REFLECTIONS

A Puritan’s Prayer

“THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE

Thou Great I Am,

Fill my mind with elevation and grandeur at the thought of a Being

  with whom one day is as a thousand years,

  and a thousand years as one day,

A mighty God who, amidst the lapse of worlds,

  and the revolutions of empires,

  feels no variableness,

  but is glorious in immortality.

May I rejoice that, while men die, the Lord lives;

  that, while all creatures are broken reeds,

  empty cisterns,

  fading flowers,

  withering grass,

  He is the rock of ages, the fountain of living waters.

Turn my heart from vanity,

  from dissatisfactions,

  from uncertainties of the present state,

  to an eternal interest in Christ.

Let me remember that life is short and unforeseen,

  and is only an opportunity for usefulness;

Give me a holy avarice to redeem the time,

  to awake at every call to charity and piety,

  so that I may feed the hungry,

    clothe the naked,

    instruct the ignorant,

    reclaim the vicious,

    forgive the offender,

    diffuse the gospel,

    show neighborly love to all.

Let me live a life of self-distrust,

  dependence on Thyself,

  mortification,

  crucifixion,

  prayer.”

-From, The Valley of Vision, edited by Arthur Bennett, (The Banner of Truth Trust; 1975); page 104.

REFLECTIONS

“1 Samuel 1; Romans 1; Jeremiah 39; Psalms 13-

How does the wrath of God manifest itself according to the Scriptures?

There is no short answer to that question, because the answers are many, depending on an enormous array of circumstances. God’s wrath wiped out almost the entire human race at the Flood. Sometimes God’s punishment of his own covenant people is remedial. Sometimes it is immediate, not the least because it then tends to be instructive (like the defeat of the people at Ai after Achan stole some silver and fine Babylonian clothes); at other times, God forbears, which at one level is gracious, but granted the perversity of God’s image-bearers, is likely to let things get out of hand. The final display of God’s wrath is hell itself (see, for instance, Rev. 14:6ff.).

Romans 1:18ff. pictures the revelation of God’s wrath in a slightly different way. What Paul presents here is not the only thing to say about God’s wrath—even in Paul—but it contributes something very important. Not only is God’s wrath being revealed against “all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (1:18), but it manifests itself in such sins—that is, in God’s giving people over to do what they want to do (1:24-28). In other words, instead of rebuking them in remedial judgment or curtailing their wickedness, God “gave them over”: to “shameful lusts” (1:26) and a “depraved mind” (1:28). The result is multiplying “wickedness, evil, greed and depravity” (1:29). The picture painted in the rest of the verses of Romans 1 is not a pretty one.

We must reflect a little further as to what this means. In our shortsightedness we sometimes think God is a little abrupt when in certain passages, not least in the Old Testament, he instantly chastens his people for their sins. But what is the alternative? Quite simply, it is not instantly chastening them. If chastening were merely a matter of remedial education to morally neutral people, the timing and severity would not matter very much; we would learn. But the Bible insists that this side of the Fall we are by nature and persistent choice rebels against God. If we are chastened, we whine at God’s severity. If we are not chastened, we descend into debauchery until the very foundations of society are threatened. We may then cry to God for mercy. Well and good, but at least we should see that it would have been a mercy if we had not been permitted to descend so far down into the abyss.

Granted the shape and trends in Western culture, does this not argue that we are already under the severe wrath of God? Have mercy, Lord!”

-From For the Love of God; Volume One, D. A. Carson (Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois; 1998)

REFLECTIONS

Love

All the fruits of the Spirit which we are to lay weight upon as evidential of grace, are summed up in charity, or Christian love; because this is the sum of all grace. And the only way, therefore, in which any can know their good estate, is by discerning the exercises of this divine charity in their hearts; for without charity, let men have what gifts you please, they are nothing.

-Jonathan Edwards

I wish, brothers and sisters, that we could all imitate "the pearl oyster"—A hurtful particle intrudes itself into its shell, and this vexes and grieves it. It cannot reject the evil, but what does it do but "cover" it with a precious substance extracted out of its own life, by which it turns the intruder into a pearl! Oh, that we could do so with the provocations we receive from our fellow Christians, so that pearls of patience, gentleness, and forgiveness might be bred within us by that which otherwise would have harmed us.

