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Grace Less Experiences By James Hogg

This morning I have the responsibility of bringing the last two sessions in our conference on the subject of Christian affection.
We have thought of the pastors' affections in the first session this morning, which has been very challenging and helpful and I trust revealing to some of us today.
And I want to address the feelings of God's people at last, or the affections of God's people at last.
And I've decided to divide my subject into two parts.
The first part, which I wish to address in this session, is simply entitled, Grace Less Experiences, Grace Less Experiences.
And then in the second session, I want to address the affections which grace inspires,
the affections which grace inspires.
In the first session, addressing Grace Less Experiences, I'm really touching on a very negative aspect of things, but as I studied the subject and as I came particularly to look at the passage in Matthew 22 concerning love, I saw very clearly that there was a need to open up some discussion, some observations, and not only observations, but some exhortations as well concerning this particular subject that we're addressing.
And so the first session is more in the form of observations, if you like, and exhortation from a biblical perspective, setting the tone for the second session, the affections which grace inspires.
I want to point out immediately that scripture clearly teach by word and implication that those who are the genuine recipients of God's grace and this great work of redemption, that they manifest what I have called gracious affections for God and for all his interests.
And those who are the genuine recipients of God's grace in this great work of redemption, they manifest gracious affections, affections that come because of the grace of God, and they are also committed to all God's interests.
And already Pastor Bull has underlined that point to us.
They manifest affections for God and for all his purposes with a passion that is the direct fruit of the grace of God at work in the line.
And this passion is begotten by the truth of God's one, and that is a very important point.
The passion, the affections which we have are begotten by the truth of God's one, both imparted and understood by the mediation of the Holy Spirit.
I'll be emphasizing that point further this morning.
It is not an animal passion.
It is a passion which has its roots in the word of God.
It has its roots and therefore Its sustenance in the truth of God's word is communicated and applied by the Holy Spirit.
And therefore as I think of Christian affections today, I do not see them as separate from the word of God.
I do not see us having emotions and affections and passion for the work of God apart from the receiving and the understanding of that truth with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Consequently and conversely, it logically follows that whatever passions, exuberant
feelings and emotions which do not discover their genesis in revealed truths and their
continuing application to the mind and to the heart must be considered as highly suspect
if indeed not spurious.
Now we need to make some of these observations today because a great deal of ministry is
aimed at the feelings and the subjective experiences of men and women and the great danger is that
we bypass the word of God in relationship to these inverted commas affections.
We bypass the word of God in relationship to these seemingly burning passions and they
are not related to the receiving and to the understanding of the truth in the mind and
the magnification of these truths in the heart by the Holy Spirit that we might praise and
serve God around.
Our subject really suggests that you can experience certain religious emotions which are void
of grace.
You and I can have certain religious and I use that word carefully, religious emotions
which are totally void of grace.
They are graceless experiences and we must look around today and just to see how the
people can be stirred up with a religious fervor.
We can see it on television not only in relationship to the Christian faith but to other religions
as well and we can see how the people are stirred and moved with a passion for religion
but we must admit as we consider that passion and that zeal that it is not founded upon
the word of God or the great truths of scripture.
It is not discovered in an understanding and in an application of these truths to the life.
It is a different kind of passion altogether and what I'm suggesting to you today is that
there is a great danger in the Christian church of us being stirred up, even good evangelical
Christians being stirred up to have a religious fervor that is not related to the word of
God, not related to the truth of scripture and certainly not given with the help of the
Holy Spirit.
Now I want us to think about this today.
These are thoughts that have been very much upon my heart as I've come to the subject
and perhaps some of you have been thinking some of these things yourself and if some
of these statements might be like a frame of silver round apples of gold then it will
help us to understand what is before us.
You see certain occasions and circumstances can produce religious fervor which is void
of the gracious and the influential work of the Holy Spirit.
Our natural emotions can be stirred very easily to express a passion for religion which is
related to our instincts rather than an intelligent response to reveal truth.
