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Richard Sibbes Sermons on Canticles, Sermon 1.3 (The Church is a Garden)

11 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Richard Sibbes, Song of Solomon, Uncategorized

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Canticles, Doctrine of the Church, Garden, Richard Sibbes

The previous post on this sermon may be found here. 

Next Sibbes asks

Quest. But, why is the church compared to a garden?

His general answer draws upon a principle which is at use in Jesus’ parables. When Jesus came to provide an example, an illustration of a proposition, he draws on what is available: a sower, a bird, grass, flowers, fishing. In Luke 12:24, Jesus says, “Consider the ravens”. In Matthew 6:26, they are “birds” to consider. 

And so Sibbes says that God here uses “garden” so that when we are in a garden, we can think about heavenly things. And when we are in a field, the same. When we think of a spouse or sister, a father or son, there are things to draw out our meditation. 

He then gives a series of 8 reasons why ‘garden’ in particular has been chosen:

First, “Because a garden is taken out of the common waste ground, to be appropriated to a more particular use. So the church of Christ is taken out of the wilderness of this waste world, to a particular use.” The true value of the church is that it has been chose by Christ.

Second, a garden depends upon what is planted — otherwise it will only be weeds (and having a garden I will attest to this truth). “So weeds and passions grow too rank naturally, but nothing grows in the church of itself, but as it is set by the hand of Christ, who is the author, dresser, and pruner of his garden.”

Third, a garden is curated: what is present has been chose for use and delight. “So there is no grace in the heart of a Christian, but it is useful, as occasion serves, both to God and man.”

Fourth, many different things will grow in a garden, a variety of flowers and spices. The Spirit of God raises up many different graces in the heart of a Christian. 

Fifth, a garden is a delightful place to be: and the church is a delight to Christ.

Sixth, “as in gardens there had wont to have fountains and streams which run through their gardens, (as paradise had four streams which ran through it); so the church is Christ’s paradise; and his Spirit is a spring in the midst of it, to refresh the souls of his upon all their faintings, and so the soul of a Christian becomes as a watered garden.” 

Seventh, “So also, ‘their fountains were sealed up,’ Cant. 4:12; so the joys of the church and particular Christians are, as it were, sealed, up. A stranger, it is said, ‘shall not meddle with this joy of the church,’ Prov. 14:10.” Sibbes has also provided sermons “A Fountain Sealed” and “The Fountain Opened”

Eighth, a garden takes attention “weeding and dressing.” The Church needs the constant of Christ. 

Knowing these things, we have some direction on how to live. If a garden is kept separated from a common field and is tended by the gardener, our lives should reflect this separation onto the gardener. We should you labor to produce those things which are most delightful to the gardener.

The third application is quite interesting in light of ethnic contention which seems to be part of the Christian church in America, “And then, let us learn hence, not to despise any nation or person, seeing God can take out of the waste wilderness whom he will, and make the desert an Eden.”

Fourth, we should be thankful that Christ has taken an interest in us, to tend us so.

Fifth, “For it is the greatest honour in this world, for God to dignify us with such a condition, as to make us fruitful.” And as we meditate upon the image of being fruitful, we recall the vast use of this image and the application of it throughout Scripture: from Eden to the vine John 15. The field burned in Hebrews 6 and the tree cut down in Matthew 3.

Finally, if the church is the garden of God, we can rest secure knowing that God will care for his garden. Since the grace which grows in us is of God, we can rest knowing that God will tend to his own. This will bring us comfort and hope. 

In the mean time, let us labour to keep our hearts as a garden, that nothing that defileth may enter. In which respects the church is compared to a garden, upon which Christ commands the north and south wind, all the means of grace, to blow.

 Richard Sibbes, The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 2 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet And Co.; W. Robertson, 1862), 10–12.

James Denney: Wrong Roads to the Kingdom.3

09 Sunday Dec 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiology, James Denney, Uncategorized

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Compromise, Doctrine of the Church, Ecclesiology, James Denney

The last post on this sermon may be found here

The last of our Lord’s temptations is the one which has been most variously interpreted, which is another way of saying the one which has been least certainly understood. The tempter takes Jesus to a high mountain, shows Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and says, “All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me”.

