful blood shall one day take from you all sin. Having forgiven you all trespasses. It is one of the subtlest of all oppositions that you may meet, with respect to forgiveness, when it is fearfully suggested to you that your sins are beyond the blood of Jesus Christ. If possible the old enemy won’t allow you to think that the sins of a creature are finite, but that the merits of the Redeemer are infinite. “Fight the good fight of faith,” in this particular.
“Fight the good fight of faith” in respect of justification. Justification is God’s act passed on a guilty person; and it is the only thing that can give a title to heaven, that can bring a sinner before God without blame, without any unworthiness, to be righteous as Christ is righteous. This is the justification that shall carry all the blessed subjects of it to eternal bliss. But you are always doing that which brings guilt, always thinking wrong thoughts, often saying wrong words, wishing wrong things, turning your face to the world and your back to God; always by the power of indwelling sin, failing; what then of justification? You will need to fight for your title. You need to fight to hold fast that which God has passed upon you, that great act of justification, by virtue of which He could, and did say for substance: Thou art all fair, there is no spot, no wrinkle, no evidence of decay, but thou art a perfectly justified person in My sight. “Fight the good fight of faith,” in respect of trust.
“Fight the good fight of faith” to the promises of the gospel. These are many; one includes them all, and yet there are many. “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5) But then one says, according to his feelings, “I am forsaken; I have not the presence of God with me; I seek Him and do not find Him; I ask Him to come and He seems to take no notice of me; I ask Him to be with me in a difficult path and I appear to be left alone; I ask Him to shine upon me and I walk in darkness and have no light.” Now, “fight the good fight of faith” here. “Who is among you that feareth the LORD,….that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God.” Yield not to all these contrary and contradicting feelings, fight this fight. Has God told you that He will bless you indeed? Has He promised to guide you with His eye; never to leave you nor forsake you?
Then this must be said to you:
“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense.
But trust him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence,
He hides a smiling face.”
Blind unbelief always errs, it cannot but err; it is against God, against His truth, against His promise. Cleave to a faithful God; hold fast to what He has said to you. “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it?” (Numbers 23:19) Did He ever say to you that He would be with you? And can He break the promise?
O! But I have sinned.
Yes, and He knew that you would sin.
But I am unworthy.
And whoever got a promise on the ground of worthiness? Whoever got a fulfilment of the promise because he was worthy?
Ask all those blessed ones in heaven how they got there. Will they bring in some little reason from their faithfulness, their sticking fast to God? No! Grace, free and sovereign grace, constant and unfailing grace, in its abundance, in its efficacy, in its blessedness, grace in all its riches, and grace alone, shall be the song. “Fight the good fight of faith” respecting the promise of God.
A NOTE OF TRUTH
A NOTE OF TRUTH
by J. K. POPHAM
‘I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.’ (Mark 2:17)
“Until a sinner is wounded the Gospel cannot be received by means of exhortations to ‘repent and believe.’ When a minister has clearly laid down the fall and utter ruin of men he is freely to preach the whole Gospel, and make use of the exhortations addressed to the convinced and wounded according to Scripture and grace given him. It is this preaching that God has ever honored and not exhortations addressed immediately and nakedly to the dead…To call upon unconvinced sinners to repent and turn to God, many of whom in their own esteem may be believers already is to call ‘the righteous’ whom Christ came not to call ‘and the ninety and nine just persons who need no repentance…’”
He further stated that, “Because man had not in his first estate the spiritual life given him in Christ, it is not his duty by the law of his creation spiritually and savingly to repent and believe.” “Simply to exhort men in a state of nature to believe in or turn to God or to call upon them savingly to repent, believe and receive Christ, is not to preach the Gospel to them.”
