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Sermon Outline: Isaiah 15-16

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Acts, Isaiah, Preaching, Sermons, Uncategorized

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(Picture, “War & Poverty” by Kelly Short — I am using this picture because it provokes one to sympathy by seeing the horror of war — is one of the primary effects of Isaiah 15-16)

In reading Isaiah 15-16, I thought (1) How would I preach this passage? And (2) What is important in the manner of its composition: It is poetry, with a great deal of emphatic compression, repetition and imagery. Why is written like this and not as a narrative or as a didactic declaration?

I.  The Horror of Judgment

The overall tone is one of pathos. The repetition insists upon the horror and sorrow:

Ar of Moab is laid waste in a night

Kir of Moab is laid waste in a night

And so on. Every detail of the devastation is repeated and amplified. It is like a series of snapshots of broken walls, bodies and wailing. The destruction is absolute and goes down even to the earth. 16:8-10

There are refugees fleeing in all directions and the terror and sorrow spread in all directions like blood from the corpses:

Isaiah 15:8–9 (ESV)

8           For a cry has gone

around the land of Moab;

her wailing reaches to Eglaim;

her wailing reaches to Beer-elim.

9           For the waters of Dibon are full of blood;

for I will bring upon Dibon even more,

a lion for those of Moab who escape,

for the remnant of the land.

I can help thinking of all the millions pouring out of the Middle East who suffer loss and death and sorrow even as they flee. Any sermon must effectuate the sorrow and horror of the judgment or the sermon will have failed in its purpose.

II.  The Cause of Judgment

Second there is the cause of this devastation:

Isaiah 16:6–7 (ESV)

6           We have heard of the pride of Moab—

how proud he is!—

of his arrogance, his pride, and his insolence;

in his idle boasting he is not right.

7           Therefore let Moab wail for Moab,

let everyone wail.

Mourn, utterly stricken,

for the raisin cakes of Kir-hareseth.

This reminds me of Obadiah 3 (which is interesting when you compare this to Amos 1:11-12 & 2:1-3).  So this horror has come about because of pride.

III.  The Escape from Judgment

Third, this is the real bite in the passage. God has destroyed Moab with a horror beyond belief.  But God mourns the destruction:

Isaiah 15:5 (ESV)

5           My heart cries out for Moab;

her fugitives flee to Zoar,

to Eglath-shelishiyah.

For at the ascent of Luhith

they go up weeping;

on the road to Horonaim

they raise a cry of destruction;

 

Isaiah 16:9 (ESV)

9           Therefore I weep with the weeping of Jazer

for the vine of Sibmah;

I drench you with my tears,

O Heshbon and Elealeh;

for over your summer fruit and your harvest

the shout has ceased.

God loves his enemies: God judges, and yet there is compassion for the necessity of the judgment:

Luke 19:41–44

41 And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

There is a command to shelter the refugees:

Isaiah 16:3–5 (ESV)

3           “Give counsel;

grant justice;

make your shade like night

at the height of noon;

shelter the outcasts;

do not reveal the fugitive;

4           let the outcasts of Moab

sojourn among you;

be a shelter to them

from the destroyer.

When the oppressor is no more,

and destruction has ceased,

and he who tramples underfoot has vanished from the land,

5           then a throne will be established in steadfast love,

and on it will sit in faithfulness

in the tent of David

one who judges and seeks justice

and is swift to do righteousness.”

Notice this command ends with the protection in the tent of David. This phrase “tent of David” matches (in the LXX) the language of Acts 15:16:

The citation from Amos 9:12 follows the LXX fairly closely, though this version differs from the Massoretic (Hebrew) text in significant ways.49 ‘Precisely the divergence of the LXX from the Hebrew enables the text to be used midrashically.’50 The purpose of this restoration of the Davidic rule is not simply to bless Israel but also ‘ “that the rest of humanity may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things” ’. James adds words possibly taken from Isaiah 45:21 ‘ “(things known from long ago” ’) as a gloss on the concluding words from Amos 9:12 (‘ “these things” ’).51 This addition strengthens the claim that God’s plan to save Gentiles along with Jews is no novelty, since it was part of his eternal purpose (cf. Rom. 15:8–12).

David G. Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Nottingham, England: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 432.

The language of the throne coupled to the tent of David strengthens the tie to Jesus (and all of the cross-references to Jesus based upon this language).

The reason why the sorrow and terror are seen throughout the poem is that God intends to provoke the same sorrow and terror in the hearer. Moab is guilty. The judgment is justice, but it is sad, frightening event. God is calling upon his people to rescue the judged people of Moab.

It is interesting that it is not certain what attack is being foretold:

The first part of the prophecy, 15:1–9, tells of the devastating effect of the disaster which was to befall Moab. As noted above, the actual nature of the attack cannot be determined from the general account here. The major emphasis is upon the effect, which will be that the Moabites will be so demoralized that their only response will be weeping and flight.

John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1–39, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1986), 336–337.

But by analogy, the lesser judgment all foretell the greater judgment to come. This would lend itself, by such analogy to a very evangelistic plea. The tie to seeking protection in the tent of David would strengthen the argument.

God foretells this judgment, primarily to the people of God, to provoke them with both the horror of the judgment and the sorrow of the victims (who deserve the judgment) so that they will reach out and rescue these people by bringing them into the tent of David.

Sermon Outline: Nehemiah 3

31 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in Nehemiah, Preaching, Sermons, Uncategorized

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Difficulty with the text: on its face, this is a dull text. There is conflict before and after Nehemiah 3, but this chapter presents little conflict (there is a mention of some kind of conflict involving the nobles of Tekoa —Neh. 3:5b— but that is not explained).

One might be tempted to spiritualize the text by making some arcane symbols of the gates and the order: but that is not warranted from the text. It is a simple list of the work which was completed. The NIV Study Bible note even suggests the that list was essentially Nehemiah’s project list.

