God Loves… Himself

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Paul spoke very clearly to the corruption of the heart and how it is exposed for what it is by the law in Romans 7:7-11. Though Paul was an expert in the Old Testament Law, he did not know the depths of its meaning until God opened his heart and he saw the deep corruption there. It is virtually sure that Paul had studied the commands of God before, but it was not until the spiritual nature of the Law pierced to the depths of the soul that he saw the nature of his heart. It is one thing to see the commands of God and think of them as external, but it is quite another to see them as reaching the depths of the soul and to the very desires of the soul. The Law, when spiritually applied, exposes the depths of the soul and in doing that it exposes the depths of the wickedness of the heart.

What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.” 8 But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; 10 and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; 11 for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.”

According to Paul, the Law is good. But what did the Law do to him and what does the Law do to all others? It shows us our heart and when the Law is heard the heart rises against it and so it is said that the Law produces sin. In other words, the Law shows the depths of the corruption of the soul and in doing so the soul can see the sin that is pouring out of it and therefore what kind of heart we have. The Law, then, is said to kill and result in death. If a person tries to be saved by the Law, it will result in eternal death which is hell. But if a person bows to God with a broken heart and cries out for grace, God may save that person.

We can see, then, by this example of Paul the nature of the heart and how right Thomas Adam is to say it is a fatal mistake to suppose we are sinners only by the commission of outward sin. Paul was a Pharisee and strove to keep the Law, but he only strove to keep it outwardly or externally. All the Pharisees and anyone else that strives to keep the Law on the outside without dealing with the heart have made or are making a fatal mistake. We simply must see our own hearts and bow before this living God in utter brokenness and helplessness praying for and seeking a new heart by grace. We don’t just need a new set of intellectual beliefs and better external behavior, we need a new heart. The old one is so corrupt that it will use religion as a way to deceive itself and send itself to the everlasting flames.

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

The essence of what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (at least in one sense) is that the heart of Christianity is the heart. The driving issue that Christ dealt with was the heart. We can also think back (or read) through the Bible and know that God shows people their hearts or what their hearts are really like by giving them trials of faith. In the Parable of the Sower we see different kinds of seed that responded in different ways depending on the soil (the heart) and the circumstances that God brought to them. We see people (especially in the Gospel of John) believing in Jesus, but then falling away because they loved money or wanted comfort.

One issue with the Pharisees was that they made the fatal mistake that Adam speaks of above. They believed that people were corrupted by the deeds that they did. Whatever their so-called creeds or intellectual theology was, their practice had to do with the actions and not the heart. What the Pharisees either did not recognize or at least did not want to recognize is that men are sinners and that sinful heart can be demonstrated in religious actions as well as outwardly sinful actions. They would pray in order to be seen by men and yet thought that was true prayer. They would give money to the poor in order to be seen my men and yet thought that was an act of righteousness. They would fast in order to be seen by men and yet thought that was fasting unto God. So the Pharisees lived by sinful and corrupt hearts and all they did was sinful though they deceived themselves into thinking that they were corrupt only if their deeds were corrupt. Instead of that, however, their sinful hearts made all their religious actions corrupt and vile in the sight of God.

Apart from a person coming to the stark realization of his or her own heart being evil and corrupt to the depths of it, there is no real hope for that person’s conversion. Until that happens, regardless of a person’s theological profession, that person will look to self in some way instead of losing all hope in self and looking to Christ alone. It is utterly fatal for a soul to be deceived by its good actions and as such think of itself as something less than corrupt in all of its parts. Part of this deception is pride which tries to hide a corrupt heart from itself and others. This is why the Pharisees and the religious elite of the day hated Jesus so much. In His life, deeds, and teaching their corrupt hearts was being opened up to them and their self-righteousness was being exposed for what it really was. Self-righteousness is nothing but the manifestation of a corrupt heart and sinful nature and is but a thin veil that tries to cover a filthy heart.

