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Off with their heads!
Spurgeon, "Driving Out the Canaanites and Their Iron Chariots"
Any pretense of friendship with iniquity is mischievous.
If you are a friend of sin, you are not a friend of God.
All sorts of sins are our enemies and we are to hate
them with our whole soul. If you can say of any sin,
"I do not hate it," then you may gravely question
whether you were ever born again.
One of the marks of a child of God is that, although
he sins, he does not 'love' sin. He may 'fall' into sin
but he is like a sheep which, if it tumbles into the
mud, is quickly up again; for it hates the mire.
The sow wallows where the sheep is distressed.
Now we are not the swine that love the slough,
though we are as sheep that sometimes slip with
their feet.
What a misery sin is to us!
Every sin hates us and we hate every sin.
There is no beauty in sin.
There is no comfort in sin.
There is no strength in sin.
There is nothing whatever good in sin.
From the crown of its head to the sole of its
foot, sin is all bruises and putrefying sores.
Sin is evil, only evil and that continually.
It will do you all the hurt it can.
It will never be satisfied with the mischief that it has
worked in you. It will try to lead you farther and
farther into danger so as to bring you down to Hell.
Sin would utterly destroy you if it could and it
certainly could and would, if the grace of God
did not prevent it.
Proclaim, then, a ceaseless warfare against
all sin. Cry, "War to the knife with sin!"
We Must Drive Sin Out!
Sin is a powerful enemy; and if you are a child
of God, you will have to fight against it.
Every sin has to be slaughtered.
Not a single sin is to be tolerated.
Off with their heads!
Drive the sword into their hearts!
They are all to die!
Not one of them may be spared!
The whole race is to be exterminated and so
buried that not a bone of them can be found.
Here is a labor worthy of all the valor of faith
and the power of love. They must all be driven
out, for every sin is our enemy. Every sin,
every evil, of every shape, is our true enemy;
against which we are to wrestle to the bitter end.
You cannot say to any sin, "You may dwell in
my heart and be my friend." It cannot be your
friend; evil is our natural and necessary enemy
and we must treat it as such.
Your sins war with you; take care that you war
with them. Up with the blood-red banner! Draw
the sword and never sheath it again. So long as
sin remains in our heart, or in our life, or in
the world, it is to be fought against to the death.
Sin is our Lord's most cruel enemy.
All sorts of sins He bore in His own body on the tree.
From our sins, all of which were laid upon Him, came
the lashings of His back, when the whip plowed deep
furrows. From our sins came the bloody sweat that
covered Him from head to foot. From our sins came
the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the vinegar
and gall and the dread death of agony.
Sin! Oh, how our Lord loathes it!
"He who knew no sin was made sin for us..."
It was sin that caused Him such an agony.
Sin to Jesus was horror, torment, death.
Jesus abhors sin with all the force of His holy nature.
Saved by Jesus, will you not hate sin as He did?
Would any person here lay up in his drawer as a
treasure, the knife with which his father was murdered?
Our sins were the daggers that slew the Savior!
Can we bear to think of them? Oh, that our tears
might flow at the very thought of our horrible conduct
towards our Lord, whom we slew by our sins; and
may we never, never, never indulge any of all our
iniquities; for no one of them is innocent of the
murder of our best Beloved. They conspired to take
away His life. Let us execute them at once!
"Oh, how I hate those lusts of mine
That crucified my God;
Those sins that pierced and nailed His flesh
Fast to the fatal wood!
Yes, my Redeemer, they shall die;
My heart has so decreed;
Nor will I spare the guilty things
That made my Savior bleed.
While with a melting, broken heart,
My murdered Lord I view,
I'll raise revenge against my sins,
And slay the murderers, too."
We cannot have Christ, and have one sin 'reigning'
in our hearts. Sin may 'lurk' in our nature, as it does,
ready to plot against the King of kings. But it cannot
'reign' in our nature, for it has come under another
sovereignty; Christ is on the throne.
Our Lord Jesus will not share His dominion even
with an angel; much less with a sin. If you have
iniquity 'enthroned' in your heart you must be lost.
You may have Christ and leave your sin.
But you can not have Christ and hug your sin.
Christ shall help you to slay your sin.
But if you say, "No, but I will indulge this evil; is
it not a little one?" you will perish in your iniquity.
If there is one darling sin that you would spare,
Christ and your soul will never agree. There can
be no peace between you and Christ while there
is peace between you and sin.
"The dearest idol I have known,
Whatever that idol be,
Help me to tear it from its throne,
And worship only Thee."
Sins of all sorts must go when divine
grace takes possession of the soul.
Bring out the 'golden' calf! This costly idol must
be ground to powder and strewn upon the water.
The 'golden' calf is as detestable before the Lord as
the most beggarly gods of 'wood'. One form of enmity
to God is as obnoxious to His Law as another.
Sin in satin is as great a rebel as sin in rags.
You may wash sin in perfume but it smells none the sweeter.
You cannot be free from sin if you are the 'slave'
of even one sin. As long as a man is held a captive
by a single vice; no matter how small it is; he is still
in bondage to iniquity and under the dominion of evil.
Down with them all!
They must all be conquered, every one. Not
one single sin must be allowed to occupy the
love of our heart and the throne of our nature.
Certain sins are very hard to deal with.
They fight back and seem to have as many
lives as a cat. There is no killing them. When
you think that you have slain them, they are
up and at you again.
These sins are sometimes those which have
gained their power through long habit.
"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the
leopard his spots?" No, he never shall, but
the grace of God can. The grace of God has
taken all the spots out of many leopards
and all the black out of crowds of Ethiopians.
But occasionally old, 'deep seated habits'
come up again from their graves by a hideous
resurrection. Terrible is the power of habit
which has long held sway. It is not easy
to uproot the oak of many a year's growth.
These habits make chariots of iron into
which your sins mount and they become
terrible enemies to our holy desires and
fervent resolves.
You must not say of any sin, "I cannot
help it." You have to help it. You must not
say, "Oh but it is natural to me."
I know that it is natural; that is the very
reason why you have to be doubly on your
guard against it.
Everything that is of nature; yes, and of
your fallen nature when it is at its best;
has to be put under the feet of Christ that
Divine Grace may reign over every form of evil.
Certain sins are supposed to be irresistible.
It is a sad calamity when a Christian says,
"I can keep straight in everything except that.
Do not touch me there. You must allow me
a great deal of latitude in that direction.
Please make large allowances for my peculiar
constitution." All such pleading is mischievous.
I beseech you, do not make any allowance
for yourself. I implore you, do not take out
a license to sin. For you to make an allowance
for yourself will be most injurious to your soul.
You have to overcome and destroy the sin
for which you claim toleration. Mark that!
You must not; you dare not; allow ANY sin
to 'master' you! And if it does overpower you,
do not therefore claim that you may indulge
it, but draw an inference of the opposite sort.
Because it has mastered you, concentrate
your entire strength upon its utter destruction.
Sin must come down; let not your eyes spare it.
The Canaanite must be driven out; the finest
and fairest of the race must fall by the sword.
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