primarily unbelief is not in the mind but in the heart — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"Stephen tells us that primarily this unbelief and rejection of the Gospel is due to the state of the heart. “To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, saying …” (Acts 7:39) The real trouble with men and women, the cause of their unbelief, is in their hearts. Now in Scripture the term heart generally means the very center of personality. Particularly it means the seat of the desires. It is that in people that determines what they really want.

Now, you notice, unbelief is not in the mind. This is the first thing that people today must learn, for they fondly think that they are not Christians because of their great brains, because of their understanding, and especially because of all this wonderful modern knowledge that we have garnered. But that is exactly where they go wrong. The trouble with them is not primarily in their head but in their heart. The heart is deeper than the mind…

If you read the story of the children of Israel in the Old Testament, you will constantly find this truth that Stephen is expounding here. Constantly their hearts lusted after something else, lusted after other gods or other women. They were always lusting after something. That was the whole cause of their tragedy. If I had the powers of a dictator, I think I would compel everybody to read the story of the Jews in the Old Testament. There you see men and women behaving like fools, always governed by their wicked hearts.

Indeed, our Lord put it still more plainly and clearly when he said, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matt. 15:19). That is where it all comes from. It is “not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth” (Matt. 15:11). It is not even the influences that are around us. They only play on what is inherent in us. “Unto the pure all things are pure” (Titus 1:15); but if you are not pure, everything will become impure. It is the human heart that is evil.

So the trouble with the world is not due to the fact that it does not have light and knowledge. Look at the books that have been poured out showing the madness of war and the wrongness of various attitudes that are ruining life. There is no lack of light and knowledge, and the light has come supremely in the Son of God Himself. We have it all in the Sermon on the Mount. So why are the nations fighting? Why are they arming? Why are they on the brink of some abyss? Here is our Lord’s answer: “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world …” Why does everybody not turn to it and submit to it? Why do we not all live in the light? Here is the answer: “… and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

That is why people reject the Gospel. It is because they love evil; they enjoy what they are doing; they are governed by the heart. The apostle Paul sums this up in his customary manner when he writes to the Ephesians:

  "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversation in times past [what sort of life was it? Here it is] in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind [that means, the lusts of the flesh, the body, and the mind]; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."
—Eph. 2:1–3

I am talking about the world as it is. Listen to James:

  "From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not."
—Jas. 4:1–2

Is that not the explanation of the whole of history, I do not care which country you may name? This country [England], too, has been guilty of lusting for power, taking over this and that area of the world. We do not like other people to do it, but we have done it—all nations have. “This is mine.” “No, it’s mine.” Lusting! Desiring! Lust is the cause of the troubles of the world. Light is brushed aside because people are not governed by their reason but by their lusts and passions. This is the universal teaching of the New Testament.
The apostle John says exactly the same thing:

  "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."
—1 John 2:15–17

These people, said Stephen to the Sanhedrin, their forefathers, had “in their hearts turned back again into Egypt.” (Acts 7:39)…

And do not talk to me about your scientific problems—I know as much about them as you do! That is not an explanation. You are putting them up as a camouflage to hide your lusts and passions and desires. You are insulting me if you say that your unbelief is because of your intellect, for you are saying that I am a fool; but I am ready to meet with you on scientific grounds whenever you like. Face the facts! Face yourself! Face your world as it is today. Read history, and you will see that it is the story of just this very unbelief, this madness, this being governed by lust and desire rather than by reason and truth. It is the rejection of God. It is spitting into the face of God’s love, rejecting His most glorious offer. He is offering you free pardon; He is offering to reconcile you unto Himself, to give you a new heart, a new life, and a new nature. He will take from you the fear of death and will hold before you the prospect of a glory that transcends your highest imagination. He is offering you all that for nothing. Do you say that you are wise in rejecting all that? It is the only solution to your problem and to the problem of the nations; it is the only solution to the problem of the whole world.

May God grant us ears to hear! May God enable us to listen to the argument of Stephen presented of old to the members of the Sanhedrin, and may God give us grace to apply it to ourselves and to see that unless we repent, there is nothing awaiting us but the disaster and the doom that we so richly deserve. Let us listen to Him and yield to Him before it is too late."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones (2006). Triumphant Christianity (Vol. 5, pp. 173–182). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

The folly of humanity — Martyn Lloyd-Jones

"The Bible has many ways of defining sin. It says that sin is missing the mark. It is like a man aiming at a target and missing it. It also says that sin is a transgression and that it is disobedience. But the ultimate fact about sinners, the men and women who disobey God, is that they are fools. “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Ps. 14:1). Our Lord told a parable about a rich fool. The man, who was a farmer, was congratulating himself. His harvest was so great that his barns had become too small, and he was planning to pull them down and build larger ones. He was pleased with himself, and he said, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” But that night God spoke to him and said, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” (Luke 12:16–20). The fool! And this is the most common charge that is brought in the Bible against men and women in sin and in rebellion against God…

In Romans 1:22 Paul makes the most devastating statement that has ever been made about the human race, and it has never been seen more clearly than at this moment: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” If that is not the most perfect description that you have ever heard of men and women in this modern day, then you know very little about life.

