Steve P. Holcombe, the Converted Gambler: His Life and Work
Tekst2. It is shown in what we call conversion.
But this power which belongs to Christianity, not only produces this awful sense of the guilt and danger of sin, it also delivers from the guilt and power of sin, and makes the man a new creature. The awful sense of condemnation and the fear of a just and endless retribution are taken away. He may not know how or just why, but he knows it is so, and he rejoices with joy unspeakable and full of glory. But, not only so, he finds to his amazement and joy that his whole inner nature is reversed, re-created, and he no longer is a slave of sinful habits and passions, but he is delivered from these, and now loves holiness and holy people and holy things and holy thoughts. The whole current of his nature is changed. "Old things are passed away, and behold all things are become new," and, instead of the old defilement and darkness and devilishness, there flows out and on a life of purity, consecration, self-forgetfulness and holiness. Now, do you not call that a power which can bring to pass such effects as this? Do you know of any other power that can do anything like it?
And now, my brother, you who profess to be a follower of Jesus, have you experienced this power, or have you only the form of godliness without the power? That is what is the matter with most of the church members of this day. They have a form of godliness, but in too many cases only a form. They do not know anything of the power of which I have been speaking. But let no one be discouraged who has not experienced this blessed deliverance from the power of the enemy, provided you are seeking for it. You shall not seek long in vain, if you seek it in earnest. May God reveal Himself to us all now and here.
I. CORINTHIANS IX: 26, 27
"I therefore so run not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:
"But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway."
This Is the language of St. Paul, the Apostle. As we have already remarked of Jesus, that He took the most familiar facts and experiences of every-day life by which to teach His doctrines, so we may say of His great Apostle, Paul. The Grecian games, consisting of running matches and boxing matches, were well known among the people of St. Paul's day, and especially so at Corinth, and these furnished him the illustrations which he frequently used in his letters. In another place he speaks of laying aside all weights and running with patience the race set before us. In this place he speaks both of running and boxing. His object is to show that, as in these games the utmost attention and energy and self-denial were necessary to success, and that these would insure success, so it is in the Christian race and the Christian fight. He says: "I, for my part, run not as uncertainly," that is, I run no risk, I indulge in nothing that would make it in the least degree uncertain as to my gaining the desired object; I know what is required of me, and I know that if I do not fully observe all that is commanded me and required of me, I, to that extent, render my success uncertain, and this I am determined, by the grace of God, not to do. Then he says: "I fight not as one that beateth the air." The boxers would frequently take exercise by striking into the air, as we see men practicing gymnastics now; but Paul meant to say that he was not taking exercise – he was facing an earnest and dangerous foe, and it was a life and death matter to him to know just what that foe was, and to know just how to attack it so as to conquer it. And what was that foe? Hear it, you who think you are safe and can just go smoothly to heaven as if you were sliding down hill. Hear what Paul's greatest foe was: It was his body – yes, his body, with its appetites and passions, its constant craving for gratification and pleasure. What! do you mean to say that Paul, the great Apostle, was in danger of being led away by the appetites of the body? Well, that is what he himself says. He was not in danger of falling because of doubt, for he had had such a wonderful conversion, and such an actual vision of Christ, that he could never, never doubt that, nor does he any where, in any of his epistles, show the slightest wavering in this respect, but he does show that he knew and felt there was danger of being, in some unguarded moment, misled and brought into sin by the appetites of an unmastered body. So, he says in the next verse: "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that when I have preached to others, I myself should be lost." He still keeps up the figure of the boxing matches in the games, and says: "The foe I have to contend with is my body," and as the winner in the fist fight of the games beats his foe black, till he cries "enough!" so do I deny my body till it ceases to have any desire or disposition toward the objects of unholy passions, till it meekly gives up, and I feel that I am perfect master, and it is under my feet as it were. When the body is fed and gratified and pampered, its animal appetites and passions are nursed and become strong. So men who live high and eat to gluttony and drink wines and liquors are usually in a perfect strut of sensual passion. I guess that is why the Lord keeps me so poor, and why I have so little to live on and so little to feed on. It is that, by this necessary self-denial, I may keep my poor body down, out of danger of betraying me into sin.
David was as great a man in some respects as Paul, he communed with God in the solitudes of Bethlehem's sheep pastures, till he became strong enough to overcome a giant and to put a whole army to flight. He composed most of the Psalms, the most spiritual songs in the world. He withstood all the temptations of honor, and endured, with matchless meekness, the hatred and persecution of Saul, the king (I. Samuel xxiv). But his poor body, with its sensual passions, got the better of him, and he committed the awful sin of adultery. Doubtless, when he had become king, he forgot the self-denial which he practiced when he was a shepherd, and when he was a persecuted and hunted fugitive, and instead of that he lived high, fed high, drank high, and so he fell, and fell very low.
