Unbelief and its rebellion will make of a mere nothing a great mountain.
Every murmuring thought is the child of Unbelief, and makes God a liar.
The Sins of Believers
The heart of man is a restless deep, ever casting up mire and dirt (Isa. 57:20); but in the sins of God’s children there is a pre-eminence of guilt.
Jonah could not sin himself out of the love of God; therefore, sinning himself out of communion with God, he had the greater guilt.
I count myself more vile than the murderer who suffers death by the hangman’s hand, because the atoning blood of the Son of God acquaints me with myself…. That which shows me my forgiveness reveals to me my pollution.
By far the greater part of the sins of God’s children are sins of ignorance. How needful therefore the cry, “Cleanse Thou me from secret faults” (Ps. 19:12)—faults hidden from mine own eye and from mine own conscience. Without atoning blood they would bring down God’s curse on the offender’s head. Oh, let us not make light of sins of ignorance!
The sins of our unregenerate state should indeed be ever before us; but by frowardness, since we tasted that God is gracious, we sin (as natural men cannot sin) against the heart of Christ, against God’s love and His Spirit, who seals us unto the day of redemption. The natural man is a rebel against his Maker; but it is against a Father that we, the saved, offend. Forgetting the cross, we go astray. The remedy is true and speedy confession; for we have an Advocate with the Father. (1 John 2:1.)
We must be ever waging war with the secret workings of sin. Where it is but in a little measure allowed, God may suffer His child to go further and further in that allowance, until the seven locks are shorn on Delilah’s lap.
To be doubting Christ’s love, to be limiting His grace, is alike unworthy of us and grieving to Him. The last offence of Joseph’s brethren (Gen. 50:15-21) was not the least.