“Professing themselves to be wise”—in what sense? In their self-confidence. The self-confidence of men and women is endless. They think there is nothing they cannot do. After all, they have split the atom, they have beaten the law of gravity, they sent men into space … can anything stand before them? They think they are the center of the universe. The greatest thing in the universe is the human brain. There seems to be no limit to its capacity, and the first claim men put forward is that they can make God. But there is nothing new about modern man—his forefathers did exactly the same thing. At the foot of Mount Sinai, they turned to Aaron and said, “Make us gods to go before us…”…

But, second, let me prove to you that men and women are fools. The Bible does not stop at assertions—it goes on to give us demonstrations. I know of nothing more devastating—in a kind of literary sense—than the way in which Stephen did it here…

If you are in any doubt about this, let me demonstrate to you the folly of human beings, let me prove it beyond the possibility of contradiction. First, men and women show that they are fools when you look at what they produce in contradistinction to what they reject. Stephen brought that out at this point by quoting from the thirty-second chapter of the book of Exodus. The children of Israel had rejected, and they had made. What had they rejected? God! What had they made? A calf! Could anything be plainer? They rejected God: “To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And they made”—they were going to make a god; they were rejecting the true God—“a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol.”
What else needs to be said! That is humanity at this very moment. In the second half of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, the apostle Paul says:

  "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things."
—Rom. 1:19–23

That is what people did, and that is what they are still doing. They reject God—God the Creator, God the sustainer of the whole universe, God the orderer of all things, the God of providence, the God of history, the holy God, the glorious God. I will tell you about the God whom the children of Israel had rejected. He gave a description of Himself to Moses soon after the incident of the golden calf:

  "And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation."
—Exod. 34:5–7

That is God! The everlasting and eternal God!…

Paul wrote to Timothy, “[God] only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto” (1 Tim. 6:16). No man has seen God or ever can see the everlasting God, the God of glory, who is beyond description. And yet He is a God to whom we can pray, a God who is ready to listen to us. He is the living God, the powerful God, the acting God.

      "God in three persons, blessed Trinity."
             Reginald Heber

That is the God from whom people turn away.

And what do people turn to? What do they make? A calf! Have you noticed, they always do something like this. Of course, they make it of gold, and this is where they show their folly still further. They think that making a calf of gold will be different from making a calf of wood. They do not see that in all cases it is still a calf. But because it is gold, it looks marvelous and is costly, and they think, “This is it—a calf made of gold!” And they bow down before it. And as Paul says in Romans 1, it does not stop with calves—they make “creeping things” (v. 23) and so on.

The people of this country [England], over 90 percent of them, are much too intelligent, they tell us, to believe in God any longer. What do they believe in? They believe in the British lion! He has recently had his tail twisted a bit, has he not? A lion. It is always an animal. The Russian bear! The German eagle! It is always the same. How we give ourselves away! What utter fools we are. We do not believe in God, but we believe in our country. Many people worship their country. Nationalism is ultimately worship of country, worshiping the blood that is in you, worshiping yourself writ large.

Then look at the worship of money! Oh, we are much too intelligent to believe in God, so we go in for sports pools to win money. Or perhaps our god is food, drink, travel, or pleasure. People say, “We can’t possibly believe in God,” but they literally worship money. I have known people who have worshiped houses—there is no question about it—and cars. I have known many people who have worshiped their own children. They have sacrificed God without a moment’s thought for the sake of their children. They will discourage their children from being religious so that they might get on in the world. In all this, as Paul reminds us, man has been worshiping himself. Not only “four-footed beasts, and creeping things” (Rom. 1:23) but man himself. Great man! Scientific man! Man come of age. What is man but a fool! He turns from God and worships a beast."

— Martyn Lloyd-Jones, M. (2006). Triumphant Christianity. Studies in the Book of Acts (Vol. 5). The folly of humanity.

God's preserving care — Charles H. Spurgeon

"Do we sufficiently praise God for guarding us from disease? I am afraid that his preserving care is often forgotten. Men will go thirty or forty years almost without an illness, and forget the Lord in consequence. That which should secure gratitude creates indifference. When we have been ill we come up to the house of the Lord and desire to return thanks because of our recovery; ought we not to give thanks when we are not ill, and do not need to be recovered? Should it not be to you healthy folk a daily cause of gratitude to God that he keeps away those pains which would keep you awake all night, and wards off those sicknesses which would cause your beauty to consume away like the moth?…

Oh, come let us sing unto Jehovah who hath said,—“I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). Do not attribute to secondary means that which ought to be ascribed to God alone. His fresh air, and warm sun, or bracing wind, and refreshing showers do more for our healing than we dream of, or if medicine be used, it is he who gives virtue to the drugs, and so by his own Almighty hand works out our cure. As one who has felt his restoring hand, I will personally sing unto him who is the health of my countenance and my God.”

— Charles H. Spurgeon