Therefore, we can begin with the question of “Why is this project list even in the Bible?”

It shows that the people were faithful to the call.
It shows that the work of God often entails planning and dull work.
It also shows that the extraordinary work of God is often ordinary.

The Extraordinary Ordinary Work of God

A.  This work, on its face, is hardly “spiritual”: they built a wall.
1. When we think of “spiritual” or “religious” work or effort
a. This leads us to split our lives in parts, generally (there is my “religious” life and my regular life).
b. It causes us to undervalue or misperceive the life of the gathered people of God. 1 Cor. 12 — and thus lose out on the blessings of God, because we may fail to see the greatest of the gifts given. 1 Cor. 13.
2. All of our live is to be “spiritual”. 1 Cor. 10:31; Col. 3:23
B.  We know this work was extraordinary from the context
1. This is recorded in the Bible, so we have the grandest of contexts.
2. We know the story of Nehemiah in particular.
3. The opposition from the wicked is another indicator of God’s presence. The Devil cannot be in the presence of God’s work and keep quiet. Mark 1:23; 5:2.
4. The actors saw this as spiritual work: Neh. 3:1. The text begins with the high priest who arose to do the work. The priests consecrated the gate & walls.

C. The work of God cannot always be seen for what it is
1. Sometimes God’s work is invisible.
a. To unbelievers Mark 4:12
b. To believers Mark 6:51-52
2. Sometimes the work of God provokes
a. Mark 3:1-6
b. Neh. 2:10 & 19; 4:1, et seq.
What is miraculous here?
1. Relevant dates:
538: Return from exile
520: Haggai
516: Temple
458: Ezra
445: Nehemiah
It’s been 90 years since the return from exile
It’s been 70 years since the time was built.
2. The people have shown no natural heart for the work.
3. These people were prone to all sorts of trouble: Ezra 9:1, Hag. 1:9
4. The work was subject to outside troubles: Ez. 4:17, etc.
5. Just consider what people who had fallen into lifetimes of workless habit would be like. That they would change at all would be indicative of supernatural action (Hag. 1:14; cf, Acts 17:6 vs. Mark 14:50).

Application
1. The miraculous work of God is often ordinary in how it looks: The miracle may even be largely invisible: like building a wall, the most mundane sort of thing.
2. The ordinary work of the church is supernatural
a. The preaching of the gospel. 1 Peter 1:12
b. Sanctification. Gal. 5:16 & 22-26
c. It is also seen in the acts of (i) Sending a man from one place to another (Eph. 6:21); (ii) a greeting (Rom. 16:22, 1 Cor. 16:20); (iii) establishing churches (Tit. 1:5); (iv) strengthening a church (1 Tim. 1:3). [These are things commanded or commended by an apostle. They were things which the Spirit deemed worthy of recording. None would have taken place without the Spirit’s work).

Sermon Outline, John 1:11

24 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in John, Preaching, Sermons, Uncategorized

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John 1:11 (ESV)

11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

How to preach this.
There are three parts to the verse
An action: he came
The recipients of the action: his own
The response: rejection

I. He Came

Implications:
a) If he came, he was not there before: why the absence? (Gen. 3)
b) The waiting for the Messiah
c) There was no ability to compel God to come (the idea of compelling God is at the heart of idolatry)
d) Parallels to the parables (e.g. Luke 19:11)

A Miracle
What a wonder is here:
a) The Incarnation
b) The distance between dark & light, creature & Creator

II.His Own
a)His own by creation
b)His own by covenant/promise
c) Contrast, those under the New Covenant will receive him — these will come by conquest

III. Rejection
a) They could see him
b) Killed him
c) They did not understand (1 Cor. 2:8, 2 Cor. 4:4)
d) This will turn to judgment

Introduction and Outline of a Sermon on Church Conflict (Philippians)

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Philippians, Preaching

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[This is the mere introduction and outline of a sermon. Notice that a sermon is not a merely commentary upon a text, but is a means of changing how one thinks and desires. The application must flow naturally from the transformation of the heart. A good sermon and biblical counseling must have the same ends and means (Dr. John Street calls it ‘expositional counseling’).]

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In Philippi, something had gone wrong. There were two women whose conflict had over-spilled the banks of their relationship and was now flowing through the streams of the church. The bitter water had reached into Paul’s prison, and from that prison he did more than resolve the issue, he set out to rebuild their heart.

Now, we have no idea why these women fought: Paul does not even mention the particulars of their conflict. But it is just that way with fighting: when the war is over we have the scars, but we don’t know why we drew our sword.

Paul loves this church dearly. He thanks God for them in every remember (1:3); he prayers for them with joy (1:4); he is certainly God is working in them and for them to the end that they will be “complete” (1:6, 2:13); he “holds in [his] heart” — which is an endearment he offers to no others; he “yearn[s] for [them] all with the affection of Christ Jesus”; they are his partners in the work of the Gospel (1:5).

Therefore, Paul’s heart must have been torn in two when he heard from Epaphroditus of the conflict. Sorrow upon sorrow had been heaped upon Paul, and now he had his friends in rivalry with one-another.

Now, if we were to seek to work here, we would likely put our effort into the facts of the conflict and the possible solutions. But Paul doesn’t go there (at best he leaves that for later, 4:3). Rather, Paul runs at the root of the conflict: They have lost sight of how the story ends.

Paul is no therapist or life coach. He is an apostle and pastor. Paul’s orientation is toward that Day:

9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:9–11 (ESV)

In Paul’s understanding, that Day transforms how he thinks about this day. His own imprisonment is redeemed, because it has “served to advance the gospel” (1:12). It is not that he is not under pain and pressure: in fact, his sees death and life in the presence of Christ as the only resolution to his pain. However, he does not shrink from the pain and trial, but rather can still rejoice for the cause of Christ’s glory (1:18).

