Because Christ Suffered for You

26 Saturday Oct 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in 1 Peter, affliction, Atonement, Christology, Faith, Glory, Hope, John Piper, Joy, Praise, Preaching

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1 Corinthians 15:56–58, 1 Peter 1:18–20, 1 Peter 1:23, 1 Peter 1:3–7, 1 Peter 2:12, 1 Peter 2:9, 1Peter 2:21, Acts 2:23, Affliction, And Can it Be, Atonement, Brothers We are not Professionals, Charles Wesley, Colossians 2:14, Ecclesiastes 2:11, Ecclesiastes 9:3, Galatians 3:13, Galatians 4:4–7, glory, Glory of God, Gospel, Hebrews 2:14, joy, Luke 22:61–62, Luke 24, Mark 15:16–20, Mark 15:33–34, Peter, Psalm 115:1, Romans 3:20, Solomon, Suffering

(draft notes for a sermon 1 Peter 2:21)

Because Christ Suffered for You. 1 Peter 2:21

Suffering hurts in two ways. First, there is the actual pain of suffering. Illness hurts; poverty hurts; broken relationships hurt. But the actual pain is perhaps not the worst part. I remember hearing an interview with a woman who was being tortured by the secret police in her country. She was tied to a table and the men where torturing her. She said she could take it as long as thought of them as monsters. But during the torture, one man took a phone call and spoke with his wife. He talked about finishing up at work and coming home. That real human beings were torturing her tore her soul.

The worst part of suffering is the shame, the pointlessness, the loneliness. When we come to die, there is regret. It doesn’t how much we acquire or how much we have done. Solomon coming to the end of his life, having done all that any man could do:

“And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure … “Ecclesiastes 2:10. And yet, that could not keep him from regret, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and striving after the wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

If drinking in all the money and power and sex and pleasure and wine which the world can give will leave one with regret, what of a normal life? When we suffer, we can think, What’s the point? What’s the point of my disease? When we can’t pay our bills, or a marriage fails; or our life just seems a waste, a getting up and paying bills for what?

We think, What’s the point of my suffering. Then, some well-meaning Christian tells us, “It’s to strengthen your faith!” Or, much worse, “God’s teaching you something.” It sounds as if the point of suffering is some sort quiz; as if there were some test and we need to get a 90% or higher to pass. Those answers are correct – but only in part. It’s like saying that Hamlet is important because it’s about ghosts, or the World Series is about hot dog sales.

Suffering does grow our faith – but faith is only the means to the end. In suffering we feel pain – and we are tempted to feel that our pain is pointless. We feel shame in our suffering and think that it serves no good. When we hear “It will strengthen our faith” – we think, I would settle for just not hurting today.

But what if suffering were an inlet for glory and joy – and not just joy in the future, but joy today? Look at 1 Peter 2:21. Peter writes:

For to this you have been called

Because Christ suffered for you

Leaving an example that you might follow in his steps.

1 Peter 2:21. Consider carefully those words and follow the logic: You have been called – that means that God has called you to patiently enduring suffering, even unjust, undeserved suffering. Peter then gives the reason: Because Christ suffered for you. Then, that you may not miss the point, Peter restates our duty and status in other words, that we might follow in Christ’s steps of suffering.

This does not sound hopeful. But, as you consider the matter, it becomes worse. We are not merely called to suffer, but we are called suffer as Christ suffered.

How does the logic work? You must suffer unjustly. If your boss abuses you, if your husband does not love you, if your wife will not respect you, you must so suffer. If someone pays you evil, you give them good. When someone curses you, you must bless them. Why? Because Christ has suffered for you.

Even more, such suffering will be measured by Christ’s suffering: His suffering is the pattern which you must follow; his suffering is like so many steps in the snow and you must follow behind, for it is the only way to cross.

Peter writes of Jesus being reviled and threatened. Those words do not merely mean a couple of crass shouts by an enemy:

16 And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. 17 And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. 18 And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 19 And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him. Mark 15:16–20 (ESV)

There he stood alone, beaten, shamed, blood running down his face as they struck him and danced about in their madness, mocking the Lord of glory who had come to rescue the children of Adam from sin and death.

Peter saw some, but not all of these things. You know the story of how Peter, frightened by a girl, denied the Lord. Luke records how that scene ended:

61 And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” 62 And he went out and wept bitterly. Luke 22:61–62 (ESV)

Peter’s own cowardice makes the command to suffer with Christ laughable – who is Peter to command me to follow the Lord, when Peter himself ran away and wept? How can this coward think to command our courage when he could not even stand still? How can Peter tell us to follow in the steps of Christ:

And they led him out to be crucified.

Peter’s words that we should follow in the steps of Christ, that we should follow Christ in suffering do not make sense. First, it does not make sense that we should suffer patiently through a bad marriage just because Jesus bore sin. Second, it makes no sense that Peter, of all people, should be the one who could draw such a conclusion. Peter looked at Jesus suffer. He saw that Jesus was going to the cross and Peter responded by lying to a little girl. If seeing Jesus suffer did not give Peter courage, how does Peter think reading about Jesus suffering will help me?