The teachings of Jesus which the crowds loved were hated by the Pharisees because it opened their hearts to them and demonstrated to them how thin a veil their own righteousness really was. It also threatened their honor and positions before the people precisely because of those things. Oh how their hearts would rise when Jesus would teach on the real issues of the heart and on what true righteousness really was, but instead of going to war with their own flesh they wanted to strike out at Jesus. Thus their actions demonstrated for all to see that they were wicked men who were trying to cover over their own corrupt hearts with external actions. Their hatred for Christ demonstrated just how much they hated true love (Christ incarnate) and true righteousness (Christ incarnate). The true heart of the Pharisees was put on display by their opposition and hatred of Christ. The true heart of the Pharisees is also alive today and yet the true Christ is not being taught, so the hearts of the modern Pharisees are still being hidden beneath robes of self-righteousness. Oh how we need true preaching today.

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

The great issue of Christianity is with God and the heart. God is not just sovereign over the external and outward things of life; He is sovereign over the heart as well. As Hebrews 3:10 sets out, God was angry with the Israelites because their hearts went astray: “THEREFORE I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SAID, ‘THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DID NOT KNOW MY WAYS’.” Matthew 12:34 also speaks clearly to this issue: “You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.”

The Pharisees had many external good works and certainly they were very religious, but the biggest issue was that their hearts were not changed and so they were opposed to the living God. Yes, they interpreted the Law of God and made laws that they said were to enable them to keep the Law, but the reality is that they had dropped the Law down from being a Law of the heart to one that could be kept by the external man. So while they were following the laws of God in the outward man, they violated them in the depths of their souls. A person that keeps the Law of God in the external man can be led to believe that s/he is then keeping the Law, that person is self-deceived. The Law of God is to be kept from the deepest recesses of the soul. The Law of God tells us to love God with all of our being and not just some of it. There is no keeping of the Law of God apart from a love for God and the desire for God in keeping the Law.

The Law was meant to strip us of all hope in keeping it and drive us to Christ as Savior and then as the life of the soul. The Law was never meant to be a way of salvation, but it was always a tutor to teach people of Christ and their need for Christ. But it has always been impossible to get across the point that people are sinners by nature and not just by act. It takes a work of the Holy Spirit to teach men that they are sinners by nature rather than by act alone. How the sinner by nature has pride and self to fight that teaching in order to leave room to feel good about self. How utterly impossible it is for sinners full of self and pride to think of themselves in the depths of their soul to be nothing but sin and utterly and totally helpless apart from the work of God in the soul.

The theory of depravity is easily seen in the Bible, but many reject it because they cannot and will not understand it as true. Others accept the theory but cannot see themselves or those around them as sinful by nature. It is far easier to see sin as a theory of sin than to see myself as a sinner by nature and practice. It is far easier to think of myself as one that sins rather than one that is a sinner by nature. When one is a sinner by nature, then even the good things I do is sin and nothing but sin. When one is a sinner by nature, then one sees that the nature cannot be changed by anyone but God and so the sinner is unable to save or help self in that regard. When one is a sinner by nature then the sinner is utterly unable to do one thing good unless it comes in the soul by grace alone.

Thomas Adam tells us that “it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so [sinners] only by the commission of sin.” If that is a fatal mistake, it is also a fatal mistake to think of ourselves as anything less than sinners who are dead in sins and trespasses with no hope in ourselves and nothing in us to hope in. The denial of the fact that we are sinners by nature and our sin is an expression of that nature is in fact a denial of the new birth and the Gospel of grace alone. This also teaches us the necessity of preaching and teaching this vital truth so that men will not make this vital mistake and the glory of grace alone will be magnified.

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

The common thinking of the world and the religious world about cause and effect is exactly backwards. This is because we are born Pelagians and when people become religious they are not converted to Christ from their Pelagianism. But even true believers can be led down this path of faulty and sinful thinking as well. When we see a sinful act of a person, we think that they person has corrupted himself and brought guilty upon himself by that sin. We think of the cause and effect as the sin being the cause and the corruption and guilt being the effect. While there is some truth to that, there is also something very wrong with that. It is true that sin does corrupt and sin does bring guilt. But why did the person commit that sin in the first place? The act of sin not only brings corruption and guilt, it is a demonstration of a corrupt heart as well. A person that lives in what appears to be unrestrained sin is a person with a wicked heart that is being displayed in that unrestrained sin.

