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Tag Archives: perseverance

Richard Sibbes, Sermon on Canticle 5.2(c)

12 Thursday Sep 2019

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

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Canticles, perseverance, Richard Sibbes, Song of Solomon

The next two observations on the text by Sibbes considers the persistence of the Christian life being grounded in the love of God. The first observation, which derives from the imagery of waking and sleeping, is that while the Christian may stumble, the Christian will never completely fall:

 Obs.1. ‘My heart waketh.’ God’s children never totally fall from grace.

First, he looks to an image in Isaiah 6:13:

Though they sleep, yet their heart is awake. The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the church and children of God, Isa. 6:13, saith, ‘It shall be as a tree, as an oak whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves.’ Though you see neither fruit nor leaves, yet there is life in the root, ‘the seed remains in them.’

The imagery of Isaiah applies most directly to Israel as a whole. Sibbes notes the context, “speaking of the church and children of God” (here, “church” is being used to refer to the people of God prior to the New Covenant). Thus, he is not misusing the text exegetically but rather using the image as illustrative.

Sibbes next  applies the principle to an individual, Peter. (In making a reference the book of First Peter, I am surprised that Sibbes did not also reference 1 Peter. 1:23). Peter denied Jesus on the night of his arrest and trial, and Peter did not utterly fall away (as did Judas, who would not born of a “living hope”):

There is alway a seed remaining. It is an immortal seed that we are begotten by. Peter, when he denied his Master, was like an oak that was weather-beaten; yet there was life still in the root, 1 Pet. 1:3,Mat. 26:32, seq.For, questionless, Peter loved Christ from his heart. Sometimes a Christian may be in such a poor case, as the spiritual life runneth all to the heart, and the outward man is left destitute;

Sibbes then draws an analogy to a city ravaged in war:

as in wars, when the enemy hath conquered the field, the people run into the city, and if they be beaten out of the city, they run into the castle. The grace of God sometimes fails in the outward action, in the field, when yet it retireth to the heart, in which fort it is impregnable. ‘My heart waketh.’

Sibbes then applies the principle more directly to the issue, the outward failure and inward perseverance

When the outward man sleeps, and there are weak, dull performances, and perhaps actions amiss, too, yet notwithstanding ‘the heart waketh.’ As we see in a swoon or great scars, the blood, spirits, and life, though they leave the face and hands, &c., yet they are in the heart.

We have been wounded and appear dead, but our life has not yet left:

It is said in the Scripture of Eutychus, ‘His life is in him still,’ though he seemed to be dead, Acts 20:9. As Christ said of Lazarus, John 11:4, so a man may say of a Christian in his worst state, His life is in him still; he is not dead, but sleeps; ‘his heart waketh.’

This doctrine is contested. There are some who would say that one who falls has “lost his salvation”. There have been questions throughout the church among those who spoke of losing one’s salvation as to whether salvation could ever be regained; or even whether the regained salvation could merit heaven or only a purgatory. Sibbes anticipates that objection and contends this doctrine is consistent with Scripture:

 Obs.2. This is a sound doctrine and comfortable, agreeable to Scripture and the experience of God’s people. We must not lose it, therefore, but make use of it against the time of temptation. There are some pulses that discover life in the sickest man, so are there some breathings and spiritual motions of heart that will comfort in such times.

Those who speak of a lost salvation, put the continuance of salvation in human effort. Sibbes rightly places the provision and maintenance of salvation not in the human recipient but in the God who gives salvation:

These two never fail on God’s part, his love, which is unchangeable, and his grace, a fruit of his love; and two on our part, the impression of that love, and the gracious work of the new creature. ‘Christ never dies,’ saith the apostle, Heb. 7:25. As he never dies in himself, after his resurrection, so he never dies in his children. There is always spiritual life.

Sibbes then goes to the “use” of the doctrine. By the way, this insistent reference to the “use” of a doctrine was a hallmark of Puritan preaching. It demonstrates that the purpose of doctrine is not for some hypothetical future theology exam, but rather for living. This particular doctrine brings “comfort”. The doctrine provides a comfort because the our unfailing relationship with God is not based upon us but upon God: God engenders this love which provokes love in us; and love never fails:

This is a secret of God’s sanctuary, only belonging to God’s people. Others have nothing to do with it. They shall ever love God, and God will ever love them. The apostle, 1 Cor. 13:8, saith, ‘Love never fails.’ Gifts, you know, shall be abolished, because the manner of knowing we now use shall cease. ‘We see through a glass,’ &c., ‘but love abideth,’ 1 Cor. 13:12. Doth our love to God abide for ever, and doth not his love to us, whence it cometh? Ours is but a reflection of God’s love.

