Back |  |  |  |  |  | Contents |  |  |  |  |  | Next

###### Your Folly Is Great

{Since the Heavenly Trade Is the Best Trade…

The Blameworthiness of People’s Inordinate Pursuit of Earthly Things

More Reasons Why an Earthly Mind Is Evil

Your Folly Is Great}

Second, just as your state is dangerous if you are one who loves this present world, so also to set your heart on the world is great foolishness.390

After you have been convinced of the evil of such a spirit and practice and have felt the sting of it in your own soul; after you have been accused by your conscience and condemned in your own heart for this sin (as every truly convinced soul is); if ever the spirit of bondage has been at work in your heart (as you have confessed)—then you have found this sin to be more bitter than death. And now, if you return to the same course of life as will break your bones again and put your soul to greater torture than before (as all backsliding does)—this is foolishness indeed.

You once chose God for your portion, Christ for your treasure, godliness for your gain, an inheritance with the saints for your land, a mansion in Heaven for your house, Christ’s tried gold for your money, a way of life in Heaven for your trade, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for your everything now and forever—as you have done or else horribly falsified your profession of faith.391 And now, after all this, do you turn again to weak and worthless elemental things (Galatians 4:9)?392 Do you exchange God for the world, a crown for crumbs, a throne for thorns, a dowry in Heaven for a dunghill on earth, an eternal weight of glory for a burden of the guilt of swindling,393 fellowship with God for a defiling association with dirt and staining trash, a title of nobility in Heaven for a name written in the earth? Is this not foolishness indeed? It is true that a person who has a real portion in God and the things above can never fully and finally forfeit and lose them. A person who is [truly] in Christ is forever in Christ. But, you once seemed to choose the things above for your chief portion and to profess hope in a certain title to supreme treasures. But now you seem to have sold your hopes for God and glory for the vomit you once spewed up and the mire from which you once had been washed (2 Peter 2:22).394 This is madness indeed.

You have so often seen the vanity and uncertainty of the things here below; they are empty and will not satisfy. They cannot quench your thirst or fill your hungry soul. They do not give even a little rest to your weary heart, but fall short of your expectations. You look for peace and, behold, they give you trouble. You think to gather roses and they prick your fingers. You hope to find rest in earthly things and say, “Soul, take your ease (Luke 12:19–20)395 in your full money bags, fair estate, pleasant house, and relatives.” But then they prove to be swords to pierce you or thorns to rend you. At best, they will be gas that bloats, but does not nourish you. You have also found them fading things that will not last, ripe fruit that soon rots. A moth and an east wind396 take them away. They are a pleasing plant one day and a withered plant the next: “But as morning dawned the next day God prepared a worm, and it so damaged the plant that it withered” (Jonah 4:7 NKJV). Sickness takes away your child and all the hopes of your house perish with him. Your customers go bankrupt and you are impoverished. Your house burns down and you are undone.397 Your heir may turn out to be a spendthrift and all you have gathered is scattered. So uncertain, empty, and perishing are these earthly things, and you know it. You have learned this by experience, and yet your heart goes after them. As the dog in the fable,398 you leave what is real for shadows and neglect unseen, but sure, sweet, satisfying, and eternal things for things that are not. Is not this madness? The world perishes and yet you seek worldly things?

You have found better things and tasted the sweetness of them. You have experienced the light of God’s countenance to be better than all corn, wine, and [olive] oil. You have found His lovingkindness better than life and a day in His courts better than a thousand elsewhere (Psalm 4:6–7).399 Oh, how sweet has His Word been to your taste, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb (Psalm 19:9–10)!400 How often God cheered, enlivened, and strengthened your heart in your drawing near to Him. You said (as David of Goliath’s sword (1 Samuel 21:9),401 there is none like this. And, as the disciples said at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:4),402 you said, “It is good to be here.” Lord, evermore give me this bread. And, after all this! That you would choose to leave all these for the world and prefer your shop, trade, field, house, and money above these divine and approved treasures. This is madness.

You have made so many confessions of this sin before the Lord and His people. You have prayed and cried to God against it and asked for grace to subdue your earthly heart. You have made many promises and resolutions to turn to this foolishness no more. But you have so easily and quickly been reconciled to the world again and have resumed your love for these old lovers. This is madness and it will exceedingly increase your guilt and torment when the Lord judges you for these things and your convictions, prayers, and vows will return as so many police officers to arrest your guilty conscience and as so many witnesses to prove [to you] God’s charges against you. At such and such a time, in your prayer closet, in the congregation of the Lord’s people, in days of humiliation403 and preparation seasons,404 on your sickbed, and under this or that word and rod [of chastisement], you heart melted over your sin and solemnly renewed your covenant against it. And now, your prayers, tears, promises, and even God Himself will be against you for your apostasy in favor of lovers that yourself will loathe another day. You will be ashamed to acknowledge them in the presence of God, saints, and angels. This is foolishness, foolishness.405

