Welcome to the Hackberry House of Chosun. My name is Bob, and reading today from the Free Grace Broadcaster of Winter 2019, as I've told you many times, you can get this little booklet delivered to your door by just contacting these people. It's all free. Just give them an email at chapel at mountzion.org, chapel at mountzion.org, and just tell them you'd like to receive the broadcaster, the quarterly broadcaster, and they'll send it to you. They'll have a different theme each time. The theme this quarter is self-examination, self-examination, and a whole bunch of different preachers coming along and talking about that subject. Well, we've got Charles Spurgeon talking about it today. A little article called Examine Yourself. Charles Spurgeon, everybody knows Charles Spurgeon, 1834 to 1892. influential English Baptist preacher. He uses 2 Corinthians 13.5 as his text. Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know you not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you be reprobate. 2 Corinthians 13.5. The Corinthians were the critics of the Apostle's age. They took to themselves great credit for skill in learning and in language, and as most men do who are wise in their own esteem, they made a wrong use of their wisdom and learning. They began to criticize the Apostle Paul. They criticized his style. His letters, they say, are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible." 2 Corinthians 10 10. They not content with that, they went so far as to deny his apostleship. For once in his life, the apostle Paul found himself compelled to become a fool in glorying. For, says he, you have compelled me, for I ought to have been commended of you. For in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing." 2 Corinthians 12, 11. The apostle wrote two letters to them. In both, he is compelled to upbraid them while he defends himself. And when he had fully disarmed his opponents and wrested the sword of their criticism out of their hands, he pointed it at their own breasts, saying, Examine yourselves. You've disputed my doctrine? Examine whether you be in the faith. You've made me prove my apostleship? Prove your own selves. That's in 2 Corinthians 13 5. Use the powers that you've been so wrongfully exercising upon me for a little season upon your own characters. And now, my dear friends, the fault of the Corinthians is the fault of the present age. Let not any one of you, as he goes out of the house of God, say to his neighbor, how'd you like the preacher? What'd you think of the sermon this morning? Is that the question you should ask as you retire from God's house? Do you come here to judge God's servants? I know it is but a small thing unto us to be judged of man's judgment, for our judgment is of the Lord our God. To our own master we shall stand or fall. But, O men, ye should ask a question more profitable unto yourselves than this. Ye should say, Did not such and such a speech strike me? Did not that exactly consort with my condition? Was that not a rebuke that I deserve, a word of reproof or of exhortation? Let me take unto myself that which I have heard. Let me not judge the preacher, for he is God's messenger to my soul. I came up here to be judged of God's word, not to judge God's word myself. But since there is in all our hearts a great backwardness to self-examination, I shall lay out for a few minutes this morning, earnestly to exhort myself, and all of you, to examine ourselves, whether we be in the faith. First, I shall expound my text, though in truth it needs no exposition. It's very simple. Yet by studying and pondering it, our hearts may become more deeply affected with its touching appeal. Examine yourselves. Who does not understand that word? And yet, by a few suggestions, you may know it more perfectly. Examine is a scholastic idea. A boy has been to school a certain time, and his master puts him through his paces. He questions him to see whether he's made any progress, whether he knows anything. Christian, catechize your heart. Question it. to see whether it's been growing in grace. Question it to see if it knows anything of vital godliness or not. Examine it. Pass your heart through a stern examination, excuse me, as to what it does know and what it does not know by the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Again, examine is a military idea. Examine yourselves or renew yourselves. Go through the rank and file of your actions and examine all your motives. Just as the captain on review day is not content with merely surveying the men from a distance, but must look at all their accoutrements. So do you look well to yourselves. Examine yourselves with the most scrupulous care. And then examine is a legal idea. Examine yourselves. You've seen the witness in the box when the lawyer has been examining him or, as we have it, cross-examining him. Now, Mark, never was there a rogue less trustworthy or more deceitful than your own heart. And in the way you cross-examine a dishonest person, one that has buy-ins to serve, buy-ins as secret purposes for personal gain. You set traps for him to try and find him out in a lie. So do that with your own heart. Question it backward and forward this way and that way. If there be a loophole for escape, if there be any pretense for self-deception, rest assured your treacherous heart will be ready enough to avail itself of it. And then once more, this word examine is a traveler's idea. I find in the original that it has this meaning, go right through yourselves. As a traveler, if he has to write a book about a country, as he's not content to go around its borders merely but goes as it were from Dan to Beersheba, right through the country, he climbs the hilltop. where he bathes his forehead in the sunshine. He goes down into the deep valleys where he can only see the blue sky like a strip between the lofty summits of the mountains. He's not content to gaze upon the broad river unless he traces it to the spring once it rises. He'll not be satisfied with viewing the products of the surface of the earth, but he must discover the minerals that lie within its bowels. Now, do the same. with your heart. Examine yourselves. Go right through yourselves from the beginning to the end. Stand not only on the mountains of your public character, but go into the deep valleys of your private life. Be not content to sail on the broad river of your outward actions, but go follow back the narrow rill until you discover your secret motive. Look not only at your performance, which is but the product of the soil, but dig into your heart and examine the vital principle. Examine yourselves. This is a very big word, a word that needs thinking over. And