Richard Sibbes, Sermon on Canticles 5.2(b)

11 Wednesday Sep 2019

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

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Canticles 5:2, goodness, Goodness of God, perseverance, Puritan, Richard Sibbes, Song of Solomon

Based upon those observations, Sibbes then turns to the application of that idea: If it true that Christians will live with two contrary principles, with desires in conflict; and yet Christians will not ultimately be overcome and lose that gracious principle which flows from the work of the Spirit of God in our lives; how then should we live? Sibbes counsels (1) thankfulness, that God will continually show mercy to us; and (2) let us use the knowledge of our frailty and persistence of temptation, to keep a close eye upon our lives.

First, thankfulness:

 Whence, for use, let us magnify the goodness of God, that will remain by his Spirit, and let it stay to preserve life in such hearts as ours are, so prone to security and sleepiness.

That is an interesting observation about human psychology: use our thankfulness, extoling the goodness of God, because that will cause us to persevere. The knowledge that God will continue to show goodness to us, will cause us to continue to persevere in the goodness of God. It is an interesting that our worship of God will cause us to continue in the experience of the goodness of God.

He then comes to specific instances of God’s goodness. First, to think of how God was willing to do us good when there was no gracious principle in us, at the time of our salvation:

Let it put us in mind of other like merciful and gracious doings of our God for us, that he gave his Spirit to us when we had nothing good in us, when it met with nothing but enmity, rebellion, and indisposedness.

And also to consider the goodness of God in the Incarnation:

Nay, consider how he debased himself and became man, in being united to our frail flesh, after an admirablenearness, and all out of mercy to save us.

Second, when we look to ourselves, let us take care and look to the Devil’s persistence in seeking to exploit our fraility:

Use. 2. If so be that Satan shall tempt us in such occasions, let us enter into our own souls, and search the truth of grace, our judgment, our wills, our constant course of obedience, and the inward principle whence it comes, that we may be able to stand in the time of temptation.

Sibbes then gives examples of this self-servicing (he calls it a “reflect act”):

What upheld the church but this reflect act, by the help of the Spirit, that she was able to judge of the good as well as of the ill? Thus David, ‘The desires of our souls are towards thee,’Ps. 38:9; and though all this have befallen us, yet have we not forgotten thy name, Ps. 44:20. This will enable us to appeal to God, as Peter, ‘Lord, thou knowest I love thee,’ John 21:15. It is an evidence of a good estate.

 

Thomas Manton on Psalm 119.1b

01 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Faith, Galatians, Obedience, Preaching, Psalms, Thomas Manton, Uncategorized

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Biblical Counseling, Faith, Galatians, Galatians 2, Hope, perseverance, Persistence, Preaching, Psalm 119, Psalms, Psalms 119.1, Puritan Preaching, Sermon, Thomas Manton

The previous post in this series may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/thomas-manton-on-psalm-119-1-a/

The second doctrine Manton sets forth from Psalm119:1 is “That sincere, constant, uniform obedience to God’s law is the only way to true blessedness.” He derives this doctrine from the present participle “walk”, “in this way we must walk, which notes both uniformity and constancy”.

To walk must be in accord with some rule. The way in which must walk is the law of God, “First, The rule is the law of God. All created beings have a rule. Christ’s human nature was the highest of all creatures, and yet it is to be in subjection to God; he is under a rule.”

Here Maton makes a striking observation, the rule of inanimate creatures is a rule of covenant, “Inanimate creatures, sun, moon, stars, are under a law of providence, under a covenant of night and day”.

This rule must most especially apply to those redeemed of God. Hebrews 8:10 quotes the promise of the New Covenant from Jeremiah 31:

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Now if the promise of the New Covenant is to have the law of God written on one’s heart, the law must be a blessing to know,. As Manton writes,

If the law might be disannulled as to new creatures, then why doth the Spirit of God write it with such legible characters in their hearts? This is promised as the great blessing of the covenant of grace, Heb. 8:10. Now, that which the Spirit engraves upon the heart, would Christ come to deface and abolish? The law was written upon tables of stone, and the great work of the Spirit is to write it upon the table of the heart;

If we are to follow the rule we must not fall too short, nor overshoot the mark.

