REFLECTIONS

“A Test of Assurance

He who loves God DESIRES HIS PRESENCE. Lovers cannot be long apart, they soon have their fainting fits, for want of a sight of the object of their love. A soul deeply in love with God desires the enjoyment of Him in His ordinances, in word, prayer, and sacraments. David was ready to faint away and die when he had not a sight of God. “My soul fainteth for God” (Psalm 84:2). Such as care not for ordinances, but say, “When will the Sabbath be over?” plainly reveal their lack of love to God.

He who loves God DOES NOT LOVE SIN. “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil” (Psalm 97:10). The love of God, and the love of sin, can no more mix together than iron and clay. Every sin loved, strikes at the being of God; but he who loves God, has a hatred of sin. He who would part two lovers is a hateful person. God and the believing soul are two lovers; sin parts between them, therefore the soul is implacably set against it. By this try your love to God. How could Delilah say she loved Samson, when she entertained correspondence with the Philistines, who were his mortal enemy?

He who loves God IS NOT MUCH IN LOVE WITH ANYTHING ELSE. His love is very cool to worldly things. His love to God moves swiftly, as the sun in the firmament; to the world it moves slowly, as the sun on the dial. The love of the world eats out the heart of religion; it chokes good affections, as earth puts out fire. The world was a dead thing to Paul. “I am crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me” (Gal. 6:14). In Paul we may see both the picture and pattern of a mortified man. He that loves God, uses the world but chooses God. The world engages him, but God delights and satisfies him. He says as David, “God my exceeding joy,” the gladness or cream of my joy (Psalm 43:4).

He who loves God CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT HIM. Things we love we cannot be without. A man can do without music or flowers, but not food; so a soul deeply in love with God looks upon himself as undone without Him. “Hide not thy face from me, lest I be like them that go down into the pit” (Psalm 143:7). He says to Job, “I went mourning without the sun” (Job 30:28). I have starlight, I want the Sun of Righteousness; I enjoy not the sweet presence of my God. Is God our chief good, and we cannot live without Him? Alas! How do they show they have no love to God who can do well enough without Him! Let them have corn and oil, and you shall never hear them complain of the lack of God.

He who loves God WILL BE AT ANY PAINS TO GET HIM. What pains the merchant takes, what hazards he runs, to have a rich return from the Indies! Jacob loved Rachel, and he could endure the heat by day, and the frost by night, that he might enjoy her. A soul that loves God will take any pains for the fruition of Him. “My soul follows hard after God” (Psalm 63:8). Love is pondus animae (Augustine). It is the weight which sets the clock going. It is much in prayer, weeping, fasting; it strives as in agony that he may obtain Him whom his soul loves. Plutarch reports of the Gauls, an ancient people of France, that after they had tasted the sweet wine of Italy, they never rested till they had arrived at that country. He who is in love with God, never rests till he has a part in Him. “I sought him whom my soul loveth” (Song of Sol. 3:2). How can they say they love God, who are not industrious in the use of means to obtain Him? “A slothful man hides his hand in his bosom” (Pro. 19:24). He is not in agony, but lethargy. If Christ and salvation would drop as a ripe fig into his mouth, he would be content to have them; but he is loath to put himself to too much trouble. Does he love his friend, who will not undertake a journey to see him?

He who loves God PREFERS HIM BEFORE ESTATE AND LIFE.

(1) Before estate—”For whom I have suffered the loss of all things” (Phil. 3:8). Who that loves a rich jewel would not part with a flower for it? Galeacius, marcus of Vico, parted with a fair estate to enjoy God in His pure ordinances. When a Jesuit persuaded him to return to his popish religion in Italy, promising him a large sum of money, he said: “Let their money perish with them who esteem all the gold in the world worth one day’s communion with Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit.” 

(2) Before life—”They loved not their lives to the death” (Rev. 12:11). Love to God carries the soul above the love of life and the fear of death.