But we can also think of the nice religious person as well. This person is nice to others and has a strict moral code. This person goes to church and is committed to many things that the church does. In other words, this person is religious in much the same way that the Pharisees were. This person thinks that s/he is religious because of what s/he does. But it is the heart that determines these things. The heart that is full of self and pride is a heart that can and will do all of its religious activities out of pride and love of self. It will look down on the outwardly sinful and think of itself as better, though indeed it can pray and thank God that it is not like those other people. But what it does not realize in its darkness of love for self and its pride is that it does what it does from the same motive as those who are outwardly sinful. In other words, the very religious person and the very outwardly sinful person can and often do have the exact same motive and desire. Both live for self, are full of self, and are blinded by pride.

The sinful heart is put on display by the outwardly sinful person while the sinful heart is hidden more by the religious person, but that only makes it more deceitful. It is not the case that the very religious person is not living in sin and that the person’s heart is not on display, but it is the case that the pride of the very religious person is active in hiding the sinful heart from that person. In both cases, that is, of the outwardly sinful person and the very religious person, the heart is at work in deceiving them and that the wickedness of the heart is being put on display for those with eyes to see. Certainly God sees the corrupt heart on display in all the outward sin and in all the outward religious activity.

The proud heart of the self-righteous religious man is hidden from him because he judges mainly by outward actions. So the self-righteous religious person thinks that he is righteous because of his actions. Interestingly enough, many of those who are in outward sin are deceived because they think that they have good intents and motives in what they are doing. They might admit that what they are doing is wrong in and of itself, but the flatter themselves that they do them because they don’t intend wrong and that they really want to do good. So the religious person deceives himself by the outward action and the outwardly sinful person deceives himself by thinking that this inner being is better than that. But both are deceived because they don’t see the corruption of their hearts being the real problem in what they do. Both are driven by a love for self and both are blinded by that love of self as to their real hearts.

This gets at a vitally important issue. If preachers and teachers don’t deal with the issues of the heart, they will only be helping people deceive themselves in the things of religion. External morality is a great evil in the sense that it does not promote true love for God and it hides a man’s self-centered and proud heart from him. Being orthodoxy in doctrine is not the same thing as having a heart that loves God and is being freed from the bondage of sin and of a corrupt heart. An external repentance is not the same thing as a true repentance of the heart. If Thomas Adam is right that it is a fatal mistake to think of corruption as being from the commission of sin rather than from the heart, it is a fatal mistake for preachers to only preach to the externals in doctrine and practice as well.

Alas! Who is humble? We disclaim perfection, and run down the preachers of it, from a general confused consciousness of our unworthiness, but cannot bear to be told of a trifling error in conduct. What management, gentle insinuation, and nice art of address, is necessary to prevent resentment in such cases, even from a friend! (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

The Scriptures give us the words of Jesus in Luke 18:8 saying, “when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” We could also ask the question if Jesus will find humility of the earth. Humility is the root of all other graces and one only has faith and love to the degree that s/he has humility. But as Thomas Adam asks, who is humble? Well, one might say, those who believe in the doctrine of total depravity must be humble. Indeed, but is that correct? One can have a belief in the fact that he is totally depraved and yet not be truly humbled for it. One could, horrible as it may seem, have pride for believing in orthodoxy at that point as well. What, then, could it mean for a person to really and truly believe in depravity in a humble way?

One can believe in the total depravity of human beings as a theory and even of self without really being driven to the end of self by that. This is seen by how sensitive human beings are to the things of self. Yes, indeed, we all know that the meek shall inherit the earth, but how many people are there in the land today who are meek? We can be assured that there are far more people who know that the Bible teaches meekness than there are that are truly meek. But again, we live in a day where we are supposed to be nice and always smile and say nice things so that we will not offend others. If someone says something to us that is not nice, we are offended. Yet our theory of depravity tells us that we are far worse than what that person said. So why is that? It is because we don’t really believe in our depravity and we are not truly meek.

We are told today that we must be winsome if we are to be successful and win souls. Indeed, one could agree, that makes sense. But if so, make sense in what context? If the cross of Christ is truly offensive, then can Christ be preached in a winsome way and the cross preached in truth at the same time at all? A winsome preaching of the cross is simply taking the offense of the cross out of the way, which is the same thing as not preaching the cross at all. In other words, all this talk today about being winsome is to take the truth of the cross out. It takes humility to preach the cross because humility is the absence of self (to the degree one is humble) so that the truth of the cross would not be hindered by selfish considerations.