I want to say that passion stirred and emotions captivated without the presentation and revelation
of biblical truth carries men and women into religious excesses which demean the gospel
rather than promoter.
Let me say that again.
I've chosen my words carefully that passion stirred, emotions captivated without the presentation
and revelation of biblical truth that is by the Spirit of God can carry men and women
into religious excesses which demean the gospel rather than promoter.
Now in our generation what is often portrayed as enthusiastic and affectionate worship can
be attributed to the natural man rather than to the spiritual.
We must recognize that.
Now we're not speaking ungraciously and I certainly hope I do not sound ungracious as
I sound these things out but we must face facts.
The scriptures say the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit.
Now at this point I wish to make three important observations which are relevant to the subject
before us this morning because there's been an epidemic of subjective, so subjectivism
which has swept through the churches and denominations of this land and overseas to the detriment
of sound doctrine and its consistent application.
In my privilege to travel rather widely over the last few years and there has been such
an emphasis wherever I have gone on the subjective aspects of faith and feelings.
And it is causing a great deal of concern.
I'm just back from Malaya, just ten days back from Malaya.
And while I was there with Pastor Po and his assistant Pastor Ho at the Sri Sadang Church,
I heard there of a chaos that is coming in the churches in Malaya because of the emphasis
on subjectivism and the rustling and struggling with these issues.
And it is very attractive to men and women to come into these bright services and where
the emotion is so easily engaged and where there is a kind of gregarious instinct that
draws men and women into a spiritual fervor so easily.
And there on Malaya in the mission field they are facing these difficulties.
I've been in England and in Wales and Scotland, Ireland and I've found exactly the same things
that people are being drawn off in this direction.
And the big problem is that when you try to address the issues from a biblical perspective
you have a tremendous problem.
Because immediately people become resentful, they put up the shutters and they rest in
that subjective experience and feel threatened as you would apply the word of God and seek
to come to some point of biblical understanding in relationship to these things.
And the truth is, and I'm sorry to have to say this, but often times you will discover
that as a biblicalist you're arguing with pragmatists because in a very unconscious
way, many of them have moved away from the centrality of the word of God.
They have not meant to do so, there are sincere souls in these groups and it has not been
their intention.
But the more the emphasis has come upon the experience, the more the emphasis has come
upon direct revelation, the more the emphasis has come upon say tongues and interpretation
that men have beheld these so-called gifts with wonder and amazement and have begun to
draw something of their spiritual fervor and succor directly from the experiences and unconsciously
almost the Bible has been pushed to the side and objective truth has been ignored.
And we find ourselves in a situation now in relationship to Christian affections that
there is a swing on the part of many who dread these kind of things in another direction.
But I think that we need to know that when we come to address these issues as biblicalists,
we are addressing often times pragmatists.
It is so when we begin to discuss the issues of scripture with the neo-orthodox and with
the liberal.
But I'm sad to say it is true as well in relationship to many in charismatic circles.
And so therefore I want to underline this to you this morning.
It is so important.
Well then firstly it must be observed that as a result of the worldwide explosion of
charismatic influences and excesses in the realms of religious affections, there has
been a reactionary swing to a position in which any kind of enthusiasm and passionate
affection for the things of God are suspect.
Now we must address this and particularly for those of us in refined circles because
there is a danger of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction.
And we find ourselves afraid of experiences of any kind in our relationship with God.
That must be addressed.
Because you see this kind of disposition, inclination, often based on fear and prejudice
can cause some real harm in relationship to our walk with God and to our worship and service.
Secondly it must be observed that in every generation it has been a device of Satan to
God-believers into unscriptural and emotional excesses which captivate their affections.
Satan has guarded believers into unscriptural emotional excesses in every generation.
If you read Dali Moore's first volume on the life of Whitefield, you will discover
there that Charles Wesley on one occasion shared a room with a French prophet.
And these French prophets were traveling the length and the breadth of the land preaching
the charismatic doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit in tongues.
In Whitefield's day, Charles Wesley said he spent the night in a room with a French prophet.