Let us consider the matter more carefully. What was the event? The Lord of glory, God incarnate, was murdered, “crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” Acts 2:23. Peter contends that murder must affect our life here and now.

For to this you were called

Because Christ suffered for you

Leaving you an example that you might follow in his steps.

To suffer because we have done wrong is no great trouble. Only the most morally twisted could conclude that wrong does not deserve a response: “For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it you endure?” 1 Peter 2:20a.

But God does something strange. He commands a thing seemingly makes no sense:

“But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this a gracious thing in the sight of God” 1 Peter 2:20b.

Somehow a line runs between Christ’s suffering for our sins and our suffering even when we have not sinned.

Let’s consider the death of Jesus. If you were to stand on the street in Jerusalem on that Friday morning, you would have seen just another criminal, beaten, filthy, bloody, brutalized; a rough wooden beam upon his shoulders. You would have seen the tatters of meat which had been his back. You have seen him stumble and fall before the soldiers. Perhaps if you had known more, you have seen just another failed messiah; another dreamer and liar who had run into the teeth of Rome. You would have seen betrayal and shame and sorrow.

Even the dearest disciples and friends of Jesus had lost hope as he pushed along the streets to be murdered outside the gate. The women who found the empty tomb, had come to honor a corpse. Cleopas and the unnamed disciple were hopeless and saddened when they spoke to the Lord, not realizing he had risen from the dead:

Our chief priests and rulers had delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Luke 24:20-21a.

No one knew the “hidden wisdom of God” in all this. “For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” 1 Corinthians 2:7-8.

Now there was no secret in the death of Jesus – Rome killed in as a public a manner as they could find. What then was not seen:

24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 1 Peter 2:24 (ESV)

Thus, something must have happened in this death for our sin which transform everything we think we know about the world.

That is the great connection between Christ’s death and our suffering in this world. When Christ died for sins, the world changed.

We are born in a slaughterhouse. In a slaughterhouse, the cattle stand in long lines, head to tail, waiting their turn to walk through the door and die. The only hope for the cow is the hope of a feedlot and then the line outside the door of the slaughterhouse. This world is little more than a feedlot, than a prison. You are locked in by death. Death stands at the doors of this world and no one escapes.

Sin spreads through the camp and has infected us all, like a plague which eats the mind and poisons the soul:

3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. Ecclesiastes 9:3 (ESV)

Look carefully into this world. The Law has come to town. In every street, the law sends out his soldiers to drag us each and every-one before his court. The young comes with the old; the baby is dragged from the mother; the rich stands with the poor. The tribunal stands in the middle of street; nothing is private. The bailiff reads out your crimes; nothing is hidden. Your boldest wrong and the darkest intention of your heart, so dim you scarcely knew it if was true all are read aloud. The Law knows all.

You fall condemned. No mercy; no defense; no hope. And thus you find yourself in this prison, this slaughterhouse, this feedlot for death. You are food for worms, and nothing more.

Sin and death reign supreme in this prison. All the insanity which spreads around flows from the utter terror of death at the door. As the Holy Spirit explains in Hebrews 2:14, the devil holds the world in life long slavery through fear of death.

Some people deny that death stands at the door. Others think they can bribe the guard when it comes the day to account. Others claim to have brought paradise to the prison and seek a torrent of pleasure to dull their eyes until they die.

No one within this prison deserves the least reprieve. The Law’s judgment was just and true. Nothing less than death awaits. And after death, vast fields of hopelessness and sorrow, despair and death without end. The bars of death cannot be beat. Like a blackhole whose gravity can swallow even light and time, death will not be beat. Justice will not lose one dram of vindication.

Yet, into this world the Son of God came. He takes up the charge laid against you. The Law reads out crimes, one by one, each more vicious and foul to have stained the air with their sound. The charge in full being stated, the Son of God, the King himself says to the Law, I will bear it all. Let death and hell come, I will bear it all.

And so the king, reviled, mocked, beaten, murdered upon a tree, bore the weight of sin and shame. Even more dreadful, the King received the wrath of God which caused the earth to shake and the sun to hide for shame:

33 And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:33–34 (ESV)

Somehow, upon that cross,

For our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Somehow

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— Galatians 3:13 (ESV)

A mystery lies here, that Christ could bear our sin in his body on the tree. And yet, it is true:

4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Galatians 4:4–7 (ESV)

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,

Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

That is why Peter writes that God has brought us to hope:

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:3–7 (ESV)

Look into this hope – as deep as the sorrow of sin once laid upon us, so much greater is the joy and glory of hope now brought by resurrection of Jesus Christ. See further that all this hope is of God, and God alone.

It was God who sent the Law to condemn us each and everyone:

20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Romans 3:20 (ESV)

It was God himself who wrote the “record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands” (Colossians 2:14). It was God who kept close track of our sin, of our deeds and intentions. And it was God who sent the Son into the world. Do you not know

that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you …. 1 Peter 1:18–20 (ESV)

And in that ransom, death itself was aside forever. In his death and resurrection, “you were born again, not of perishable seed but imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23). The one who lives without Christ cannot be said rightly to live at all. Before him lies only death; his life a life of a feedlot for worms. And after death? Death for eternity, endless fields of sorrow and despair.