James Denney, The Way Everlasting: Sermons (London; New York; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), 198. This is a peculiar temptation: what could possibly work in this? Jesus had the right of rule over the world — he is now sitting as King of kings and Lord of lords:

The possibility of the temptation lies in the two facts that the sovereignty over the world belonged of right to Jesus, as the Son and representative of God, and that an immense and actual power in the world was unmistakably wielded by evil. Could Jesus make any use of that power? Could He, in order to obtain a footing in a world where evil was so strongly entrenched, give any kind of recognition to evil? Could He compromise with it, acknowledging that it had at least a relative or temporary right to exist, and making use of it till He could attain a position in which He would be able to dispense with its aid? This is the real question in the third temptation.

James Denney, The Way Everlasting: Sermons (London; New York; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), 199–200. Would Jesus be willing to make an “alliance of evil in establishing his kingdom?” (p. 200).

And so this temptation continues to exist for the church:

It hardly needs to be said that this temptation also remains with the Church. Evil is still a great power in the world, and as long as it is so the question will continue to arise whether it is not a power of which we can make some use for the kingdom of God. It is all the more sure to arise because evil is strong enough to cause great trouble and suffering to those who refuse to transact with it.

 James Denney, The Way Everlasting: Sermons (London; New York; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), 200.  There are a myriad of ways in which evil proposes a transaction.  Perhaps someone who is powerful and wealthy seeks influence in the church? Denney gives this example — and I have spoken with many pastors who have been offered financial security in exchange for a compromise in doctrine or winking at sin.

But there are other ways in which a pastor may be compromised — seeking political connections and power (and indeed, the state may be jealous when the church does not support the state; just today, I read of a nationally prominent politician who complained of voters listening to “the pulpit” rather than politicians on matters of morality and policy). There is the fact of being shunned, called names whether “ignorant” (God as creator, Jesus having risen from the dead) or hateful (Biblical sexual morality).  The world will make demands from every direction, and will cause great trouble for those who refuse to pay the world protection money.

Loyalty to the Saints

24 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiology, Faith, Faith, James Denney, Uncategorized

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Doctrine of the Church, Doubt, Ecclesiology, Faith, Hume, James Denney, Loyalty to the Saints, Psalm 78, The Way Everlasting

This sermon (“Loyalty to the Saints”) by James Denney is based upon Psalm 78:15, ” If I had said, I will speak thus; Behold, I had dealt treacherously with the generation of thy children.”

This sermon concerns the “generation of God’s children”, the people of God and the individuals need of relationship to God’s children. Having established that God has a generation in every age, Denney explains the importance:

At this moment, there is such a thing in the world as the generation of God’s children, the spiritual successors of those to whom the Psalmist refers; they inherit the same hopes, and represent the same ideals and beliefs.

[1] It is a great matter to recognize this. For one thing, it is an important part of our moral security to have our place among God’s children.

[2 For another, it is a great test of the soundness of our judgment in spiritual things when we find ourselves in agreement with them.

James Denney, The Way Everlasting: Sermons (London; New York; Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911), 128.  Here is an important aspect of the stability in the Christian life: both as to how we live (“moral security”) and right thinking (“soundness of our judgment”).  Therefore, it is critical that we rightly understand the Church.

Denny singles out trust or faith in God as a distinguishing mark of the Church:

The one mark of the children of God which never varies is that they believe in Him. From generation to generation they perpetuate the sublime tradition of faith. In various modes, through all sorts of discouragement, they look unceasingly to Him, believing that He is, and that He is the rewarder of those who seek Him. (129)

While not a comprehensive theory of the “true Church”, Denney does focus on the distinguishing attribute of “faith”.  He does not attempt to distinguish true and false objects at faith. Rather he looks to three practical objections to faith. The rationale for such an examination is that faith must be challenged to be faith, “No doubt it belongs to the nature of faith that it should be tried; if there were not appearances against it, it would not be faith; it would be sight.” (129)

First, the political evil of the world may cause us to question God: “Faith in God implies faith in His government of the world.” (129) But when we look at the world — from the time of the psalmist until now — there is constantly more than enough to cause us to question God, “It is manifest that the Psalmist had had more than enough to try his faith in the Divine government. When he looked abroad upon the earth, it was as though God had abandoned it, or rather as though there were no God at all.” (129-130).