I am afraid there'd be very few, if any of us, who ever come up to the full weight of this solemn exhortation, examine yourselves. There's another word you'll see a little further on if you'll kindly look at the text. Prove your own selves. That means more than self-examination. Let me try to show the difference between the two. A man is about to buy a horse. He examines it. He looks at it. He thinks that possibly he may find some flaw and therefore he carefully examines it. But after he's examined it, if he be a prudent man, He says to the person of whom he is about to buy, I must prove this horse. Would you let me have it for a week or a month or for some given time that I may prove the animal before I actually invest in him? You see, there's more in proof than in examination. It's a deeper word that goes to the very root and quick of the matter. I saw yesterday an illustration of this, a ship before she's launched is examined. When launched, she's carefully looked at, yet before she's allowed to go far out to sea, she takes a trial trip. She's proved and tried. When she's roughed it a little, and it's been discovered that she will obey the helm, that the engines will work correctly, that all is in right order, She goes out on her long voyages. Now, prove yourselves. Do not merely sit in your closet and look at yourselves alone, but go out into this busy world and see what kind of piety you have. Remember, many a man's religion will stand examination that will not stand proof. We may sit at home and look at our religion and say, well, I think this will do. It's like cotton prints that you can buy in sundry shops. They are warranted, fast colors. And so they seem when you look at them, but they're not washable when you get them home. There's many a man's religion like that. It's good enough to look at. It's got the warranted stamped upon it. But when it comes out into the actual daily life, the colors soon begin to run. And the man discovers that the thing was not what he took it to be. You know, in scripture we have an account of certain very foolish men that would not go to a great supper. But foolish as they were, there was one of them who said, I've bought five yoke of oxen and I go to prove them. Thus he had at least worldly wisdom enough to prove his oxen. In the same way, prove yourselves. Try to plow in the furrows of duty. See whether you can be accustomed to the yoke of gospel servitude. Be not ashamed to put yourselves through your paces. Try yourself in the furnace of daily life, lest happily the mere examination of the chamber should detect you to be a cheat, and you should prove to be a castaway after all. Examine yourselves. Prove your own selves. There is a sentence that I omitted, namely this one. Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith. Oh, says one. You may examine me whether I'm in the faith. I'm an Orthodox Christian, fully up to the standard, good, genuine weight. There's no fear whatever of my coming up to the mark and going a little beyond it, too. My friend, he that lives by faith, he who feels that faith operates upon him and is to him a living principle, he who realizes that faith is his dwelling place, that there he can abide, that's the very atmosphere he breathes, the very girdle of his loins to strengthen him. Such a man is in the faith. But we repeat again, all the orthodoxy in the world, apart from its effect upon the heart, as a vital principle, will not save a man. Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith. Know you not your own selves? If you do not, you've neglected your proper study. What avails all else that you do know if you know not yourself? You've been roaming abroad while the richest treasure was lying at home. You've been busying yourself with irrelevant affairs while the main business has been neglected and ruined. Know you not your own selves? Especially know you not this fact that Jesus Christ must be in your heart, formed and living there, or else you are reprobates. That is, you are worthless persons. vain pretenders, spurious professors. Your religion is not anything but a vanity and a show. Reprobate silver shall men call them because the Lord has rejected them, Jeremiah 630. Now what is it to have Jesus Christ in you? The Roman Catholic hangs the cross on his bosom. The true Christian carries the cross in his heart. And a cross inside the heart, my friend, is one of the sweetest cures for a cross on the back. If you have a cross in your heart, Christ crucified in you, the hope of glory, all the cross of this world's troubles will seem to you light enough. You'll easily be able to sustain it. Christ in the heart means Christ believed in, Christ beloved, Christ trusted, Christ espoused Christ communed with. Christ is our daily food and ourselves as the temple and palace wherein Jesus Christ daily walks. There are many here that are total strangers to the meaning of this phrase. They do not know what it is to have Jesus Christ in them. Though you know a little about Christ on Calvary, you know nothing about Christ in the heart. Now remember, Christ on Calvary will save no man unless Christ be in the heart. The Son of Mary, born in the manger, will not save a soul unless He be also born in your hearts and live there. Your joy, your strength, your consolation. Know you're not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except you be reprobates. That was from a sermon delivered on Sunday morning, October 10, 1858 at the Music Hall in Royal Surrey Gardens by Charles Spurgeon. God bless his word to our hearts. I have the works of other great men of God on this site. I have their stories in many cases. I have their very words. We have many North Korea audios, hundreds of them for you to look at, to be not entertained by, but to bring you to a place, I hope, of prayer and compassion for your brothers and sisters who suffer. I have a study on the Quran. I have a study on Muhammad, and many studies on prophecy through the Bible, commentaries, the latest being a book, a two-volume set commentary on the book of Romans. And Cries from Among Us is our absolute newest one. It's a book about Christians who get caught up in abusing children. They don't mean to. I'm talking about physical abuse, disciplinary abuse goes too far sometimes. Institutions and many families are involved in this and I've written about it tearfully and hope that you will take a look at that one. You can go to criesfromamongus.com and see the whole 94 posts that are actually what this book is. You can read the book online if you want and print it out if you want. Anyway, this is the Hackberry House of Chosim. Lord willing, we'll talk again soon. Bye-bye.