He then turns to the Philippians and tells them that their suffering is a grace of God:

29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have. Philippians 1:29–30 (ESV)

Paul is not merely seeking to resolve their conflict: he is seeking to remove the grounds for their conflict. Think of it this way: Come the “day of Christ” what will this matter?

Suppose a young lady will be married in a few months. It is the common lot of such women to work and sacrifice and plan and worry as she prepares for that day. She will deprive herself of pleasures and rest, and she will do so joyfully because she so anticipates that day.

Paul is preparing his friends, his family for “the day of Christ”. He thus works to recast their present troubles as future blessing. Like a bride preparing for her wedding, he tells that they may suffer troubles joyfully: not because the trouble is no trouble, but because the end is so joyous and certain.

Here are three of the means Paul uses to restructure their hearts, their desires, their thinking and willing and affections: First he tells them that end which they desire is certain. Second, he gives the example of his own life, how he willingly has lost everything in his work to gain such a day. Third, he tells them to pray, meditate and then act as those who are willingly preparing for that day.

First, the end is certain: Philippians 2:4-11

Second, Paul’s own example: Philippians 3

Third, Pray, Meditate, Act with Joy. Philippians 4:4-9

[In each of three sections, note the implied obstacles to believing and acting. E.g., in Phil 3, Paul speaks of his joyful loss of all things. We so treasure our immediate goods that we fear losing them and thus will fight to keep them. Paul counters that line of thought by explaining how he works through such desires. The second point, in particular, should do the work of responding to objections. Now someone here will say, But if I try to reconcile with X, I might lose Y.]

 

 

 

What are the best preservatives against melancholy and overmuch sorrow?

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Joy, Preaching, Puritan, Richard Baxter

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WHAT ARE THE BEST PRESERVATIVES AGAINST MELANCHOLY AND OVERMUCH SORROW?[1]

Lest perhaps such an one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.—2 Corinthians 2:7.

THE brevity of a sermon not allowing me time for any unnecessary work, I shall not stay to open the context…these three doctrines which I shall handle all together; namely,—

I. That sorrow, even for sin, may be overmuch.

II. That overmuch sorrow swalloweth one up.

III. Therefore it must be resisted and assuaged by necessary comfort, both by others, and by ourselves.

In handling these, I shall observe this order: I. I shall show you when sorrow is overmuch. II. How overmuch sorrow doth swallow a man up. III. What are the causes of it. IV. What is the cure.

I. It is too notorious that overmuch sorrow for sin is not the ordinary case of the world.

A. A stupid, blockish disposition is the common cause of men’s perdition. The plague of a hard heart and seared conscience keeps most from all due sense of sin, or danger, or misery, and of all the great and everlasting concerns of their guilty souls. A dead sleep in sin doth deprive most of the use of sense and understanding… But most men so little regard or feel them, that they have neither time nor heart to think of them as their concern, but hear of them as of some foreign land, where they have no interest, and which they never think to see.

B. Sorrow is overmuch when it is fed by a mistaken cause.—All is too much where none is due; and great sorrow is too much when the cause requireth but less.

Superstition always breeds such sorrows, when men make themselves religious duties which God never made them, and then come short in the performance of them.

C. Sorrow is overmuch when it hurteth and overwhelmeth nature itself, and destroyeth bodily health or understanding.—… God will have mercy, and not sacrifice; and he that would not have us kill or hurt our neighbour on pretence of religion, would not have us destroy or hurt ourselves; being bound to love our neighbour but as ourselves.

II. When sorrow swalloweth-up the sinner, it is overmuch, and to be restrained: as,

A. The passions of grief and trouble of mind do oft overthrow the sober and sound use of reason.—

 B. Overmuch sorrow disableth a man to govern his thoughts; and ungoverned thoughts must needs be both sinful and very troublesome.—

 C. Overmuch sorrow would swallow-up faith itself, and greatly hindereth its exercise.—

 D. Overmuch sorrow yet more hindereth hope.—When men think that they do believe God’s word, and that his promises are all true to others, yet cannot they hope for the promised blessings to themselves. Hope is that grace by which a soul that believeth the gospel to be true, doth comfortably expect that the benefits promised shall be its own; it is an applying act. The first act of faith saith, “The gospel is true, which promiseth grace and glory through Christ.” The next act of faith saith, “I will trust my soul and all upon it, and take Christ for my Saviour and Help.” And then hope saith, “I hope for this salvation by him.” But melancholy, overwhelming sorrow and trouble, is as great an adversary to this hope, as water is to fire, or snow to heat. Despair is its very pulse and breath. Fain such would have hope, but they cannot. All their thoughts are suspicious and misgiving, and they can see nothing but danger and misery, and a helpless state. And when hope, which is the anchor of the soul, is gone, what wonder if they be continually tossed with storms?

E. Overmuch sorrow swalloweth-up all comfortable sense of the infinite goodness and love of God, and thereby hindereth the soul from loving him.—And in this it is an adversary to the very life of holiness. It is exceeding hard

F. And then it must needs follow, that this distemper is a false and injurious judge of all the word and works of God, and of all his mercies and corrections.—

 G. And by this you see that it is an enemy to thankfulness.—It rather reproacheth God for his mercies, as if they were injuries, than giveth him any hearty thanks.

H. And by this you may see, that this distemper is quite contrary to the joy in the Holy Ghost.—

I. And all this showeth us, that this disease is much contrary to the very tenor of the gospel.—

J. Yea, it is a distemper which greatly advantageth Satan to cast-in blasphemous thoughts of God, as if he were bad, and a hater and destroyer even of such as fain would please him.—

 K. This overmuch sorrow doth unfit men for all profitable meditation.—

L. And it is a distemper which maketh all sufferings more heavy

III. QUESTION. “What are the causes and cure of it?”

A. ANSWER I. With very many there is a great part of the CAUSE in distemper, weakness, and diseasedness of the body; and by it the soul is greatly disabled to any comfortable sense. But the more it ariseth from such natural necessity, it is the less sinful and less dangerous to the soul; but never the less troublesome, but the more.

