The Treasury of David
Psalm 16
4Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.
The same loving heart which opens towards the chosen people is fast closed against those who continue in their rebellion against God. Jesus hates all wickedness, and especially the high crime of idolatry. The text while it shows our Lord’s abhorrence of sin, shows also the sinner’s greediness after it.
Professed believers are often slow towards the true Lord, but sinners “hasten after another god.” They run like madmen where we creep like snails. Let their zeal rebuke our tardiness. Yet theirs is a case in which the more they haste the worse they speed, for their sorrows are multiplied by their diligence in multiplying their sins.
Matthew Henry pithily says, “They that multiply gods multiply griefs to themselves; for whosoever thinks one god too little, will find two too many, and yet hundreds not enough.”
The cruelties and hardships which men endure for their false gods is wonderful to contemplate; our missionary reports are a noteworthy comment on this passage; but perhaps our own experience is an equally vivid exposition; for when we have given our heart to idols, sooner or later we have had to smart for it.
Near the roots of our self-love all our sorrows lie, and when that idol is overthrown, the sting is gone from grief. Moses broke the golden calf and ground it to powder, and cast it into the water of which he made Israel to drink, and so shall our cherished idols become bitter portions for us, unless we at once forsake them.
Our Lord had no selfishness; he served but one Lord, and served him only. As for those who turn aside from Jehovah, he was separate from them, bearing their reproach without the camp. Sin and the Saviour had no communion. He came to destroy, not to patronize or be allied with the works of the devil. Hence he refused the testimony of unclean spirits as to his divinity, for in nothing would he have fellowship with darkness.
We should be careful above measure not to connect ourselves in the remotest degree with falsehood in religion; even the most solemn of Popish rites we must abhor. “Their drink offerings of blood will I not offer.” The old proverb says, “It is not safe to eat at the devil’s mess, though the spoon be never so long.” The mere mentioning of ill names it were well to avoid,—“nor take up their names into my lips.” If we allow poison upon the lip, it may ere long penetrate to the inwards, and it is well to keep out of the mouth that which we would shut out from the heart.
If the church would enjoy union with Christ, she must break all the bonds of impiety, and keep herself pure from all the pollutions of carnal will-worship, which now pollute the service of God. Some professors are guilty of great sin in remaining in the communion of Popish churches, where God is as much dishonoured as in Rome herself, only in a more crafty manner.
The Treasury of David Psalm 16 by C.H. Spurgeon
Filed under: C.H. Spurgeon, Devotions~Quotes | Tagged: Apostasy, carnal worship, contemporary evangelical movement, ecumenicalism, end time delusion, false gods, heresy, idolatry, idols, new age Christianity, one world religion, outside the camp, Popish rites, Self Esteem Gospel, self love, The Treasury of David | 1 Comment »