When we see the evil of this world, we wonder at the evil of the world and wonder why we should try. But in this skepticism, we should be checked, because the children of God have persevered through generations. To doubt would be to betray the perseverance of the Church:

What, it was suggested to him, does the indulgence of this sceptical temper mean? It means that I am betraying the cause for which the children of God have fought the good fight from generation to generation, that I am deserting the forlorn hope of the good to side with the enemies of God and man. God forbid! Be my soul with the saints, and shall my mind cherish thoughts, shall my lips speak words, that are disloyal to their faith, their hopes, their sacrifices? To choose your creed is to choose your company, and the feeling that such scepticism would range him in base opposition to the Israel of God is the first thing which rallies the Psalmist again to assert his faith. (131).

Rather than back down, the witness must become more certain (Thomas Watson, “The profaneness of the times should not slacken but heighten our zeal. The looser other are, the stricter we should be.”),

No: they are trumpet calls for witnesses for God; for soldiers, for martyrs, for men and women who will fight God’s battle against all odds, and though they die fighting die assured of victory at last. All the hope of the world lies in them, not in the cynical or sceptical who say, How doth God know?

The same principle applies to our private trials of faith, “by your own faith and patience set a new seal to its truth”. (132).

Second, we must not question God’s moral agency even when world proves to us that we should change our position: we must not be relativists. Our Faith in the authority of God’s law must remain unchanging.  While the first tests our patience and hope, this second tests our relationship to society, ”

While the first point shows itself in private defections, this second point has recently shown itself in claiming Christian Churches rejecting the law of God, particularly on matters of sexuality:

And how many novelists there are, exhibiting their criticism of life in all languages, who seem to have it as their one motive to show that there is nothing absolute in the seventh commandment. A man is to be true to his wife, naturally; but it is a poor kind of truth to sacrifice to his legal obligations to one woman the genuine love for another in which his true being would attain its full realization. (134)

What then should we do?

What should we say when we encounter ideas of this kind, in philosophy or in literature, in cruder or in subtler forms? Let them be met on their own ground, by all means; let bad philosophy be confuted by good; let the inadequacy of such theories to explain the actual moral contents of life be made clear; but before everything, let the soul purge itself from every shadow of complicity in them in the indignant words of the Psalm, “If I spoke thus, I should be false to the generation of God’s children.” I should desert those who have done more than all others to lift the life of man from the natural to the spiritual level.

It is also reject that which God has “set His seal” upon.

Finally, this faith is in the promises of God, particularly the promise of eternal life. (136)  Eternal life is at the crux of the Christian hope, “As the Scottish father whom I quoted at the beginning has said, ‘Eternity is wrapt up and implied in every truth of religion’.” (136).

How then do we respond to such necessary doubts? First, “that true as the disconcerting phenomena referred to may be, they are not the whole truth.” (138)

Second, why should I reject the the faith of the Church, why should “I separate myself from the generation of God’s children”? (139) He drives this argument further,

No one, I fancy, has ever argued more subtly against immortality than Hume: but what has Hume contributed to the spiritual life of the world that he should be counted an authority at all? Who would weigh his negative inferences, whatever the weight of logic behind them, against the insight and conviction of this Psalm, against the assurance of Jesus, against the struggling yet ever triumphant faith of the generation of God’s children? None who would be loyal to the best that man has been. (139)

Denny ends with an exhortation as to the life of the Church:

I will add one word of application to this interpretation of the text: Associate with God’s children, and let their convictions inspire yours; frequent the church, and let the immemorial faith of all saints beget itself in you anew. It is one great service of the Church that it perpetuates the tradition of faith—that sublime voices like those of this Psalm are for ever sounding in it, waking echoes and Amens in our hearts—that characters and convictions of the highest type are generated in it, not by logic but by loyalty, not by argument but by sympathy with the good—deep calling unto deep. We need the common faith to sustain our individual faith; we need the consciousness of the children of God in all ages to fortify our wavering belief in His government, His law and His promises. To be at home in the Church is to absorb this strength unconsciously. It is to be delivered from the shallows and miseries of a too narrow experience, and set afloat on the broad stream of Christian conviction which gathers impetus and volume with every generation the saints survive. (139-140).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Church unity is dynamic, not political

27 Friday May 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiology, Uncategorized

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Church History, Doctrine of the Church, Ecclesiology, John Calvin, Unity

Physical succession may be attractive, but it guarantees nothing. That is precisely why we have the written Scriptures, so that the truth of God may be carefully preserved and passed on intact from believing generation to believing generation. Neither biblically instructed Christians of the 16th century nor the Fathers of the church in the early centuries believed that a mere succession of bishops guaranteed that the gospel message would be maintained in its pristine purity.

This is why Calvin’s departure from the community of physical succession was not schism. For how could agreement in the word of God be regarded as schism from the church of God?

The episcopacy that holds the church together in unity is not man’s but Christ’s. The unity of the church, therefore, is not a formal, historical reality made concrete in an institution (the college of bishops or the pope). Rather it is a dynamic reality, born out of living union and communion with the one true bishop of our souls, the Lord Jesus Christ. Rome’s fault was not only its boast in the historic episcopacy but in its failure to make confession of biblical truth and in its anathematizing of those who did. –

See more at: http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2016/05/john-calvin-on-the-true-church.php#sthash.N1ZNCT84.dpuf

Doctrine of the Church 9: The Church is the New Covenant People of God, Part Three

18 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiology, Lectures

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Church, Doctrine of the Church, Ecclesiology, Lecture, Lectures

Here is the final installment of the lecture series on the ontology of the church. The lecture notes are here: 

Here is the final lecture:

https://memoirandremains.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/20131201-2.mp3

Doctrine of the Church 8: The Church is the New Covenant People of God, Part Two

17 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiology, Lectures

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Doctrine of the Church, Ecclesiology, Lecture, Lectures, New Covenant

This is a continuation of the prior lecture. The notes are here 

https://memoirandremains.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/20131124.mp3

Doctrine of the Church 7: The Church is the New Covenant People of God, Part One

16 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiology, Lectures

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Doctrine of the Church, Ecclesiology, Lecture, Lectures, New Covenant

The church exists in a covenantal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. This new covenant is established by God and God alone with his covenant partners, or Christ-followers who have heard the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, have repented of their sins, have embraced Jesus Christ by faith, have been baptized in the name of the triune God, have received forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and have been incorporated into the church of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:22-47). By means of this covenant, God binds himself to his covenant partners, who in turn observe binding obligations toward him. To the church Christ has given two signs of this covenant relationship: baptism, the sign of entrance into the new covenant relationship with God and into the covenant community, the church; and the Lord’s Supper, the sign of ongoing new covenant relationship with God and the covenant community, the church.[1]

[1] Allison, Strangers and Sojourners, 124.

The lecture notes are here:

https://memoirandremains.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/20131110.mp3

Doctrine of the Church 4: The Church is Empowered by the Spirit

13 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiology, Lectures, Pneumatology

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Doctrine of the Church, Ecclesiology, Lecture, Lectures, Pneumatology

The Holy Spirit uses the power of the Word of God to make, development and sustain the Church. It is not programs, schemes, gimmicks, or personal charisma which creates the Church. Now, one can gather people in one place and can do churchy things without the Spirit; but only the Spirit can do the real work of the Church.

The lecture notes may be found here: Lesson 4 The Church is Empowered by the Spirit

https://memoirandremains.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/20131013.mp3

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