Ecclesiastes Christians

There are three types of people in this world: those with a saved life, but a lost soul; those with a saved soul, but lost life; and those with both a saved soul and saved life. During the time of this transitory experience in Solomon’s life of which he writes, he would fit into the second category of the above three mentioned.

Life at best can be perplexing at times. Hard to understand, let alone control. When we attempt to comprehend things from the human standpoint, we’re standing in the wrong place. As David said, “When I thought to know this, it [was] too painful for me.” That is, until he looked at it from God’s perspective.

It is not looking at the things under the sun, but unto Him above the sun. The Ecclesiastes Christian says, “Life is not worth living.” The Spiritual Christian, “Life is worth living.” The first finds life without God is gloomy; the second, life with God is glorious! You cannot enjoy life to its fullest without the Giver of Life’s breath upon you.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

 R.D. Sandlin

Honorable Men and Women

The Bible speaks of both honorable men and women. And these were not honest because it was the best policy, but, for them, there was no other policy. There is only one avenue open to this sort of glowing character.  

Ludwig van Beethoven said, “To me, the highest thing after God is my honor.” Honest folks are not without faults, but they are without guile. As another has said, “The worse mistake an honest man or woman can make is an honest mistake.”

In the movie, Rob Roy, a son asks his father, “Father, what is honor?” To which the parent answered, “Son, honor is something a man gives himself, and no one can take it from him.” “An honest man or woman is the noblest work of God,” says one.

“I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an “honest man.” (George Washington)

 R.D. Sandlin

Let's Pray About It-No!

I understand the conventional and acceptable thing to say in any situation is, “Let’s pray about it.” But woe be to the man or woman who suggests, “Let’s think about it first.” Behind all meaningful prayer you will find sanctified thought. Think it through, then pray it through.

When Paul mentions making our requests known to God, it necessitates prior thought. Esther was ready to make her request known to the king when asked, because she had thought her petition through. We give more thought to what we will request of a banker than our King.

My wife and I visited a church some years ago and I was asked by the pastor to lead the congregation in prayer. I hesitated a few moments to gather my thoughts. While I was doing so, he once again asked, thinking I had not heard him.

I wonder sometimes when some of us come to God in prayer, if He doesn’t ask the angels, “What will this babbler say?”

R.D. Sandlin

Monotony in Prayer

Take Christ out of our service to God and you find boredom; leave Him out of your prayers and you’re faced with monotony. Prayer, like the Bible, is to be Christological to the core. One reason our prayers, both privately and publically, are so dry and dull is because there is so little of Jesus in them.

What a wilderness we make of our prayer life when, as one old divine puts it, we have “untheological devotions.” Paul was a great intellect, as well as theologian, but we see Paul at his very best in his prayers. I read recently somewhere that Paul was our master teacher in divinity, but especially in devotion. He fell asleep at night full of praise and prayer to Christ Jesus, and in the morning he began again where he had left off the previous night.

I encourage each of you to take note, when reading Paul’s epistles, how he fills his prayers with the person of Jesus Christ. Nowhere will you see this man’s magnificent mind and great heart revealed more than in his prayers. It was, Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus, Jesus, my Lord, Christ Jesus, Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ, in every prayer of his. He knew how to get God’s ear; he incessantly bragged on His Son. Nothing will endear God to a man or woman like constantly speaking to Him of His only begotten Son.

God never tires in hearing such prayers. And you can always be assured of an immediate audience when such prayers are offered up!

R.D. Sandlin

The Majority Report

“If God be for us, who [can be] against us?

When God is for you, your minority status moves up to majority. Dr. Bob Jones Sr. used to tell his preacher boys, “When you and God enter a town, you’re with the majority.” Therefore, the popular saying, “Daniel in the lion’s den,” to be Biblically correct, should be, “The lions in Daniel’s den.” God is not now, nor has He ever been, or will He be in the future, in the minority.

God is the supreme eternal majority: He can out wit, out vote, out fight, out think, out maneuver, out last, and out run, any and all, from eternity to eternity. He always has the last say and deciding vote in every situation. If God is against you, it matters not who is for you. Ask Pharaoh.

Jesus was always conscious of the fact that His crowd was in the majority. On one occasion, He mentioned He could call twelve legions of angels if He so desired, and God would presently supply them. If you use a Roman legion as a standard, that would be 72,000 angels. The full strength of a legion was 6,000 men. You might recall in the Old Testament one angel killing 185,000 of His people’s enemy.

Elisha’s Prayer

“And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not: for they that [be] with us [are] more than they that [be] with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain [was] full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.”

ONE MAN OR WOMAN OF GOD IS THE MAJORITY!

R.D. Sandlin

 

 

Lifetime Repentance

“God...granted repentance unto life.”

When the Methodist preacher, William Taylor, was asked what he would choose for a gift in his old age, he answered, “Repentance unto life.” In his book, The Apostle Paul, Alexander Whyte writes, “If you are well read in Paul’s old-age Epistles you will find far more repentance unto life in his last years, than even in his years of immediate conversion and remorse. You meet with an ever deeper bitterness at sin, and at himself, as time goes on with Paul: and, then, a corresponding amazement at God’s mercy.”