Three diseases cause overmuch sorrow:—

1. Those that consist in such violent pain as natural strength is unable to bear. But this, being usually not very long, is not now to be chiefly spoken of.

2. A natural passionateness, and weakness of that reason that should quiet passion. …. Even many that fear God, and that have very sound understandings and quick wits, have almost no more power against troubling passions, anger and grief, but especially fear, than they have of any other persons.

3. But when the brain and imagination are crazed, and reason partly overthrown, by the disease called “melancholy,” this maketh the cure yet more difficult; for commonly it is the foresaid persons, whose natural temper is timorous and passionate, and apt to discontent and grief, who fall into crazedness and melancholy: and the conjunction of both, the natural temper and the disease, doth increase the misery. The signs of such diseasing melancholy, I have often elsewhere described. As,

a. The trouble and disquiet of the mind doth then become a settled habit.

b. If you convince them, that they have some evidences of sincerity, and that their fears are causeless and injurious to themselves and unto God, and they have nothing to say against it; yet either it takes off none of their trouble, or else it returneth the next day: for the cause remaineth in their bodily disease; quiet them a hundred times, and their fears a hundred times return.

c. Their misery is, that what they think they cannot choose but think.

d. And, when they are grown to this, usually they seem to feel something beside themselves, as it were, speaking in them, and saying this and that to them, and bidding them do this or that; and they will tell you, “Now it saith this or that,” and tell you when and what it hath said to them; and they will hardly believe how much of it is the disease of their own imagination.

e. In this case they are exceeding prone to think they have revelations. ….And many of them turn heretics,

f. But the sadder, better sort, feeling this talk and stir within them, are oft apt to be confident that they are possessed by the devil, or at least bewitched, of which I will say more anon.

g. And most of them are violently haunted with blasphemous injections, at which they tremble; and yet cannot keep them out of their minds. Either they are tempted and haunted to doubt of the scripture, or Christianity, or the life to come, or to think some ill of God; and oft-times they are strangely urged, as by something in them, to speak some blasphemous word of God, or to renounce him; and they tremble at the suggestion, and yet it still followeth them; and some poor souls yield to it, and say some bad word against God; and then, as soon as it is spoken, somewhat within them saith, “Now thy damnation is sealed! thou hast sinned against the Holy Ghost! there is no hope.”

h. When it is far gone, they are tempted to lay some law upon themselves,—never to speak more, or not to eat; and some of them have famished themselves to death.

i. And when it is far gone, they oft think that they have apparitions; and this and that likeness appeareth to them, especially lights in the night about their beds: and sometimes they are confident that they hear voices, and feel something touch or hurt them.

j. They fly from company, and can do nothing but sit alone and muse.

k. They cast off all business, and will not be brought to any diligent labour in their callings.

l. And when it cometh to extremity, they are weary of their lives, and strongly followed with temptations to make away [with] themselves; as if something within them were either urging them either to drown themselves, or cut their own throats, or hang themselves, or cast themselves headlong, which, alas! too many have done.

m. And if they escape this when it is ripe, they become quite distracted.

EXCURSUS on the Devil and “Possession”

1. And, first, we must know what is meant by Satan’s “possession” either of the body or the soul. It is not merely his local presence and abode in a man that is called his “possession;” for we know little of that, how far he is more present with a bad man than a good. … but he possesseth only the souls of the ungodly by predominant habits of unbelief and sensuality.

2. And so also he is permitted by God to inflict persecutions, and crosses, and ordinary diseases on the just; but when he is God’s executioner of extraordinary plagues, especially on the head, depriving men of sense and understanding, and working above the bare nature of the disease, this is called his “possession.”

3. And as most evil motions on the soul have Satan for their father, and our own hearts as the mothers, so most or many bodily diseases are by Satan, permitted by God, though there be causes of them also in the body itself. And when our own miscarriages, and humours, and the season, weather, and accidents may be causes, yet Satan may bythese be a superior cause.  [He defines the word broadly to refer to affect by the Devil: which may range from temptation or physical affliction to possession “of the soul” – which seems similar to what is commonly meant by “possession”.] From all this it is easy to gather:—

a. That for Satan to possess the body is no certain sign of a graceless state; nor will this condemn the soul of any, if the soul itself be not possessed. …

b. Satan’s possession of an ungodly soul is the miserable case which is a thousand times worse than his possessing of the body. But every corruption or sin is not such a possession; for no man is perfect, without sin.

c. No sin proveth Satan’s damnable possession of a man, but that which he loveth more than he hateth it, and which he had rather keep than leave, and wilfully keepeth.

d. And this is matter of great comfort to such melancholy honest souls, if they have but understanding to receive it,—that of all men none love their sin which they groan under so little as they; yea, it is the heavy burden of their souls. …

e. And it is the devil’s way, if he can, to haunt those with troubling temptations whom he cannot overcome with alluring and damning temptations. As he raiseth storms of persecution against them without, as soon as they are escaping from his deceits; so doth he trouble them within, as far as God permitteth him. We deny not but Satan hath a great hand in the case of such melancholy persons; for,

i. His temptations caused the sin which God corrects them for.

ii. His execution usually is a cause of the distemper of the body.

iii. And as a tempter, he is the cause of the sinful and troublesome thoughts, and doubts, and fears, and passions which the melancholy causeth. The devil cannot do what he will with us, but what we give him advantage to do. He cannot break open our doors, but he can enter if we leave them open.

f. But I add, that God will not impute his mere temptations to you, but to himself, be they never so bad, as long as you receive them not by the will, but hate them. Nor will he condemn you for those ill effects which are unavoidable from the power of a bodily disease, any more than he will condemn a man for raving thoughts or words in a fever, frenzy, or utter madness. But so far as reason yet hath power, and the will can govern passions, it is your fault if you use not the power, though the difficulty make the fault the less.