In fact he said he was terrified, for he gobbled all night like a turkey.
And that's exactly what he said.
And he was afraid.
This is no new thing.
It is no new thing.
But we need to observe that it is a device of Satan to God-believers into unscriptural
emotional excesses which captivate their affections.
And then, having achieved this end, he begins to gender fear in the hearts of others because
of these very excesses and their attendant doctrinal abuses.
We must observe these things from a biblical perspective.
We must know what our enemy is about.
And in all this he subtly causes many either to ignore or overstate the truth in these
other circles, and in the process they depart from it or they severely abuse it.
And then, as I said, consequently he drives others from a balanced view of the truth to
a position of extreme and unbiblically warranted rejection of any affections at all.
And this ultimately robs them of their joy and of passionate commitment to God's will.
And it is a work which should be based on comprehended truth and not churned-up emotion.
And then, thirdly, I want us to observe that it is the responsibility of every single believer
to distinguish the difference between gracious affections stimulated by the instrumentality
of truths intelligently comprehended and graceless experiences in the form of passionate enthusiasm
not begotten by the truth of the Word of God.
I am going to say that again.
I have chosen these words so carefully this morning.
It must be observed that it is the responsibility of every believer to distinguish the difference
between gracious affections stimulated by the instrumentality of truths intelligently
comprehended and graceless experiences in the form of passionate enthusiasm not begotten
by the truth.
Having said this and made these three observations, I want to proceed directly to my first subheading.
And it is this.
That strong emotions about religion are not necessarily wholesome and beneficial emotions
either for the individual or for a church.
Strong emotions about religion are not necessarily wholesome and beneficial emotions either
for the individual or for a church.
We have a tendency to respond to warmth and to emotion and to enthusiasm.
It is in our nature to do that.
But we must be deceiving in this particular area.
We must not be gullible.
Because perhaps something is warm and something seems to be really religious and because some
texts are quoted and perhaps the Bible is open for a few minutes and some Christian
hymns are sung and there seems to be such a sense in vertical commas of the presence
of God.
We must not be gullible.
We are commanded in the scriptures to try the spirits to see whether they be of God.
And we as believers must consider these situations from a biblical perspective intelligently
in the application of truth.
And I think you will discover that oftentimes what we accept as being from God has come
merely from the feelings of a natural man or natural man and woman.
We need to descend the source of such fervent emotions.
Let me say, and I want to emphasize this and Pastor Bull has emphasized it as well,
scripture endorses fervency.
Scripture endorses fervency.
We are not preaching against that.
You will see in the last session that I am encouraging this kind of fervency and affection
for Jesus Christ.
But let me pause for a moment and just say that scripture endorses fervency.
Look at Romans 12 and verse 11.
The apostle exhorts the Romans not to be slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the
Lord.
And he calls for a fervency in serving the Lord.
But scripture also determines the source of that enthusiasm and that fervent, and that
is important.
It is not enough to be fervent.
We must determine the source from which our fervency comes.
I want you to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 30 and to verse 6.
Pastor Bull referred to passages this morning here and in the New Testament.
He had me extremely nervous because the two of the passages that I intended to bring to
you this morning, and I am grateful for him laying some foundations.
Chapter 30 of Deuteronomy and verse 6.
It says, and the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to love
the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.
Now notice what the scriptures are saying.
Our affections must spring from a heart that has been circumcised by grace.
Our affections and our service must spring from a heart that has been circumcised by
grace.
It is not just enough to be fervent, you see.
The scriptures say, here is the source of this fervency.
The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Look at Deuteronomy chapter 10 as well and verse 12.
Deuteronomy 10 and 12, and now Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but
to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, to love him and to serve the Lord thy
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul?
Paul says we have to serve fervently, but then Deuteronomy 12 tells us our affections
must spring from a reverential fear of God.
What doth the Lord require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his
ways?
And so we see that this fervency is related to a walk in the fear, the reverential fear
of God, a fear which causes us to walk in his ways, a fear which causes us to put away
sin and live God's lives.