Not short. There are many false rules with which men please themselves, and are but so many byways that lead us off from our own happiness. For instance, good meaning, that is a false rule; the world lives by guess and devout aims. But if good meaning were a rule, a man may oppose the interest of Christ, destroy his servants, and all upon good meaning: John 16:2, ‘Those that kill you will think they do God good service

Neither may we overshoot the mark:

That we may not act over. There is a superstitious and apocryphal holiness which is contrary to a genuine and scriptural holiness, yea, destructive to it: it is like the concubine to the wife: it draws away respects due to the true religion. Now, what is this kind of holiness? It is a temporary flesh-pleasing religion, which consists in a conformity to outward rites and ceremonies and external mortifications,

If there must be obedience, then let be such obedience as will bring blessing. “If you would be blessed, there must be a sincere, constant, uniform obedience. The will of God must not only be known but practised.”

How can such obedience be perfect?

Then, sincere obedience is required: ‘Blessed is the undefiled in the way.’ At first hearing of these words, a man might reply, Oh, then, none can be blessed, if that be the qualification; ‘for who can say, My heart is clean?’ Prov. 20:9. I answer—This undefiledness is to be understood according to the tenor of the second covenant, which doth not exclude the mercy of God and the justification of penitent sinners;

What does this mean in practice?

Ps. 84:11, ‘The Lord will be a sun and a shield’, &c. To whom? ‘To those that walk uprightly.’ This is possible enough; here is no ground of despair. This is that will lead us to blessedness, when we are troubled for our failings, and there is a diligent exercise in the purification of our hearts.

Such obedience must be constant, and it must be as to all things which God commands: we cannot chose this and ignore that.

To what use can we put this knowledge:

To show you that carnal men live as if they sought misery rather than happiness: Prov. 8:36, ‘He that sins against me wrongs his own soul; all that hate me love death.’ If a man were travelling to York, who would say his aim was to come to London? Do these men pursue happiness that walk in such defilement?

Also, if we will be blessed, we must take the law of God for our rule.

Take the law of God for your rule. Study the mind of God, and know the way to heaven, and keep exactly in it. It is an argument of sincerity when a man is careful to practise all that he knows, and to be inquisitive to know more, even the whole will of God, and when the heart is held under awe of God’s word.

We must also take the Spirit as our guide:

Take the Spirit of God for your guide. We can never walk in God’s way without the conduct of God’s Spirit. We must not only have a way, but a voice to direct us when we are wandering.

The work of obedience runs contrary to the course of this world. To aim for a constant sincere obedience, to walk in the law of the Lord will bring difficulty and discouragement. We will not be able to past through discouragement if we walk only by faith, “The promises for your encouragement. If you look elsewhere, and live by sense, and not by faith, you shall have discouragements enough.”

Moreover, the difficulties of obedience will be disorienting; we will loss our way unless with an unmoving mark at which to aim:

Fix the glory of God for your aim; else it is but a carnal course. The spiritual life is a living to God, Gal. 2:20, when he is made the end of every action. You have a journey to take, and whether you sleep or wake, your journey is still a-going. As in a ship, whether men sit, lie, or walk, whether they eat or sleep, the ship holds on its course, and makes towards its port; so you all are going into another world, either to heaven or hell, the broad or the narrow way.

Faith Brings Us Through Trial by Setting Our Hope Upon the Promises of Confirmation and Good Issue

08 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by memoirandremains in 2 Corinthians, 2 Timothy, Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Edward Polhill, Meditation, Philippians, Reading, Romans

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2 Corinthians, 2 Timothy, A Preparation for Suffering in an Evil Day, Affliction, Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Edward Polhill, Faith, faith, Hope, Meditation, perseverance, Philippians, Reading, Romans

Polhill continues with his discussion of need of faith and perseverance which comes faith, for faith brings to our understanding the promises of God which support us in our trials.  Thus, faith looks to promises of God that he will confirm us to the end  — and that end will be a good end. Note that the promises are not that we will be without trials. Rather, the promises presume trial and yet promise that we will come by God’s grace through the trial.