But it is not so for you who know him. You have been called to joy which words cannot contain, because you have come to hope in the revelation of Jesus Christ:

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:8–9 (ESV)

But this still may not answer the question we asked at the beginning: How does Christ dying me lead to me suffering in this world? Wouldn’t it be the case that I should come into immediate and full possession of all this joy?

That is where we stumble. You see, we falsely think that there is a joy to be had which is other than the joy of the visible presence of the King. When we joke about mansions in heaven, we laugh at the idolatry of our hearts that even when we think of the King we somehow think of a joy which should centered upon us.

But all so hope is false. We were created for something far greater than ourselves – we were created for God. Nothing less than our king will do for such a heart. No mere trifle, even the most glorious throne to ever arise over the face of the world will be enough. The greatest room in a prison is still a cell.

To dream that we should be happy with something here and now is dastardly – it is lie. The only happiness and contentment we have now is a draught of the Creator being bestowed through the creature. Imagine being thirsty and coming to a faucet. You turn the handle and water comes out. It is not the faucet which drowns your thirst but the water. When you have contentment which flows through the creature it is only gift of the Creator seen in the creature. We must not love anything or anyone for themselves, but rather for the sake of Christ. Even our dearest relations must be loved for Christ’s sake.

Only our foolishness ever permits us to seek contentment in the creature.

When Christ died for us, our entire world changed. Rather than being desperate to find some happiness in this world – which is like trying to find water in the Sarah – we were granted true hope. I can remember the day that one of my daughters first ate chocolate. After that taste, nothing else would be the same. How much more is such a thing true when we come to Christ!

We now know a thirst that can only be slaked by living water.

Our hope is God. Our good is God. Our joy is God. Our inheritance is God.

Thus, our greatest joy and hope is that our King be glorified.

You see, when Christ died and carried away our sin we were brought to a greater a hope and joy: the all sufficient most glorious God. We have come to see that our God possesses such power and beauty that it would be a crime for God to not glory in himself. When the Father looks upon the work of his Son, destroying the reign of sin and death, the Father delights in the Son. And it is the joy of the Father to glorify his Son. It is the joy of the Son to bring glory to his Father. It is the joy of the Spirit to convict us sin that we may come to see the glory of the Father in the Son.

When we were rescued from sin, we were rescued into this kingdom of joy. “Not to us, O LORD, not us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and faithfulness!” Psalm 115:1.

That is where our suffering comes in.

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 1 Peter 2:9 (ESV)

You were saved so that you too could join in the eternal delight of God by proclaiming the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You and I are not the point of the universe. You can understand nothing of true importance in this life, if you do not understand this. You will never understand, faith, obedience, suffering; you will never know blessedness, nor know joy, worship or hope until you grasp this point: “God loves His glory more than He loves us and that this is the foundation of His love for us” (Piper, Brothers, We are not Professionals, 7).

The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And that is the chief end of God. You exist to share in the eternal delight of glorifying God. Look down at 1 Peter 2:12:

12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 1 Peter 2:12 (ESV)

You proclaim the excellencies of God by keeping your conduct honorable among the Gentiles. And how do you do that? By patiently enduring suffering – even unjust suffering. To endure unjust suffering because you have hope of God’s rescue testifies of God’s goodness and glory. Now, perhaps, the others may think you a fool and may think your suffering shame – but the day will come when you will be revealed to be a child of God and a joint heir with Christ. The time will come that Christ will come and then they will see your good deeds where done in the hope of God. Therefore, you may rejoice today knowing that you are bringing glory to God. Indeed, bringing glory to God is the only true means of joy in all of creation. Where you to search all heaven, all earth; where you to travel to edge of the universe, you could find no other true joy, no greater joy than the joy of glorifying God.

When the Lord had been arrested, Peter did not understand what was happening. It was only later that he finally realized the glory of God. Too often, we live like Peter before the resurrection. We deny Jesus, because the shame and pain of this world become too great. We know it to be wrong, and so we run out and weep. Peter is writing to you and me to spare us the sorrow of hearing the cock crow.

Thus, now that Christ has risen and death has been defeated, we can look upon our sorrows and pangs, sad marriages or painful work, as moments to glorify God – and what could be a greater joy? Christ’s death did not merely transform death for us, it also transformed life:

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:56–58 (ESV)

Mystical Bedlam.4

16 Thursday May 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiastes, Puritan, Thomas Adams

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bedlam, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 9, Ecclesiastes 9:3, madness, Mystical Bedlam, Puritan, Puritan Preaching, Sermon Outline, Thomas Adams, Wisdom

The prior three entries summarizing and outlining this sermon by Thomas Adams may be found here:

https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/mystical-bedlam-3/

https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/mystical-bedlam-2/

https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/mystical-bedlam-1/

PART TWO: Madness

Prologue: Having left his heart full of evil, we come to his madness. No marvel if, when the stomach is full of strong wines, the head grows drunken. The heart being so filled with that pernicious liquor, evil, becomes drunk with it. 269

Outline:

A tenant, madness

What madness is

Types of madmen

A tenement, the heart

A tenure, while they live

I) Madness

A) Adams begins with an extensive explanation of the difference between madness of a physical nature with a physical cause and a “spiritual madness”. To do this he works through the current anthropology. He discusses the differences between imagination, reason and memory; between frenzy and madness. This discussion is interesting in its own right, but is not necessary to understand the discussion of the spiritual condition.