Now, God is punishing you406 for this very sin by stripping you of your idols and pouring out the bowls of His wrath on your Euphrates (Revelation 16:12),407 that is, on your riches, business concerns, trade, and earthly comforts. These carried your heart away from God; now, while His rod [of chastisement] is on your back, if you should stubbornly hold on to your iniquity and refuse to return to God, this is desperate and incorrigible foolishness. And this is the practice of most people today. God blows [away] their trades and business concerns for pursuing them while letting His house lie waste,408 and yet they pursue them still. The Lord opens the bottoms of their money bags, and yet they put more money into them. God clobbers people for the iniquity of their covetousness, and yet they go on in the crooked ways of their hearts (Isaiah 57:17).409 God is putting hedges of thorn bushes between people and their lovers [idolized worldly things], and yet these people break through to get them. So it was with Israel; God had hedged up her way and made a wall so that she could not find her paths. Yet she still followed after them. Oh, incorrigible wickedness! “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; And she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, For it was better for me then than now!’” (Hosea 2:6–7 NASB). “The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place” (Isaiah 9:10 ESV). God’s providence pulls away people’s unduly pursued interests, but they grab at them again. This is daring wickedness; it tells God to His face that they do not fear Him, nor will they repent. “O Lord, do not your eyes look for truth? You have struck them down, but they felt no anguish; you have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent” (Jeremiah 5:3 ESV). This is our condition; should we not lament over it?410

Last, when nothing but ruin and depression are before our eyes; when there is clear danger of losing everything; when even all our assets, the Gospel, our way of life, and all that we hold dear are going away—in spite of this, to still pursue earthly things while neglecting our souls is incomparable madness and a dangerous symptom of approaching devastation. If people are not given up to a spirit of blindness, they must see that wasting destruction is upon us. There are gray hairs411 here and there, but we do not see them. “Strangers devour his strength, and he knows it not; gray hairs are sprinkled upon him, and he knows it not. The pride of Israel testifies to his face; yet they do not return to the Lord their God, nor seek him, for all this” (Hosea 7:9–10 ESV). “They felt the pain, but did not acknowledge the cause and source of all those evils,” said Zanchi,412 “and this showed that they were beyond hope and incurable because they were convicted of their evil state, yet would not return to the Lord.” No place is more dangerous than continuing in sin under the utmost means of reformation and acknowledged danger of ruin. “Now as for you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus you have spoken, saying, “Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we are rotting away in them; how then can we survive?”’” (Ezekiel 33:10 NASB).413

####

390The text to follow is addressed to backsliding Christians, but is applicable to all who reject Christ for the world.

391It is also possible that you did not count the cost of following Christ. “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him” (Luke 14:27–29 ESV). If this is the case, you have a choice to make that will determine where you will spend eternity.

392“But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again?” (Galatians 4:9 NASB).

393Ashwood has: a burden of thick clay. He would have used the KJV, which mistranslates עַבְטִיט [ab-teet´] as thick clay in Habakkuk 2:6: “Will not all these take up a proverb against him, And a taunting riddle against him, and say, ‘Woe to him who increases What is not his—how long? And to him who loads himself with many pledges’?” (NKJV). As translated correctly elsewhere, it means pledges, that is, loan collateral. NASB translates as loans. ESV and NKJV translate as pledges. This is a difficult passage to translate, but the fact that woe is pronounced on him who heaps up what is not his seems to support the idea of theft via some kind of unjust loans, perhaps by usury or failure to return pledges (collateral). The editor has thus translated Ashwood in more general terms as swindling due to the uncertainties.

394“But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: ‘A dog returns to his own vomit,’ and, ‘a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire’” (2 Peter 2:22 NKJV).

395“‘And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’” (Luke 12:19–20 NASB).

396east wind: in this context, a biblical reference to the dry and parching east winds that blew in from the desert into Israel.

397In Ashwood’s days, fire insurance was very new and not yet widely used.

398In one of Aesop’s fables, a dog carrying meat sees his reflection in water and thinks to seize that meat also, losing the meat he was carrying into the water. (There are multiple versions of this tale.)

399“There are many who say, ‘Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord!’ You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” (Psalm 4:6–7 ESV).

400“The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:9–10 ESV).

401“Then the priest said, ‘The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the valley of Elah, behold, it is wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod; if you would take it for yourself, take it. For there is no other except it here.’ And David said, ‘There is none like it; give it to me’” (1 Samuel 21:9 NASB).

402“Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, I will make three tabernacles here, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Matthew 17:4 NASB).

403days of humiliation: special days called by church or civil officials for prayer and fasting.

404Some denominations now, or in the past, celebrated Holy Communion very infrequently, perhaps once or twice a year. In preparation, the congregation would have a week of prayer and sermons, usually by guest preachers, in something like a retreat to prepare for the Lord’s Supper.

405The condition Ashwood describes is of a people who are deeply aware of their sin, but refuse to actually repent of it. Such a one treats the means of grace as magic charms, as it were.

406Recall that Ashwood wrote in the midst of a severe economic downturn. Guilty readers who are prospering as they read this should take stern warning.

407“The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east” (Revelation 16:12 ESV).

408Ashwood is here using prose and imagery from Haggai 1:2-11. While God will not chastise anyone for not building the now-superseded Temple in Jerusalem, He does expect us to labor to build up one another and Christ’s kingdom generally.

409“For the iniquity of his covetousness I was angry and struck him; I hid and was angry, And he went on backsliding in the way of his heart” (Isaiah 57:17 NKJV).

410This must be repentantly taken first at a personal level to ourselves, then to our people groups as a whole.

411A few gray hairs, as indicators of old age, are here a metaphor for weakness and loss of ability.

412Probably Girolamo Zanchi (February 2, 1516–November 19, 1590), an Italian Protestant reformer.

413The Hebrew חיה [khaw-yaw´] can mean either live as opposed to die, or how one lives out one’s life. God answers this question in the following verses in both senses of the word: repent.

Back |  |  |  |  |  | Contents |  |  |  |  |  | Next