Tag Archives: Puritan Sermons

The Sinner’s Mourning Habit

07 Saturday Aug 2021

Posted by in Job, Repentance, Thomas Adams, Thomas Adams

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This sermon by Thomas Adams was preached on March 29, 1625, just after the death of King James

The Sinner’s Mourning-Habit

(A habit here means an outfit, the way one dresses in mourning.)

The text given is Job 42:6, “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent and dust and ashes.” 

Adams begins with the implicit question, How does God speak to us, what does God do to gain our attention?

Affliction is a winged chariot, that mounts the soul toward heaven; nor do we ever rightly understand God’s majesty as when we are under our own misery….The Lord hath many messengers by which he solicits man….But among them all, none dispatcheth the business surer or sooner than affliction; if that fail of bring a man home, nothing can do it.

God had used affliction to gain the attention of Job and Job’s repentance here in “dust and ashes” is the end of that work. Where we may consider three degrees of mortification: the sickness, the death, and the burial of sin. 

To study God is the way to make a humble man; and a humble man is in the way to come unto God.

Adams comes to the first word of the text, “Wherefore.”  This establishes the basis upon which Job was humbled. Adams sees two elements here: (1) God’s majesty and (2) God’s mercy as the basis for Job’s humility.

As to majesty, “Mathematicians wonder at the sun, that, being so much bigger than the earth, it doth not set it on fire and burn it to ashes: but here is a wonder, that God being so infinitely great, and we so infinitely evil, we are not consumed.”

As to mercy: Meditating upon the mercy of God is the great means to humble us, “nothing more humbles a heart of flesh.”

It is a certain conclusion, no proud man knows God.

Humility is not only a virtue itself, but a vessel to contain other virtues: like embers, which keep the fire alive that is hidden under it. It empieth itself by a modest estimation of its own worth that Christ may fill it….All our pride, O Lord, is from want of knowing thee.

Next words, “I abhor myself. It is a deep degree of mortification for a man to abhor himself.”

He that doth not admire himself is a man to be admired.

He that doth not admire himself

Is a man to be admired

But the children of grace have learned another lesson – to think well of other men, and to abhor themselves. And indeed, if we consider what master we have served, and what wages deserved, we have just cause to abhor ourselves. What part of us hath not sinned that it should not merit to be despised?

He then asks this question, which raises a fascinating psychological question as to the nature of self-centeredness and more particularly the sin-centeredness of human beings. Perhaps this centering upon sin is truly what is at issue in narcissism rather than the bare “self.” Here is Adams’ observation on this point:

That we love God far better than ourselves is soon said; but to prove it is not so easily done. He must deny himself that will be Christ’s servant, Mark viii. 34. Many have denied their friends, may have denied their kindred, not a few have denied their brothers, some have denied their own parents; but to themselves, this is a hard task. To deny their profits, to deny their lusts, to deny their reasons, to deny themselves? No, do to all this they utterly deny.

But this denial of self and abhorrence of the sin which inhabits this is the heart of repentance.

Thus, if we deny ourselves, 

God will honor us.

If we abhor ourselves,

God will accept us.

If we hate ourselves, 

God will love us.

If we condemn ourselves, 

God will acquit us.

If we punish ourselves,

God will spare us. 

Yea, thus if we seem lost to ourselves,

We shall be found in the day of Jesus Christ.

Next, he comes to the words, “I repent.” Rather than explain the nature of repentance, Adams’ goal is to bring us to repentance. He begins by noting that for many the potential for repentance perversely becomes an encouragement to sin. But such thinking is faulty, repentance – true repentance – can never be a basis to encourage sin: “repentance is a fair gift of God.” 

Man’s heart is like a door with a spring-lock; pull the door after you, it locks of itself, but you cannot open it again without a key. Man’s heart naturally locks out grace; none but he that hath the key of the house of David, Rev. iii.7, can open the door and put it in. God hath made a promise to repentance, not of repentance; we may trust to that promise, but there is no trusting to ourselves.

We have no promise that God will grant us repentance, and without repentance there is no reconciliation with God. True repentance does not lie in magic words nor in our natural ability. True repentance is something given and granted by God. 

Nor yet must we think with this one short word, ‘I repent,’ to answer for the multitude of our offenses; as if we, that had sinned in parcels, should be forgiven in gross….Nor is it enough to recount them, but we must recant them….

If we could truly weigh our iniquities, we must needs find a necessity of either repenting or of perishing. 

Shall we make God frown upon us in heaven, 

Arm all his creatures against us on earth? 