B) The madness which I would minister to is thus caused: a defective knowledge; a faith not well formed, affections not well reformed. Ignorance, knowledge and refractory desires make a man mad.

1) “Ignorance: Anoia {Greek: no mind} and anomia {Greek, no law} are inseparable companions. Wickedness is folly; and ignorance of celestial things is either madness, or the efficient cause, or rather deficient, hereupon madness ensueth. Psalms 14:1, All workers of iniquity have no knowledge.” 271

a) “Beyond exception, without question, the authority, patronage, and original fatherhood of spiritual madness is nescience of God.” 272

b) “The true object of divine knowledge is God; and the book wherein we learn him is his word. How shall they scape the rocks that sail without this compass?” 272

2) “Unfaithfulness is a sufficient cause of madness. Faith in the Christian man’s reason.” 272

a) “Now the privation of reason must needs follow the position of madness.” 272

b) If God speaks , how can that not be good enough for you? “Surely you are mad, haplessly made, hopelessly mad, unmeasurably out of your spiritual wits.” (273)

c) Shall the Lord threaten judgments? Woe to him that trembles not! Hell was not made for nothing. 273.

d) But we see those that are as ripe in lewdness draw long and peaceable breaths; neither is it the disposition of a singular power, but the contingency of natural causes that thus worketh. Take heed; it not the levity but the lenity of God, not the weakness of his arm, but the mercy of his patience that forbeareth thee. 273

e) Infidelity in God’s judgments is madness; unbelief of his mercies hath never been counted less. 273

f) Thou dost not lack faith because God doth not offer it, but because thou wilt not accept it.

g) If, then, distrust of God’s mercy be not madness; what is? …Is he not made that will give credit to the father of lies rather than to the God of truth. 274

3) Refractory and perverse affections made a man frantic. This is a speeding cause and fails not to distemper the soul whereof it hath gotten mastery. 275

a) How many run made of this cause, inordinate and furious lusts!~ If men could send their understandings, like spies, down into the well of their hearts, to see what obstructions of sin have stopped their veins, those springs that erst derived health and comfort to them, they should find that their mad affect have bad effects; and the evil disposedness of their souls arisesth from the want of composedness in their affections. 275

b) This is that which Solomon calls the wickedness of folly, foolishness, and madness, Ecclesiastes 7:25, a continual deviation from the way of righteousness, a practical frenzy; a roving, wandering, vagrant, extravagant course, which knows not which way to fly, nor where to light except like a dormouse in a dunghill; an opinion without ground, a going without a path, a purpose to do it knows not what ….So madly do these frantics spend their time and strengths, by doing and undoing, tying hard knots and untying them ….275

c) Every willful sin is madness. 276

4) Types of madmen

a) The Epicure 276: what is the flesh which thou pamperest with such indulgence? As thou feedest beasts to feed on them, dost thou not fat thy flesh to fat the worms? …Thou imaginest felicity consists in liberty, and liberty to be nothing else but a power to live as thou list. Alas, how mad thou art! Thou wilt not live as shouldst, thou canst not live as thou wouldst, thy life and death is a slavery to sin and hell. 277

b) The Proud: ….Admiration is a poison that swells them till they burst ….277….There is mortality in that flesh thou so deckest, and that skin which is so bepainted with artificial complexion shall lose the beauty and itself….278

c) The Lustful: ….A father contemplating in his meditations how it came to pass that our forefathers in the infancy of the world had so many wives at once, answers himself, Whiles it was a custom, it was scarce a fault. We may so no less in our days. Lasciviousness is so wonted a companion for our gallants that in their sense it hath lost the name of being a sin. 278-9…Thou art made whiles incontinent. 279 I would mention the loss of his soul too; but that he cares not for; the other he would seem to love, then how mad is he to endanger them? …279

d) The Hypocrite plays the madman under covert and concealment. 279 ….He mourns for his sins as a hasty heir at the death of his father. 280.

e) The Avarious is a principle in this bedlam. ….covetousness …It is the great cannon of the devil, charged with chain-shot that hath killed charity in almost all hearts. A poison of three sad ingredients, whereof who hath not tasted? Insatiability, rapacity and tenacity. 280

f) The Usurer would laugh to hear himself brought into the number of madmen. 281

g) The ambitious man must be also thrust into this bedlam, though his port be high, he thinks himself indivisible from the court. Whiles he minds the stars, with Thales, he forgets the ditch….282.

h) The drunkard: It is a voluntary madness, and makes a man so like a beast that whereas a beast hath no reason, he hath the use of no reason; and the power or faculty of reason suspended gives way to madness. 283

i) The idle man you will say is not made, for madmen can hardly be kept in, and he can hardly be got out. You need not bind him to a post of patience, the love of ease is strong fetters to him….He that lives by the sweat of other men’s brows and will not disquiet the temples of his head. 283

j) The swearer is ravingly mad; his own lips pronounce him; as if he would be revenged on his Maker for giving him a tongue. 283

k) The liar is in the same predicament as the swearer. ….Ps. v. 6, ‘Thou shalt destroy them that speak lies.’ This is his madness. He kills at least three at once (himself, the one who hears, and the one of whom he lies). 284

l) The busbody will confess a madman; for he fisks up and down like a nettled horse, and will stand on no ground….He loves not to sleep in his own doors. 284

m) The flatterer is a madman….He displeaseth his conscience to please his concupiscence; and to curry a temporary favor he incurreth everlasting hatred. 284.