B. ANSWER II. But usually other causes go before this disease of melancholy, except in some bodies naturally prone to it; and therefore, before I speak of the cure of it, I will briefly touch them.

1. And one of the most common causes is sinful impatience, discontents and cares proceeding from a sinful love of some bodily interest, and from a want of sufficient submission to the will of God, and trust in him, and taking heaven for a satisfying portion.

 

…. But yet it beseemeth even a pardoned sinner to know the greatness of his sin, that he may not favour it, nor be unthankful for forgiveness.

I will therefore distinctly open the parts of this sin, which bringeth many into dismal melancholy.

a.  It is presupposed that God trieth his servants in this life with manifold afflictions; and Christ will have us bear the cross, and follow him in submissive patience. Some are tried with painful diseases, and some with wrong by enemies, and some with the unkindness of friends, and some with froward, provoking relatives and company, and some with slanders, and some with persecution, and many with losses, disappointments, and poverty.

i. And here impatience is the beginning of the working of the sinful malady. Our natures are all too regardful of the interest of the flesh, and too weak in bearing heavy burdens; and poverty hath those trials which full and wealthy persons, that feel them not, too little pity; especially in two cases:—

I When men have not themselves only, but wives and children in want, to quiet.

II And when they are in debt to others; which is a heavy burden to an ingenuous mind, though thievish borrowers make too light of it.

2. And this impatience turneth to a settled discontent and unquietness of spirit, which affecteth the body itself, and lieth all day as a load or continual trouble at the heart.

3. And impatience and discontent do set the thoughts on the rack with grief and continual cares, how to be eased of the troubling cause. They can scarce think of any thing else; and these cares do even feed upon the heart, and are to the mind as a consuming fever to the body.

4. And the secret root or cause of all this is the worst part of the sin, which is, too much love to the body and this world. …

5. There is yet more sin in the root of all, and that is, it showeth that our wills are yet too selfish, and not subdued to a due submission to the will of God, but we would be as gods to ourselves, and be at our own choosing, and must needs have what the flesh desireth. We want a due resignation of ourselves and all our concerns to God, and live not as children, in due dependence on him for our daily bread, but must needs be the keepers of our own provision.

6. And this showeth that we be not sufficiently humbled for our sin; or else we should be thankful for the lowest state, as being much better than that which we deserved.

7. And there is apparently much distrust of God and unbelief in these troubling discontents and cares. Could we trust God as well as ourselves, or as we could trust a faithful friend, or as a child can trust his father, how quiet would our minds be in the sense of his wisdom, all-sufficiency, and love!

8. And this unbelief yet hath a worse effect than worldly trouble; it showeth that men take not the love of God and the heavenly glory for their sufficient portion. Unless they may have what they want or would have for the body,—this world; unless they may be free from poverty, and crosses, and provocations, and injuries, and pains; all that God hath promised them here or hereafter, even everlasting glory, will not satisfy them: and when God, and Christ, and heaven are not enough to quiet a man’s mind, he is in great want of faith, hope, and love, which are far greater matters than food and raiment.

C.  ANSWER III. Another great cause of such trouble of mind is the guilt of some great and wilful sin; … There is some more hope of the recovery of these, than of dead-hearted or unbelieving sinners, who work uncleanness with greediness, ..

But yet if God convert these persons, the sins which they now live in may possibly hereafter plunge their souls into such depths of sorrow, in the review, as may swallow them up.

D.  ANSWER IV. But among people fearing God, there is yet another cause of melancholy, and of sorrowing overmuch; and that is ignorance and mistakes in matters which their peace and comforts are concerned in. I will name some particulars:—

1. One is ignorance of the tenor of the gospel or covenant of grace: …

2. And many of them are mistaken about the use of sorrow for sin, and about the nature of hardness of heart. They think that if their sorrow be not so passionate as to bring forth tears and greatly to afflict them, they are not capable of pardon, though they should consent to all the pardoning covenant; and they consider not that it is not our sorrow for itself that God delighteth in, but it is the taking down of pride, and that so-much humbling sense of sin, danger, and misery, as may make us feel the need of Christ and mercy, and bring us unfeignedly to consent to be his disciples, and to be saved upon his covenant-terms. Be sorrow much or little, if it do this much, the sinner shall be saved.

…

3. And abundance are cast down by ignorance of themselves, not knowing the sincerity which God hath given them. Grace is weak in the best of us here; and little and weak grace is not very easily perceived, for it acteth weakly and unconstantly, and it is known but by its acts; and weak grace is always joined with too strong corruption; …

4. And, in such a case, there are too few that know how to fetch comfort from bare probabilities, when they get not certainty; much less, from the mere offers of grace and salvation, even when they cannot deny but they are willing to accept them; and if none should have comfort but those that have assurance of their sincerity and salvation, despair would swallow up the souls of most, even of true believers.

5. And ignorance of other men increaseth the fears and sorrows of some. They think, by our preaching and writing, that we are much better than we are. And then they think that they are graceless, because they come short of our supposed measures; whereas if they dwelt with us and saw our failings, or knew us but as well as we know ourselves, or saw all our sinful thoughts and vicious dispositions written in our foreheads, they would be cured of this error.

6. And unskilful teachers do cause the griefs and perplexities of very many. Some cannot open to them clearly the tenor of the covenant of grace; some are themselves unacquainted with any spiritual, heavenly consolations; and many have no experience of any inward holiness, and renewal by the Holy Ghost, and know not what sincerity is, nor wherein a saint doth differ from an ungodly sinner. As wicked deceivers make good and bad to differ but a little, if not the best to be taken for the worst; so some unskilful men do place sincerity in such things as are not so much as duty; as the Papists, in their manifold inventions and superstitions; and many sects, in their unsound opinions.

