Psalms 80:18

So will not we go back from Thee.

Apostasy from God

I. Wherein lies the true nature of apostasy from God.

1. Every failure and defect in the exercise of grace is not to be reckoned as an apostasy. The soul may faint and flag in the pursuit of God, and yet not be carried off so far as to steer a contrary course.

2. Every positive discovery of corruption in the actual commission of sin is not apostasy. A man may halt and slip, yea, he may stumble, and fall, and yet not go back.

3. Apostasy from God includes not only a deviation in the life, but an alienation of the heart (Psalms 95:10; Act 3:32; Psalms 44:18).

4. Apostasy from God is really an undoing of all the good which we have done. It is ending in the flesh, after we have begun in the Spirit; when our faces have been towards Zion, and our doings framed to turn to God; this is a revoking and disannulling of all, and driving towards hell.

II. Of what concernment and importance it is to believers to re secured against such apostasy.

1. How much they are in danger of it, viz. if left alone, and abandoned to themselves.

(1) Grace in us is very weak.

(2) Corruption in us is very active (James 1:14). There is folly enough remaining in the wisest and best of men to prevent and mislead them.

(3) The temptations which come upon us are very numerous. Every place, every condition, every employment, every relation is full of them.

2. How much danger they incur by apostasy, if they should be left to be guilty of it.

(1) They must needs at the present lose all comfortable communion with God.

(2) They can never see the kingdom of God, unless they remember from whence they are gone back, and return and do their first works.

(3) If they come back to God again, it must be by very bitter and sorrowful repentance.

III. How is the strength of Christ our security in this case?

1. Omnipotence belongs to Christ, on the account of His Godhead, and this shall be exerted on the behalf of them that believe, as there is occasion.

2. Christ was anointed with power, as Mediator, the improvement whereof is not to His own advantage, but the advantage of those that believe in Him (Isaiah 63:1; Luke 1:69).

3. Christ hath destroyed the power of the devil by a power superior to him. This is meant by His dividing the spoil with the strong (Isaiah 53:12).

4. Christ, by the matchless efficacy and merit of His blood, hath purchased for us confirming grace, and the perpetual presence of the Spirit with us.

5. Christ’s prevailing intercession secures to us the needful, actual succours of grace, while we are here in this world.

IV. Why hath God ordered it so, that believers should be secured against apostasy by the strength of Christ?

1. This agrees with God’s general design of heaping all the glory possible upon Jesus Christ.

2. This suits with God’s design of grace in our eternal election; for we are chosen in Christ (Ephesians 1:4). Therefore it is fit that we should be also preserved in Christ (Jude 1:1).

3. It is necessary that we should be secured against apostasy by the strength of Christ, because He is the First and the Last in our sanctification.

4. It is necessary that Christ should secure us in our way to glory, because it is His business to receive us into the possession of that glory at the close of all (John 14:3).

5. The wisdom of God is hereby seen in a most shameful baffling of the devil.

6. Believers could not have a better security than that whereof there hath been a visible experiment in the Person of Christ Himself.

V. Uses.

1. This lays open the ground of the devil’s enmity against Christ, which hath been always most extreme and implacable.

2. It is inexcusable folly for any one in the world to lean to his own arm.

3. Make no promises of perseverance in your own strength.

4. Look to your faith as the principal grace, which contributes to your establishment (Isaiah 7:9).

5. Do not arrogate the honour of your standing in Christ, and abiding with Christ, in the least measure to yourselves. Let Christ have all the glory of your setting out, and holding out; let Him have it now, and let Him have it at the last. (T. Cruse.)

Backsliders and their guilt

I. Point out those who may be justly charged with going back from God.

1. Those who, having been once instructed in the Gospel, and having enjoyed the benefits of its means of grace, and continued for some time professors of Christianity, have afterwards renounced the faith through an evil heart of unbelief. The religion of Jesus presents insurmountable objections to fraud, deceit, or dishonesty--to the indulgence of sinful passions or of unlawful pleasures; yet they are attached to their worldly enjoyments, and, desirous of shaking off the restraints of religion, they begin by impugning particular doctrines, and imagine that the precepts of Christianity are not so strict, or its denunciations against sin so very positive as they seem, and fancy that they shall find some way of escaping punishment not commonly understood, some easier way than passing through the strait gate which Christ has pointed out By degrees they go on to deny religion altogether, and to magnify for themselves difficulties into serious objections.

2. Those who shrink from an open and fair avowal and confession of their faith. They are afraid lest they be accounted puritanical, singular, narrow-minded or superstitious; they dread the laugh, the ridicule, the contempt of weak and worthless mortals whom they cannot possibly esteem, more than the reproofs of a disapproving conscience, more than the awful displeasure of God.

3. There are many who, from pure fickleness and love of change, are carried about with every wind of doctrine; many have no root in themselves, and therefore become the deluded followers of every new instructor, of every arrogant pretender to superior knowledge or holiness.

4. There are also not a few who, influenced by worldly attachments and connections, accompany and follow their companions and friends, and separate themselves from others with whom they have had some trifling quarrel, or conceived something wrong. Those who thus act go in direct opposition to Christ’s admonition. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.”

5. Those who act habitually inconsistent with their religious profession. A licentious and immoral Christian, a profane and ungodly believer, a false and deceitful follower of Jesus, a lover of God who is cruel or unjust to men, are characters which, by the very words of which they are expressed, involve a contradiction, and cannot by possibility have any existence.

6. They may be more especially charged with going back, who return to the wilful commission of sin, after having been engaged in the ordinances of devotion, namely, those professing Christians who have made public and solemn declaration of love, obedience, and attachment, to Jesus, and of a determination to act faithfully as Christians.

II. Let me entreat you to avoid following their example, because--

1. It is weak and contemptible. In the most ordinary affairs of life can you ever have confidence, can you ever have esteem for the fickle, changeable, and irresolute?

2. It is very sinful to go back from God; for dishonesty and unfaithfulness to engagements are uniformly regarded as criminal, and are generally punished. Shall he, then, who vows, escape the vows he has made before heaven?

III. Let me entreat you, then, to form the resolution here expressed by the psalmist, that you will not go back from God. Whatever your difficulties or trials, whether pleasures allure or dangers intimidate, it is yours to follow unmoved the great Captain of your salvation. Think of the recompense set before you--the crown of life set before him who shall be faithful unto death. (D. Macfarlan, D. D.)

Quicken us, and we will call upon Thy name.

The quickening necessary to prayer

Man requires spiritual quickening before he can pray. He must be quickened--

I. With the sense of the Divine presence. Who can pray without the vivid realization of the Divine personality, the Divine presence, and the Divine entreatability?

II. With the sense of moral obligation. Who will pray without feeling the strongest convictions of duty to love, serve, and honour the great God?

III. With the sense of spiritual needs. Sense of dependence underlies all prayer, all religion, all worship. This sense which, alas! is deadened within us, must be quickened before we can pray. (Homilist.)