n) Ingratitude is madness. …He is not worthy of more favors that is not thankful for those he hath.

o) the angry man none will deny to be a madman. 285

p) The envious man is more closely, but more dangerously mad. 285. …He whets a knife to cut his own throat….Others strike him and like a strangely penitential monk, as if their blows were not sufficient, he strikes himself. Is not this a madman? …If you miss in in a stationer’s shop jeering at books, or at a sermon caviling at doctrines, or amongst his neighbor’s cattle grudging their full udders, or in the shambles plotting massacres, yet thou shalt find him in bedlam. 285

q) The contentious man is as frantic as any….Look upon his eyes, they sparkle fire; mark his hands, they are ever sowing debate. 285 So he makes work for lawyers, work for cutlers, work for surgeons, workd the devil, work for his own destruction. To bedlam with him. 286

r) The impatient man is a madman. …Bear one affliction from God well and prevent a greater. 286

s) The vain-glorious man is a mere madman, …By seeking fame he loseth it, and rushs made upon it. Put him into bedlam. 286

t) False religion: 286….

5) Consider the nature of your tenant. 289

a) He is a usurper, intruding himself into God’s freehold, which, both by creation and re-creation he may challenge for his own inheritance…What a traitor is man to let into his landlord’s house his landlord’s enemy! 289

b) That he doth not pay rent of God’s house. God, rich in merices, lends, and, as it were, lets to farm divers possessions; as the graces of the Spirit, the virtues of the mind, gifts of the body, goods of the world, and for all these he requires no rent but thanksgiving: that we praise him heart, tongue and conversation. 289

c) That he doth suffer God’s tenement to decay; he doth ruinate where he dwells. For the outhouses of our body, madness doth strive to either to burn with lusts or drown them with drunkenness or starve them with covetousness. 289

d) That he doth employ the house to base uses. 289.

II) The Tenement, the heart: The heart is a mansion made for God, not for madness. God made it and reserved it to himself.

III) The Tenure, while they live.

A) Alas! What gain we by searching further into this evidence? The more we look into it, the worse we like it. While they live. Too long a time for so bad a tenant.

B) Who then can be saved?

1) Will God give the kingdom of heaven to madmen?

a) Fear not; all are not madmen that have madness a tenant in their hearts, but they have it for their landlord….sin may well dwell in your hearts, let it not reign there. It will be a household servant, it must not be a king…It is one thing to have madness, another thing for madness to have thee. 290

b) Though sin, the devil’s mad dog, hath bitten thee, and thou at first beginnest to run frantic, yet apply the plaster of the blood of Christ to thy sores. This shall draw out the venom and grace shall get the mastery of madness. Be of good comfort, thou shalt not die frantic. 290

c) Happy is he that learns to be sober by his own madness, and concludes from I have sinned! I will not sin! Madness may be in his heart, like a tenant; it shall never be like a tyrant…..291

PART THREE: The Period (the conclusion)

After that they go to the dead….If a man looks into what life itself is, he cannot but find, both by experience of the past and proof of the present age that he must die. As soon as we are born, we begin to draw to our end.

….If we must be sinful, we must die; if we be full of evil, and cherish madness in our hearts, we must to the dead. We have enough sins to bring us all to the grave. God grant they be not so violent and full of ominous precipitation that they portend our more sudden ruin! 292.

We live to die; let me a little invert it: Let us live to lie; live the life of grace, that we may live the life of glory. Then, though we go to the dead, we shall rise from the dead, and live with our God, out of th reach of death forever. Amen. 293

Mystical Bedlam.3

15 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiastes, Faith, Good Works, Keep the heart, Mortification, Preaching, Puritan, Thomas Adams

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Ecclesiastes 9:3, Mystical Bedlam, Preaching, Puritan Preaching, Sermon Outline, Thomas Adams

(This analysis of Thomas Adams’ sermon “Mystical Bedlam” (Adams, collected works, vol. 1, 254 is continued from https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/mystical-bedlam-2/)

In this section he demonstrates that humanity has been infected extensively with death. The objection stated, as to original sin will become a much more heated debate in the generations which follows Adams. Edwards’ treatise on original sin will consider that objection at much greater length than Adams does here.

“Our corruptibleness is here demonstrated: A moral father cannot beget an immortal son” (256).

i) Objection: Why should the children die for their father’s sin?