And you see without this all emotions be the ever so convincing to the senses the experience.
Unless God circumcises the heart, unless God changes a man from within, there is no ground
for fervency, there is no ground for affection.
And I think it's Dabney in volume one of his works, speaks about a man who is dying.
And he speaks about the several age they bring to his body as it begins to chill in death.
And as the worm begins to seep through his body, there is some kind of far off hope that
this animal part of his body is reviving again.
But he points out it is false, he's still dying.
The warmth is coming from without, not from within.
And the decay is still taking place and the warmth is deceptive to the dying soul.
And what we are seeing this morning is that it is very easy in these corrupt natures of
ours with remaining sin from without, even dying spiritually to feel some warmth and
some light from without and to believe that that warmth springs from within when it is
not so.
Scriptures show us that if we are going to experience anything of affections that please
God, if we are going to know anything of a godly zeal, then the heart must be circumcised.
And in the circumcision of that heart, a man begins to fear God and to walk in all his
ways in holiness.
A highway shall be there and away and it shall be called the way of holiness.
No unclean thing shall go up thereon.
But the wayfaring man, it says, will walk on it, but only through grace.
And so as we think of affections, we must begin here.
Now we've spoken of the positive aspect of this fevency, but having stated the positive
we must also consider the negative.
Because as our subheading suggests, strong emotions about religion are not necessarily
wholesome and beneficial emotions either for the individual or for a church.
Now here we need to examine.
Today there has been a growing and determined effort to promote religious feelings by a
multitude of methods and means rather than by the truth.
I'm going to say that again because I believe that's a key thought that we need to consider.
That today there has been a growing and determined effort by many to promote religious feelings
by a multitude of methods and means other than by the truth in the way that God is ordained.
And again we're thinking of bypassing the Word.
The emphasis, for example, in crusade meetings and church outreach in many instances makes
us appeal to the emotions and not to the intellect, to the mind via the scriptures.
There's a great deal of entertainment value included.
You know what I'm speaking about this morning.
There is the pop singer who's known worldwide who must be on the platform to share in the
gospel services to get the young in.
And we could multiply these things.
But every one of them are appealing to the senses, the sympathies and the carnal sympathies
of men.
And we must see how it is possible to be manipulated in these particular areas.
You see, because preaching has been despised in many quarters and strong corporate ministries
are declining, the appeal is more and more to the sentiment and to the emotions than
to the pure and unadulterated scriptures.
And I want you to think about that for a moment, too.
That as preaching is declining, entertainment in the church is increasing.
As the direct preaching of the Word of God is being more and more neglected and even
denigrated by some, there has been a proliferation of things brought into the life of the church
to fill that place and to appeal to men's sympathies, natural sympathies and emotions.
But the Bible says that by the foolishness of preaching, men will be saved.
And we can circumnavigate the Word of God in this way.
Now we need to note this in our churches.
Keep an eye on the corporate ministry, pray for the pastors, pray that God will raise
up godly pastors, pray for institutions that are training men for the ministry who accept
the Bible in its entirety as the Word of God, and who are seeking to produce thoroughgoing
preachers of the Word.
And be very careful in a church situation where the corporate ministry begins to decline
and where choruses take over, and I'll say more of that later, where choruses begin to
take over, when entertainment begins to creep into the corporate, when mime and dance begins
to take the place of the Word of God, then beware, because the church is moving into
that field of graceless affections, and only a descending heart and a descending spirit
anchored in the Word of God will recognize what is happening.
Usually friends of this church renounce their affiliation with a local assembly, and one
of their complaints was that they had clowns in the pulpit throwing lollies to the children
during the services.
When I was in Perth, a Christian bookstore manager told me that a minister of the gospel
visited his shop and asked for a book of pulpit jokes, and there's one being printed.
And the reason that he went to buy the book of pulpit jokes was because a well-known evangelist,
if I mentioned the name, you'd know him this morning, and a minister's seminar had recommended
to these ministers that they should commence their preaching with a joke.