The reply of J. K. Popham was that those who accused Gospel Standard ministers of not “preaching the gospel” were themselves guilty of this very error since the indiscriminate offer of Christ is not preaching the Gospel. Christ’s command to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel” entailed preaching “the whole counsel of God,” “Preach the Word” was not synonymous with “a well-meant offer of Christ” to the ungodly. In restating this truth regarding the preaching of the gospel, J. K. Popham was following in the footsteps of John Gill, William Huntington, William Gadsby (Works vol. 1) John Kershaw, John Warburton, J. C. Philpot, John Mckenzie, William Tiptaft and many more ministers of the Gospel Standard Churches who for nearly two centuries have preached in this way, and on account of it have been designated Hyper-Calvinists, and at other times have been accused of being Antinomians, both of which epithets they reject. [source]
Do you want a teacher? (the utter valuelessness of all religion)
One of the best sets I ever purchased for my bookshelf was a collection of sermons by J. K. Popham,
Say christian, dost thou want a teacher? then go to the throne of grace where you will find One who will be discovered to you by His good Spirit. Then you will say in humble prayer sometimes: Do write lessons on my heart. My memory won’t retain anything and memory is not the seat of religion, the soul is, the heart is, therefore write on my heart, let the instruction be the writing of God’s own finger. Everything else will go away from us, will die away. If there be knowledge it shall fail, but this heavenly instruction written on the fleshy tables of the heart will last. So Paul says, “Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.” (2 Cor. 3:3) Why a child of God can read you; and you can read a child of God! If you speak a few words out of God’s own instruction in your heart, the child of God to whom you speak will find out where you got that feeling from; and you will find just the same in your own heart when one should speak to you of divine teaching. You will say: that came from heaven into his soul and it will form a union that nothing else can, between the Lord’s people.
A teacher. Dost thou want a teacher? Ask thy God and He’ll provide. The covenant provides it. “They shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them.” (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:11) And how is this to be? “I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people.” One thing that seems to be the foundation of all the mercy in the covenant is this, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Do you feel foolish? Do you feel sometimes that you cannot understand what you read, that you do not understand the way you are going; that you do not know what is in your heart? What a mercy to feel it, because we are foolish whether we know it or not. “I am the LORD which teacheth thee to profit.”
The teaching. The Teacher is God, and He teaches by preaching. He is anointed to preach. What does He teach? What makes His teaching profitable to us? He teaches a profitable lesson when He teaches us depravity and ruin. Who can value the Lord Jesus who does not know himself? Seldom should we think of prayer if we could do without the Lord. Never should we pray for a righteousness wrought out by Christ if we had one of our own in our own imagination. Never should we want to be plunged into the fountain of His infinite merit if we had no conception of our own pollution. Ah! but the Lord lights a candle and puts it into the soul. He searches His children with candles. “I will search Jerusalem with candles.” It is not enough to have a general knowledge of things in the brain; that is not the seat of religion and God will put a knowledge of what you are into your very soul so that you won’t be able to get rid of it. If He teaches you to profit, nobody will be able either to argue, or to lift you out of what He has taught.
“To see sin smarts but slightly;
To own, with lip confession,
Is easier still; but O to feel
Cuts deep beyond expression.”
This is divine teaching and the life of God in your soul. Here is foundation instruction, teaching that prepares for the reception of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is what brings a sinner into the sensible and painful concern that he may have that preaching in his heart of which the prophet speaks, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me; because the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek.” (Isa. 61:1) This is a very painful lesson and because we are apt to forget and very wishful to forget it at times, He writes it again and again and again, “Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see yet greater abominations,” see yet more painfully and feel your inclination to sin and your disinclination to God and to everything that is good and holy. Those of you who have been in the way of God and in the school of the Lord Jesus Christ for years, will be able to follow me when I say that in my beginning I did not half know what a sinner I was. I know something more now and I would not be without the instruction that this gracious Teacher writes on my heart of my sinfulness and ruin, because I find it makes me prize Him more. I want Him more. I need a great deal more saving today than I did in the beginning; I speak experimentally. Salvation is complete in Christ and was so from eternity. But when you come into the knowledge of things you want saving. So that is a heart-felt humbling lesson, penetrating to the depths of your soul and to the ruin there and to the corruptions that are there and to the bondage to sin that is natural to us all.
This, gazed on under the gospel is a sacred thing, and deeply humbles, but it does not drive us away from God. The law does drive us, but the sacred teaching of Christ does not drive us away from Him. Do you understand me? I am sure you do, because these deeper discoveries that are made to you of your ruin turn you to Him and make you say: Save me from myself. You see the gospel to have everything in it you need, the Lord Jesus to be everything you can pray for, and so your heart is turned toward Him. “He teacheth thee to profit.”