-Charles Spurgeon

What a support to our faith is this, that God the Father, the party offended by our sins, is so well pleased with the work of redemption! And what a comfort is this, that, seeing God’s love rests on Christ, as well pleased in Him, we may gather that He is as well pleased with us, if we be in Christ! For His love rests in a whole Christ, in Christ mystical, as well as Christ natural, because He loves him and us with one love. Let us, therefore, embrace Christ, and in Him God’s love, and build our faith safely on such a Savior that is furnished with so high a communion.

-Richard Sibbes

In pursuing His calling, Christ will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, in which more is meant than spoken, for He will not only not break nor quench, but He will cherish those with whom he so deals.

-Richard Sibbes

The love and grace of God shining out and living in the glorified person of Christ is the same communicated to His saints and living in them.

-Peter Sterry

Let a man have what he will, and do what he will, it signifies nothing without charity; which surely implies that charity is the great thing, and that everything which has not charity in some way contained or implied in it is nothing, and that this charity is the life and soul of all religion, without which all things that wear the name of virtues are empty and vain.

-Jonathan Edwards

The love of God is our uniting adhesion to Him: and God that first draweth up the soul to this union, will not Himself reject us, and avoid it.

-Richard Baxter

REFLECTIONS

No Compromise (Based on Genesis 24:5-8)

“III.

In the third place, I would ENLARGE UPON HIS VERY NATURAL SUGGESTION. This prudent steward said, “Perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land. Must I bring your son again unto the land from where you came?” If she will not come to Isaac, shall Isaac go down to her? This is the suggestion of the present hour—if the world will not come to Jesus, shall Jesus tone down His teachings to the world? In other words, if the world will not rise to the Church, shall not the Church go down to the world? Instead of bidding men to be converted and come out from among sinners and be separate from them, let us join with the ungodly world, enter into union with it and so pervade it with our influence by allowing it to influence us. Let us have a Christian world.

To this end let us revise our doctrines. Some are old-fashioned, grim, severe,

unpopular. Let us drop them. Use the old phrases so as to please the obstinately orthodox but give them new meanings so as to win philosophical infidels who are prowling around. Pare off the edges of the unpleasant Truths of God, moderate the dogmatic tone of infallible Revelation—say that Abraham and Moses made mistakes and that the books which have been so long in reverence are full of errors. Undermine the old faith and bring in the new doubt. For the times are altered and the spirit of the age suggests the abandonment of everything that is too severely righteous and too surely of God.

The deceitful adulteration of doctrine is attended by a falsification of experience. Men are now told that they were born good, or were made so by their infant Baptism and so that great sentence, “You must be born again,” is deprived of its force. Repentance is ignored, faith is a drug in the market as compared with “honest doubt,” and mourning for sin and communion with God are dispensed with to make way for entertainments, and Socialism and politics of varying shades. A new creature in Christ Jesus is looked upon as a sour invention of bigoted Puritans. It is true, with the same breath they extol Oliver Cromwell. But then 1888 is not 1648. What was good and great two hundred years ago is mere cant today. That is what “modern thought” is telling us. And under its guidance all religion is being toned down. Spiritual religion is despised and a fashionable morality is set up in its place. Do yourself up tidily on Sunday—behave yourself. And above all, believe everything except what you read in the Bible and you will be all right. Be fashionable and think with those who profess to be scientific—this is the first and great commandment of the modern school. And the second is like unto it—do not be singular, but be as worldly as your neighbors. Thus is Isaac going down into Padan-aram—thus is the Church going down to the world.

Men seem to say—It is of no use going on in the old way, fetching out one here and another there from the great mass. We want a quicker way. To wait till people are born again and become followers of Christ is a long process—let us abolish the separation between the regenerate and unregenerate. Come into the Church, all of you, converted or unconverted. You have good wishes and good resolutions. That will do—don’t trouble about more. It is true you do not believe the Gospel but neither do we. You believe something or other. Come along. If you do not believe anything, no matter. Your “honest doubt” is better by far than faith. “But,” you say, “nobody talks so.” Possibly they do not use the same words but this is the real meaning of the present-day religion. This is the drift of the times.