He who loves God LOVES HIS FAVORITES, THE SAINTS (I John 5:1). To love a man for his grace and the more we see of God in him, the more we love him that is an infallible sign of love to God. The wicked pretend to love God, but hate and persecute His image. Does he love his prince who abuses his statue, or tears his picture? They seem indeed to show great reverence to saints departed; they have great reverence for Saint Paul, and Saint Stephen, and Saint Luke; they canonize dead saints, but persecute living saints; and do they love God? Can it be imagined that he loves God who hates His children because they are like God? If Christ were alive again, He would not escape a second persecution.

If we love God WE CANNOT BUT BE FEARFUL OF DISHONORING HIM, as the more a child loves his father the more he is afraid to displease him, and we weep and mourn when we have offended him. “Peter went out and wept bitterly” (Matt. 26:75). Peter might well think that Christ dearly loved him when He took him up to the mount where He was transfigured, and showed him the glory of heaven in a vision. That Peter should deny Christ after he had received such signal tokens of His love, this broke his heart with grief. “He wept bitterly.” Are our eyes dropping tears of grief for sin against God? It is a blessed evidence of our love to God; and such shall find mercy. “He shows mercy to thousands of them that love Him.”

Use. Let us be lovers of God. We love our food and shall we not love Him that gives it? All the joy we hope for in heaven is in God; and shall not He who shall be our joy then, be our love now? It is a saying of Augustine, Annon pana satis magna est non amare te? Is it not punishment enough Lord, not to love thee? And again, Animam meam in odia haberem. I would hate my own soul if I did not find it loving God.”

-Thomas Watson  English Preacher, Author  1620-1686

REFLECTIONS

THE TRUE HEART  Let us draw near with a true heart. — Heb. 10:22

"Man's heart, by nature, is not true. It is neither true to himself nor to God. In some respects it may be said to be true to himself and his fellow men, when it is true to his own interests and true to his usual character, or when it is true to the friendships and affections of earth. In the last of these respects we often hear of the heart's truth. We hear how truly hearts beat in affec­tion for each other. We hear of friends being true to friends, so as to maintain their mutual constancy unshaken amid distance, suffering, and peril. But in all this, how seldom is it that we hear of hearts that are true to God and to Christ.

What is a true heart? It is not a perfect heart, for where is that to be found on earth? It is not a heart where sin has no place at all, and where all is holy and spiritual, for who, save the spirits of the just made perfect, have reached this stature? It is not a heart that never wavers, never saddens, never droops, never languishes, never grows cold, for that we must seek a brighter world and a more genial clime.

A true heart is one that has ceased to misunderstand and mistrust the character of God, that takes that character simply as it is revealed in grace, and rests where God would have the sinner to rest, on His forgiving love. A true heart is one that has ceased to suspect God or to look upon Him as an austere and hard master. The trueness of the heart consists in its right apprehensions of the character of God; in "knowing the Father" as He has made Himself known to sinners in Christ Jesus. To be true to God is to know Him as the gracious One, as the pardoning One, as the sin-hating, yet sinner-loving God. He who has not yet seen enough of Him in the Cross, as to dispel all his wicked doubts and guilty fears, is not yet true to God.

A false heart is one which does not know the Father. Its views of God’s character are distorted and dim. It seeks, in self-righteousness, to do something or feel something which may draw towards it the fa­vor of God, and it cannot rest or trust without finding this. It does not understand the entire freeness of the grace revealed in Jesus…”

-By Horatius Bonar  1808-1899  Scotch Minister, Hymn Writer

REFLECTIONS

Use the Word or Lose the Word

Amos 8

There are many things in Amos 8 that one might usefully reflect on: the whining moans that religious services last too long and cut into time better used for business (8:5); the shady practices that boost profits (8:5b); the rising slavery grounded in economic penury (8:6); the bitter irony of 8:7 (if one remembers that “the Pride of Jacob” is God himself); the apocalyptic language of 8:9 (compare Joel 2:30-31 and Acts 2:19-20); the colorful imagery of the “ripe fruit” (8:1-2). But here I shall focus on verses 11-12: “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.’”

