Morning  July 14, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“For if you wield your tool on it, you will profane it” — Exodus 20:25

God’s altar was to be built of uncut stones, that no trace of human skill or labor might be seen upon it. Human wisdom delights to trim and arrange the doctrines of the cross into a system more artificial and friendlier with the corrupt tastes of fallen nature; instead, however, of improving the gospel, secular wisdom pollutes it, until it becomes another gospel, and not the truth of God at all. All alterations and amendments of the Lord’s own Word are desecrations and corruptions. The proud heart of man is very eager to have a hand in the justification of the soul before God; processes of preparing for Christ are dreamed up, self-depreciating and sorrowing are trusted in, good works are praised, natural ability is highly promoted, and by every method the attempt is made to utilize human tools upon the divine altar. It only if sinners would remember that, far from perfecting the Savior’s work, their self-confidence only pollutes and dishonors it. The Lord alone must be exalted in the work of atonement, and not a single mark of man’s chisel or hammer will be endured. There is an inherent blasphemy in seeking to add to what Christ Jesus in His dying moments declared to be finished, or to improve that in which the Lord Jehovah finds perfect satisfaction. Trembling sinner, cast away your tools, and fall upon your knees in humility and prayer; and accept the Lord Jesus to be the altar of your atonement, and rest in him alone.

Many professing faith should take warning from this morning’s text as to the doctrines which they believe. There is among Christians far too much inclination to line up and reconcile the truths of God’s revelation to this world’s philosophies. This is a form of irreverence and unbelief; let us combat it, and receive the truth as it is written; rejoicing that the doctrines of the Word are uncut stones, and so are the exact fit to build an altar for the Lord.