I can justify the broadest statement I have made by the action or by the speech of certain ministers who are treacherously betraying our holy religion under pretense of adapting it to this progressive age. The new plan is to assimilate the Church to the world and so include a larger area within its bounds. By semi-dramatic performances they make Houses of Prayer to approximate to the theater. They turn their services into musical displays, and their sermons into political harangues or philosophical essays—in fact, they exchange the temple for the theater and turn the ministers of God into actors, whose business it is to amuse men. Is it not so, that the Lord’s Day is becoming more and more a day of recreation or of idleness, and the Lord’s House either a house full of idols, or a political club, where there is more enthusiasm for a party than zeal for God? Ah me, the hedges are broken down, the walls are leveled and to many there is henceforth no Church except as a portion of the world, no God except as an unknowable force by which the laws of nature work.

This, then, is the proposal. In order to win the world, the Lord Jesus must conform Himself, His people and His Word to the world. I will not dwell any longer on so loathsome a proposal.”

-C.H. Spurgeon  1834-1892

REFLECTIONS

Answers To Prayer and God’s Provision

“October 21, 1868—As the days come, we make known our requests to Him, for our outgoings have now been for several years at the rate of more than one hundred pounds each day; but though the expenses have been so great, He has never failed us. We have been, as to the outward appearance, like the “Burning Bush in the Wilderness”; yet we have not been consumed. Moreover, we are full of trust in the Lord, and therefore of good courage, though we have before us the prospect, that, year by year, our expenses will increase more and more.

“If all my beloved fellow disciples, who seek to work for God, knew the blessedness of looking truly to God alone, and trusting in Him alone, they would soon see how soul refreshing this way is, and how entirely beyond disappointment, so far as He is concerned. Earthly friends may alter their minds regarding the work in which we are engaged; but if indeed we work for God, whoever may alter his mind regarding our service, He will not. Earthly friends may lose the ability to help us, however much they may desire so to do; but He remains throughout eternity the infinitely rich one. Earthly friends may have their minds after a time diverted to other objects, and, as they cannot help everywhere, much as they desire it, they may have to discontinue to help us; but He is able, in all directions, though the requirements were multiplied a million times, to supply all that can possibly be needed. And He does it with delight, where His work is carried on and where He is confided in. Earthly friends may be removed by death, and thus we may lose their help, but He lives forever; He cannot die.

“In this latter point of view I have especially, during the past forty years, in connection with this institution, seen the blessedness of trusting in the living God alone. Not one nor two, nor even five or ten, but many more, who once helped me so much with their means, have been removed by death; but have the operations of the institution been stopped on that account? No. And how came this? Because I trusted in God, and in Him alone.”

-From Answers to Prayer; He Has Never Failed, by George Mueller  Evangelist and Orphanage Director  1805-1898

REFLECTIONS

Hardened and Not Able to Discern

June 23

Deuteronomy 28:20-68; Psalm 119:25-48; Isaiah 55; Matthew 3

“There are not many passages in the Bible more fearsome than Deuteronomy 28:20-68. What the text depicts is the judgments that will befall the people of God if they disobey the terms of the covenant and rebel against God, if they “do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God” (28:58).

            There are many striking elements about these judgments. Two occupy our attention here.

            First, all the judgments depicted could be interpreted by the secular mind as the accidents of changing political and social circumstance, or, within a pagan worldview, as the outworking of various malign gods. On the face of it, the judgments all take place in the “natural” world: wasting disease, drought, famine, military defeat, boils, poverty, vassal status under a superior power, devastating swarms of locusts, economic misfortunes, captivity, slavery, the horrible ravages of prolonged sieges, decrease in numbers, dispersal once again among the nations. In other words, there is no judgment that sounds like some obviously supernatural “Zap!” from heaven. So those who have given up on listening to God’s words are in the horrible position of suffering the punishments they do not believe come from him. That is part of the judgment they face: they endure judgment, but so hardened is their unbelief that even such judgment they cannot assess for what it is. The blessings they had enjoyed had been granted by God’s gracious pleasure, and they failed to receive them as gifts from God; the curses they now endure are imposed by God’s righteous pleasure (28:63), and still they fail to recognize them as judgments from God. The blindness is systemic, consistent, humanly incurable.

