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Tag Archives: Doubt

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).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Psalm 74 as an Answer to Job 38

11 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Psalms

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2 Timothy 2, Babylon, Biblical Counseling, Creation, Doubt, Faith, faith, God, Habakkuk, Habakkuk 2, providence, Psalm 74, Psalms

First the questions:

8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb,
9 when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?
12 “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place,
13 that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?
14 It is changed like clay under the seal, and its features stand out like a garment.
15 From the wicked their light is withheld, and their uplifted arm is broken.
16 “Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this.
19 “Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness,
20 that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home?
21 You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great!

And:

31 “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion?
32 Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season, or can you guide the Bear with its children?

Now the answer:

12 Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.
14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.
15 You split open springs and brooks; you dried up ever-flowing streams.
16 Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun.
17 You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter.

Psalm 74.

But there is another level of coherence: God speaks to Job, in response to Job’s questioning of God in light of Job’s trails. Psalm 74 also entails a question to God:

O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?

Psalm 74:1. God’s people have suffered an attack (possibly the attack of Babylon) and they question God in their anguish. In this they sound like Job:

11 “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
12 Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me?
13 When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’
14 then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions,
15 so that I would choose strangling and death rather than my bones.
16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.
17 What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him,
18 visit him every morning and test him every moment?
19 How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?
20 If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you?
21 Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.”

Job 7. The trouble lies not just in the circumstance and physical pain. In both Job and the Psalm, pain lies primarily along the path of doubt: doubt functions like a tear to let in the weather: the blistering heat and dry wind rattle the bones because God has seemingly failed.

Here is the answer of the Psalm: God I know that you exercise perfect control over nature — and thus you have power here.

What then does the Psalmist use to seek God’s help? The pagan would list his good works, as the old priest in the Illiad:

The old man feared him and obeyed. Not a word he spoke, but went by the shore of the sounding sea and prayed apart to King Apollo whom lovely Leto had borne. “Hear me,” he cried, “O god of the silver bow, that protectest Chryse and holy Cilla and rulest Tenedos with thy might, hear me oh thou of Sminthe. If I have ever decked your temple with garlands, or burned your thigh-bones in fat of bulls or goats, grant my prayer, and let your arrows avenge these my tears upon the Danaans.”

The Psalmist does not speak to his honor but to the glory of God; he touches God upon the covenant wherein God shows himself faithful:

18 Remember this, O LORD, how the enemy scoffs, and a foolish people reviles your name.
19 Do not deliver the soul of your dove to the wild beasts; do not forget the life of your poor forever.
20 Have regard for the covenant, for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.
21 Let not the downtrodden turn back in shame; let the poor and needy praise your name.

Psalm 74.

Thus we learn that physical trial touches upon faith and doubt and it is faith that God seeks:

1 I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.
2 And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.
3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end-it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.
4 “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

Hab. 2:1-4. Paul turns such Doctrine into direction for Timothy:

8 Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel,
9 for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound!
10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
11 The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful- for he cannot deny himself.

2 Tim. 2:8-13. Again see the connection between trial of the body, and trial of faith: faith directs the heart to see throughs physical trial and seek the God beyond the trial, the God of covenant and faith.
The counseling application is immediately obvious: understand the true trial within the trial. Pain causes us to question; faith causes us to hold fast and plead the promise.
Faith rests upon a certain knowledge of God as Creator and Sustainer.

Update:

This was the basis for a lesson, found here:

http://veritas.drupalgardens.com/content/true-happiness-or-ponzi-scheme

The Bruised Reed Outline Part XVI

13 Thursday Oct 2011

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Ministry, Quotations, Richard Sibbes, Uncategorized

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Assurance, Biblical Counseling, Discouragement, Doubt, Ministry, Quotations, Richard Sibbes, Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, Uncategorized

IX Believe Christ, Not Satan

Since Christ is thus comfortably set out to us, let us not believe Satan’s representations of him. When we are troubled in conscience for our sins, Satan’s manner is then to present Christ to the afflicted soul as a most severe judge armed with justice against us. But then let us present him to our souls as offered to our view by God himself, holding out a scepter of mercy, and spreading his arms to receive us.

A. How Should we Think of Christ

1. We should conceive of him as a mirror of all meekness.

2. Let us therefore abhor all suspicious thoughts, . .

B. When Christ Seems to be an Enemy

1. `But for all this, I feel not Christ so to me,’ says the smoking flax, `but rather the clean contrary. He seems to be an enemy to me. I see and feel evidences of his just displeasure: Christ may act the part of an enemy a little while, as Joseph did, but it is to make way for acting his own part of mercy in a more seasonable time. He cannot restrain his bowels of mercy long.

2. He cannot deny himself, he cannot but discharge the office his Father has laid upon him. We see here the Father has undertaken that he shall not `quench the smoking flax’, and Christ has also undertaken to represent us to the Father, appearing before him for us until he presents us blameless before him (John 17:6,11). The Father has given us to Christ, and Christ gives us back again to the Father.

C. When Doubt Assails Us.

`This would be good comfort,’ says one, `if I were but as smoking flax.’

1. If you are not so much as smoking flax, then why do you not renounce your interest in Christ, and disclaim the covenant of grace? This you dare not do.

2. In this appears Christ’s care to you, that he has given you a heart in some degree sensitive. He might have given you up to hardness, security and profaneness of heart, of all spiritual judgments the greatest. . . . (Psa. 10:17).

3. If God should bring us into such a dark condition as that we should see no light from himself or the creature, . . .Isa. 50:10 Isa. 53:5.

4. The sighs of a bruised heart carry in them a report, both of our affection to Christ, and of his care to us. The eyes of our souls cannot be towards him unless he has cast a gracious look upon us first. The least love we have to him is but a reflection of his love first shining upon us.

5. Whatever may be wished for in an all sufficient comforter is all to be found in Christ:

a. Authority from the Father. All power was given to him (Matt. 28:18).

b. Strength in himself. His name is `The mighty God’ (Isa. 9:6).

c. Wisdom, and that from his own experience, how and when to help (Heb. 2:18).

d. Willingness, as being bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh (Gen. 2:23; Eph. 5:30).

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