This expresses a “use it or lose it” philosophy. The covenant people in Amos’s day are content not to regulate their lives by God’s revelation, and so they will lose it. Whether “the words of the LORD” refers to messages spoken to them through prophets such as Amos, or to the written Word of God (substantial parts of which were already available) makes little difference. The point is that the people who do not devote themselves to the words of God eventually lose them. The loss is catastrophic. The only adequate analogy is a desperate famine.

It is easy to see how this judgment works out in history. For complex historical reasons, France turned on the Huguenots and persecuted them almost out of existence, so the Bible and the Reformation never took hold in France as it did in England. Sometimes the antipathy toward the Bible has arisen from drift, rather than from persecution. In many Western countries, the public sense of morality was until a couple of decades ago largely tied to the Ten Commandments. Nowadays very few even know what the Ten Commandments are. The result is not freedom and integrity, but a lilting scorn that flaunts its superiority over something that is no longer even understood, much less respected—and what shall the end of these things be? So many Bibles, so many Bibles—and so little thoughtful reading of them. The next stage is the Bible as source of prooftexts; the stage after that is the Bible as quaint relic; the next, the Bible as antiquarian magic; the next, implacable ignorance—and all the while, a growing hunger for something wise, something stable, something intelligent, something prophetic, something true. And the hunger is not satisfied.

The only answer is the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:17.”

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

REFLECTIONS

Saved In The Father’s Love For His Son And His Glory

“Father, I will that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which You have given Me: for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” John 17:24.

“Breathe the home atmosphere. Jesus tells us that the atmosphere of His home is love, “You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” Brethren, can you follow me in a great flight? Can you stretch broader wings than the condor ever knew, and fly back into the unbeginning eternity? There was a day before all days, when there was no day but the Ancient of Days. There was a time before all time, when only God was, the uncreated, the only-existent One. The Divine Three, Father, Son, and Spirit, lived in blessed consort with each other, delighting in each other. Oh the intensity of the divine love of the Father to the Son! There was no world, no sun, no moon, no stars, no universe, but God alone and the whole of God’s omnipotence flowed forth in a stream of love to the Son, while the Son’s whole being remained eternally one with the Father by a mysterious essential union. How came all this which we now see and hear? Why this creation; this fall of Adam, this redemption, this church, this heaven? How came it all about? It needed not to have been, but the Father’s love made Him resolve to show forth the glory of His Son. The mysterious volume which has been gradually unfolded before us has only this one design—the Father would make known His love to the Son, and make the Son’s glories to appear before the eyes of those whom the Father gave Him. This Fall and this Redemption, and the story as a whole, so far as the divine purpose is concerned, are the fruit of the Father’s love to the Son, and His delight in glorifying the Son. Those myriads, those white-robed myriads, harping to music infinitely deep, what do they all mean? They are the Father’s delight in the Son. That He might be glorified forever, He permitted that He should bear a human body, and should suffer, bleed, and die, so that there might come out of Him, as a harvest comes from a dying and buried corn of wheat, all the countless hosts of elect souls, ordained forever to a felicity exceeding bounds. These are the bride of the Lamb, the body of Christ, the fullness of Him that fills all in all. Their destiny is so high that no language can fully describe it. God only knows the love of God, and all that it has prepared for those who are the objects of it.

Love wraps up the whole in its cloth of gold. Love is both the source and the channel, and the end of the divine acting. Because the Father loved the Son He gave us to Him, and ordained that we should be with Him. His love to us is love to the Son. “Not for your sakes do I this, O House of Israel; be ashamed and be confounded.” Because of the boundless, ineffable, infinite love of the great Father toward His Son, therefore has He ordained this whole system of salvation and redemption, that Jesus in the church of His redeemed might everlastingly be glorified. Let our saintly ones go home, beloved, if that is the design of their going. Since all comes of divine love, and all sets forth divine love, let them go to Him who loves them—let divine love fulfill its purpose of bringing many sons unto glory. Since the Father once made our Lord perfect by His sufferings, let Him now be made perfectly glorious by the coming up of His redeemed from the purifying bath of His atonement. I see them rise like sheep from the washing, all of them gathering with delight at the feet of that great Shepherd of the sheep.