            Second, God’s judgments extend beyond externally imposed tragedies to minds that are unhinged—in part by the sheer scale of the loss, but in any case by God himself. The Lord will give these people “an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life” (28:65-66). This God not only controls the externals of history, but also the minds and emotions of those who fall under his judgment. 

            Before such a God it is unimaginable folly to try to hide or outwit him. What we must do is repent and cast ourselves on his mercy, asking him for the grace to follow in honest obedience, quick to perceive the sheer horror of rebellion, with eyes open to take in both God’s providential goodness and his providential judgment. We must see God’s hand; we must weigh everything with an unswerving God-centeredness in our interpretive focus.”

-From For the Love of God; Volume One, by D.A. Carson (Crossway Books, Wheaten Illinois)

REFLECTIONS

God’s Providence in the Nations

June 15.

“When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” Deut. 32:8

This is an important and interesting communication. It supplies us with two facts. 

First, that God originally divided the nations their inheritance. When after the deluge he gave the new earth to the children of men, he did not throw it in among them, so to speak, for a kind of scramble, that each might seize what he could, but he assigned them their several portions, that the discontented might not invade the peaceful, nor the mighty prey upon the weak. God permits what he does not approve; but nothing can be more contrary to his pleasure than for powerful states to invade and incorporate little ones. And the crime generally punishes itself. Such unjust and forced accessions add nothing to the safety, strength, or happiness of the acquirers; but become sources of uneasiness, corruption, and revolt; so difficult is it to suppress old attachments, and patriotic instincts that are almost equal to the force of nature. Paul justifies the sentiment of Moses: “He hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.”

Secondly, in the arrangement of the limits and conditions of mankind, he had an especial reference to the future commonwealth of Israel. For they were by far the most important detachment of the human race. They were the Lord’s portion, and the lot of his inheritance. They were the depositaries of revealed religion; the heirs of the righteousness which is by faith. To them pertained the adoption and glory and the covenant, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; theirs were the fathers; and of them, as concerning the flesh, Christ came.  We cannot trace this fact perfectly, for want of more materials; and we know not all the purposes of God in making and keeping the Jews a peculiar body; otherwise we should clearly see how all the dispensations of God corresponded to their privileged destination.

One thing is to be observed. They were not intended to engross the divine favor, but to be the mediums and diffusers of it. They were not only to be blessed, but to be blessings. Hence their being placed in the midst of the earth, that from them knowledge might be derived, and proselytes to revealed religion might be made; and that, in the fullness of time, out of Zion might go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and that the great supper, as our Lord calls it, and which was designed for the whole family of Adam, might be spread in the midst of the earth, and be accessible to all.

While we here see that there is nothing like chance in the government of the world, there is what may be called a peculiar providence in particular instances. And here we cannot help thinking of our own country. No country on earth bears such a comparison with Judea, in privilege and design, as this favored land. Its appropriation and appointment will account for its preservation, and emerging from difficulties which seemed likely to swallow it up. And when we consider what it is and what it promises to be, we can find reason for its insular situation; its government, laws, and commerce; its talent and learning, and influence and dominion. We are a sinful people, but as “the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it; so, says God, will I do for my servants’ sakes that I may not destroy them all.” We cannot approve of everything we have done, especially in the West and East Indies; but we cannot be ignorant  that God is overruling for good; and has ends in view far beyond slave-holders, and mercantile companies, and heroes, and statesmen. We have fought, and we have conquered; but the negro is instructed, and the captive is made free indeed; and openings are made and occupied for the spread of the gospel.

The economies of heaven on earth have always been regulated by one end—the cause of the Messiah; and could we view things as God does, we should perceive how all the revolutions of the world, the changes of empire, the successes or defeats of haughty worms, have affected this cause, immediately or remotely, in a way of achievement or preparation, of purification or increase, of solidity or diffusion; and that all things are going on not only consistently with it, but conducively to it. For says the Ruler over all, “I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.”

And O, Christian, there is a special providence over thee. The hairs of thy head are all numbered. One thing regulates all that befalls thee; all the dark, as well as the clear; all the painful, as well as the cheerful—thy spiritual, thy everlasting welfare: “For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God; to them that are called according to his purpose.”

From—MORNING EXERCISES, by Rev. William Jay 1769-1853 (Harrisonburg, Virginia; SPRINKLE PUBLICATIONS, 1998); page 279.