Flesh, Warring With

“FLESH, WARRING WITH”

“The sins which we thought had utterly left us are hunting us behind, while impassible floods block up the way. Even trembling Israel halting by the Red Sea is but a faint emblem of that terrible position into which the child of God usually falls, within a few weeks or months after he

has come out of the land of Egypt.  I shall preach this morning a sermon, which I hope will be useful to such of you as have lately come to know the Lord. You were expecting to build tabernacles, in which to dwell on the summit of the mountains of joy for ever; but you find, on the contrary, that you have very great troubles and conflicts; and perhaps now you have a more terrible trial than you ever experienced in all your life before. I will endeavor to show you, that this is just what you might have expected, that there will be a Red Sea very soon after you come out of your house of bondage.

These Egyptians, I think may be interpreted this morning, by way of parable, as the representatives of those sins of ours, which we thought were clean dead and gone. For a little while after conversion sin does not trouble a Christian; he is very happy and cheerful’ in a sense of pardon; but before many days are past’ he will understand what Paul said’ “I find another law in my members’ so that when I would do good’ evil is present with me.” The first moment when he wins his liberty he laughs and leaps in an ecstacy of joy. He thinks, “Oh! I shall soon be in heaven, as for sin, I can trample that beneath my feet!” But mark you’ scarce has another Sabbath gladdened his spirit, ere he finds that sin is too much for him; the old corruptions which he fancied were laid in their graves get a resurrection and start up afresh, and he begins to cry, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” He sees all his old sins galloping behind him: like Pharaoh and his host pursuing him to the borders of the Red Sea.”

[Spurgeon, MTP, Vol. 2, p. 239, 241]