He “teacheth thee to profit,” when He teacheth thee of thy weakness. “My weak resistance O, how vain.” He teaches you your weakness and inability and non-submission in the matter of taking up your cross and following Him; of your inability to pray an acceptable prayer, or to desire Himself acceptably. He teaches you your ignorance of the way you ought to go, and then He says, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” This I find very wholesome, humbling and sobering. It makes one feel sometimes that one would give all your best things for meat to relieve your soul of the trouble you come into by reason of sin felt and feared in the conscience.
The Lord thy God teaches you to profit when He teaches you the utter valuelessness of all religion except that which comes from Him. That is a cure for idolatry, for self-reliance, for self-wisdom and self-strength. Long captivity cured Israel of idolatry, and divine teaching in our hearts will cure us of the same. Watch this in your own case. There is a peculiar interest in every child of God at times in watching the growth of the knowledge of sin, and the next thing is that Christ by His Spirit teaches His people to know Himself. Who He is; why He came: what love brought Him; the end He had in coming to suffer bleed and die; the end He had when He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. He teaches us all these things. He lets the light to shine into our hearts upon His priestly office and sacrifice; upon His prophetic office and how He is the One who came from heaven to speak His Father’s will and to say what His Father taught him to say; and upon His kingship. He is “King of kings and Lord of lords.” [source]
Christ’s Sacred Humanity
On the subject Christ’s humanity and the blessings of God in the flesh J.C. Philpot writes;
“…the sacred humanity of 
our adorable Redeemer is that in that nature he learnt the experimental reality of temptation and suffering, and thus became able to sympathise with his tempted and afflicted people. It was necessary under the law that the high priest “should have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way, for that he himself also was compassed with infirmity.” Heb 5:2. Our great High Priest was not compassed with infirmity, like the high priest under the law. and therefore had no need to offer sacrifice for his own sins; Heb 5:3; but that he might be “a merciful” as well as “faithful” high priest-faithful to God and merciful to man, “it behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, for in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he might be able to succour them that are tempted.” Heb 2:17,18. “We have not, therefore, a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Heb 4:15.
Here we see the wisdom and grace of the Father in preparing, and the love and pity of the Son in assuming a nature like our own, sin only excepted, that he might have a real experience of every form of suffering and of temptation. Those only can feel for others in trouble and sorrow who themselves have walked in the path of tribulation; nor can any one really sympathise with the tempted but those who have themselves been in the furnace of temptation. Thus our blessed Lord became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; hid not his face from shame and spitting; endured poverty, hunger, thirst, and nakedness; was betrayed by one disciple, denied by another, and forsaken by all; was oppressed and was afflicted, not only as a part of his meritorious, suffering obedience, but that by a personal experience in his holy humanity of sorrow and affliction he might sympathise with his mourning, afflicted people. And as with affliction, so with temptation; the gracious Redeemer endured every sort of temptation which Satan could present to his holy soul, for “in all points he was tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” Heb 4:15, that he might feel for and sympathise with the tempted.
But this is not all. The blessed Redeemer had not only to sympathise with the sorrows and temptations, but experimentally to learn the graces of his believing people. He had therefore to learn obedience in the same way that they learn it, for “he learnt obedience by the things which he suffered;” Heb 5:8; was taught in the school of affliction the inward experience of submission to God’s will, meekness under injury and oppression, and lowliness of heart as a heavenly grace. Therefore he could say, “Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.” Mt 11:29. Let us not think that the blessed Lord had no inward experience in his holy soul of spiritual graces, or that his divine nature supplied to his human the grace of the Holy Ghost. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit that was given him without measure, Joh 3:34, who not only anointed him as Prophet, Priest, and King, but dwelt in him in all his fullness, bestowed upon him every spiritual grace, as faith, trust, hope, love, prayer and supplication, patience, long-suffering, zeal for the glory of God, and with all spiritual wisdom and understanding, all counsel and might, all heavenly knowledge and the fear of the Lord. Isa 11:1,2. All these gifts and graces dwelt in his sacred humanity [If space admitted, we could easily show from those Psalms in which, beyond all controversy, Christ speaks that all the graces which we have here enumerated dwelt in him and were expressed by him. Let our spiritual readers examine Ps 18 Ps 22 Ps 40 Ps 69, all of which the most indubitable external and internal evidence assigns to Christ, with an eye to this particular point, and trace it for themselves.] and were drawn into exercise by the Holy Ghost, so that the blessed Lord believed, hoped, and loved; prayed, sighed, and groaned; trusted in God and lived a life of faith in him, just in the same manner and by the same Spirit and power, though in an infinitely higher degree, and wholly unmixed with sin, as his believing people do now. So that just in the same way as his sacred body was fed and nourished by the same food as ours, so was his holy soul sustained by the same communications of grace and strength as maintain in life the souls of his people now.