And that is an appeal to the natural man, and it is a sin against God to turn from this
book and to manipulate men and women in the realms of their sympathies and their affections.
There is no mandate in the scriptures for a preacher to do that, none.
And music is also deployed to captivate the emotions of those who gather to hear the gospel,
and I'll say more of this later.
But again the emphasis is on feelings and not upon the facts of the gospel.
I want to explain that at a later point, but let me say here that I've been amazed
even in the referred churches, the number of referred churches that I've been to in
the last year or two that are introducing in particular scripture choruses and psyching
up the services with the choruses.
I'll say more about that.
Let me come to my second sub-henning.
Strong emotions can be produced by the manipulation of our sympathies.
Strong emotions can be produced by the manipulation of your sympathies.
Dabney points out that, quote, the sympathetic emotion, he calls it the sympathetic emotion,
is wholly unintelligent.
Now I want you to think about this.
He says the sympathetic emotion, the part of us that is sympathetic emotion is wholly
unintelligent.
It is superinduced by the mere sight of feeling in another and usually vanishes when removed.
I'm going to say it again.
The sympathetic emotion is wholly unintelligent.
It is superinduced by the mere sight of feeling in another and usually vanishes when removed.
Now that's true if you think about your sympathies.
Is it not true that you can suddenly come upon someone suffering?
You go into a hospital, as I have to do often as a pastor, and you see somebody really suffering,
and you feel your heart going out, and you see a mother and a father around the bed and
perhaps children, and you can see that maybe somebody is near to death.
What happens?
I'll tell you what happens.
This sympathetic emotion in me takes over.
I don't know them.
I don't know where they live.
I know nothing of the circumstances.
I don't even know what the disease is, but it's grabbed my sympathy, and I feel emotions.
You see, that sympathy is unintelligent in that sense.
It is part of my created being, I feel, because others feel, and seeing others feeling, I
feel as well.
Now this God-given sense can be beneficial in some small measure to assist genuine and
gracious emotions, but more often than not, it's tragically abused and abused deliberately.
The unscrupulous pastor can aim at your sympathies, your emotions, rather than your mind and heart
with illuminated truth, and there's a great deal of this kind of scoldulgery going on
today, and it's wrong, and the emphasis is on the emotion.
Now let me give you one classic example.
Twenty-six years ago, I myself was involved in the charismatic movement, and there I speak
with some knowledge and some experience, and I can remember attending a charismatic conference
in the south of England, and we got into these meetings, and the emphasis was on singing,
and we sang, and we sang, and we sang ourself into some kind of unity, and then the word
was opened in a rather rambling way, here and there and everywhere, without any obvious
thorough preparation, and then the inverted commas sensed God's presence, and instead
of finishing at nine o'clock the second night, they thought they would move with the Spirit,
and so the meeting went to half past ten, quarter to eleven, and people looked at their
watches and thought, well, isn't this marvellous, God moving, fancy being in a meeting for nearly
four hours and wanting to be here.
And then the next morning, the prayer meeting and the morning services, and God was so moving,
we won't have our afternoons recreation, we won't go out and kick a ball and let some
steam off, walk along the beach or go for a swim, we'll have another meeting.
Oh, this is tremendous, building up into something really great, until more than halfway through
the conference one night, the meeting going on to about eleven at night, and the pressure
was on, a hothouse atmosphere, somebody began to weep and publicly confess their sin, and
it was like an electric shock through that gathering, and many women looked to that situation,
and hearing that person confessing their sins publicly, very quickly in their mind remembered
revivals in the past when God's Spirit had come and brought deep conviction of sin and
people were frustrated in the presence of God, and they were confessing sin, and they
put two and two together, and in their minds and hearts were saying, it's revival, it's
revival, and somebody else stood up and confessed their sin publicly, and somebody else and
somebody else and somebody else, but it wasn't revival, and it wasn't the moving of the
Spirit of God, and the events that followed show very clearly that was the case.