Beloved, I am lost in the subject now. I breathe that heavenly air. Love surrounds all, and conquers grief. I will not cause the temperature to fall by uttering any other words but this—Hold your friends lovingly, but be ready to yield them to Jesus. Detain them not from Him to whom they belong. When they are sick, fast and pray, but when they are departed, do much as David did, who washed his face, and ate, and drank. You cannot bring them back again, you will go to them, they cannot return to you. Comfort yourselves with the double thought of their joy in Christ and Christ’s joy in them; add the triple thought of the Father’s joy in Christ and in them. Let us watch the Master’s call. Let us not dread the question—who next, and who next? Let none of us start back as though we hoped to linger longer than others. Let us even desire to see our names in the celestial conscription. Let us be willing to be dealt with just as our Lord pleases. Let no doubt intervene, let no gloom encompass us. Dying is but going home, indeed, there is no dying for the saints. Charles Stanford is gone! Thus was his death told to me—“He drew up his feet and smiled.” Thus will you and I depart. He had borne his testimony in the light, even when blind. He had cheered us all, though he was the greatest sufferer of us all, and now the film has gone from the eyes, and the anguish is gone from the heart, and he is with Jesus. He smiled. What a sight was that which caused that smile! I have seen many faces of dear departed ones lit up with splendor. Of many I could feel sure that they had seen a vision of angels. Traces of a reflected glory hung about their countenances. O brethren, we shall soon know more of heaven than all the divines can tell us. Let us go home now to our own dwellings, but let us pledge ourselves that we will meet again. But where shall we appoint the trysting place? It would be idle to appoint any spot of earth, for this assembly will never come together again in this world. We will meet with Jesus, where He is, where we shall behold His glory. Some of you cannot do this. Turn from your evil ways. Turn to the right, where stands that cross, and keep straight on and you will come to Jesus in glory. Blessed be the name of the Lord! Amen.”

-C.H. Spurgeon  1834-1892

REFLECTIONS

“You crown the year with Your goodness.” Psalm 65:11.
 

“GODLY men in olden times felt God to be very near them and they attributed everything they saw in nature to the direct operation of His hand. They were not accustomed to speak of “the laws of matter,” “the operation of natural forces” and “the outcome of diverse causes” but they thought more of the First Cause, the foundation and pillar of all existence—and they saw Him at work on all sides. Hear how the Psalmist sings, “You make the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice. You visit the earth and water it. You prepare them corn when you have so provided for it. You water the ridges thereof abundantly; you settle the furrows thereof: you make it soft with showers; you bless the springing thereof. You crown the year with Your goodness.” God was very near in those days. As Herbert says—

“One might have sought and found You presently

At some fair oak, or bush, or cave, or well.”

If the result of our philosophy has been to put God farther off from the consciousness of His creatures, God save us from such philosophy and let us get back again into the simple state in which we were children at home and God, our great Father, worked all things for us. Let us note the distinct mention of God throughout the psalm, for it is well worthy of notice, and let our speech be more after the olden sort—with less of our supposed knowledge in it and a good deal more concerning the presence and the goodness of God.”

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

REFLECTIONS

God’s Decree in Bethlehem

“Sweet thought! He is the Christ of the little ones! “You, Bethlehem Ephratah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall He come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel.” We cannot pass away from this without another thought, which is, how “wonderfully mysterious was that providence which brought Jesus Christ’s mother to Bethlehem at the very time when she was to deliver!” His parents were residing at Nazareth, and why should they need to travel at that time? Naturally they would have remained at home; it was not at all likely that His mother would have taken a journey to Bethlehem while in so peculiar a condition! But Caesar Augustus issues a decree that they are to be taxed; very well then, let them be taxed at Nazareth. No! It pleases him that they should all go to their city, but why should Caesar Augustus think of it just at that particular time? Simply because while man devises his way, the king’s heart is in the hand of our Lord! Why, what a thousand chances—as the world has it—met together to bring about this event! First of all, Caesar quarreled with Herod; one of the Herods was deposed; Caesar says, “I shall tax Judea, and make it a province instead of having it for a separate kingdom.” Well, it must be done, but when is it to be done? This taxing, it is said, was first commenced when Cyreneus was governor, but why is the census to be taken at that particular period—suppose—December? Why not have had it last October? And why could not the people be taxed where they were living? Was not their money just as good there as anywhere else? It was Caesar’s whim, but it was God’s decree! Oh, we love the sublime doctrine of eternal absolute predestination! Some have doubted its being consistent with the free agency of man; we know well it is so, and we never saw any difficulty in the subject. We believe metaphysicians have made difficulties; we see none ourselves. It is for us to believe that man does as he pleases, yet notwithstanding, he always does as God decrees! If Judas betrays Christ, “thereunto he was appointed”; and if Pharaoh hardens his heart, yet “for this purpose have I raised you up, to show forth My power in you.”

