This morning at our Theological Discussion Group, we began examining the sermon by Thomas Chalmers titled, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” Chalmers ’s thesis is that the only true way of ridding oneself of the love of the world is to set one’s heart on the one true affection in life, namely, God. The sermon is filled with some excellent points that support this theme. For instance,

You never will be able to arrest any of its leading pursuits by a naked demonstration of their vanity… It is not enough, then, that you dissipate the charm by your moral and eloquent and affecting exposure of its illusiveness. You must address to the eye of his mind another object, with a charm powerful enough to dispossess the first of its influence, and to engage him in some other prosecution as full of interest and hope and congenial activity as the former (2-3).

That new pursuit, Chalmers argues, is God himself. He writes,

It is there, and there only, where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to sinners—and where our desire after Him is not chilled into apathy by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is not made to Him through the appointed Mediator (8).

The sermon is filled with challenging vocabulary and sentence structure, but it will pay a great dividend if you can persevere through the entire message.

Categories: Christian living, God, Preaching, Shepherding