Men and women are extra sensitive in the modern day and that speaks to the pride of our hearts. We cannot bear to have someone tell us something that is not what we think of as positive and uplifting. Our pride will not bear anything less than perfection when others comment about us or something we have done. Nathan the prophet spoke clearly to David the king and yet David heard the Word of the Lord with humility and was brought to repentance. It is a sign of a proud heart when a person cannot bear to be corrected in any way. So where are the humble in our day? The humble in name are those who cannot bear for anyone to think that they are not perfectly humble, which shows that they are not truly humble. Ministers and conference speakers are told that they must speak gently and winsomely in order to be heard, but this is a vicious circle. Ministers and speakers desire to be spoken well of and so they speak in ways to get others to speak well of them. Yet the people want to be addressed in ways that will move them to speak well of the speakers. People love themselves and want to hear how God loves them, but this is a dangerous thing.

And by this rule every one may try his own religion. If it began in a belief that God loved him, and had bestowed salvation upon him, etc., and all his religious joy and sorrow, and darkness and light, respect his own interest in God’s favor, etc., it has the appearance of false religion. He who comes to the knowledge of the truth fixes on something infinitely more important than self, and his own personal interest, as the object of his regard and pursuit. He from that moment devotes himself to the glory of God, and the greatest general good, in the advancement of his kingdom. From this time he begins to pray, and say, “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And it now becomes his study and labor to promote this grand interest, by serving God and his generation, and thus he seeks first the kingdom of God. He whose religious discoveries, views, and exercises are not of this kind, and do not issue in this, may safely conclude himself a stranger to true religion…But, instead of this, how common is it to hear the preacher speak of religion as if it consisted altogether in selfishness!                Samuel Hopkins

It is the devil’s master-piece to make us think well of ourselves. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

One book put it well (1960’s) with its title Damned through the Church. The professing Church in the modern day appears to be little more than a way to take people away from the truth of who they are and the truth of God and His Gospel. Yes, this sounds like a depressed person preaching doomsday. Perhaps, but where is God in the professing Church of the day? Are people being moved by things of self (disguised as love) or real love for God?
What would be the case if the devil had replaced love for God with thinking well of self in the veneer of orthodoxy? Would it really be different than what we see today? I don’t think so. People can love orthodox teaching out of love for self rather than love for God. The Pharisees are excellent examples of this.

If the heart is more deceitful than all else, then the heart is certainly under attack by the deceiver (II John 7) who uses the deceitfulness of wealth (Mat 13:22) and the deceitfulness of sin (Heb 3:13) to deceive. Nothing is more deceitful to a heart that is full of self-love than to deceive it my working on it in ways that provoke it by self-love and built on ways to make people think well of themselves. When the message of the Church, whether in preaching or teaching or other ways, is built on the love of self, then the Church is really setting forth the teaching of the evil one. It is that bad and when that is done people are being damned through the Church.

Why is it that preachers will not preach to the heart and deal with sin in the people? Is it not from their own self-love in not wanting to “offend” people who will be “offended” if their high views of self are pointed out to them? I might add that what is known as “offend” and “offended” is in reality simply people getting angry. People get angry when they hear sin preached because it pricks their hearts and they don’t want to think that they are wrong because they love themselves.

The teaching about sin and self-love has literally almost disappeared from the teaching of the professing Church and that is because the teaching and attitude of self-love has been brought into the professing Church. People think that God loves them as they are and that they are to think highly of themselves because God thinks highly of them, but in reality the wrath of God is on them and they should repent of their high views of self. The very heart of sin is self-love and high views of self. People have not repented of sin until they have repented of self-love and thinking well of themselves. Until a person can bow to the biblical truths that s/he is an ungodly wretch, how can they believe that God justifies the ungodly? How can they believe the Gospel of grace alone until they see that they are so vile and wretchedly sinful that they cannot do one good thing to merit the least aspect of grace? In fact, one little work makes grace no longer to be grace (Rom 11:6). As long as a person has a high view of self that person will never be the humbled, contrite, and broken sinner that bows at the foot of the cross and goes to the throne of grace. High views of self are contrary to the character of God, of man, and of the Gospel of grace alone.