There are promises of confirmation: In Matthew 16:18, Jesus promises that he will build his church “and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it”. This promise contains both the warning and the hope. There will be a war waged against the church, but hell will not prevail. Paul delivers a matching promise to the individual believers of Philippi:

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6 (ESV)

Or to Timothy:

8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, 9 who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, 10 and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, 11 for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, 12 which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me. 2 Timothy 1:8–12 (ESV)

There is the knowledge of suffering the promise of “that Day” when the war will be ended. This is a great hope of the believer in suffering – he will not be lost to Christ. As Polhill writes:

God doth, as it were, pawn his faithfulness upon it, that they being once brought into union with Christ, shall never fall off, but be confirmed unto the end: “The gates of hell shall never prevail against them; they shall be kept through faith unto salvation;” nay, and their faith shall be kept too. Christ did not only pray for Peter, that his faith fail not, but he prays so for all the faithful. Oh! how comfortable are such promises to the saints! Let us by faith lay up these rich cordials in our hearts to keep up from fainting in persecution.

Likewise, Polhill directs the attention of faith to the promises that God not merely bring his people through their distress, but that he will bring them to a good end. This is a point which runs throughout the Bible:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Romans 8:18 (ESV)

And:

16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16–18 (ESV)

Of this Polhill writes:

Faith must live upon the promises of a good issue: “All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth to his people,” (Ps. 23:6). “All things shall work together for their good,” (Rom. 8:28); persecutions and all. God alters the property of his people’s afflictions, and by an almighty alchemy turns dross into gold; he makes persecution turn to the refining of the saints, graces, and to the glorifying of his own great name. O! what great good things doth he bring out of evil! How much of his love and faithfulness may be seen in the cross! Let us, therefore, fix our hearts upon such promises, that, passing through the fiery trial, we may see the good end the Lord makes of it.

Edward Polhill, The Works of Edward Polhill (London: Thomas Ward and Co., 1844), 343.

How are such things to be used as a practical matter by the believer? He must first memorize these promises – tools which are not possessed cannot be used. These words must be known and then they must become part of the structure of one’s thinking. When trial comes the mind must first run to what it knows most unfailingly to be true. If one has not memorized and then made sure by meditation, one cannot take up these promises. Faith lacks content, it lacks knowledge when one does not possess the words of God.

There is no final salvation apart from continued faith

02 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by memoirandremains in 1 Peter, Romans, Thomas Schreiner

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1 Peter, Faith, perseverance, Romans, salvation, Thomas Schreiner

There is no final salvation apart from continued faith, and thus faith is a condition for obtaining the eschatological inheritance. It is imperative to understand that God’s protection cannot be kept in a separate compartment from our believing. We can get at the issue by asking, “How are we protected through God’s power?” All of 1 Peter clarifies that we are not exempted from suffering or even death because of the power of God since the church experiences persecution. God’s power does not shield believers from trials and sufferings, but it does protect us from that which would cause us to fall away. What would prevent us from maintaining our allegiance to Christ until the end? Surely the answer is sin, and we know that sin stems from unbelief—in failing to hope in God during our earthly sojourn. God’s power, to be effective at all, must guard us from sin and unbelief. If his power plays no role in our faith, then it seems that his power accomplishes nothing in our making it to the end—since it is precisely unbelief and failure to hope in God that causes us to fall away from God. If God’s power does not protect us from unbelief, it is hard to see what it does. How is God protecting us until the end if his guarding plays no role in our continuing faith? We are suggesting that 1 Pet 1:5 contains a glorious promise. God’s power protects us because his power is the means by which our faith is sustained. E. Best rightly discerns that the ultimate reason for our preservation must be God’s gift rather than our faith since otherwise “the reference to God’s power” is “unnecessary and provides no assurance to the believer since what he doubts is his own power to cling to God in trial.” We should not use this verse to deny that believers must maintain their faith until the end. Its function is to encourage believers with the truth that God will preserve their faith through sufferings and the vicissitudes of life. Faith and hope are ultimately gifts of God, and he fortifies believers so that they persist in faith and hope until the day that they obtain the eschatological inheritance.

 

Thomas R. Schreiner, vol. 37, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, electronic ed., Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2007), 64-65.

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