Shall we force his curses upon us and ours;

Take his rod, and teach it to scourge us with all temporal plagues; 

And not repent?

Shall we wound our consciences with sin, 

That they may wound us with eternal torments;

Make a hell in our bosoms here, 

And open the gates of that lower hell to devour us hereafter, 

And not repent?

Do we give by sin Satan a right to us

A power over us

An advantange against us: 

And not labor to cross his mischiefs by repentance?

Do we cast brimstone into that infernal fire, 

As if it could not be hot enough, or we should fail of tortures expect we make ourselves our own tormentors?

And not rather seek to quench those flames without penitent tears?

How then will we put off sin? We cannot look to repentance as a remedy to sin if we look to it as an excuse for sin. We start with looking to the end of sin, “If we could see the farewell of sin, we would abhor it and ourselves for it.” Look at the consequence which will flow from the sin: what will happen? How will your conscience stand? 

Finally the phrase, “Dust and ashes.” 

This is a wonderful line, “I have but on stair more, down from both text and pulpit, and this a very low one, ‘Dust and ashes.’”

What keeps us from thinking of this end? 

How may doth the golden cup of honor make drunk, and drive from all sense of mortality. Riches and heart’s ease are such usual intoxications to the souls of men, that it is rare to find any of them so low as dust and ashes.

Dust as the remembrance of his original; ashes, as the representation of his end. Dust, that was his mother; ashes, that shall be the daughter of our bodies.

Dust the matter of our substance, the house of our souls, the original grains whereof we were made, the top of all our kindred. The glory of the strongest man, the beauty of the fairest woman, all is but dust. Dust, the only compounder of differences, the absolver of all distinctions. 

Who can say which was the client, which the lawyer; 

which the borrower, which the lender; 

which the captive, which the conqueror, 

when they all lie together in blended dust?

….

Dust, 

The sport of the wind,

The very slave of the besom [a broom].

This is the pit from whence we are digged, 

And this is the pit into which we shall be resolved.

As he writes later, we are made from dust and live in the empire of dust.

I conclude

I call you not to casting dust on your heads

Or sitting in ashes

But to that sorrow and compunction of souls

Whereof the other was but an external symbol or testimony.

Let us rend our hearts and spare our garments

Humble our souls without afflicting our bodies. Is. lviii.5. 

It is not the corpse wrapped in dust and ashes,

But a contrite heart, 

Which the Lord will not despise. Ps. li. 17.

Let us repent our sins 

And amend our lives;

So God will pardon us by the merits

Save us by the mercies,

And crown us with the glories of Jesus Christ.

How May Beloved Lusts be Discovered and Mortified.3

04 Friday Jul 2014

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The previous post in this series may be found here.

What must we do with this information? Needler provides “Uses” that is implications and application of the doctrine that we must put our beloved sin to death.

Use 1: Repentance. We have a great tendency to think much about the sins don’t commit, his sin  or her sin – when it is our own sin which matters most.  When it comes to sin, “We search everywhere, save where our Rachel sits upon her idol.”

Use 2: How do I discover a beloved lust? The sinner loves and shows “tender respect” for this particular sin

Needler provides a 12 part test. It is interesting that this test seems in many ways to match tests for “addiction” – or, as the Scripture puts it, enslavement.

1. The love and care for the sin:

The sinner seems to repent of sin, and to condemn sin, and himself for sin. But when the time of execution comes, the man is very tenderhearted: here is a reprieve for this sin, and there is a pardon for another sin. O, it goes against him to cut the throat of his darling lust! (It is a woful case when a man will undertake to pardon his own sin: this is crudelitas parcens, “sparing cruelty!”)

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 59.

Continue reading →

How May Beloved Lusts be Discovered and Mortified.2

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Mortification, Original Sin, Romans

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The previous post in this series may be found here:https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/how-may-a-beloved-lust-be-discovered-and-mortified-part-1/

 

Needler proposes that every human being has a peculiar beloved lust:

Most men have some peccatum in deliciis, “some sweet morsel” that they roll under their tongue, which they will by no means spit out or part with.

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 56.  A contemporary argument, seen predominately in sexual matters, is that this particular is so strong that it must be part of my character & nature: therefore, it cannot be wrong.

This an argument which derives from the civil rights legal work on matters of “race” – an utterly repellent term, because there is only a human race. Since one’s ancestry cannot be altered, nor one’s skin color be changed, these things cannot be taken into consideration for purposes of determining civil rights in civil society. The conclusion is correct: skin color & ancestry must be irrelevant when it comes to the law. However, the rationale is wrong. The basis of the distinction on
“race” is the proposition that there are different types, races, of human beings. And thus the distinction is close to the distinctions we make between species [see, it is a grotesque line of thought]. This is false: Genesis 1:27; Acts 17:27.

