3. Self-Honesty – the Best Policy! Psalm 73:3-4

Text: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.  Know ye not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?  But I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates (rejected of God).”

2 Corinthians 13:5-6.

Good morning, often weary, but self-honest Christian!  Show me the professing Christian who NEVER feels totally weary, utterly discouraged, and sometimes almost in deep despair – and I will show you someone who has never really been engaged in the privilege of Spiritual warfare against the world, the flesh, and the Devil.  No pain, no gain!

Living a genuine Christian life is described in Scriptures as a profound and continual warfare, and this is the reason that the Living Lord God grants us a full set of Spiritual armour which we must place upon ourselves daily – if we are to war a good warfare in Christ’s service.

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.  Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil…Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.  Stand therefore…loins girt about with truth…the breastplate of righteousness; feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace…the shield of faith…the helmet of Salvation…the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God; continual fervent prayer…”  (Ephesians 6:10-20)

But who would ever want to live such a life of constant warfare, constantly being on guard, perpetual watching, and seeking God’s face, and serving a Saviour/Lord Who has suffered on a cruel Roman Cross, died, rose again from the dead three days later, and, after showing Himself alive to a chosen group of His disciples and followers, gone back Home again to Heaven, with the instruction that we, ‘His people’ must now wait patiently for His return, and contend for faith in Him, in a most hostile world, while we do so?  It seems an almost impossible task!  (Luke 1:37)

However, the Lord God does not leave us without His Spirit; His Presence; and His protection and peace.  Praise His Name!  This is why “…many be called, but few chosen…” to be Christ’s followers; and for that same Scriptural reason, “…narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it…” (Matthew7:14)  (Matthew 20:16)

Without the Living Lord’s Divine empowerment, we could not dare to be ‘the children of God’ in a world so steeped in anti-Christianity, disobedience to God, and gross sin.

“But as many received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His Name.”  (John 1:12)

Is it, therefore, any wonder that the genuine Christian sometimes falls into the fault of looking all around us, and beginning to subtly ‘envy’ the ‘prosperity of the wicked’, unsaved?  God’s Word teaches us that we must always lay aside such envious practice.

“Wherefore (a conclusion) laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speaking, as new born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word that ye may grow thereby: if so that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”  (1 Peter 2:1-3)

Self-honesty is always the best policy for true, Spiritually regenerate, Christians – for we can never adjust a personal fault, if we refuse to honestly accept that we have it.

We Christians do often become quite envious of non-Christians.  They don’t seem to have the same level of stresses daily; they seem quite content to watch the world and all around them deteriorate into a quagmire of sin, and lust, and perverted filth.  It gives them little offence, because deep down where it matters in their hearts, this is the kind of sinful world they really desire to live in. 

Heaven would be Hell for those not Spiritually enlightened and saved by the precious Blood of Christ Jesus!  Sinners must be made fit to dwell in a Holy Heaven, wherein no sin dwells.  Christ Creates us ‘new creatures’ fit to dwell Eternally with Him in Heaven.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he/she is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold (Look, and fully understand), all things are become new.  And all things are of God, Who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation (the glorious Gospel of Christ, and Him Crucified for sinners).”  (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)

Verse 3. “For I was envious at the foolish. It is a pitiful thing that an heir of Heaven should have to confess, ‘I was envious,’ but worse still that he should have to put it, ‘I was envious at the foolish.’ Yet this acknowledgement is, we fear, due from most of us.” (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 313)

Furthermore, I would humbly add, that we Christians should never be envious at the foolish, unsaved, world all around us – for their foolishness in not receiving Christ as Saviour and Lord is, for them, an Eternal foolishness; a foolishness that will haunt their every thought as they languish, forever tormented, in the Lake of Fire.

There are no unbelievers in Hell, dear Reader.  They all now believe there, but also know it is Eternally hopeless for them to do anything about it, once death escorts them to their Eternal habitation.  Oh that men/women would cry out to the Lord NOW for Salvation!

“Who would envy a malefactor’s going up a high ladder and being mounted above the rest of the people when it is only for a little and in order to his being turned over and hanged?  That is just the case of wicked men who are mounted up high in prosperity; for it is so only that they may be cast down deeper into destruction.” (John Willison 1680-1750)

Verse 4. “For there are no bands in their death. The notion is still prevalent that a quiet death means a happy hereafter. The Psalmist had observed that the very reverse is true.  Careless persons become case-hardened and continue presumptuously secure, even to the last.” (C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, page 314)

 “Men may die like lambs and yet have their places forever with the goats.” (Matthew Henry, 1662-1714)

Thought: “We suffer with Him, that we may be glorified together.” (Romans 8:17-18)