Thus he learnt experimentally not only their trials and temptations, their griefs and sorrows, both natural and spiritual, but their joys and deliverances, their manifestations, their waiting, hope, their trusting confidence, their patient expectation, their obedient submission, and in a word, the whole compass of their experience. [Thus in reading David’s deliverances and blessings, though we know that they were really David’s, and truly felt and acknowledged by him as such, yet we may often say, "A greater than David was here." Thus compare Ps 18:16-19 with Ps 18:43,44] If any think it is derogatory to the Deity of our blessed Lord, to believe that he had a spiritual experience of the same graces that his people have, for being God, they might argue he could not need them, let them explain why his body needed human food, or why his soul had an experience of sorrow and temptation. Could not his divine nature, as in the wilderness, have supported the human without food? And is it not equally derogatory to say that the blessed Lord had an experience of affliction and temptation, as of joy and deliverance? As our great Exemplar, as our suffering Head, the blessed Lord was delivered as well as tempted, rejoiced in spirit as well as sighed and wept, was made glad with the light of his Father’s countenance as well as felt the hidings of his face. [Our blessed Lord had no experience of regeneration or of repentance: for the one is the quickening of the soul out of death, and the other implies the existence of sin. These two things are to be carefully distinguished from his experience of faith, trust. &c.]” Meditations on Sacred Humanity
To Know Christ…
“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith– that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3:8-11
J.K. Popham wrote, “To know Christ is to know that you are blessed with divine life, surrounded by divine favour, founded on a divine love, and that there is prepared for you an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. All this is really implicit in that knowledge of Christ which the Apostle Paul here desires. Yet some here may know Him and not feel that they know all that. But it is there in the seed of it, and the more Christ comes the more will those things which accompany salvation come to the front in your own experience, and you will say, “I understand now a little of what was meant when such and such things were said concerning the knowledge of Christ.” To know Christ is really to be delivered, to be delivered from bondage and fear which hath torment. The child of God may know Him so as to say, “I wish I were united to Him; I wish I had communion with Him; I wish He would pour out of His fullness into my soul; I wish He would condescend to heal me and to comfort me and walk with me.” Well, this wish of yours, ardent wish, will one day find perfect satisfaction. “That I may know Him. I want above all else,” as if the apostle should say, “I want above all else to embrace the Son of God as my own, to be led to say, constrained to say of Him, “Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)“ Read the rest here.
More From The Lawful Captive Delivered
“He shall glorify Me, for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you.” (John 16:14)
When an architect is about to erect a building he makes provision in his plans for the foundation. He makes provision according to the building he is to erect. If it be but a cottage, a footing will do; if it be a large building the foundation must be according to it. And further, he will consider the nature of the soil on which the building is to be erected. If it be sandy and if the sand be deep, then the foundations must go down. The architect is supposed to be wise, he is supposed to be sufficient for his work. When God will build, and He will, wise wonderful Architect that He is, He makes provision for the foundation and has respect to the nature of the building and of the soil, and He digs deep and reaches the rock before He begins to build.
When it pleased God to begin with some of us what did He do?
Did He make us rejoice in Christ before we mourned over self?
Did we feel glad before He made us sorry?
No the text is a very beautiful one, but it has a connection, a context. Go back to the eighth verse on which I made some remarks this morning: “He shall convince of sin.” He digs, He finds sand, mud, mire; but He digs, He digs down, He convinces of sin; shows the sinner his nature, shows him his wickedness, his deceitfulness, his lust, his corruption. He alarms him by some thunder of the law. He alarms him by some views given to him of God, of the character of God with whom he has to do. He alarms him by giving him some sense of the evil desert of sin, that it deserves punishment; some view of hell; some view of divine justice; some sense of the power of God who after He hath killed the body hath power to cast into hell. And this work, so painful, so alarming, is necessary; it is like digging the foundation. As if the architect has gone to the site and found the nature of the soil and has said: “Well, we must go down very deep.”
God, looking at a sinner says,
“I must dig deep.”