Solomon was a wise man. He knew all the secrets of the human heart. He wrote Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, books full of profound knowledge, as well as of deepest piety. Yet Solomon was led away from God by indulging in sensuality. And if David and Solomon, with all their faith and wisdom and power and piety, found that their bodies, because not kept down, led them into sin, we need not wonder that Paul saw and shunned this danger. But how is a man to keep his body under? By totally abstaining from everything that heats the blood and inflames passion, as drinking, etc., and high living; by fleeing from evil conversation, evil books, evil thoughts; by fasting and abstinence, frequently practiced. Moses fasted; Elijah, David, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Jesus, Paul, the early church and Wesley and the early Methodists – all these eminent servants of God fasted, and there must be something good and profitable in it. I am satisfied it is one of the ways of keeping the body under, and bringing it into subjection. And may God help us to use all the means in our power for securing ourselves from our greatest enemy.
ACTS XX: 21
"Testifying both to the Jews, and also the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."
This verse is a part of St. Paul's account of his own ministry at the city of Ephesus in Asia. He revisits them after having spent three years of labor among them, and in his address to them he reminds them of his manner of life among them, and recounts the substance of his preaching among them; and the burden of his preaching was as is stated in the text: "Repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."
And the first point to be noticed is that St. Paul made no difference among men; he was no respecter of persons or classes. You all know the Jews were the church people of that day. They not only claimed to be the pious of that day, but they claimed to be the only pious people, and the only ones qualified to teach others. But Paul, finding their religion was altogether outward and formal, as is the religion of many of the church people to-day, preached to them just as he did to the vilest of the heathens around them, the necessity of repentance, of turning from their sins and passions to God, with self-abhorrence and hope of mercy and pardon. And in this he has only followed the example of his Divine Master; for Christ said to Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, a sort of reverend doctor of divinity, "Except ye be born again, ye can not enter into the kingdom of God." (John iii., 3.) And so now it makes no difference if you belong to the Catholic church or the Episcopal church or the Methodist church, or any or all others, it will do you absolutely no good at all if you have not repented of your sins and evil doings and turned to God in prayer and hope for grace to enable you to live above the power of sin. But, in the next place, Paul said he preached "repentance toward God." It is God, then, whom you have offended by your sins. As David says in the fifty-first Psalm, "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight." And because you have sinned against God, you must repent toward God, and as in the sight of Him who sees and knows all, even the secret thoughts and passions and purposes of the heart. God is judge, and God is a consuming fire. But what is it to repent? Ordinarily, when we hear persons speak of repentance, we think at once about being sorry and of feeling a deep grief because we have done wrong; and some of us think it means to weep and moan and to be afflicted with an awful bitterness of soul because of our sins, when we hear any one speak of repentance in a religious sense. And, indeed, this may be the kind of repentance which many people have, and doubtless do have. But there may be true repentance without this extreme sorrow for sin, provided there is enough sorrow for sin and hatred of sin and dread of sin to turn away from it, and to at once and forever forsake it. Nor must you wait for this extreme sorrow, which you may have heard others speak of, but if you are convinced of the evil of sin and the baseness of sin and the ruinousness of sin, then cease to follow it, cease to practice it, and cease at once, however much it may cost you to do so. The old prophet, speaking to the Jews who came with sighs and groans and tears to God's altar, but without mending their ways, says, "Cease to do evil, learn to do right, put away the evil from you." And John the Baptist says, "Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance," that is, such fruit as will show that you have indeed and in heart turned away from evil and from sin. Meanwhile, ask God to help you repent, tell Him you are nothing but sin and that you look to Him for grace to repent right and to turn away from all sin. And as long as you cleave to one sin, you need not expect to get any relief. Many give up one thing and another, but think they can hold on to one sin – one darling sin, one idolized sin – and that God will excuse this one, if they give up all others. "But be not deceived; God is not mocked," nor can you trifle with Him. Having thus let go your hold of sin, of your secret darling sins, and turned away from them with hope of mercy from God, you can trust in Jesus Christ, His Son crucified for your sins, and in your stead, and you will surely have peace, and that quickly.