In trying to write as clearly as I can the book Damned through the Church speaks to the condition of the modern professing Church today. Preaching and teaching that does not address people as sinners is contributing to the deception of the people who want to be deceived and does in fact make the name of the book descriptive of what is happening rather than just a title. It may have been the case in history that people could go to most churches and hear the Gospel of grace alone, but that is not the case today. The Gospel is so lost today that it would be rare for one to attend a church and hear the Gospel rather than being deceived in a way that it could be said that the person was being damned through that church. When the devil works high views of self in the professing Church, he is doing his work of deception and damnation through the professing Church.

It is the devil’s master-piece to make us think well of ourselves. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Evangelism can be done by nothing but self-love and a way to make self think well of self. Evangelism can also be a way for souls to trust in themselves and their own works, which in a sense is a way for people to think well of themselves. The devil hides behind supposed good words, works, and motives. How can one be wicked if that person does evangelism? How can one be wicked if one spends time and money in evangelizing? The easy answers are that they do this in an effort to win something from God, to prove something to themselves or others, or simply from the love of self.

Matthew 23:15 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.

In Matthew 23:15 it is clear that the Pharisees went to great lengths in their evangelism. They would travel long distances in order to make on proselyte. But what was the problem with the Pharisees? Matthew 6 is so clear that they did all their works of righteousness to be seen by men. This passage teaches us that people can be missionaries who travel to foreign lands and yet they are doing it out of nothing but the love of self and the love of applause of others.

Galatians 4:17 They eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them.
Galatians 6:12 Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

In the two passages above there are two motives for evangelism given. One is that the ones seeking the Galatians wanted the Galatians to seek them. This shows that one can do evangelism in a way that has the primary motive of wanting others to seek the one doing the evangelism. In the second passage we see that some sought for the Galatians to be circumcised in order to keep themselves from being persecuted. This, once again, is seeking something for others out of a motive that has self as its primary intent and love.

Phi 1:15 Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; 16 the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; 17 the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.

The passage above shows us that there are people who preach Christ simply out of selfish ambition. In this case, they wanted to cause distress to Paul while he was in prison. Most likely, then, those preaching Christ in that context were trying to get the people to follow them rather than Paul. But in their efforts to get the people to follow them rather than Paul, their chief love was not Christ or the people but instead themselves. Even in being an orthodox minister a person can preach Christ in a way to make self think well of self.

Phi 2:19 But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition. 20 For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare. 21 For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus.

The passage just above is a startling passage. Paul had not one to send to the church in Philippi because he had no one who would genuinely be concerned about the people. The reason for this is that he had no one who was truly concerned about the things of Christ instead of the things of self. But all of this sets out the clear and unmistakable teaching that people can evangelize and be very religious and do that only for the reasons of self. In other words, the devil has brought his master-piece of making people feel good about themselves into the churches and into our evangelistic practices. People evangelize because they feel good about themselves rather than love for Christ. People evangelize in order to obtain or further a sense of self-righteousness instead of love for Christ. In other words, evangelism can be a way for people to deceive themselves and as such is a way of the devil to make people think well of themselves. It is diabolical.

It is the devil’s master-piece to make us think well of ourselves. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

We can imagine professing churches teaching people to pray in ways that make them feel good about themselves and the prayers are all about themselves because that is essentially what we see in reality. We teach people to pray and to know that God cares about them and that God will do this and do that for them, but is selfishness in the form of prayer really prayer? We teach them to pray for self and the things that concern self, but if self is the idol we all must repent of we are doing nothing but teaching them to pray for the idol of self. We teach them to pray for religious things, but that is rarely done and when done it makes us think we are religious enough. However, even the Pharisees prayed for religious things and religious reasons, but they only did so because of self. “Every man is an idolater, so far as he is selfish” (Richard Baxter). Selfish prayer is idolatrous prayer and that is what the devil loves to hear in the prayers of the religious.

 Jesus spoke firmly to the Pharisees and contrasted what they did with true prayer.

Mat 6:5 “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6 “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. 7 “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.8 “So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 9 “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.

