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Tag Archives: Robert Buchanan

I have learned to abound

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Philippians, Uncategorized

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1 Timothy 6:17-19, Abound, Biblical Counseling, Comfort, Contentment, Ease, Ecclesiastes 7:14, Ecclesiastes 7:2-4, Mark 8:34-38, Philippians, Philippians 3:12-16, Philippians 4:12-13, Philippians 4:14-19, poverty, Proverbs 30:7-9, Riches, Robert Buchanan, The Book of Ecclesiastes Its Meaning and Its Lessons, Uncategorized, Want, Wealth

Paul writes to the Philippians:

11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.
12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

Philippians 4:12-13.

We can understand why Paul would need to learn how to live with being brought low. But the idea that “good” could be something which would require wisdom and learning seems positively foreign. Consider the words to a popular Christian song

Blessed be your name
When the sun’s shining down on me
When the worlds all as it should be

This is contrasted with the “road marked with suffering”. I don’t mean to push too much weight onto a song which was not written to bear too much scrutiny (I think of the ghastly graduate thesis where a poor student tries to wring some semiotic significance from a pop song). But the given of the song is that getting what I would like (even if it is not a sinful thing, merely a matter of comfort) is how things “should be”. For the Christian, isn’t everything “as it should be?”

In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.

Ecclesiastes 7:14. Both want and fullness present trials:

7 Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die:
8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me,
9 lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

Proverbs 30:7-9. Melanchthon explains:

In prosperity, men become reckless; they think less of God’s wrath, and less expect His aid. Thus they become more and more presumptuous; they trust to their own industry, their own power, and are thus easily driven on by the devil.—

Buchanan draws out this point at greater length:

Alas! that prosperity, instead of thus drawing the soul nearer to the great fountain of all blessedness, should, on the contrary, serve so often only to wed it more closely to the world! It is in this way that “the prosperity of fools shall destroy them” (Prov. 1:32). As was exemplified in the case of Israel of old, “Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness: then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.” Therefore the Lord said, “I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be” (Deut. 32:15, &c). Solomon himself had painfully illustrated, in his own personal history, this fatal tendency of outward prosperity to alienate the heart from God. The wisdom, and wealth, and power with which the Lord had so remarkably endowed him, became his snare. In that dark season of spiritual declension he tried to be joyful. He said in his heart, Go to; I will prove thee with mirth. He withheld not his heart from any joy; from any joy, that is, but one. He had ceased to joy in God. And how empty and unsatisfying did his earthly joys prove! Of the best of them he had nothing better than this to say, “It is vanity.” When he, therefore, with all this experience, says, “In the day of prosperity be joyful,” let us be well assured he does not mean us to repeat his own error; but rather that, taking warning from that error, we should turn every blessing we receive, whether temporal or spiritual, into a fresh argument for stirring up our souls and all that is within us, to praise and magnify the great name of our God.

Robert Buchanan, The Book of Ecclesiastes Its Meaning and Its Lessons, 1859, 259-260.

Of the two, ease and mirth are the more dangerous:

2 It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

Ecclesiastes 7:2-4.

How then did Paul learn to abound? Did he merely consider the end of death? No, he writes, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

In what does Christ strength Paul? By rightly valuing all the things of this life. He happily receives gifts and comforts as gifts from The Lord which will prosper those who give them (Philippians 4:10 & 14-19). But Paul does not fall into the trap of trusting in such things:

17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.
18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share,
19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

1 Timothy 6:17-19. He sees a thing for what it is — uncertain. But he also sees something better:

12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.
16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Philippians 3:12-16. Thus, the answer is not enforced poverty. The answer is not a grimace and growl. We may learn how to abound by realizing that even gaining the entire world cannot compare with Christ:

34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
37 For what can a man give in return for his soul?
38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Mark 8:34-38

Worldly Men Forget This

29 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by memoirandremains in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Ecclesiastes

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Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Ecclesiastes, Meaning of Life, Possessions, Robert Buchanan, The Book of Ecclesiastes Its Meaning and Its Lessons, Use of This World

There is a legitimate place and use for the things of this world; and there is a certain kind and measure of enjoyment which they are fitted and intended to yield. Solomon’s design, or rather the design of that blessed Spirit of God by whose inspiration he wrote this book, was to guide us to the golden mean of using this world as not abusing it, and to teach us ever to remember that the fashion of this world passeth away. Following out this course of salutary and much-needed instruction, he proceeds, in the remainder of this chapter, to amplify the proceeds, in the remainder of this chapter, to amplify the views previously presented of the vanity of a life devoted to this world. Of this truth what can be a more conclusive evidence than the fact stated in the seventh verse: “All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.”

To sustain the life of the body is undeniably the immediate end of human toil. It is part of the primal curse, that in the sweat of his brow man should eat bread. But that end, rightly understood, is after all but a means to a higher and nobler end. Man liveth not by bread alone, but by every word of God. Worldly men forget this, and instead of eating to live, they rather live to eat; live, that is to say, for mere earthly aims and interests; live for objects and enjoyments which have to do with the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, to the total neglect of what concerns the life of God in the soul. Living for such ends, it is impossible, from the very nature of things, that they should ever find the satisfying portion they are seeking for. The wants which they supply to-day will clamour as loud as ever for a fresh supply to-morrow. It is true, not of our bodily desires alone, but of all earthly desires whatsoever, that “the appetite is not filled;” that no amount of indulgence or gratification contents these desires; that they are ever craving for more.

So it is, not merely with hunger and thirst, but with the love of pleasure, vanity, ambition, avarice. The more they are fed the more they grow. They may be satiated and even sickened with one form of indulgence, but it is only to crave more impatiently for another. What folly, then, is it for men to embark on a voyage which only carries them farther and farther away from the destination at which they wish to arrive! In such a career the millionaire is no nearer his object than the houseless mendicant, who knows not where he is to find the food or the shelter of to-morrow. Is there, then, no difference between one man and another, as regards the good to be gotten from temporal things? Are the possessions of this world alike worthless to all?

This we understand to be the question raised in the eighth verse, when Solomon asks, “For what hath the wise more than the fool? what hath the poor, that knoweth to walk before the living?” The answer to the question is evidently contained in the verse that follows. Like many, however, of the other sayings of Solomon in this book, it does not leave its meaning lying on the surface, so that the careless and casual passer-by may discern it at a glance.

The saying must be closely examined, and diligently searched, otherwise its meaning may very easily be missed altogether. But so examined and so searched, the answer which Solomon gives to his own pertinent inquiry seems to be substantially this, that the wise man—the man who, though poor, yet knoweth to walk before the living—is satisfied with what he has of this world’s goods, while the fool is ever seeking after something more. “Better is the sight of the eyes”—better to be contented with what God has been pleased to set before us—the portion actually possessed, be it less or more—than be a prey to “the wandering of the desire”—the restless, craving, unsatisfied spirit of the fool—one of the many who are continually saying, “Who will show us any good?” That “wandering of the desire” is also vanity and vexation of spirit. It leads to nothing but fresh disappointments. It is like the mirage of the desert, which mocks the parched and weary traveller with the semblance of waters that have no existence. It is the ignis fatuus after which the poor deluded worldling stumbles on, through the darkness that lures him farther and farther away from the path of life; and leaves him too often, in the end, to perish in his sins.

The Book of Ecclesiastes, Its Meaning and Its Lessons, 1859
Robert Buchanan

216-218

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