Prayer Meeting 18/3/25

The Great Stumbling Block To Devotion - Part 2

(Thomas Brooks)

Watch the Full Sermon HERE.

Well its good once again to gather some momentum with our devotional nights. Last time we met, I spoke on a work by one of my favourite puritans Thomas Brooks, which I entitled ‘The Great Stumbling Block To Devotion’. Which is fitting again this week based on what we spoke much about on Sunday.

That is the main reason really for all of the Corinthian’s issues and battles, and lack -it was down to the company they kept, coupled with the devotion they lacked. Each feed the other.

Brooks, over a course of 216 pages addresses what he calls ‘Serious And Weighty Questions Clearly And Satisfactorily Answered’. That for me is an important aspect of our Christian walk. The reason I say so, is that it’s not so common for Christians to ask themselves some serious questions. This is based on challenging and helping our devotion which includes our prayer life.

Brooks poses the question, which he then answers. It’s like a puritan Q&A:

What are the special remedies, means or helps against cherishing or keeping up any special or peculiar sin, either in heart or in life, against the Lord, or against the light and conviction of man’s own conscience.

What a question to ask ourselves. Basically the question is this: What are you actually doing, to stop justifying sin in your life? What means and actions are you implementing to stop it?

Do you have a continued means of dealing with sin, do you capture thoughts and line them up to the Word of God continually? Are you aware even, that it is sin now, as the justification and habitual unchecked actions has numbed the conscience?

Are we living a life where we are able to answer with godly satisfaction our actions? If not then your devotion will be precarious at best, non-existent mostly, and as a result you will be picking new friends.

Again it comes down to asking ourselves some serious questions.

As many of you will know, one of my favourite and go to verses in the whole of the new testament is:

2 Corinthians 10:3-6

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.

All these mindsets and strongholds shut God out, or as John MacArthur writes in his commentary:

Ideological forts in which men barricade themselves against God and the gospel.

In other words: shut out the light and truth that brings us into line with God and His ways, and keeps us on the narrow path, where we imitate Christ and not Satan; where we serve God and not the flesh.

Okay, let me pose Brooks’ second serious question. He poses 3; this is the second. The next time we meet I will pose the final one. Here is the question:

What is that faith that gives a man an interest in Christ, and in all those blessed benefits and favours that come by Christ?

So in a nutshell, what makes a man live for Christ? Where does that faith come from?

Often we compare our faith to others, we compare our walk. For many there is a walk that truly lacks faith, that has no fruit from their walk and faith. It’s a faith that is futile, it may even be in the vicinity of believers whom you see living a blessed life. But what is it that you need that you do not either have or can seem to grasp?

What is it that makes men hunger for God and yet not others?

Brooks really here is posing the first few questions of the sermon on the mount and what it is that goes on in the heart of one who is saved.

Now I know tonight I may be talking to many who are, but I’m also talking to some who are not. I’m also talking to some who are, yet act like they are not.

Brooks answers the question he poses by giving 13 answers. I will only cover 4 of them, and the last three will be brief.

Let me start by reading our puritan prayer. Tonight in going to read a different prayer from last time, even though we are in same teaching from Brooks. But really its a different subject. Tonight’s prayer comes from the ‘Valley Of Vision’ page 84, or page 47 in the paperback, and is entitled ‘Regeneration’:

O God Of The Highest Heaven, Occupy the throne of my heart, take full possession and reign supreme, lay low every rebel lust, let no vile passion resist thy holy war; manifest thy mighty power, and make me thine for ever. Thou art worthy to be praised with my every breath, loved with my every faculty of soul, served with my every act of life. Thou hast loved me, espoused me, received me, purchased, washed, favoured, clothed, adorned me, when I was worthless, vile, soiled, polluted. I was dead in iniquities, having no eyes to see thee, no ears to hear thee, no taste to relish thy joys, no intelligence to know thee; But thy Spirit has quickened me, has brought me into a new world as a new creature, has given me spiritual perception, has opened to me thy Word as light, guide, solace, joy. Thy presence is to me a treasure of unending peace; No provocation can part me from thy sympathy, for thou hast drawn me with cords of love, and dost forgive me daily, hourly. O help me then to walk worthy of thy love, of my hopes, and my vocation. Keep me, for I cannot keep myself; Protect me that no evil befall me; Let me lay aside every sin admired of many; Help me to walk by thy side, lean on thy arm, hold converse with thee, That henceforth I may be salt of the earth and a blessing to all.

Question One:

First upon search, I find myself a poor, lost, miserable and undone creature, as the scripture everywhere gives evidence.

Luke 19:10

“For the son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Ephesians 2:1-5

 And you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)

Matthew 5:3

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

It’s not the prideful, or the self-sufficient that are poor in spirit, they are still trying desperately and continually doing all to gain joy and peace, and satisfaction.

Do you know why your teenage son or daughter, or wayward work colleague is living as a rebel? It’s because they are convinced that the world can fix them. They also don’t realise how broken and lost they are.

The prodigal son wasn’t lost in his eyes, he was just wanting to go and find himself in ‘stuff’. Its only when he, and I quote:

Luke 15:17

“but when he came to himself, he said, ‘how many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!”

The key words here are “came to himself”.

In some translations it says “came to his right senses.”

Lenski wonderfully puts it:

He came to himself, he was converted in an instant. He came to himself implies, in his whole course of sin he was beside himself, not in his right mind, suffering from the species of insanity, and it’s true neither sense or reason exists in sin, but the contrary.

He adds:

Conversion means to become rational, right minded and properly balanced.