It was this human sympathy, unintelligent, not directed by the Word of God, not directed
by clear doctrinal, exegetical preaching, but a buildup of emotional experience, and
when the person wept and confessed, others empathized with them with this natural affection,
and a chain reaction took place, and a lot of people were left with a lot of spiritual
hang-ups.
You see, I believe Dabney is right, the sympathetic emotion is wholly unintelligent, it is super-induced
by the mere sight of feeling in another, and usually vanished when removed, and that was
the case with these people.
Take away the meeting, take away the hothouse atmosphere, and you're left with these cooling
natural sympathies.
Sympathy is involuntary, it is immediate.
We need to consider this very carefully, because if that is so, then these sympathies
of ours can be roused without the Word of God, and without clear biblical understanding
of the truth, and I think that's very important to note, and I think that we need to consider
very carefully, as we think of the issue of Christian affections, the source from which
these movements, and in inverted commas, affections, are coming, because it is my contention that
there are men abroad today who will manipulate these unintelligent sympathies, and it is
very obvious that they are doing it because of their lack of emphasis upon the preaching
of the Word of God, and if they gave their mind and heart to the preparation and to the
preaching of the Word, and appealed to the mind and hearts of men and the Holy Spirit
to bring light to their understanding, then there is a safeguard against this unintelligent
sympathy that can rise so easily without the truth.
Now, just answer the question for yourself.
Why is it in so many meetings that you can think about there is such an emotional fervor
abroad, and yet in the analysis of it, there has been no clear definitive doctrinal exegetical
preaching of the Word of God?
Beloved, there is something wrong, something far wrong, and there are graceless experiences
in the midst of it.
It's very dangerous, and it leaves men and women exhausted, confused, and even depressed.
You see, mere sympathy by way of a response is unintelligent.
I came back from overseas just last week, a week past, and in the airports I'm always
interested to see people pouring out of the exit gates, and when I'm overseas, doesn't
matter if you're in Asia or wherever you are, it's a delightful thing to see parents waiting
for children, or family, a mother waiting for a daughter, a husband for a wife, a wife
for a husband, and there's something human about it that really gets to my heart.
It's lovely to see that there's affection abroad in the world today, it's for real.
There are still families and still people who love and care closely for each other,
and I see that, and it moves me.
But again, it's this unintelligent, uninformed sympathy, I just see this, they feel, I feel.
You see, coming back to the issues of music and entertainment, they can also be a manipulative
tool to gain our sympathy, but they can do more than that as well with their affections,
because they can woo our affections away from the Bible, from doctrinal truth.
They can woo our hearts away from the Word of God, and we can find our affections set
somewhere else, and in that kind of position, it leaves the church wide open for heresy
and division.
Entertainment is a biblically unauthorised ministry, and I make no bones about that.
It is biblically unauthorised ministry, it is an appeal to the flesh and not to our spirit.
Drama, dialogue, musical ditties subtly appeal to our sympathies and they shape our emotions
and our appetites as well.
And if you think about it, uninspired preaching against this backdrop makes the task of preaching
seem irrelevant.
If a preacher is uninspired against the backdrop of this fabulous entertainment, it makes preaching
look irrelevant, and people want to get the programme on and over this one item into the
things they enjoy.
Is it not true at home it's easier to switch on the TV than to study the Word of God and
pray?
We're more concerned about missing our favourite TV drama than missing out quiet time, and
it stands to reason in charge that this old nature would rather be entertained and confronted
with its corruption under sound and anointed preaching.
And thus this vital ministry of preaching is denigrated, and often our sympathies are
engaged to hold us together on an unintelligent emotional basis.
Now that is wrong.
God wants to employ us intelligently, and our emotions and our sympathies and our work.
I want to touch on J.N. Dabney and music here because this is so important.
I said not only does it appeal to our sympathies and engage our sympathies, it can also lead
us away from truth.
He says this, we conclude with a word touching the office of Mr. Sankey.