Why did the Pharisees love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners? It was so that they could be seen by men. Why do many love to stand and pray in the churches, at athletic events, and at political events? It is the same reason that the Pharisees prayed and that was in order to be seen by men. What is the point of being seen by men? It is the heart of self desiring honor for self and for self to be seen as righteous or holy. But this is not limited to one religious and political party two thousand years ago. It is the state of the heart. Satan has worked hard to get people to thinking that thinking well of themselves is okay, but now the churches are full of that type of thing. That thinking well of self is now used in teaching people how to pray and how to get what they want from God, but the heart of that type of prayer is idolatry. In other words, the churches are full of self-centered people who go to church and pray in order that they may obtain the desires of self. On the other hand, Jesus said that we must deny self if we are going to be His followers. So people are being taught to pray in a way that will keep them from following the true Christ. Such a thing sounds outrageous at first, but when the reality starts to sink in the hand of the devil in his deceiving work can be seen.

In the fall the evil one worked his way into the situation and so deceived Eve into becoming like himself in wanting to live by his own wisdom and for his own honor. It took the humility of Christ to take a human body to Himself and so live, suffer and die for the sins of others and raise up a church (the body of Christ and the wife of Christ). But the evil one is constantly trying to work his own image in the churches and this is done by working self-interest and self-love in people so that they will think well of themselves and seek themselves. In other words, he wants people to be like himself and seek the interests of self. When people seek self rather than the glory of God, though indeed they may be deceived into thinking they are seeking God, in fact they are just like Adam and Eve in the Garden who sought self and so the Fall occurred. As in the Old Testament when the evil one constantly sought to get the Israelites to set up idols in the land in order for God to be dishonored, so now the evil one is constantly seeking to have the idol of self set up in the churches. To the degree that men think well of themselves they will seek themselves when in the church or not. Idolatry reigns when self is served rather than denied.
The evil one has many deep roots in the professing Church of today.

It is the devil’s master-piece to make us think well of ourselves. (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

Imagine professing churches having its preaching focused on ways to get people to feel good about themselves. It can also be a way for form of preaching that makes the preacher feel good about himself. A man can feel good about himself if he preaches a sermon full of orthodox doctrine. A man can feel good about himself if he preaches in an expository method and goes through a book of the Bible stressing orthodox doctrine and conservative morality. Either way, whether the preaching is intended to make the minister or the people feel good about themselves (or both), it is not aimed at the glory of God.

After all, this is the way to gain a hearing and a way to get people to do what we want. Getting people to do things makes ministers think that they are good leaders, though indeed they are leading people astray. Getting people to do things does get things done and it makes people think that they are advancing the kingdom. But if the root of it is (as it appears to be much of the time) getting people to think well of themselves (as workers, as spiritual, as righteous), then the root of it is not love for God but for self. Then the ministers praise people and give awards for this! Oh how hearts are being deceived within the churches by the devil and those who do his bidding.

The Scriptures speak of this problem (sin) in different places. We see it in the Old Testament and in the New.
Jeremiah 5:31 “The prophets prophesy falsely, And the priests rule on their own authority; And My people love it so! But what will you do at the end of it?”

II Tim 4:3 “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths”

The people love to hear it when the prophets don’t tell the truth and their leaders rule on their own authority. Why is that? Because people hate God and they don’t want to hear the truth about Him and they don’t want to hear of those who are under His authority. The Scriptures can only be proclaimed when they are set out as God-centered with a love for God as the center. The Scripture can only be proclaimed when God and His grace are the focus and the strength to do good works and those for His glory.

People do not want to endure sound doctrine because they want to have their ears tickles, which is to say that they want to hear things that please them and make them feel good about themselves. They would rather hear good things about themselves and of things that make them feel good about themselves rather than the truth of who they really are and of who God really is. The teaching of self-esteem and self-love has simply permeated the church and has worked terrible things in all facets. It is the devil’s master-piece to bring the things he wants into the church and he is able to do so because his children are like him in wanting the honor and glory for themselves.  It is a terrible thing when minsters preach to gain honor and glory and the people want to hear nothing but what makes them feel good about themselves. That is a demonstration that those who are like the devil are rampant in the churches. The devil wants himself to be the focus and to get the honor and his children are like him in that regard.