Are we holy? That’s the question. J. C. Ryle calls it the most seasonable and profitable question anyone can ask of himself.

Never in all these years of hunting have I missed so many shots. Near shots. Far shots. In between shots. No matter. I failed to fell a deer in ’09. At one point toward the end of our vacation I concluded it would take an animal coming right up to me and shaking my hand for me to hit one. I used to think I was a good shot. Not anymore.

One night toward the end I thought I finally broke through. At dusk we sighted two nice size bucks on the sky line of the ridge pictured here. I fired at the bigger one first. Missed again. What else is new? Then I got off a round at the second. Missed yet again. Sigh. This is getting monotonous. One more chance. I fired a second shot. Finally. He staggered and disappeared beyond the skyline. “He went down out of sight,” my friend Dick assured me.

We marked the shot and began our climb. This ridge is precipitous. The heart pumps hard as you zig zag up the fence line. Finally, we reached the spot on the hillside. Nothing. No blood trail, no deer. You’ve got to be kidding me! I worked my way up to the very top of the ridge, well beyond the scene of the shooting. Slowly I crisscrossed back and forth scouring every square foot. My friend did the same. When darkness enveloped the hillside, we gave up and headed back to the truck. Unbelievable.

We came back at dawn the next morning. The law of the woods says if you think you hit something, make sure you do the right thing in looking for it until you are absolutely sure you did or didn’t hit it. My friend, who has hunted these hills all his life, was certain I got the buck given the way he staggered. So we climbed again. We zigged and zagged again. In the full light of day we searched for that deer to no avail. The case of the missing deer. Beyond baffling. Go figure.

It occurred to me while looking just how much effort the two of us put into the search, all in the hope of finding an animal to butcher and eat along with another rack to nail to the rail on my deck. Not that the pursuit of venison for the freezer is insignificant, mind you. But it pales in comparison to the rewards that come from seeking God. And unlike the occasional deer on the hillside, God promises to be found.

Deuteronomy 4:29 says, “You will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.” Jeremiah 29:13 repeats virtually the same promise. “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Jesus said, in Matt. 7:7-8, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened.”

Notice the proviso in these Old Testament verses. It concerns the way we must seek – with all our heart and soul. With at least the same, if not more vigor, that hunters seek after their felled quarry, believers should seek after God and His glory, banking all the way on His gracious promise to be found.

I asked myself some hard questions on that ridge. Do I seek God with the same energy I devote to finding a deer I might have shot? How earnest is my daily reading of the Scriptures? Does my zeal for Scripture memory match my passion for hunting? Where does my passionate pursuit of God in prayer compare to the enthusiasm with which I tackle an arduous climb up an Idaho hillside?

What do you value so greatly that you seek it with all your heart and all your soul? Don’t blow by this question. Stop and think about it for a time. Honestly, how do you answer?

With hunting or any other inferior pursuit, seek and you may or may not find. With God, your supreme satisfaction, seek with all your heart and soul and you will find.

In the second chapter of his book, Holiness, J. C. Ryle contends that sanctification is a visible reality in a Christian. He gives the reader ten aspects of the visible evidence of sanctification in a Christian’s life.

1. True sanctification does not consist in talk about religion (1 John 3:18).
2. True sanctification does not consist in temporary religious feelings (Matt. 13:20).
3. True sanctification does not consist in outward formalism and external devoutness (1 Tim. 4:8).
4. True sanctification does not consist in retirement from our place in life, and the renunciation of our social duties (Jn. 17:15).
5. True sanctification does not consist in the occasional performance of right actions (Psa. 119:1-4).
6. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual respect to God’s law, and habitual effort to live in obedience to it as the rule of life (1 Tim. 1:8; Rom. 7:22).
7. Genuine sanctification will show itself in an habitual endeavor to do Christ’s will, and to live by His practical precepts (Jn 15:14).
8. Genuine sanctification will show itself in an habitual desire to live up to the standard which St. Paul sets before the churches in his writings.
9. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual attention to the active graces which our Lord so beautifully exemplified, and especially to the grace of charity (Jn. 13:34-35; Col. 3:10).
10. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual attention to the passive graces of Christianity (1 Pet. 2:21-23). These are the graces of being forbearing to one another. It is nonsense to pretend to sanctification unless we follow after the meekness, gentleness, longsuffering, and forgivingness of which the Bible makes so much.

GENUINE SANCTIFICATION IS A THING THAT CAN BE SEEN!

How visible a reality is it in you and me?

In his book, Holiness, J. C. Ryle describes what it means to grow in grace.

When I speak of growth in grace, I only mean increase in the degree, size, strength, vigour, and power of the graces which the Holy Spirit plants in a believer’s heart. I hold that every one of those graces admits of growth, progress and increase. I hold that repentance, faith, hope, love, humility, zeal, courage, and the like may be little or great, strong or weak, vigorous or feeble and may vary greatly in the same man at different periods of his life. When I speak of a man growing in grace, I mean simply this: that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual mindedness more marked. He feels more of the power of godliness in his own heart; he manifests more of it in his life; he is going on from strength to strength, from faith to faith, and from grace to grace. I leave it to others to describe such a man’s condition by any words they please. For myself, I think the truest and best account of him is this: he is growing in grace.