He was speaking about Sankey's singing in his day, and he's really quite gracious in
his way of dealing with it.
Mr. Sankey's singing the gospel.
He points to the Jewish temple service that had its chief singer.
He said, and this is prophetic, it will be a curious result if this modern movement should
develop this function into a new and prominent branch of the ministry unauthorized by the
New Testament.
He could see it coming last century.
Singing is unquestionably a scriptural means of grace, and good singing is a very efficient
one.
But in order that the church may retain the blessing of good singing, the privilege which
Mr. Sankey and his imitators claim of importing their own lyrics into God's worship must be
closely watched.
And then he goes on to say, that saying has been quoted in favor of Mr. Sankey's ministry
of song, and this is a point I want to bring home.
This saying has been quoted in favor of Mr. Sankey's ministry of song, which has been
assigned to Lord Macaulay, to Sir Walter Scott, and Thomas Moore.
And they all said this, let me make the ballads of the people, and I don't care who makes
the laws.
Let me make the ballads of the people, I don't care who makes the laws.
That's what these men said.
And then Dabney says, we cite that very principle to condemn the approaching license of so-called
sacred song.
Why?
He has a very real reason.
He says, if the same license is to be used up by every self-appointed chorister, we shall
in the end have a mass of corrupting religious poetry against which the church will have
to wage a sore contest.
This was last century.
Our children will lend to their cost how legitimate, valuable was that restriction which we formally
saw in the lyrical liturgies of the old Protestant churches expressed by the imprimatur of the
Supreme Court appointed to be sung in the churches.
I want you to hear what he's saying, and I believe this is perhaps one of the most
important points that need to be made this morning regarding affections.
Maybe some of you are thinking, well, you're being a bit hard to ask scriptural choruses
after all.
I was at a conference, students from Sydney University, and they were sitting strumming
away and the guitar singing, although the olives shall fail, there'll be no increase
from the field and no herds in the stall.
You say, the scriptural choruses, yes, they are.
And I felt uncomfortable, not because I'm an old square, but because there was something
about it that just didn't ring true.
When we finished, I said, and there was 10 of them, I think, around the table, 9 or 10,
I said, could anybody tell me where that comes from in the scriptures?
Silence.
Nobody knew.
I said to the man with the guitar, where does it come from?
Oh, some old prophet, he said.
Scriptural.
Can you see this morning the deceit of Satan to gather millions in to sing scriptural choruses?
It doesn't matter where they come from, it doesn't matter what they mean, as long as
we all get together, sing them.
Let me make the ballads of the people, and I care not who make the laws.
And that takes me to another point, and it's this, that this has been one of the most subtle
works, I believe, of the devil this century.
You can hold your hands up in honor of your life, to introduce this kind of thing into
our churches, because it is the Charismatics who have made the ballads.
And I don't know of a church yet, and there may be some, and there must be some, but I
know the majority that I have been to that have introduced the choruses, eventually my
own church in Scotland as well, there comes the hand clapping, the hand waving in the
ear, and many of them have split because of the reserve of some in the church, not because
they were old squares, but they didn't want to be just singing and living once, and they
wanted to live by the book.
And I had, when I was in Paris, a man was telling me, speaking to someone who was involved
in early stages of this kind of music, and he stated categorically the purpose of it
was to get their doctrine into other churches, and they've done it.
And that was just three weeks ago.
That was the end.
Let me make the ballads of the people, I don't care who makes the doctrines, I don't care
who peaches from the pulpit.
And you know, Dabney makes an amazing statement.
He says then, it is even more important that church courts should use their authority of
deciding what shall be sung than of securing the qualifications and orthodoxy of its preachers.
Well, my time has gone this morning, but I want to underline to you, in this session,
as I said, it was observations and exhortations, there are such things as graceless experiences.
And I believe that Satan is doing a great work of manipulation of our emotions.
Now, having said that this morning, I believe that there is a true area of spiritual affection
and dedication and commitment to Jesus Christ, and we're going to speak about that positive
aspect in our next session.
I wonder if...