Observe, Paul says he preached faith, not in God the Father, but faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus that God reconciles the world unto Himself, And if you do not accept Jesus and trust in God's mercy, as shown in Jesus, you will get no relief and no peace. God has promised nothing outside of Jesus. But He has promised everything to him who accepts Jesus Christ's suffering and sacrifice as the sufficient and satisfactory penalty due to his own sins, and believes that Jesus bore his sins in His body on the cross. If Jesus satisfied Paul, He ought to satisfy you, and be worthy of your confidence and trust and worship. Turn from sin, then, with humility and shame that you have so long grieved God, and trust in Jesus, and Jesus alone, and keep doing so for days if necessary, and you can not, and shall not, fail to obtain salvation.
ON SELF-DENIAL
LUKE IX: 23
"And He said unto them all, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me."
Religion depends on this more than on any other one thing. If we are willing to give up all our own preferences and to deny all our desires and inclinations, we shall not have much trouble at any other point. The greatest hindrance to getting religion or keeping religion is our own desire for ease, comfort and self-gratification, and our aversion to enduring any hardship or privation or suffering. The reason why self-denial is necessary is that our very nature is corrupted and diseased and we are blinded by sin. Once the will of man was the same as the will of God; but, since the fall, the will of man and that of God are directly opposed; and if we live according to God's will, we must go directly against our own.
Self-denial is necessary in avoiding sin to which we are inclined and which we find give us pleasure.
But it is necessary also, when no sin or temptation is present, to preserve that frame of mind which keeps us in readiness for temptation and enables us to resist it when it does come.
A constant habit of self-denial is necessary to make us proof against the gradual and unperceived approach of sin either in the form of coldness and distaste for religion, or sloth, or a desire to gratify the flesh. So Paul (I. Cor. ix., 27) said he kept his body under and brought it into subjection, lest even he, through the deceitfulness of sin, should become a castaway.
It follows that self-denial is absolutely necessary to growing in grace. We are mistaken if we imagine we are growing in grace, when we are practicing no self-denial. Jesus said (Luke ix., 23): "If any man will come after Me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily." Now what does that word "daily" mean in this connection? Indeed growth in piety is a growing out of self so that self is crucified, as Paul says he was.
Self-denial must be practiced then.
1. In abstaining from sins of all kinds.
2. In performing all our duties of religion, however hard and unpleasant they may be, as attending all church services, ordinances, etc., and giving according to your ability.
3. In practicing private prayer however hard and distasteful it may be at first. Some men have prayed three hours a day in secret, as, for example, Luther.
4. In abstinence from food, i. e., fasting; and sometimes from sleep when it is necessary to have time to pray, etc.
Get the upper hand of your animal nature and keep it by daily self-denial and you will mount up with wings as eagles, you will run and not be weary, you will walk and not faint.
I. JOHN III: 5
"And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins; and in Him is no sin."
These are Christmas days. This is the period of the year that is celebrated as the anniversary of the birth of Jesus. I fear that if some stranger from a foreign land, who knew nothing of the character of Jesus and His history and nothing of Christianity, were to happen in our midst during this Christmas time, he would think, from the character of our festivities and the kind of our demonstrations, that we were either, by our bonfires and guns and rockets and fireworks, celebrating some warlike hero who, in the midst of belching cannon and blazing musketry, had delivered his country from peril, or else that we were, by our revelry and dissipation and debauchery and riot, celebrating some heathen god of pleasure like Bacchus, the Roman god of the wine cup. And it is strange – unaccountably strange – that men should so pervert the sacred Christmas time into a season of unusual and disgraceful indulgence in sin. What does our text say? "He was manifested to take away our sins." "He was manifested;" what does that mean? Oh, it means more than you and I will give ourselves time to fully take in. It is said that the angels desire to look into the wonderful fact of the condescension of Jesus Christ, the prince of princes, in becoming man in order to save sinners. But though angels thus desire, very few of us, for whom this wonderful humiliation was suffered, give enough time or attention to it to either understand it or care much about it. We are too much occupied with these lower things to take any special interest in things infinitely higher.
Paul, in the second chapter of the Philippians, tells us how Jesus humbled himself. Let us see verse 5: "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant, and humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, yea even unto the death of the cross."
Christ, then, was the equal of God, the Father, worshipped by angels; and yet He consented to become man, and so be made "a little lower than the angels." But He not only became man, He became a servant among men. So His life was one of lowly service and unremitting toil for others. He once girded Himself with a towel and washed the feet of His disciples. But He not only became man and servant to man, He went to a deeper depth of humiliation than any other ever descended to: He suffered as an evil-doer, though in fact He was the only good and pure man that ever lived. "He was numbered among the transgressors," though He was guilty of no transgression, and He descended down to the bottom floor of disgrace – He was nailed on a cross and left there to die as you hang the worst criminals by the neck till they are dead.