Give yourself to the means of grace today that you may grow in grace to the glory of God, the increase of your joy, and your love for others.

William Gurnall writes:

Wickedness must be weak. The devil’s guilt tells them their cause is lost before the battle is ever fought. They fear you, Christian, because you are holy; so you do not need to fear them at all. When you see them as subtle, mighty, and many, your heart beats fast. But look on all these spirits as ungodly wretches who hate God more than they hate you. And the only reason they detest you at all is your kinship to Him. Whose side is God on? In the past He rebuked kings for touching His anointed ones. Will He stand still now and let those wicked spirits threaten his life in you without coming to your rescue? It is impossible.

For a pretty sweet rendition by Il Divo click on here.

Here is the John MacArthur quote about Jesus’ meaning in saying we must eat of Him as the bread of life that I shared from this morning’s message in John 6:52-59.

Now, when we think about this analogy, it should just conjure up in your mind all kinds of appropriate relationships to the spiritual apprehension of Christ. Let me see if I can’t help you with that. Eating, just take eating in general. If we’re talking about the physical bread and the physical eating. First of all, eating is a necessary act if I am to derive any advantage from the bread. Is that not true? Now I like bread. I like bread a lot. I grew up with a mother and a grandmother that made bread all the time, still do. Rarely do I ever visit my mother when she, knowing I’m coming, doesn’t have bread made for me. I love bread. My wife makes bread. We have a bread maker. I like to walk in the house and smell it. I like to see it. I like the color of it. Sometimes I like just to squeeze it. And I can go on and on about the – I can eulogize the crust. I can get into this stuff. I like all kinds of bread with all kinds of different things in it. But I may look at that bread, and I may admire that bread, and I may sniff that bread, and I may analyze that bread, and I may philosophize about that bread, and I may eulogize its qualities, and I may touch it and handle it, and I may be assured of its excellencies. And I might even trust the baker. But if I don’t eat it, it doesn’t nourish me. How obvious is that.

You may access his entire sermon here.

Finally, we found one. We searched a long time. Every time we’ve come to Idaho the last several years we’ve visited the thrift and second-hand stores looking for a good bargain on a used gun cabinet. It simply will not do for a Nimrod-wanna-be (see Gen 10:8-9) to store his rifles in a closet!

It didn’t take long. Within half a day of touching down on Idaho soil, shot gun in hand, I headed out to hunt on the final day of turkey season. As you can see, the Lord went with me. He gave me good success. I bagged a hen from last year’s hatchlings.

An obscure verse of Scripture from the genealogy in Genesis 10 came to mind somewhere along the way. Verse 8 says, “Cush fathered Nimrod; he was the first on earth to be a mighty man.” What a way to go down in the biblical record!

How did he demonstrate his strength? Verse 9a gives the answer – “He was a mighty hunter before the LORD.” It was true to so great an extent that the rest of the verse indicates that the ancients coined a proverb in light of Nimrod’s prowess in the field. “Therefore it is said, ‘Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.’”

I suspect Nimrod gained his reputation for hunting game bigger and badder than turkeys. Never fear. Whitetail deer and elk season in these parts opened the next day. The thing that ultimately arrested my attention however was the fact that he hunted BEFORE THE LORD. All that traipsing around the woods with a weapon occurred before the eyes of a watching God. Hunting? Yes, hunting.

What else goes on before the Lord, I wondered? Even a brief survey of the Bible reveals a lot of specifics that go on before the eyes of the omniscient One.

For example – Being silent (Zech. 2:13). Fasting (Jer. 36:9). Trembling (Psalm 96:9). Walking (Psalm 116:9). Being guilty (2 Chron. 19:10). Praying (Dan. 9:20). Sacrificing (2 Chron. 7:4). Humbling self (2 Kings 22:19). Doing evil (2 Kings 21:2). Hanging (2 Sam. 21:6). Worshiping/dancing (2 Sam. 6:5, 14). Being detained (1 Sam. 21:7). Ministering (1 Sam. 3:1). Growing up (1 Sam. 2:21). Sinning (1 Sam. 2:17). Weeping (Judges 20:23). Eating (Deut. 12:7). Feasting (Ex. 32:5). Bringing a case (Num. 27:5). Even dying (Lev. 10:2).

Proverbs 5:21 makes the obvious point of this word search exercise. “For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths.”

From hunting to worshipping to living and dying, we do it all before the eyes of God in heaven. He takes it all in. And He ponders our paths. The Hebrew word means to weigh something – to judge it. The One who bring all things to judgment on the last day, weighs our every action as it unfolds before His eyes.

This sobering truth should lead to some pondering of our own. Proverbs 4:26 exhorts us – “Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure.”

Whether your feet take you into the forest to hunt, into the sanctuary to worship, into the dining room to feast, or, God forbid, onto the gallows to hang, and finally even onto your deathbed to die, remember this – every last bit of it, all of it is before the Lord.