It may take years in His sovereignty, it may take years to do it. A little here, a little there, an alarm today, and something tomorrow. A sight of sin, and the eye is held to it till the sinner feels as if he can scarcely live under the sight. Then perhaps a relapse into a carelessness till God comes again and sends some alarm of war in his conscience, and then again he cries out: “What shall I do? Eternity is coming, I am hastening to it, what shall I do? I am wrong and fear I never shall be right, God be merciful to me a sinner.”
That sinner little thinks what God is doing. What digging, preparing, turning away, casting out, God is doing in order that there may be laid well the Foundation Stone, the tried stone, the precious corner stone. And later the sinner says: “How can I bless God enough for taking such pains with me, convincing me by degrees, and by degrees leading me to a sense of my ruined state? How can I thank Him enough, although I don’t know the day when I became concerned? Though I don’t know the means by which the work was started, yet now I could but believe it was God’s beginning. It has been God’s work and I, often distraught, often careless, often wounded, and often seeming to get slightly healed, I am brought now to feel there is one blessed Foundation Stone laid in my heart, that is Jesus Christ. Well dear friends, it may be God’s great pleasure toward us, I hope it will be, to lead us to value conviction of sin. May we never undervalue trouble of soul, our own soul; may we never undervalue that digging, that painful alarm that God may be pleased to give us to make us aware of our desperate state by sin, by the fall, by our practice, and by the law of God.
The Spirit’s Work in Conviction
Preached At Galeed Chapel, Brighton, on Lord’s day morning, February 15th, 1920
by J. K. POPHAM
“And when He is come He will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.” (John 16:8)
…the light of God shines on it and a man sees it in his heart, and he unites then with the words in the confession of Hart. Speaking of unbelief he says, “Of all my sins the chief.” It was the chief and the beginning of Adam’s sin. He believed the representation of the devil rather than the commandment of God. He believed that which took hold of his mind. Hitherto pure, absolutely pure, it took hold of his mind, “Ye shall be as gods;” and that shining forbidden fruit took hold of him and he took it, and this was unbelief. Now that conviction of unbelief going right to the very root of the thing brings a person in guilty. This law was before God promulgated the law of the ten commandments. We Gentiles have no excuse. The Apostle Paul in the Romans tells us this: “For we which have not the law” in the manner and form in which the Jews had it, says he, “have the law.” We are without law in that peculiar form, but we have the law, and we see the work of the law and know it in our hearts. And the work of the law is this, that it touches the conscience and accusations are therefore the consequence: “Their consciences the meanwhile accusing or excusing one another among themselves.” Accusation and excuses held, and that showed the work of the law in the consciences of these people. Ah, and when God does this it is as if His light fetches up from the corners and depths of our hearts our sins, our secret sinshatred of men, hatred of God, unbelief of God, wrong desires, pride of life, lust of the eyes, covetousness which is idolatry, bitterness, hatred which is murder in God’s account. These things are opened and when they are opened to a man, then he groans, he sighs, he mourns; God is terrible to Him: “Say unto God, how terrible art Thou in Thy doings to the children of men.” (Ps. 66:3) And this terrible business, that is to say, the terror that is occasioned by the work of the Spirit in conviction, every child of God knows in some measure. I am not saying how deep it shall be, how great and how lasting as to bondage felt, but I am saying what the work of the Spirit is, and may we not turn from it. I know there is an impatience of it in man. I know there is a wish to escape it in us, but it is a mercy to be not so. That bright shining that comes to an old man and makes him see things which in his earlier days he saw not; that shows him the extensiveness of sin, the depths of sin, the universality of sin in him; that all his members, his faculties, all his perception, all his understanding and all his affections and all the motions of his will are corrupted, and that he is incapable by nature of doing that which is good. “He shall convince,” the Spirit shall do it.