Studying Paul’s Christian life from start to finish you’ll find the following: at the beginning he says, he is “the least of the apostles”; later on, that he is “less than the least of all saints”; then, as an old man, declares, “I am chief [of sinners].” It is well to remember, “Christ in you,” does not negate the sin that is in you. The more Christ fills our lives the more sinful we will see ourselves to be. The Biblical principle is that light manifests darkness. This, seeing one’s sinfulness, is not a bad thing, but rather a good thing. It is here we learn true mercy and grace!

When a saint believes he or she is getting worse in God’s sight, in reality, they are getting better.”

Faith without Frills

Showing no disrespect, but real, honest to goodness, down to earth faith, is a “Plain Jane.” You might say, “There is no beauty that we should desire [her].” She is not “dolled up,” to make her more attractive. She never calls attention to herself.

True faith is modest, simple, unadorned and basic. She is not a party girl; she is a working girl. She works seven days a week, and if she isn’t working, she dies. Her job is serving as a messenger girl who carries our requests to the front office.

Whenever she is used as the means of making our “wants and wishes” known to the “ONE” in charge, you can be sure she will return with one of two things for the recipient. The desired thing we longed for, or a peace that passes all understanding that will keep our hearts and minds.

“The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.” (William James)

R.D. Sandlin

 

"The Book" and the Books

Most certainly, the Bible is the, “Book of Books!” But this does not abnegate all other books. Even Heaven has other books in its library. Paul was pre-eminently a man of “One Book,” but that does not mean it was the only book he read. Luke records he was familiar with the poets.   

As an old man shut up in prison, and on his last leg, so to speak, he told Timothy to bring his books and the parchments.  The aged saint was reading and writing up till the end. As Calvin said, “Paul has not lost his delight in books, even when he is near his death.”

Good books can make us better people. How many from the past, to this present, give testimony to the fact that it was a certain book that turned their whole life around. Paul seems to bears this truth out. “Give attendance to reading...that thy profiting may appear to all.”

Thomas Boston wrote concerning his reading of good books. “I plied my books. After earnestly plying my books, I felt my heart begin to grow better. I always find that my health and my heart are the better according as I ply my books.”

What about Lot?

“And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked... (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed [his] righteous soul from day to day with [their] unlawful deeds;)... The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.”

When we read God delivered “just Lot,” it doesn’t mean only Lot, for others came out of Sodom with him. The word “just” is used here as in justified. The context supports this by the kindred words righteous and godly.

Professing Christians sometimes like to use Lot to defend their sinning and to prove eternal security. But, I’d remind such of the old camp meeting preacher’s statement, “Eternal security only works if you’re saved.”

The question is not, “Can a Christian sin?” The question is, “Can a Christian sin and get by with it?” Hebrews tells us if one does, and goes without any type of chastening, “then are [they] bastards, and not sons.” That is, they don’t have a heavenly Father!

But the test goes much deeper than a fear of God hurting you for sinning; it comes down to a fear of you hurting God by your sinning. David said, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” There were others involved in David’s sin, yet, as far as he was concerned, it was his God who stood at the front of the line.

When I was a pastor and one of my flock doubted his or her salvation because of some horrendous sin he or she had committed, I asked only one question, “How did you feel when you sinned?” If the answer was “Awful,” they were safe-home. If there was no sensitivity, they had no home.

The word “vexed” in our above text comes from a French word, which in turn is taken from the Latin. It means: “To agitate, to trouble, afflict, harass, distress, provoke.” Again I would ask, “How do you feel when you sin?” 

It Was Good Advice

Many years ago, while serving as a pastor, I like many preachers had my share of church problems. The most trying being when a segment of influential members left. After their departure, I continued opening the sore, so to speak, in my messages. One of my best parishioners met with me and revealed that he and his family would be leaving our assembly. When asked why, referring to our past troubles, he said, “Preacher, it’s over, but you won’t let go of it.”

I had allowed the painful past to be a part of what should have, and could have, been a pleasant present. I kept my shovel handy so I could visit the graveyard daily to dig up the putrefying corpse of yesterday. I refused to heed Paul’s words, “Forgetting those things which are behind.” Like the maniac of Gadara I dwelt among the tombs. And can you believe, I wondered why I didn’t feel alive. But thank God, I finally woke up, cast aside my grave-clothes, and began again living among the living.

Maybe some of my reader’s need also to heed my friend’s advice, and leave the cemetery behind them.   

Have a Seat

“Sit ye here, while I go...yonder.”

While ministering in Ireland many years ago, I had a great Bible truth ingrained in me while watching shepherds with their sheepdogs on a mountainside. The two were inseparable, except for those times the master would command his companion to “sit.” Then, old faithful would stay, even if her friend left her sight. She would not move until hearing his order to do so or a gesture from him to indicate she should.

One of the great lessons of the Christian life is to learn simply to sit.  Mary is a good example of this. When Jesus came to town, her sister Martha, “ran” to meet Him. But it is recorded of Mary, “Mary sat [still] in the house.” And she did not move until being told, “The Master is come, and calleth for thee...As soon as she heard [that], she arose quickly, and came unto him.”

It takes a strong person to sit still. Isaiah puts it this way, “Their strength is to sit still.” Wise Naomi knew this. She told Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall: for the man will not be in rest, until he have finished the thing this day.” And so it is with our heavenly Boaz!

All the fuss of life is gone once we “sit still” and let Him engineer things.