We know the old hymn Come Thou Fount well; in the third stanza of the third verse we sing something all too familiar to us in our Christian life:
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I Love;
I always feel a bit on tension when I sing this phrase in the song. I suppose it is because that is the truest statement that could be made about me as a Christian. I do have a strong pull within myself to “wander”. If we are all honest that is who we all are. Even the Apostle Paul wrote about the temptation to wander in Romans 7:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Romans 7:21-25
We still live in the flesh; we still have desires within us to fall to the temptation of the flesh. We can see in James chapter one the slippery slope we can find ourselves on when we give in to the desires of the flesh.
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. James 1:13-15
We have to be cautious, when we feel the pull to follow the desires of our flesh; we must understand the fire that we are playing with and how quick it can get out of control. In the text in James we can clearly see the progression from temptation, to sin, to death, it implies that the fall can happen quickly.
Proceeding with Caution
We have warning throughout Scripture to beware of falling to sin. We should not take these warnings lightly, but I feel that we do. Culturally we are not helped, not to be legalistic, but when we turn on our televisions we are tempted to a degree that is unprecedented. There is unlimited access through the internet to pornography; we live in the deep end of a cultural of consumerism. As Christians we have to be wise as to how we live in a day with temptation all around us. We have all seen the sad story. We have seen many of our friends, loved ones, people we have gone to church with walk away from the faith they proclaimed being pulled and enticed by temptation and sin.
So We Must Flee…
We all know the old story; maybe we have even experienced it one way or another. A child stands in the kitchen with his mother cooking over the stove, she looks over at him and says, “Do not touch that stove, it is hot, it will hurt you.” Then the next actions of the child are predictable, when the mother turns her back she is alerted by the scream of her son as he has done the very thing she told him not to do, he touched the hot stove. That is what is wired into us. We inherit this from the fall. As Adam & Eve were told not to eat of one tree in the Garden of Eden they did the very thing, the only thing God had told them not to do. So this should be no surprise that sinners act like sinners. But for us that have been saved from our sin nature we have had the chords of sin removed and now walk in the righteousness of Christ we must fight against these temptations. Paul in his letter to the Church at Ephesus gives us wisdom as to how to fight these temptations:
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Ephesians 5:3
Paul tells us that these things should not even be named among us; a better translation is that we should flee from these things. We have a strong tendency to get as close to the fire without getting burnt but sometimes falling into the fire. Paul warns us, he gives us good wisdom, that to fall into this fire to let ourselves be burned by sin will lead to destruction and damnation.
Grace to Sustain
Back to our hymn, the final stanza of verse three ends:
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.
That ending to verse three as all good hymns uses language borrowed from Scripture:
In Him you also, when you heard the Word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1:13-14
As followers of Jesus we have a guarantee that our inheritance (salvation) is kept for us by the Holy Spirit that dwells in us. We are sealed with a promise that we will receive this inheritance that is in Heaven. God’s faithfulness to His people is from beginning to end, God is faithful to save and He is faithful to sustain us by His grace. Yes, we are prone to wander, but Jesus the Good Shepherd is faithful to go out and find His wandering sheep and bring them home. We will end by putting the whole verse together:
O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness like a fetter, Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.
Wandering Saints
Wandering Saints
We know the old hymn Come Thou Fount well; in the third stanza of the third verse we sing something all too familiar to us in our Christian life:
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I Love;
I always feel a bit on tension when I sing this phrase in the song. I suppose it is because that is the truest statement that could be made about me as a Christian. I do have a strong pull within myself to “wander”. If we are all honest that is who we all are. Even the Apostle Paul wrote about the temptation to wander in Romans 7:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Romans 7:21-25
We still live in the flesh; we still have desires within us to fall to the temptation of the flesh. We can see in James chapter one the slippery slope we can find ourselves on when we give in to the desires of the flesh.
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. James 1:13-15
We have to be cautious, when we feel the pull to follow the desires of our flesh; we must understand the fire that we are playing with and how quick it can get out of control. In the text in James we can clearly see the progression from temptation, to sin, to death, it implies that the fall can happen quickly.
Proceeding with Caution
We have warning throughout Scripture to beware of falling to sin. We should not take these warnings lightly, but I feel that we do. Culturally we are not helped, not to be legalistic, but when we turn on our televisions we are tempted to a degree that is unprecedented. There is unlimited access through the internet to pornography; we live in the deep end of a cultural of consumerism. As Christians we have to be wise as to how we live in a day with temptation all around us. We have all seen the sad story. We have seen many of our friends, loved ones, people we have gone to church with walk away from the faith they proclaimed being pulled and enticed by temptation and sin.
So We Must Flee…
We all know the old story; maybe we have even experienced it one way or another. A child stands in the kitchen with his mother cooking over the stove, she looks over at him and says, “Do not touch that stove, it is hot, it will hurt you.” Then the next actions of the child are predictable, when the mother turns her back she is alerted by the scream of her son as he has done the very thing she told him not to do, he touched the hot stove. That is what is wired into us. We inherit this from the fall. As Adam & Eve were told not to eat of one tree in the Garden of Eden they did the very thing, the only thing God had told them not to do. So this should be no surprise that sinners act like sinners. But for us that have been saved from our sin nature we have had the chords of sin removed and now walk in the righteousness of Christ we must fight against these temptations. Paul in his letter to the Church at Ephesus gives us wisdom as to how to fight these temptations:
But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Ephesians 5:3
Paul tells us that these things should not even be named among us; a better translation is that we should flee from these things. We have a strong tendency to get as close to the fire without getting burnt but sometimes falling into the fire. Paul warns us, he gives us good wisdom, that to fall into this fire to let ourselves be burned by sin will lead to destruction and damnation.
Grace to Sustain
Back to our hymn, the final stanza of verse three ends:
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.
That ending to verse three as all good hymns uses language borrowed from Scripture:
In Him you also, when you heard the Word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1:13-14
As followers of Jesus we have a guarantee that our inheritance (salvation) is kept for us by the Holy Spirit that dwells in us. We are sealed with a promise that we will receive this inheritance that is in Heaven. God’s faithfulness to His people is from beginning to end, God is faithful to save and He is faithful to sustain us by His grace. Yes, we are prone to wander, but Jesus the Good Shepherd is faithful to go out and find His wandering sheep and bring them home. We will end by putting the whole verse together:
O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness like a fetter, Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above.
Come Thy Fount –Robert Robinson