I) “I answer, Adam is considered as the root of mankind; that corrupt mass, whence can be deduced no pure thing” (257)

II) “Thou shalt die, O son of man, not because thou art sick, but because [thou art] the son of man….Who happened to come into the world, must upon necessity go out of the world” (257)

ii) “It is no new thing to die, since life itself is nothing else but a journey to death” (257).

iii) “This should teach us to arm ourselves with patience and expectation to encounter death. – Often we ought to prepare for death, we will not; at last, we die indeed, and we would not….What bad memories we have, that forget our own names and selves, that we are sons of men, corruptible men!” (257)

II. The vessel which contains such madness is the heart.

A) How mad is it that man would have all his vessels good but his own heart! 258

B) Adams next develops a doctrine of the heart. He calls it “the receptacle of life” (258). The heart being the center of the microcosmus which is the human being. To place the heart in the center of the human being as the vital point is good biblical theology. However, Adams references humanity in light of contemporary understanding:

[The human being] had the unique function of binding together all creation, of bridging the greatest cosmic chasm, that between matter and spirit….Man was called a little world, not because he is composed of four elements …but because he possess all the faculties of the universe…E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, 66.

The heart, of all places, seems to be the seat of all such faculties and of the bridge between physical and spiritual.

C) He next develops a line of argument based upon the observation that the heart is “hollow”.

1) “It is a spiritual vessel, made to contain the holy dews of grace, which make glad the city of God, Psalm 96:4. It is ever full, either with that precious juice, or with the pernicious liquor of sin.”

2) The heart is right only when it rightly relates to God:

a) “The Father made it, the Son bought it, the Holy Ghost sanctifies it; therefore they all three claim a right to the heart. …The world cannot satisfy it: a globe cannt fill a triangle. Only God can sufficiently content the heart” (258).

b) “The heart is the chief toward of life to the body, and the spiritual citadel to the whole man: always besieged by a domestical enemy, the flesh; by a civil, the world; by a professed, the devil. Every perpetrated sin doth some hurt to the walls; but if the heart be taken, the whole corporation is lost ….All the faculties of man follow the heart ….”

3) God has done good for the heart: “Spiritually, he hath done more for the heart, giving th blood of his Son to cleanse it, soften it, when it was full both of hardness and turpitude. By his omnipotent grace he unroosted the devil from it, who had made it a stable of uncleanness; and now requires it, being created new, for hi sown chamber, for his own bed. The purified heart is God’s sacrary, his sanctuary, his house, his heaven” (259).

D) Therefore we must protect the heart: accordingly, we must know who will seek the heart.

1) Four will seek it:

a) “He that begs the heart is the pope ….He begs thy heart, and offers thee nothing for it, but crucifixes, images, etc” (259-260).

b) “He that would buy this vessel of us is the devil….” (260). He offers us anything to gain it. “If any man, like Ahab sell his heart to such a purchaser, let him that it …he doth buy it to butcher it” (260).

c) “The flesh is the borrower and would have this vessel to use, with promise of restoring. Let him have it a while, and thou shalt have it agin; but as from an ill neighbor, so broken, lacerated, deformed, defaced … .and then sends the heart, like a jade, tired with unreasonable travel” (260).

d) “The world is the thief ….The world hath two properties of a thief

i) First, it comes in the night time, when the lights of reason and understanding are darkened;

ii) Secondly, it makes noise in coming …terrifies us not with noise of tumultuous troubles … but pleasingly gives us the music of gain, and laps us warm in the couch of lusts….Fraud is more dangerous than force” (260).

E) How to respond to those who would seek the heart:

1) Turn the beggar from thy door (260)

2) “Then reject the buyer; set him no price of they heart, for he will take of any reckoning” (261).

3) “The borrower …lend him no any implement in thy house, any affection in thy heart” (261).

4) Be wary of the thief, “Lock up this vessel with the key of faith ….Trust not thy heart in thine own custody; but lay it up in heaven with any treasure” (261).

III) The liquor this vessel holds is evil. 261

A) “He that feels not his miseries sensibly is not a man; and he that bears them not courageously is not a Christian” (261).

B) “God created this vessel good; but man poisoned it in seasoning….Man was created happy, but he found out tricks to make himself unhappy” (262)

C) Solomon’s reference in Ecclesiastes 9:3 is not a regenerate heart.

1) “Oh, ingrate, inconsiderate man! To whom God hath given so good a vessel, and he fills it with so evil sap …..When the seat of holiness is become the seat of hollowness; the house of innocence, the house of impudence; the palace of love, the place of lust; the vessel of piety, the vessel of uncleanness; the throne of God the court of Satan, the heart become rather a jelly than a heart … that custom, being a second nature, the heart hath lost the name of heart, and is become the nature of that it holds, a lump of evil” (263).

2) “It is detestable ingratitude in a subject, on whom his sovereign hath conferred a golden cup, to employ it to base uses” (263).

3) Shall the great Belshazzar, Dan. v. 2, that tyrant of hell, sit drinking his wines of abomination and wickedness in the scared bowls of the temple, the vessels of God, the heart of men, without ruin to hose that delightfully suffer him? 263

4) I am willingly led to prolixity in this point [Adams has been working at great length to create emotional response in the hearers by means of amplification in his description of ingratitude toward God in sin. He seeks to make sin unthinkable, seeing what damage it does the heart.] Yet in vain the preacher amplifies, except his hearer applies. 264

5) What is lust in thy heart, thou adulterer….[lists several sins] Is this wine fit for the Lord’s bowel, or dregs for the devil to carouse of? 264

6) “Sin is beneath a Christian: How ill it becomes it such a heart to have hypocrisy, injustice, fraud, covetousness seen in it!…To the master of malediction, and his ungodly ways, we leave those vices; our heart are not vessels for such liquor. If we should entertain them, we give a kind of warrants to others’ imitation” (264).