Christianity posits that all human beings are born with sin (original sin, both as to guilt & corruption). This sin corrupts our desires & behaviors.  All of us will experience such corruption as built into our very natures. That means we must have a transformation of our natures.

To argue that some-thing X, some desire (and related behavior) is part of my nature does not cross Christian claims in the least. The great stream of Christian thought has always maintained that such a corruption exists within humanity (yes, there has been a more-or-less constant debate).[1]

The “naturalness” of the desire does not determine the moral rectitude of the desire. That response to the desire requires a change of nature is precisely what Christianity claims.

He also makes an interesting sociological observation: sin has not merely a personal but also has a corporate aspect:

It would be no hard matter to show you, that several nations have their proper and peculiar sins,—as the Spaniards theirs, the French theirs, the Dutch theirs. Look into the scripture, and you will find, that the Corinthians had their sin, which is thought to be wantonness and uncleanness; and therefore the apostle, in the epistles that he writes to them, uses so many pressing arguments against this sin.

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 56–57.

Again, Needler upsets certain cleavages in modern thought. There has been a tendency to see either the individual or the society as the ground of bad conduct.

[1] See, for example, the Council of Orange, 529, A.D.:

 

CANON 1. If anyone denies that it is the whole man, that is, both body and soul, that was “changed for the worse” through the offense of Adam’s sin, but believes that the freedom of the soul remains unimpaired and that only the body is subject to corruption, he is deceived by the error of Pelagius and contradicts the scripture which says, “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:20); and, “Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey?” (Rom. 6:16); and, “For whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved” (2 Pet. 2:19).

CANON 2. If anyone asserts that Adam’s sin affected him alone and not his descendants also, or at least if he declares that it is only the death of the body which is the punishment for sin, and not also that sin, which is the death of the soul, passed through one man to the whole human race, he does injustice to God and contradicts the Apostle, who says, “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned” (Rom. 5:12)

 

 

How May a Beloved Lust be Discovered and Mortified? (Part 1)

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Matthew, Mortification, Sanctification

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How May Beloved Lusts Be Discovered and Mortified

Benjamin Needler’s sermon How May Beloved Lusts be Discovered and Mortified? Considers the text of Matthew 5:29-30:

29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Matthew 5:29–30 (ESV)

We Must Kill Our Sin

He first makes a series of observations on the text. He principally takes the text as referring to the need to stop all beloved lusts which draw us unto sin. He explains that mortification is a synergistic act of human and God:

(i.) That we ourselves must engage in the mortifying of our lusts.—Sinners, with their own hands, must pull out their own eyes. It is not enough to cry unto God for help, and, in the mean time, to be careless and idle, as if nothing were to be done on our part. Mortification is a work incumbent upon us, although we are empowered thereunto by the Spirit: “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” (Rom. 8:13.) We must mortify, although by the Spirit. The duty is ours, though the strength be God’s. So here: “If thy right eye offend thee, thou thyself pluck it out, and cast it from thee.”

(ii.) That we must be a willing people in this, as in all other duties.—A Christian dieth to sin, is not put to death.

(2.) It is not said, “If thine eye offend thee, observe it more than ordinarily, look narrowly to it,” but, “pluck it out;” to note, that nothing less is like to do our souls good, than the mortifying, the killing, the cutting off of our corruptions.—

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 52. The degree of this break must be absolute, a death:

It is not only said, “Pluck it out,” but, “Cast it from thee;” to note, that it is not enough for a man to leave his sin for the present, but he must renounce it for ever.—We must not part with sin, as with a friend, with a purpose to see it again, and to have the same familiarity with it as before, or possibly greater. Amantium irœ amoris redintegratio est: “The falling-out of lovers is the renewing of love.” We must not only shake hands with it, but shake our hands of it, as Paul did shake the viper off his hand into the fire: “Pluck it out, and cast it from thee.”

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 53.

Our Particular Life Will Affect Our Particular Sins

After a discussion as to why sin is often denoted by terms for the body, he asks the question of why some people have inclinations toward particular sin. He gives four reasons: First, there are differences in our bodies. Second, there are sins which are which are most common for those of certain stages of life: children have different temptations than old men. Third, there are differences in our circumstances. Fourth, there are differences in our upbringing.