The Spirit does it and it is a matter for thankfulness indeed wherever it is, because it brings the subject of so great, so wonderful a work to justify God, to condemn self. This conviction makes a man honest; it makes him confess to God whatever is discovered. It makes a child of God feel now he can see no word that could possibly be an exaggeration of the evil that is in him. It makes him honest; it makes him fearful; he wonders what God will do. It makes him understand the quaking of Moses on Mount Sinai; the falling flat on his face of Abraham when God came to him; it makes him enter into these things. He says, “Woe is me, woe is me!” Like Job, he said, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5) Job’s ditch would be a blessing to some. Job’s convictions would be a blessing to some who make a profession of religion. It is not a little mercy. Think who make the promise of the Spirit; think who told those disciples what the work of the Spirit should be, and then can you say it is not a mercy to be convinced? It is a mercy. Do men go to heaven ignorant of the hell they deserve? Do they come to know what it is to be made holy by being ignorant of their pollution? Is a guilty person justified while he is ignorant of his guilt? The Spirit’s work is a most necessary work. It takes away self-justification; it makes, as I say, a man honest; it makes him fearful; it produces this sweet work of the Spirit, so bitter in our mouth; it produces strong cries, sincere confessions, and fleeing away from the wrath to come. When you see what sin is, it is dreadful; and when you see against whom you have committed it, it is more dreadful: “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight.” (Ps. 51:4)
Imperishable Grace
O what wonders love has done!
The boundless grace of God is seen in the covenant of grace. Boston very truly observes that “as man’s ruin was originally owing to the breaking of the covenant of works, so his recovery, from the first to the last step thereof, is owing purely to the fulfilling (by a Surety) of the covenant of grace.” “I have made a covenant with My chosen.” The Lord says this shall not be like the first covenant, “which My covenant they brake, saith the Lord.” The blessed substance of this is: I will, they shall. “I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” “I will make them willing in the day of My power, and they shall not turn away from Me” (Psa. cx. 3; Jer. iii. 19; xxxi. 31-34).
Now these everlasting hills can never move. The promises of good in the first covenant depended upon the character of the person to whom they were made, but the promises of the second covenant all depend upon the Person making them. The goodness of the man interested in them cannot merit them, neither shall sin rob him of them, for they depend upon a divine shall and will, not upon the poor, fickle will of a creature. It is called the new and better covenant, established upon better promises. It contains in itself pardon for all the sins and iniquities of the election of grace, Jer. xxxi. 34; it has a word for backsliders, Psa. lxxix. 30-34; and it says, “Mercy is built up for ever” (Psa. lxxxix. 1-4).
Oh! what a mercy it is to be bound up in this bundle of life!
Now, there are thousands who would tell you that your poor souls may be interested in this grace of God the Father, which was given you in Christ Jesus before the world began, which bears such precious fruit as I have mentioned, which, to the astonishment of your own souls, so wonderfully abounds, moves the bowels of God, calls into precious exercise the attributes of God, from which sprang the covenant of grace, with all its blessed provisions,–I say there are thousands who would tell you you may be interested in all this, and yet finally fall, that is, fall into hell! which is to say that the counsel of the Lord may come to naught like that of the heathen, that the thoughts of His heart may perish; even though it is said that “His counsel standeth for ever, and the thoughts of His heart to all generations.” To say that one may fall into hell, who is interested in the grace of God, is to say that from loving from eternity He may in time commence to hate; from having no fury towards a soul, He may commence to have indignation. It is to say that although He determined to dwell in this or that particular soul yet the stubborn will, the unbelieving heart, of this or that person may frustrate His determination. But is the decree of God such a poor, weak thing that it cannot bring forth nor bear fruit without the consent of man’s crooked, perverse will? why, it is to break this will, or to give a new one, that the decree has gone forth, Psa. cx. 3. What a mercy, my dear friends, we have not so learned the Scriptures of truth!
The Lord has promised to put away, to forgive the sins of His people, and He is not a man that He should lie; He has given grace to His people in Christ Jesus before the world began and He is not the son of man that He should repent. His gifts are “without repentance.” He calls His people to His feet, and says they shall not depart from Him, and His callings as well as His gifts are without repentance. “He is in one mind, and who can turn Him? and what His soul desireth, even that He doeth.” “For whatsoever it pleased the Lord, that did He in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and in all deep places.” “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Poor dear child of God, what do you say to these things? to the precious doctrine of the eternal choice, the everlasting love, and the gracious determination of His will to save you, as you have at times been sweetly made to hope? what could you do if these things were taken away? “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Fall from this grace? why God must first cease to be; His Name, glory, and honour are all at stake, if I may so say, in this matter.
Fall from this grace?
God’s choice become reprobation?
His love be turned into hatred, and His determination to save you cease to exist?
Of all impossibilities these are the greatest, if there are any degrees in impossibilities.
Imperishable Grace by J. K. Popham preached at Liverpool, 1875