Yes, He was born poor; He lived in toil and sorrow and died in shame: the Prince of Glory did all this. But, stop and ask, Why did He endure all this when He might and could have avoided it? Let God answer: "Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities; all we like sheep had gone astray, and the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah lviii., 4, 6.) Yes, "He was manifested to take away our transgressions" in the sense that He suffered in our stead for those transgressions that are past. But what good would it do to forgive sinners if they were not changed and renewed, so that they could have the power in the future to abstain from sin? What good would it do for God to say to a drunkard, "Your sins are forgiven" if He did not at the same time so change that drunkard as to make him able to keep from drinking in the future? What good to forgive the past sins of a debauchee or a liar or a gambler or a thief or a murderer if, at the same time, their hearts were not so changed that they would and could keep from sinning again? It would do no good, for they would go straight into the sins they had been practicing. Well, does Jesus make provision for this? Yes, He does. He was manifested not only to take away the guilt of our transgressions, but also their power over us. Do we not read in the Scripture that if the Son shall make us free we shall be free indeed? Jesus promised a mighty agent which should work in the hearts of men and renew their natures. I, myself, am as different a man as if I had been blotted out of existence and born again a new creature. And these are the very expressions the Scripture uses for describing the wonderful change. This, then, is what Jesus was born in poverty, lived in sorrow and died in shame for, and at this time of remembrance and rejoicing He makes appeal to you:
"I gave my life for thee, my precious blood I shed
That thou mightest ransomed be, and quickened from the dead.
My Father's house of light, my glory-circled throne,
I left, for earthly night, far wanderings, sad and lone.
I've borne it all for thee; what hast thou borne for me?"
NEW YEAR'S SERMON
DEUTERONOMY VIII: 2-11
The people of Israel had journeyed long and wearily since leaving Egypt. For forty years they had wandered and now at last had come to the borders of the Promised Land. Only the narrow Jordan was between them and the Canaan of their hopes. They were encamped upon the eastern bank of this river and were only awaiting orders to pass over and possess the goodly land which lay before them. And Moses, who was not to cross over with them, but to be buried in the land of Moab, gives this parting address to them. They were just passing from one stage of their journey to another and they need to be reminded of the past and instructed and warned as to the future.
So he says:
"Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord hath led thee these forty years."
1. They were to remember the trials and temptations they had. The object of these, he says (verse 2), was to humble them and to prove them that they might know what was in their hearts. And so, my brother, if during the past year, or during your past life, you have had trials and temptations, it was that you might learn your own weakness, a hard lesson for proud mortals to learn, and so be humbled to distrust yourself and seek help from God. And if you have had sorrow or bereavement it was for the same purpose, that you might learn to give up seeking perfect happiness in anything or any creature on earth and seek it in God. And have not some of you learned this lesson or are you not beginning to learn it at last? Have not the sins and the sorrows of your past life humbled you and at last brought you to feel your need of God? But another object of these past experiences of trial was to prove what was in your heart. A man does not know what there is in his heart till temptation brings it out. He does not know how bad it is. I thought I was patient; but when temptation came, I found my heart had much impatience in it. I thought I was humble and did not think highly of myself till people began to praise me and I found I enjoyed it and loved it and I was not humble.
2. But they were to remember God's goodness to them also (see verses 3 and 4). He had fed them Himself with manna and kept their clothes from wearing out and their feet from swelling. And so you are to remember the goodness of God to you during the past year and during your past life. Remember how He has spared you in the midst of your wickedness as He spared me in my neglect of Him for forty years, and how He has furnished you many blessings and would have given you more, but you would not. And if He has allowed your wickedness to bring you into trouble and distress, it is to cause you to stop and reflect upon your ways and turn from them unto Him for deliverance and true happiness. Thus you are to recall, from the past year and from your past life, your sins and sorrows, and God's manifold mercies to you.
II. But, just entering upon this new year, you are to look ahead also, even as the Israelites were to look ahead to the goodly land into which the Lord was going to bring them (see verses 7, 8 and 9).
1. God promises you much, my brother, on condition that you follow Him and obey Him. He promises to bless you temporally and spiritually, and to give you happiness – a goodly possession – if you, for your part, give yourself up, unreservedly to His directions. He has done much for me, since I began to follow and obey Him years ago.
2. Moses ends his discourse with a solemn warning (verse 11). Beware that you forget not the Lord your God, and go at any time to trusting to yourself or any earthly help.
ON AFFLICTION AND SUFFERING
LAMENTATIONS, III: 32-33
"32. But though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.