Man does as he wills, but God makes him do as he wills! No, not only is the will of man under the absolute predestination of Jehovah, but all things, great or little are of Him! Well has the good poet said, “Doubtless the sailing of a cloud has providence as its pilot; doubtless the root of an oak is gnarled for a special purpose; God compasses all things, mantling the globe like air.” There is nothing great or little that is not from Him; the summer dust moves in its orbit guided by the same hand which rolls the stars along; the dewdrops have their father, and trickle on the rose leaf as God bids them. Yes, the dry leaves of the forest, when hurled along by the tempest, have their allotted position where they shall fall, nor can they go beyond it! In the great, and in the little, there is God—God in everything, working all things according to the counsel of His own will. And though man seeks to go against his Maker, yet he cannot; God has bound the sea with a barrier of sand, and if the sea mounts up wave after wave, yet it shall not exceed  its allotted channel. Everything is of God, and unto Him who guides the stars and wings sparrows, who rules planets and yet moves atoms, who speaks thunders and yet whispers zephyrs, unto Him be glory, for there is God in everything!”

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)

REFLECTIONS

Are we faithful to seek and pray to God in our troubled times?
 

“In this information-rich age, many of us have learned to be as brief as possible. That was one of the areas in which my own doctoral supervisor helped me a great deal: though my prose style is still too rambling, whatever leanness and precision it has owes itself to his thorough correcting of my work a quarter of a century ago. Efficient managers learn to be brief; computer programmers are rated on how briefly they can write precise code to do what needs to be done. Only a few contemporary authors (e.g. Tom Clancy and James Michener) get away with long, rambling books-and even the editors have drastically trimmed them.

Yet here we are, reading through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, with Ezekiel to go, and we find ourselves circling around the same handful of themes again and again: sin in the covenant community, threatened judgment, the enacted judgment, first for the northern tribes, then for Judah. We recognize the subtle differences, of course: history, apocalyptic, oracle, lament, prayers. Here in lamentations 5, the fifth dirge is cast as a long prayer: “Remember, O Lord, what has happened to us; look, and see our disgrace” (5:1). But haven’t you caught yourself saying to yourself more than once, “I know this is the Word of God, and I know it is important, but I think I understand now something of the history and the theology of the exile. Couldn’t we get on to something else?” We live in an age burgeoning with information, we cry for brevity, and the Bible at times seems terribly discursive. So we scan another chapter as rapidly as possible because we already “know” this.

But that is part of the problem, isn’t it? Read through this chapter again, slowly, thoughtfully. Of course, it is tied to Israel six centuries before Christ, of the destruction of her cities and land and temple, to the onset of the exile. But listen to the depth and persistence of the pleas, the repentance, the personal engagement with God, the cultural awareness, the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty and justice, the profound recognition that the people must be restored to God himself if return to the land be possible, let alone meaningful (5:21). Then compare this with the brands of Christian confessionalism with which you are most familiar. In days of cultural declension, moral degradation, and large scale ecclesiastical frittering, is our praying like that of Lamentations 5? Have the themes of the major prophets so burned into our minds and hearts that our passion is to be restored to the living God? Or have we ourselves become so caught up in the spirit of this age that we are content to be rich in information and impoverished in wisdom and godliness?”

- D.A. Carson Theologian and Professor  1946-