The prodigal sees himself as he is. Before, he simply lived in the same manner as we read and studied on Sunday in 1 Corinthians 15:32b (“let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”).

But he doesn’t just come to see himself as he is, but more: he starts to see the heart of the Father as He is.

As you read on in the verse we read:

“But when he came to himself, he said, ‘how many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!”

My father looks after and provides for even the poorest. That is now me. Before that, that’s not me.

How many say: ‘I’m pleased for you, that you have found peace or the answer’? - Like we are the broken ones and they are not?

Now at this junction, Lenski has said he is saved, and in essence he is, but for me he is getting slightly ahead of himself. Salvation is imminent. But at that time, all the prodigal knows is the depth of his own depravity, and how lost he truly is, and that the father is one who loves and provides, even for those that are poor.

But its only when the son receives the grace that he doesn’t deserve that he experiences the fullness of God’s goodness.

So it all starts with emptiness, brokenness, hopelessness. Hence why the modern church, word of faith, name and claim, pragmatic self-help stuff, is truly heretical. Because it says we are already good, but we just don’t know it. And it totally bypasses emptiness, and lostness and brokenness, and sin. Which in turn makes it cheap grace.

Bonhoffer wrote:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without the cross, it’s grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.

Oh how full are so many, that they need not come broken to the throne room of grace?

I’m sure we know that. But what for us as believers, are we out of that equation, does emptiness and brokenness no longer matter? Do we just go from strength to strength, or as I would put it: self to self?

Well, what was the issue in Corinth?

1 Corinthians 4:8-10

You are already full! You are already rich! You have reigned as kings without us—and indeed I could wish you did reign, that we also might reign with you! For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonoured!

They are already full. Full of sin, full of self will, full with looking elsewhere to heal brokenness. Of course, it won’t be fixed. But the more they fill their lives with bad company, and lack of devotion, the more they lose sight of how sick they are.

I mean look what they stopped noticing, look what they started embracing. They were full, and trying to be filled by the same things that the pagan culture fed on.

Okay

Question two:

What goes on in the heart of man gives that man interest and desire for Christ, that leads to salvation and blessing?

Brooks writes:

I am convinced that it is not in myself to deliver myself out of this lost, miserable and forlorn estate.

Brooks adds that the person who comes to that state of mind knows that, and I quote:

I could make many prayers alas might be piled up between heaven and earth, and weep as much blood as there is water in the sea, yet all this could not procure the pardon of one sin, nor smile from God.

What a truth…

Those that come to faith and have faith, know how futile all their efforts are. How feeble their prayers are, how hopeless their own works are in bringing God close to them.

Oh how many try. How many a Roman Catholic prays a prayer hoping to be heard, yet only know a works based Lord, and not one full of grace.

How many prayers are of no effect because the heart of the one praying does so with a contained spirit; so holding onto the things they desire and the carnality they love.

Oh the prayers of the proud are so contained and futile. They cry, as the prophet Isaiah declares to the idolatrous Israelites:

Issiah 57:10-13

“You are wearied in the length of your way; yet you did not say, ‘there is no hope.’ you have found the life of your hand; therefore you were not grieved. “and of whom have you been afraid, or feared, that you have lied and not remembered me, nor taken it to your heart? Is it not because I have held my peace from of old that you do not fear me? I will declare your righteousness and your works, for they will not profit you. When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you. But the wind will carry them all away, a breath will take them. But he who puts his trust in me shall possess the land, and shall inherit my holy mountain.”

The proud keep looking for strength and life outside God. But those Brooks writes of who: “gain favour that comes by Christ” do so not by looking to self, all of self has been broken and they know it’s an utter waste.

Lastly, question three:

It’s not only those that look to self that don’t seem, nor receive that blessed benefit and favour that comes from God.

What also gives a man that deep interest in Christ, is that, and Brooks answers it by writing:

Thirdly I’m convinced that it is not angels or men to deliver me out of my lost, miserable and undone condition.

A man who comes to faith, or has faith, and is experiencing the blessings and favours of Christ, knows above all, and has come to a halting solution, that nothing and no one can fulfil his broken life and make him live with a joy in his heart.

Many try. The prodigal tried. He joined a group of like-minded people who ate, drank and partied.

Luke 15:12-13

And the younger of them said to his father, ‘father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ so he divided to them his livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.

Oh how he must have thought it would have lasted a lifetime. That the party wouldn’t end. Yet it did. As long as he was spending, he was ignorant. As long as he was having a worldly experience he was full. As long as the fake friends and love was alive, he never thought he had an issue.

Oh but it doesn’t last…

Luke 15:14-15

But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.

The famine didn’t cause the loss; the famine revealed the lostness.

But was that enough? No, he still tried to go it alone, so he moves onto the next thing, the next town, the next experience, the next fix. It keeps getting worse, yet he keeps looking everywhere but to God, to the Father.

Yet point four in Brooks’ thirteen points is this. On what faith gives a man and what blessing comes. And I close. Fourthly:

I find that I stand in absolute need of a saviour.

That is what the prodigal came to see, as I started with ‘he came to his senses’. He came to himself.

And in coming to himself he came to know how much he needed a saviour to deliver him from his own feeble, hopeless, empty life.

Luke 15:17:24

But when he came to himself, he said, ‘how many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” ’ “and he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ “but the father said to his servants, ‘bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ and they began to be merry.

Oh the freedom that comes, the blessing that comes, the hope that comes, the joy that comes, the faith comes from knowing only in Him, by Him and through Him do we truly have life and life abundantly.

Amen.