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Eighth sermon in series on "Apostasy, ” based on
the book of Plalachi.
TEXT, Mai. 2:17: “Ye have wearied the Lord with
your words. Yet ye say, wherein have we wearied
him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good
in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them;
or where is the God of judgment?”
N our last study on the Apostasy of Is
rael as contained in the book of Mala
chi, we dealt with the sin of treachery.
We saw how treacherous the people of
God had gotten and for their treachery
how God punished them, and now we
come to deal with a sin closely related
to it and yet a sin of far wider range;
a sin that is applicable to more people
I
and conditions and times than perhaps at first
thought we will be impressed to believe. It is the
sin of flattery. The ungodly Israel had come to the
place where she was vain over her position, herself,
her prestige; she had come to the place where she
thought that there was no other people that had
any rights; that hers was the first right always to
be considered; and wherever there was seemingly
a disposition to forget her rights, placing the rights
of others first, it was a pretense; and this, of course,
led to still worse conditions. Israel, by reason of
her position, of her wealth and prestige, was ambi
tious; her ambition was for still greater power;
still greater wealth; still greater social position,
and she went almost wild in her effort to obtain
this. She forgot that there was a God of justice
and judgment. She stultified her conscience until
it became seared. She could not or would not de
termine right from wrong, and in her ambition and
her desire for gain it became easy for her to flatter
ungodly people for gain’s sake. They were after
what these ungodly men or women had, and found
it easy to deal in flattery and fawning with them,
and for tr ‘s God registers in this prophecy a tre
mendous protest and a threatened judgment, the
severity of which we will see if we read the next
chapter.
THE CHURCHES SIN.
But for a time our purpose is to consider this
phase of Israel’s sin in its relation to the life of our
own people, and our own time, and I unhesitatingly
say to you, my friends, that this sin of Israel’s is
a common sin with us today, and I am sorry to say
it is a sin that is common to the Christian Church,
the sin of flattering tne ungodly for the purpose
of gaining what the ungodly has got.
There are two great sins which are exact oppo
sites, and one to which, it seems to me, most Chris
tian people are addicted. The first is the sin of
over-sensitiveness with respect to sin itself. Os
course, not many people are guilty of this sin, but
those that are are very conspicuous. They do vast
harm to the cause that they love. When our fore
fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, they landed there
in a country that offered to them opportunities for
the propagation of the gospel such as have never
been offered to any other foreigners landing upon a
shore. They had come from an environment that
was very severe. In that environment they had been
tremendously persecuted and punished for their con
victions, and they sought the free atmosphere of
this country, and those people who had not been al
lowed religious liberty, like a pendulum, swing to
the other extreme; they who had not been allowed
to express an opinion in religion matters, now be
came very censorious, even to the extent of being
Phariseeical. It is on record in a New England
town that a man was arrested on the Sabbath day
for baking a pone of bread for his dog who had been
out all the previous day and all night and had noth
ing to eat, and that man was tried and convicted
for violating the Sabbath. This under the reign of
this Puritan sensoriousness. It is also a matter of
record in another New England town that a man
was arrested, tried and convicted for shooting a mad
hog which was chasing a child on the Sabbath day.
FLATTENING THE UNGUDffT
The Golden Age For January 27, 1910.
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len 6 'Broughton, D. I).
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
He had violated the Sabbath. This was because of
the narrowness of the people that actually wanted
to do good. And we find today, in every church,
especially where there is an aggressive atmosphere,
a development of this narrow, censorious, hypocrit
ical, Phariseeical spirit that does more harm than
we can estimate. They are self-appointed censors,
trying to make everybody conform to their opinions
and abide by their decisions. They go around look
ing after other people’s affairs.
I have a friend, a minister, who is so unfortunate
as to have lost an eye. He has a glass one, and it
can hardly be detected. One day, a believer in a so
called “divine healing” came to my friend, after he
had finished his sermon, and said, “Oh, Doctor
Blank, I wish you would get faith enough in God to
give hin the privilege of taking that glass eye out
of your head and putting in a good eye.” He said,
“Yes, and I wish you would get faith enough to take
those false teeth out of your mouth and put a new
set in, or at least tighten them so that they wouldn’t
wiggle when you talk to me.” That is the way they
get; they forget their own shortcomings and are al
ways taking care of other people’s. 1 feel that the
kingdom of real substantial vital godliness has been
set back more by this narrow, over-censorious and
hypocritical element in our churches than we have
ever yet dreamed of.
And the other sin that I spoke of as contrasted
with this is one that more people are guilty of. It
is the sin of over-liberalism. If I know anything
about the spirit of the present day it is that far
more than the other. And the conditions and the
causes that underlie the prominence of this thing
are identical with those that we find in the days of
Israel, when the Prophet Malachi flung this bill of
indictment against them. We have come upon a
time when we are wild, crazy for gain. We have
just got enough to make us wild for more, and, this
is especially so, I say, in this section of our country,
in the South, where we are just beginning to get a
little bit of a taste of prosperity We are now just
beginning to reap the fruit of our labors for the last
forty-five years in this country. What is it doing
then? It is making us wild, turning our heads, setting
us on fire with this everlasting insatiable desire
for more; it is not for more money alone; it is for
more prestige, for power, social position. And the
saddest part of it is that the church is getting in the
clutches of the same sin.
