Originally published in "The Lord's Coming Herald & Wesleyan Bible Prophecy Advocate," January Edition 2008
Majestic Sweetness
"I am dwelling on a mountain where the golden
sunlight gleams, or 'e a land whose wondrous beauty far exceeds my fondest
dreams."
The above stanza from one of the grand old classic hymns of the Holiness
movement has nearly been forgotten in modern times. So have the words of many of
the other traditional redemptive songs of the evangelical Christian tradition of
our yesteryears.
Now most sing generic "7/11" choruses (7 words repeated 11 times) that have little or no definitive gospel content, much less portray the witness to an experience of heart purity and perfect love that once enthralled the saints of God.
We lackadaisically sing "Worship Him, Worship Him," but the Bible says: "ye
cannot serve the Lord, for He is a holy God; he is a jealous God: he will not
forgive your transgressions nor your sins" (Josh. 24:19). The reason we cannot
worship and serve the Lord aright today, friends, is the same reason that Joshua
told ancient Israel that they could not do so--it is because there are "strange
gods" among us, and we have not truly "inclined our hearts unto the Lord" (Josh.
24:23).
What is needed now, as it was in past similar ages of spiritual and moral
degeneracy, is to "break off our sins by righteousness" (Dan. 4:27), and do
justice in the earth (Micah 6:8). God does not need any so-called "worship" from
religious pagans, friends! What He requires of us, instead, is "truth in the
inward parts" (Psa. 51: 6).
God requires absolute integrity in our hearts and lives! It is not enough to settle for an emotional "aura" of purported spirituality of some kind. The New Testament says nothing of Christianity being an "aura" of anything. God is fed up with our self-serving sentimentalities in religion, which shallow sentimentalities, in turn, we to often mistake for authentic Christian experiences. Until we first get soundly converted from theological humanism and Darbyite antinomianism to the ideology of the Christian faith, there is little hope for genuine spiritual reality to be manifested in what we do in Church.
The song writer spoke of something far different than the religious shallowness
to which so many of we moderns have now become accustomed. "I am dwelling on a
mountain where the golden sunlight gleams"--this is not spiritual defeatism, or
the uncomfortable testimony of a stranger to the fullness of divine grace. "O' re
a land whose wondrous beauty far exceeds my fondest dreams"--did you hear
it?--an experience with the living God that "far exceeds" life's highest and
noblest aspirations!
Such soul language as that used in the hymn above expresses far more that a sterile antinomian faith in an intellectually barren Christ. We don't sing deeply spiritual songs in our Church services much anymore, friends, because we are no longer deeply spiritual. Our religion on Sunday, like the secular condition of the lives we pursue six days a week, is sunken in the morass of our intrinsic self-centered humanism.
What is needed is the in breaking of the Divine! And the good news is that Jesus
still comes to abide wherever He's invited (Rev. 2:20)!
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