"33. For He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men."
There is a vast deal of suffering and of sorrow in the world, and the most of it, if not all, is due directly or indirectly to sin as the cause. Sin is followed by suffering, as for example, intemperance ruins the health and brings on a slavery worse in some cases than death; and sensuality is often followed by loathsome and painful diseases. Thus God declares His feeling towards sin in these sufferings that result from it. He has set up a barrier to keep men from the practice of it. But we will consider how afflictions and sufferings may all be overruled to the good of the sufferer and his deliverance from the evil of sin.
1. Sufferings which are the direct effect of sin have a tendency to make us turn away from sin. For example, the poverty and distress of the Prodigal son were the cause of his returning to his Father. So it was with Jack Harrington and others whom we know.
2. But sufferings and misfortunes which are not the direct effect of sin stir up the memory to a recollection of past sins, and excite a remorse for them. For example, a lady who is the wife of a whisky dealer told her husband she believed that their losses and misfortunes were judgments sent on them for being in that business.
3. Sometimes it takes the greatest and most prolonged suffering to conquer man's stubbornness and independence of God. But suffering humbles him, and, his pride being out of the way, he has no more trouble.
4. Sorrow that is too great for any earthly consolation leads the sorrowing one to seek comfort in God. One of the greatest and best preachers of Germany was thus led to God by the loss of his young wife. So parents are brought to God by the death of children and children by the death of parents.
5. Sometimes suffering is necessary to wean us from some idol which we would not otherwise be willing to give up.
6. Sometimes when we forget God and become absorbed in the world, nothing but some affliction will make us come to ourselves and turn again to God with repentance and consecration. Read Psalm cxix., 67-75.
The case of Sister P – , at Portland, was one of this kind. She was a backslider and put off her return to God and kept putting it off. But she had a great sorrow. Her son left home under a cloud, her son's wife lost her mind and then died, and her son was put in prison. To this was added her own bad health. These things broke the spell of the world, woke her up from her apathy and made her seek God with all her heart and she found Him again, and died in great peace and triumph.
7. Then suffering purifies us and develops us and prepares us for work we could not otherwise do. "Tribulation worketh patience." What excellent training I got when I rubbed the engine for a dollar and a half a day. It brought patience and resignation and a better preparation for the work I am doing than any other sort of experience, perhaps, could have given me.
REVELATIONS XXI: 3
"And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God."
The subject suggested by the text is, the future and final conquest of the world by the Church of Christ, and the rest and reward of that church in Heaven.
And the Scriptures do teach that, in time, all nations shall learn righteousness. The time is coming when neighbor shall not say to neighbor, "Know ye the Lord," but when all shall know Him, from the least to the greatest; and the knowledge of God shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the deep. When this blessed time is to be, and what are to be the signs of its approach, are not questions for us to attempt to discuss here to-day, though we may be allowed to say that the Gospel is being preached to more people to-day that at any former period in the history of the church. There is a missionary zeal in the church to-day that has not been paralleled in all her history. There is not only a readiness among heathen people to hear the Gospel, but there seems to be a positive hunger for it, and within the last few years the Gospel has penetrated to the interior of nations and continents that were previously inaccessible. Certainly the church is more aggressive and bold in her plans and operations to-day than ever before. And if it be a prophecy of the not distant conquest of the world to the reign of Christ, we take courage, and say: "God speed the day!" It is well for us to pause now, and to reflect upon the reward promised to us in the end of our course. We do not give enough attention to this. To study about it; to learn what we do not know concerning it; to realize the unspeakable blessedness of that state would make us more patient in waiting, more cheerful in suffering, more earnest and active and untiring in our efforts to help others to the attainment and enjoyment of it.
Heaven, then, is represented in the Bible as a place of perfect beauty, perfect security, perfect rest and perfect joy.
It is so represented as to appeal to the desires and longings of all classes of people. To the inhabitant of the city, what could be more pleasing than the freedom and freshness and beauty of the country? So heaven is described as having its landscapes, with its fruit-bearing trees, its crystal rivers and gurgling fountains. But for the rustic peasant, it is said to be a resplendent city, with walls of sapphire and gates of pearl and streets of gold.
But in some respects we are all alike.
We want to be free from sin and danger.
To a Christian heart, sin is the most abhorred and dreadful of all things. It gives more pain and causes more darkness than any other cause; and the fear of it causes more suspense than the fear of all bodily suffering.
But in heaven we shall be free from sin, and free from all fear of sin and all liability to sin. For nothing that defileth or maketh a lie can ever enter there; and they who are so happy as to gain heaven shall go out no more forever.