“FOR BUSINESS REASONS.”
Now then, let us take a practical illustration of how
this is effecting us. A man sometime ago came to me
with this statement: “Right around the corner from
my place of business is a dwelling house, and a fam
ily is supposed to live in it; but no family lives there;
It is a dive, and every evening you can see men, and
on Sunday great crowds of men, leading men of the
town, prominent in church life, some members of
the same church I am, going into that place. What
for? Now I know, because they have told me; they
go in there to gamble. It is a great poker dive right
in the heart of the city, and what is worse than that,
the police of this city have been notified; they know
all about it; and they have never pulled it; they
never intend to; the men connected with it are too
prominent.” “Well,” said I, “why haven’t you made
a kick? Why have you allowed it to go on right at
your door? Why haven’t you gone to your pastor and
church if you can’t effect anything else?” “For busi
ness reasons I can not afford to do that,” he said.
He was a church member, a good church member; a
man who attends regularly; a man interested in the
progress of the church, and who believes in good
morals and a clean city government as much as any
man I know; he would go his length to provide it
if it did not touch his business interest, and if so,
not a peg would he budge. Now, my brethren, let
me ask you, how many of you would do like that
man did? Men and women, it is perfectly alarming,
when we get into a real, sure-enough fight against
sin, to find how many there are who take just that
kind of stand, and yet who are good church mem
bers. What is that? It is exactly the same spirit
that the Prophet Malachi is fighting. It is flattering
the ungodly. That very same man said to me, “Why
won’t I fight those fellows? Because I have a hun
dred horses to hire out.” That is his talk. God pity
the man that has to be tied down by a thing like
that.
Let us see how we stand before God in this mat
ter. Are we sufficiently imbued with divine courage
as to be able to take our stand on the side of right
without regard to popular favor, or without regard
to business? Why I have had men by the hundreds
in fights I have conducted for the cleaning up of
communities here and there, come to me and say,
“I can tell you what is going on, but you must not
use my name.” “Why?” “For business reasons.”
Now, my brethren, I may be very vulnerable in some
things, but I believe I can speak to you from my
heart and say, if I was in a business where I had
for business reasons to subscribe to a thing that
was wrong, I would get out of that business. I
would be afraid to let that thing stare me in the
face before God. I do not see how a man can get
into heaven with that kind of thing between him
and his God. It is idolatry; as much so as the
worship of a heathen idol. It is making an idol out
of your business.
I must confess that this sin is the temptation of
preachers. It comes up at times and in ways that
you have no idea, this temptation to flatter the un
godly; to pat them on the back, and all because we
want their influence or their liberality. Hot that
we endorse their conduct; we simply overlook that.
Have you ever heard anybody say, “Here is the
dearest fellow on earth,” or, “She is the finest wo
man in town,” when you knew they did not mean it?
Brethren, can’t we be honest as God’s men and
women and say, “We want whftt-
we want you for His kingdom first.”
man living a sinful life and a preacher shouXjl
fawning before me, I would feel like whipping Im;;;
or if a church should assume that attitude to me,
simply to get what I have got, I should have no re
spect for it. I should have respect for the church
that would say, “It is for you I am longing. You are
not right before God, and you know it; it is you
that I am after.”
I was helping a preacher in a meeting at one time.
We started down the street on Monday, the first day
I was there. We walked along down the street and
somehow his people seemed to be out on dress-pa
rade that day, and they were nice people, as the
world counts nice, but they were not any nicer than
lots of other people that the world knows nothing
about. We would meet them, and he would say,
“Come here; I want you to meet the finest woman
in town.” We would go a little further and he would
say, “Wait a moment; I want you to meet the finest
woman in town.” He introduced me about fifteen
times to “the finest woman in town.” I finally got
tired of it and said, “Look here; do you know what
the superlative degree means?” The older I get, the
more I study the will and plan and purpose of God,
the more I feel that what we are needing today is
a bit of manly Christianity; a Christianity that
stands on its feet and squares itself on its heel
and dares to say exactly what it thinks, and trusts
in God Almighty to take care of the results.
INSINCERITY.
Take the social world and you will find another
opportunity for the expression of the spirit of our
times, and especially among our women. Oh, how
hard it is today for a woman of refinement, of high
social posiaon, just to come squarely out and
take her position with reference to things that she
knows to be wrong. How much disposed they are
to flatter those that they know to be ungodly. Any
woman that will play cards for prizes is a gambler,
an ungodly woman; and yet see how these good
women, good church women, get around such women
and “she is the sweetest thing in the world;” never
a word about her card-playing. I know a woman, a
member of my church, she told me this herself, who
was asked to take part in a card-playing meet and
did not have the nerve to come out and say that she
believed it was wrong; instead, she said, “Why if I
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