The Secret Key to Heaven No. 9 – Toads in the Bosom

Brooks asks this question on Page 215 (Secret Key to Heaven, Banner of Truth, 2006),

“How shall a man know whether he has real communion with God in the duty [he means secret duties especially prayer] or not?”

He answers that question in 8 answers or “solutions” over the next 40 pages or so as follows;

1. Communion can be had as much in tears and sorrow as in joy and delight.

2. Not all persons experience communion in the same way, to the same degree, at the same frequency.

3. Real communion has been experienced when after closet duties one’s faith in God, Christ, His blood etc. are increased, revitalized, warmed.

4. When he gives glory to God more than at commencement

5. When his soul is better fitted and equipped for holy and glorifying living

6. When he is better equipped for daily living in a righteous way

7. When he has himself been humbled

However is his eighth solution that I want to quote from this morning.

When a man finds such a secret virtue and power running through his closet-duties—as wounds and weakens his beloved corruption, as breaks the strength and the power of his special sin, as sets his heart more fully, resolutely, and constantly against his darling lust, as stirs up a greater rage, and a more bitter hatred, and a more fierce indignation against the toad in the bosom—then certainly he has had communion with God in his closet-duties.

He cites Isaiah 2:20,

“20 In that day a man will cast away his idols of silver And his idols of gold, Which they made, each for himself to worship, To the moles and bats, 21 To go into the clefts of the rocks, And into the crags of the rugged rocks, From the terror of the LORD And the glory of His majesty, When He arises to shake the earth mightily.”

And then Exodus 32,

Exodus 32:15-20 “15 And Moses turned and went down from the mountain, and the two tablets of the Testimony were in his hand. The tablets were written on both sides; on the one side and on the other they were written. 16 Now the tablets were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved on the tablets. 17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses, “There is a noise of war in the camp.” 18 But he said: “It is not the noise of the shout of victory, Nor the noise of the cry of defeat, But the sound of singing I hear.” 19 So it was, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing. So Moses’ anger became hot, and he cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. 20 Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it.”

Here are his comments,

When a man comes off from the mount of closet-duties with a greater hatred, anger, wrath, and indignation against bosom-sins, darling-sins, complexion-sins, which were once as dear to him as right hands or right eyes, or as Delilah was to Samson, or Herodias to Herod, or Isaac to Abraham, or Joseph to Jacob, then certainly he has had communion with God in those duties. When a man finds his beloved sins, his Delilahs, which, like the prince of devils, command all other sins, to fall before his closet-duties, as Dagon fell before the ark, or as Goliath fell before David—then assuredly he has had fellowship with God in them.

Would that we would all know the benefit of such communion with God that would expose our sins in sharp relief and that we would hate them, especially those “toads in the bosom”.