Notice the subtle difference between Needler’s understanding of sin and our general contemporary understanding of behavior. We might say that one’s circumstance (body, education, age, et cetera) somehow causes  the life we see manifested. A man’s childhood caused him to be a criminal. Needler does not discount a contribution of circumstance. However, the circumstances conditioned rather than cause the adult life.

The sin exists in the God-ward relationship (or lack thereof). The circumstances affect how that sin is expressed.

This is a particular nuance which Christians must realize when looking at various sinful actions; many of which are being normalized on the basis  of circumstance (If one has a question as to whether this line of argument goes, consider this: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/01/many-experts-now-view-pedophilia-as-a-sexual-orientation-google-hangout.html). For the person who experiences the inclination toward a particular sin, the experience may very well seem automatic. Temptation is not a rational process, but rather the process of a lust (which is a broader word than sexual desire).

Part of the difficulty Christians have had when considering the relationship between sin, temptation & circumstance lies a failure to take seriously the biblical instruction on heart desires, lust, sin & the ability of one’s circumstances to affect the temptation. Moreover, the argument “God made me this way” need not be immediately dismissed as irrelevant. Romans 1 portrays strong inclinations towards sin as judgment themselves (God gave them over) which ends in a mind which cannot rightly think.

The difficulty is so great that only the supernatural invention of God can disrupt the experience and behavior.

How Must We Govern Our Tongues? Part 1

06 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Ephesians, James, Obedience, Preaching, Puritan

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 How Must We Govern Our Tongues?

Adapted from the sermon of Rev. Edward West, A.M., Christ Church Oxford

Puritan Sermons 1659-1689, Volume 2

The Morning Exercises at Cripplegate, St. Giles in the Fields

29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Ephesians 4:29 (ESV)

What speech is prohibited by Ephesians 4:29?  Corrupt, Greek sapros: something rotten.  This means anything unprofitable, idle, empty.  This can be seen more clearly when compares the rotten speech prohibited with the profitable speech required. If profitable speech builds up and gives grace, then corrupt speech must tear down and ruin.

What is speech which builds up? Speech which does good to the one who hears – even if it is merely a matter of bringing good cheer to another.

What does it mean to minister grace? That it be seasoned with salt, it conveys some wisdom, some charity, some blessing upon the other.

Therefore, What should be the aim of our speech?

1) Our speech should always aim at some good use.

2) Our speech should promote others in the course of grace.

3) Our speech should meet the situation and need: The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly. Proverbs 15:2 (ESV)

I. OBSERVATION. That our very lips are under God’s laws.

If we would be Christians of integrity, we should look to both our words and our deeds: Christ must be in our heart, our hands and our words: If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. James 1:26 (ESV)

What then shall we do about our tongues? First we need to realize the nature our tongue:

A. The tongue will easily accept government:  many are others right in their character and conduct who have great difficulty in governing their tongues:  7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. James 3:7–8 (ESV) How is this so?

1. The tongue demonstrates the pride of heart: This is so because our tongue is peculiar to human beings – it is the point on which we differ from animals (I once heard Steven Pinker state the distinction between animals and humans lay with our language ability).

To prove the point consider what people will do – they think their words will win them status, change the mind of others, get them out of trouble, “ those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail, our lips are with us; who is master over us?” Psalm 12:4 (ESV)

Even someone who lacks all other power will backbite, slander, spread tales and reveal secrets.

2. The tongue never seems to tire: he tongue is always ready and never weary, that it must be continually watched:

James 3:6 And the tongue is a fire, The tongue is volatile, ready to strike out all directions:

a world of unrighteousness. Verse 8 also states that the tongue is “full of deadly poison” – the tongue is propelled by powerful engines, unrighteousness and poison.  All sorts of wickedness seek expression through the tongue: (1 Peter 2:1).

The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. Not only does the tongue gain strength from our heart, it gains fuel from our circumstances.

B.  The tongue does not even realize its own sin: we sin so easily, so quickly, so often by speech that we scarcely notice. The tongue is never in fault, if we might be judge, and that its own advocate; even they that are severest in censuring others’ words, have always something to say for their own. 

1. The ease of speaking – this especially troubles some people who speak so often and so easily that sin in speech is not seen by them or others.

2. The wounds of words cannot be easily seen: a sword would draw blood, but a word wounds without sight.

3.  Sins of the tongue give great pleasure when committed: That drowns all sense of evil in it: it cannot be sin that tastes so sweet.

4.  Those who hear the sin (and are not the one attacked) will applaud the sin: Think of “sweet” it is to hear a secret revealed, a slander unleashed, a story spun. Our society spends millions to hear slander, learn secrets, and relish contempt.