7) “But how can this evil juice in our hearts be perceived? What beams of the sun shall ever pierce[] into that abstruse and secret pavilion?…I say not that works determine a man to damnation of bliss – the decree of God orders that – but works distinguish of a good or bad man. The saints have sinned, but the greatest part of their converted life hath been holy” (265).

V) The measure of this vessel’s infection – full. 266

A) He “tells man plainly that his heart, not some less principal part of it, is evil, not good, or inclining to goodness; nay, full of evil, to the utmost dram it contains” (266).

B) “Indeed, man quickly fills this vessel of his own accord; let him alone, and he needs no help to bring himself to hell” (266)

C) “Then the more men act, the more they affect; and the exit of one sin is another’s hint of entrance, that the stage of his heart is never empty till the tragedy of his soul be done” (266)

VI) The “repair” of the heart

A) “There is first a necessity that the heart, which is full of evil by nature, must be emptied by conversion, and replenished by grace, or not save by glory; what scuppet have we then to free the heart of this muddy pollution? Lo, how happily we fall upon repentance: God grant repentance fall upon us!” 267

B) The heart thus emptied of that inveterate corruption, should fityly be washed before it be replenished. …In vain were all repentance without this: no tears can wash the heart clean, but those bloody ones which the side of Christ and others parts wept, when the spear and the nails gave them eyes, whiles the Son of eternal joy became a mourner for his brethren. 268

C) All is not done with this vessel when washed. Shall we empty it, cleanse it, and so leave it?… If God be not present, Satan will not be absent….Humility must take up the room which pride had in the heart; charitableness must step into the seat of avarice; love extrude malice; mildness, anger; patience, murmuring; sobriety must dry up the floods of drunkenness; continence cool the inflammations of lust; peace must quiet the head from dissensions; honesty pull off hypocrisy’s vizor; and religion put profaneness into irrevocable exile.

1) Faith is the hand that must take these jewels out of God’s treasury to furnish the heart.

2) If our former courses and customs, like turned-away abjects, proffer us their old service, let us not know them, not own, not give them entertainment, not allow their acquaintance.

3) Let us now only frequent the door of mercy, and the fountain of grace; and let faith and a good conscience be never out of our society (269)

4) We have now done, if, when our hearts be thus emptied, cleansed, supplied, we keep them….Yet here we have not a patent [guarantee] of security and negligence sealed us, as if God would save us whiles we only stood and looked on ….

Prayer: Yea, O Lord, since thou hast dealt so graciously with these frails vessels of flesh – emptied them, washed them, seasoned them, supplied them – seal them up with thy Spirit to the day of redemption, and preserve them, that the evil one touch them not. Grant this, O Father Almighty, for thy Christ and our Jesus’ sake.

Mystical Bedlam.1

26 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by memoirandremains in Ecclesiastes, Meditation, Preaching, Puritan, Spiritual Disciplines, Thomas Adams

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Donald S. Whitney, Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 9:3, exposition, Meditation, Mystical Bedlam, Preaching, Puritan, Puritan Preaching, Rhetoric, Simplify Your Spiritual Life, Spiritual Disciplines, Thomas Adams

Mystical Bedlam, or the World of Madmen

Thomas Adams, collected works, vol. 1, p. 254.

(The text of the entire sermon can be found here: http://books.google.com/books?id=4qM_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA254&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false)

The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live: and after that, they go to the dead. Ecclesiastes 9:3.

In the introduction, we will see how Adams draws out the points of the sermon and works to create an emotional and logical effect in hearers. He does not seek to waste any time in his effort to make sin hateful and absurd.

Adams notes three elements of the verse:

1) The heart of the sons of men is full of evil,

2) and madness is in their heart while they live:

3) and after that, they go to the dead

The tripartite division follows the normal grammar and structure. He notes the relationship between the parts: “Wickedness in the first proposition, madness in the second, the ergo [therefore] is fearful: the conclusion of all is death” (254). Taking the first proposition he notes that the heart of the sons of men is full of evil.

At this point, he has done nothing more than make observations from the English text. Having made the observations, he then interrogates the text: What does this mean? Consider each element of the proposition:

How are the actors, the owners in this drama? “Sons of men.” This becomes the first proposition for the first division of the sermon: “The owners fo the this vessel, men, and derivatively the sons of men.”

What is the place of action? If the sons of men own something, what do they possess? A heart. What do I know about the “heart”? That become the second proposition: “The vessel is earthen, a pot of God’s making, and man’s marring, the heart.” How does he get to earthen?

If the action takes place in a vessel, a container, what does it contain? Evil. This becomes the third proposition: “The liquor it holds is evil; a defective, privative, abortive thing, not instituted, but destituted, by the absence of original goodness” (254).[1]

Look back at the first proposition, what can we know about this vessel and its contents: It is full. This becomes the fourth proposition: “The measure of this vessel’s pollution with evil liquor. It not said sprinkled, not seasoned, with a moderate and sparing quality; it hath not aspiration, but imbution, but impletion; it is filled to the brim, ‘full of evil’” (255).