And some unskilfully and unsoundly describe the state of grace, and tell you how far a hypocrite may go, so as unjustly discourageth and confoundeth the weaker sort of Christians, and cannot amend the mis-expression of their books or teachers.* And too many teachers lay men’s comforts, if not salvation, on controversies which are past their reach, and pronounce heresy and damnation against that which they themselves understand not. Even the Christian world, these one thousand three hundred, or one thousand two hundred years, is divided into parties, by the teachers’ unskilful quarrels about words, which they took in several senses. Is it any wonder if the hearers of such are distracted?

IV. I have told you the causes of distracted sorrows, I am now to tell you what is THE CURE, But, alas! it is not so soon done as told; and I shall begin where the disease beginneth, and tell you both what the patient himself must do, and what must be done by his friends and teachers.

A.  Look not on the sinful part of your troubles, either as better or worse than indeed it is.

1. Too many persons, in their sufferings and sorrows, think they are only to be pitied; and take little notice of the sin that caused them, or that they still continue to commit: and too many unskilful friends and ministers do only comfort them, when a round chiding and discovery of their sin should be the better part of the cure. …

2. And yet when, as foolishly, they think that all these sins are marks of a graceless state, …

B.  Particularly, give not way to a habit of peevish impatience.—…Prepare for the loss of children and friends, for the loss of goods, and for poverty and want. Prepare for slanders, injuries, or poisons; for sickness, pain, and death. It is your unpreparedness that maketh it seem unsufferable.

And when you feel distracting cares for your deliverances, remember that this is not trusting God. Care for your own duty, and obey his command; but leave it to him what you shall have: tormenting cares do but add to your afflictions. …

C. Set yourselves, more diligently than ever, to overcome the inordinate love of the world.—…That which men love they delight in, if they have it; and mourn for want of it, and desire to obtain it. The will is the love: and no man is troubled for want of that which he would not have.

1.  But the commonest cause of passionate melancholy is, at first, some worldly discontent and care: either wants, or crosses, or the fear of suffering, or the unsuitableness and provocation of some related to them, or disgrace, or contempt, do cast them into passionate discontent; and [then] self-will cannot bear the denial of something which they would have. And then when the discontent hath muddied and diseased a man’s mind, temptations about his soul do come-in afterwards; and that which began only with worldly crosses doth after seem to be all about religion, conscience, or merely for sin or want of grace.

2.  Why could you not patiently bear the words, the wrongs, the losses, the crosses that did befall you? Why made you so great a matter of these bodily, transitory things? Is it not because you over-love them? …

D.  If you are not satisfied that God alone, Christ alone, heaven alone, is enough for you, as matter of felicity and full content, go, study the case better, and you may be convinced.—…

E.  And study better how great a sin it is, to set our own wills and desires in a discontented opposition to the wisdom, will, and providence of God; and to make our wills, instead of his, as gods to ourselves.—…

F.  And study well how great a duty it is wholly to trust God, and our blessed Redeemer, both with soul and body, and all we have.—…

O that you knew what a mercy and comfort it is for God to make it your duty to trust him! If he had made you no promise, this is equal to a promise: if he do but bid you trust him, you may be sure he will not deceive your trust.

1.  OBJECTION. “But it is none but his children that he will save.”

2.  ANSWER. True: and all are his children that are truly willing to obey and please him. If you are truly willing to be holy, and to obey his commanding will, in a godly, righteous, and sober life, you may boldly rest in his disposing will, and rejoice in his rewarding and accepting will: for he will pardon all our infirmities through the merits and intercession of Christ.

G.  If you would not be swallowed up with sorrow, swallow not the baits of sinful pleasure.—…The more pleasure you have in sin, usually the more sorrow it will bring you; …Never look for joy or peace as long as you live in wilful and beloved sin. This thorn must be taken out of your hearts before you will be eased of the pain; unless God leave you to a senseless heart, and Satan give you a deceitful peace, which doth but prepare for greater sorrow.

H. … is, the cure of that ignorance and those errors which cause your troubles.

 

[1] This is an outline of the first half of Sermon XI from volume three of “Puritan Sermons”; James Nichols, 1844

Of Living as Strangers, as sermon by David Clarkson

07 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by in David Clarkson, Discipleship, Faith, Hebrews, Preaching, Puritan, Self-Denial, Submission

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Of Living as Strangers

The Christian life is often spoken of as a “pilgrimage.” John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress made this image lively and plain. If the life is one of “pilgrimage”, then one must know the rules of the travel. Many travelers have found themselves ruined by being ignorant. In his sermon, “Of Living as Strangers” (vol. 1 collected works), David Clarkson demonstrates the place of this doctrine in the Christian life and then provides a rebuke and instruction on how the Christian must live, to live as a stranger.

This sermon would be a useful teaching tool and test for Christian discipleship.

An outline of the sermon follows:

And confessed that they were strangers.—Hebrews 11:13

“Obs. Those that would die in the faith, should live as strangers and pilgrims.”

 

I.  The believer is everywhere shown to be a stranger in this world.

A.  This is shown throughout the Bible:

1.  Jacob. Gen. 47:9

2.  God tells the people that they will be strangers, even after they enter the land, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev. 25:23).

3.  David calls himself a stranger while he reigns as kin.

4.   This continues in the NT, 1 Pet. 2:11.

B.  What does it mean to be a “stranger” or “pilgrim?”

1.  It means that we live in this world only a short while.

a. At best, we can only know this world as an inn; a place of temporary lodging.

b. The laws and customs of the people of God and this world will differ. “The laws of their own country have no place here: the law of faith, love, self-denial, loving enemies, &c. Such a country is the world to the people of God, a strange country; and in this respect they are strangers.”

2.  “In respect of their design, their motion, it is still homewards. This strange country likes them not, nor they it; they are travelling towards another, that which is, that which they account, their home, that better country, that heavenly country, that city prepared for them, that city whose builder and maker is God.”

3.  The believer must travel through the land, taking all only what is fit for the journey: “Much would be a burden, a hindrance to them in their journey; they have more in hopes than hand….Though they be princes, sons of God, heirs of a crown, their Father sees it best, safest for them, to travel in a disguise.. ..Their treasure, their crown, their glory is at home, their Father’s house; till they come there they are strangers.” The believe must expect no more than is fit for a traveler.

4. “In respect of their usage. They are not known in the world, and so are often coarsely used. In this strange country they meet with few friends, but many injuries.”

5. “In respect of their continuance. Their abode on earth is but short. A stranger, a traveller stays not long in one place.”

6. “In respect of their relations. Their dearest relations are in another country. Their Father, their Husband, their Elder Brother, their dearest Friend, their Comforter, and the far greatest part of their brethren and fellow-members, are all in heaven. He that lives at a distance from his relations may well pass for a stranger.”

II.        Use of the Doctrine

A.   The Christian must not live on earth, thinking himself to be a home.

1.  All the hope must be elsewhere.

2. Clarkson gives this rebuke, “No wonder if these people be unwilling to die, since they must part from the world as one parts from his own country to go into banishment. They that thus live in the world cannot expect to die in the faith. Whose image and superscription do they bear?”

B.  He then encourages and directs Christians how to live as strangers here.

1.  Don’t let the pleasures and comforts of this world be your comfort and custom. 1 Peter 2:12; Romans 12:2.

2. Be patient in suffering:  You are stranger here; you cannot expect better. Leave vindication to the Lord.

3.  Be content with what you have: it is only temporary: “it is but a while, and you will be at home, and then you will find better entertainment, and more plenty.”

4. Don’t set your heart on this world. Remember, you’re leaving.

5.  Hurry home: don’t stray out of the way and after sins, vanities and deceits. Think of dear God is to you – and you to God. “Oh let the sight, the thoughts of Jesus, quicken your pace. And while you are absent in the body, let your hearts be at home, your hearts in heaven, where are your treasure, your joys, your crown, your glory, your inheritance, your husband. Oh, is not here allurement enough? This is the way to be at home while you are from home.”

 

6. Be not too fearful of death. It is a sleep now; Christ’s death did change the property of it? and will a pilgrim, a weary traveller, be afraid of sleep? When you are come to the gates of death, there is but one step then betwixt you and home, and that is death. Methinks we should pass this cheerfully, the next step your foot will be in heaven. 

The True Believer’s Union With Christ.1

24 Friday May 2013

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Christology, Preaching, Puritan, Union With Christ

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The True Believer’s Union with Christ

Rev. Thomas Lye, A.M.

James Nichol, Puritan Sermons, vol. 5, no. 18

“But he that is joined unto The Lord is one spirit” 1 Corinthians 6:17

 

In context, the verse occurs one of the reasons given by Paul for fleeing sexual immorality.

 

Observation:

True believers are closely united to Christ Jesus.

 

Query 1: Whom are we we to understand by “true believers”

Solution 1: Not mere professors (that is those make a bare profession of faith without possessing saving faith).

Solution 2: “Such as are united unto Christ by internal implantation.

 

Query 2: What Kind of Union is it betwixt The Lord Jesus and true believers?

Solution 1 (negatively)

A. Not a union of physical nature.

B. Not a hypostatical union, such as in the incarnation

C. Not a union of substance. “Not an essential union; not such a union as make believers in any wise partakers of the substance of Christ’s Godhead.”  On this point, he rejects the doctrine of theosis. However, it is exactly at this point that Letham (Union With Christ) makes a helpful observation. The language Lye rejects is “Being Godded with God and Christed with Christ.”  Letham explains that Origien and Gregory of Nyssa, “move[] closer to the idea of apothesis. In this line of thought, there is a generic human nature that was created by God is now divinized. Salvation entails being absorbed into God, individuals losing their identity as they are merged into this defied humanity.” 92 

 

Letham notes there is a second way in which this doctrine works out which does not entail a breakdown of the Creature/Creator distinction, “It is a union and communion with the persons of the Trinity. This is achieved by our sharing by grace the relation that the Father that the Son has by nature, thus retaining both personal and human identity.” 92  “In other words, Athanasius is arguing that the humanity of Jesus Christ, body and soul, was given the grace of being capable of everlasting personal communion with the eternal Son of God.” 93 On this point, then Lye is not so far distant:

 

Those expressions of Nazianzen, Χριστοποιειν and Θεοποιειν, of old, and Englished by some of us of late, namely, “Being Godded with God, and Christed with Christ,” are harsh and dangerous, if not blasphemous. To aver that believers are partakers of the substance of Christ’s Godhead, is to ascribe that to believers which we dare not affirm of Christ’s manhood itself; concerning which we say, that it was “inseparably” joined together with the Godhead in one person, but yet “without the least conversion, composition, or confusion.”* True, indeed, believers are said to “be partakers of the divine nature;” (2 Peter 1:4;) but how? Not of God’s substance, which is wholly incommunicable: but believers, by the “exceeding great and precious promises,” as by so many conduit-pipes, have excellent graces conveyed unto them; whereby they are made like to God “in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness,” wherein “the image of God,” which was stamped on man at his creation, consists. (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10.)

 

 

D) Not such an union which mounts up believers to an equality with Christ in any respect.

 

Positively:Cyprian tells us in the general, “It is not such an union as speaks a conjunction of persons, or a connexion of natures; but a consent of wills, and confederation of affections.” (Nostra et ipsius conjunctio non miscet personas, nec unit substantias; sed affectus consociat, et confeederat volunlates.—Cyprianus.)