Figures of Amplification

Note that on this final element [to be fair, he has used related techniques in each of the prior sentences] he uses figures of amplification to create an emotional effect. Poor writers typically seek emotional effect by piling superlative adjectives before or after the noun, This is the greatest, most excellent, extraordinary, awesome X. Write like that and you will bore people. You have merely told people what to think and feel, but that will not cause them to think or feel in such a manner.

Rather than merely tell the hearer what to experience, Adams, by means of the amplification, creates a basis for the hearer to come to a decision. First, the repetition of balanced phrases creates an auditory effect by which the voice can create a sense of tense and urgency which breaks in the final phrase, “full of evil” – with the weight coming down on the final word, “evil”.

Second, he creates a reasonable basis for the emotional disgust at the heart being filled with evil. Adams uses the figure of exergasia, “Repetition of the same idea, changing either its words, its delivery, or the general treatment it is given. A method for amplification, variation, and explanation.”[2]

Hebrew poetry uses this structure as a basic building block: one statement which creates an expectation to be fulfilled by a second (or third) statement (See, Theodore H. Robinson, The Poetry of the Old Testament, 21. Take, for example, Ecclesiastes 9:3

1) The heart of the sons of men is full of evil,

2) and madness is in their heart while they live:

3) and after that, they go to the dead

The first proposition is repeated, with variation in the second proposition. The effect of the first two is given in the third. Delaying the conclusion through the repetition and amplification of the second phrase, increases the emotional tension and creates more weight to the sad condition of humanity. To understand this better, consider a rewrite, “The heart of all people is full of madness and evil. In the end, everyone dies.” While most of the logical building blocks are present in the rewrite, the disgust is missing: you may agree that it is true, but it somehow doesn’t seem as important.

This does not mean that one does not use adjectives or evaluative language in a description. Adams makes repeated valuations, however, he does it through verbs: sprinkled, season. Even the latinate abstract nouns (typically a bad move) work for him because they imply the action and they are also given in a series of near-rhymes.

At the end, Adams then tells the hearer/reader what to think, “Thus, at the first putting forth, we have man in his best member corrupted.” Adams has been explaining for several sentences (going through his four points) the dismal state of humanity. Having run through the elements, he draws up the conclusion.

Dickens performs this move masterfully. For example, in the beginning of A Christmas Carol, Dickens tells us stories about Scrooge and Marley:

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The repetition; the comic play upon the word “dead”; the story of the absolute loneliness of Marley (no one cared he was dead, except for Scrooge – and Scrooge didn’t care); the ease with which Scrooge turned to business; all tell us that Scrooge was very covetous and one we should hate. Dickens plays out the nastiness of Scrooge with other tangible examples of his bad conduct.

It is not until the fifth paragraph that Dickens tells us as opposed to shows us: “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”

By the time the delay is resolved with the name calling, we are ready to join Dickens in hating Scrooge. Moreover, Dickens verbs to describe Scrooge: squeeze, wrench, grasp, scrape, clutch, — only then do we get the adjectival “covetous old sinner”.

He then tells more stories about Scrooge, we see Scrooge so that we heartily agree with Dickens that Scrooge is “solitary as an oyster” (bringing together December and cold seawater should make one shiver).

How Did Adams Think to Ask the Questions of the Text

Most exegetical works will look at the parts, note various syntactical elements, grammatical elements. Adams did note grammatical features (his three-part division of the verse) but then brought out aspects which don’t seem to flow directly from a sentence diagram.

Adams merely does what one should do when meditating upon a text. Donald Whitney in Simplify Your Spiritual Life[3] quotes ten questions gathered from Joseph Hall’s 1607 The Art of Divine Meditation. I am not saying that Adams read Hall’s book, but that Adams and Hall came from the same religious and intellectual world and thus would think about texts in the same manner.

Whitney’s restated questions are

1. What is it (definition)?

2. What are it divisions or parts?

3. What causes it?

4. What does it cause, that is, what are its fruits and effects/

5. What is it place, location, or use?

6. What are its qualities and attachments?

7. What is contrary to, contradictory of, or different from it?

8. What compares to it?

9. What are its titles or names?

10. What are the testimonies or examples of Scripture about it?

Adams does not merely break apart the text and say it means 1,2,3, therefore apply. Instead, he has spent a great deal of time meditating upon the text – only then does he proceed to teach it.

The care he spent in writing the sermon, the careful balancing of phrases for sound and meaning, and breadth of scriptural comparison (matters which would not be brought together by a topical index) and even examples from classical literature all bespeak of an extraordinary care to the matter he preached.

[1] Destitute as a transitive verb is not terribly common in modern English. In the early 17^th Century, English underwent a great deal of expansion and experimentation.

[2] This definition comes from the Forest of Rhetoric, at http://rhetoric.byu.edu/

[3] Whitney’s book is quite good. This would be a very fine place for some with little spiritual discipline to begin. The chapters are short, the material is clear and well organized, the wisdom is accessible, the benefits are tremendous. The undisciplined Christian will likely have trouble working through Whitney’s more detailed Spiritual Disciplines. This book is an outstanding gateway to the topic.