 

A) It is a spiritual union, “Believers are partakers of one and the same  Spirit with Christ: Christ’s Spirit is really communicated to them, and abides in them.”

 

B) a Mystical (Strong will centuries later called this an “inscrutable” union. At this point, Lye notes the three sets of unions: The Trinity, the Incarnation, and the union of Christ and believers.

 

C) A real, true union: not a mere matter of imagination (Lye, “fancy”; or as we might say now, a union of mere words).

 

D) “A close, near, dear, intimate union.—Like that of the food with the body which it nourisheth. Hence believers are said to eat Christ’s flesh, and to drink his blood; (John 6:54;) such an intimate union as that one possessive particle is not sufficient to express it: [it is] not said, “My vineyard is before me;” but, “My vineyard, which is mine, is before me.” (Canticles 8:12.)“

 

E) In inseparable union (Romans 8:38-39). As Letham notes on this point, it is a union closer than one had with one’s own limbs. A limb may be severed, but one may never be severed from Christ.

 

Question 2: What are the efficient causes of this union?

The principal efficient cause: The Trinity, particularly the work of the Spirit.

 

On the human side (less principal):

Outward, “generally, all ordinances”. Particularly, the word preached. “The way to have Christ’s company is to keep Christ’s words” (John 14:23).

 

Also baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Of the Supper, he writes

 

The Lord’s supper: this is a great means of strengthening and evidencing our union, and advancing our communion, with Christ Jesus. We are “all made to drink into one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:13.) Hence that in 1 Cor. 10:16: “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of” (means, arguments, evidences, of our communion with) “the body of Christ?” The wine which we drink, “is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” Thus much for the external means of union.

 

 

Confirmation:  Lye now goes on to “confirm” the fact of such a union.

 

First, he looks to the expressions which are used to describe the relationship with Christ. For example:

 

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27 (ESV)

 

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Romans 8:10 (ESV)

 

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Romans 8:10 (ESV)

 

 

 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said,

       “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,

and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people. 2 Corinthians 6:16 (ESV)

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. John 15:7 (ESV)

Second, from the imagery used to describe our relationship to Christ: “living stones” (1 Peter 2:4-6); a building with Christ a cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20-21); a vine and branches (John 15:1-5); a marriage (Ephesians 5:30-31); a body (Ephesians 1:22-23; 5:30; 1 Corinthians 12:12).

Third, the communication of Christ to believers implies a union.

John 1:16 (ESV)

For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Union With Christ the Only Way to Sanctification

23 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Faith, Mortification, Obedience, Preaching, Sanctification, Thomas Boston, Union With Christ

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The following is an outline with comments of a sermon by Thomas Boston on the doctrine of union with Christ. The sermon can be found in volume 2 of collected works. Boston discussion of union with Christ and the order salvation — particularly his mention of passive and active reception sets out an area of explanation and investigation which could be a fruitful ground for more fully understanding the doctrine)

 union with christ the only way to sanctification

1 Cor. 1:30.—But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us—sanctification.

Introduction:

The world in its greatest darkness was not insensible that man’s nature was corrupted, that they needed something wherewith they might please God, attain to happiness, and repair the wound which they understood their nature had got. And although that Jews and Gentiles had different devices whereby they thought this might be obtained, yet all agreed in that it behoved them to go into themselves for it, and to draw something out of the ruins of their natural powers wherewith to help themselves, thereby discovering they did not sufficiently understand the depth of the corruption of human nature. And this principle is so agreeable to corrupt reason, that God’s device to bring about man’s salvation from sin and misery in and by another, to wit, Christ, was to ‘the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness,’ ver 23. And if we sound to the bottom, it is the same at this day to the unregenerate part of the Christian world.

Here, he sets out the problem and the solution:  Our helplessness, which is twofold:  Primarily, we do not rightly understand our circumstance.  The second flows from the first: Sin has so greatly corrupted our understanding that we do not realize the true depth of our trouble.

A con requires both an initial deception. However, the deception must remain in place until the scheme concludes. Sin functions in that manner.

Boston will demonstrate that the failure caused by sin admits of only a personal remedy –  the solution to ignorance and death is a person, Jesus Christ.

I  In the text we have the sum of God’s device for the salvation of sinners, and it centres in Jesus Christ who was crucified.

A.That the whole of man’s salvation shall be from Christ. God has made or constituted him the fountain of all salvation, from whom it must be conveyed to all that shall partake of it.

(1.) Man is ignorant naturally of the way to true happiness: he has lost God, and knows not how to find him again.

At this point, Boston makes a fascinating observation: The knowledge possessed by the human race is limited to the knowledge possessed by Adam: do this and live; there is a God, but he is absent. Boston does not suggest some sort of oral tradition (which would be both absurd and uninteresting), but rather a limitation in the structure of creation – there simply isn’t something more which can be had on this side of Adam.

Having noted the trouble, Boston notes the solution (he uses this pattern repeatedly: State a proposition, illustrate and elaborate; demonstrate the solution)

For remedy of this, Christ is made ‘wisdom.’ The treasures of wisdom and knowledge were lodged in him, Col. 2:3 and he is constituted the grand Teacher of all that seek for eternal happiness.

(2.) Man is unrighteous, and cannot stand before a righteous God.

For remedy of this, Christ is made righteousness. He, by his obedience to the law’s commands and suffering the wrath it threatened, hath brought in everlasting righteousness, which is a large garment, able to cover all that betake themselves to it,

… And the vilest of men coming to him, shall find a righteousness in him to be communicated to them; so that they that are far from righteousness shall be wrapt up in a perfect righteousness, if they will take Christ to them as God has made him.

(3.) Man is unholy, unfit for communion with a holy God here or hereafter. His soul is dead in sin, his lusts live and are vigorous in him; so that he is no more meet for heaven than a sow for a palace…but there is as much difference betwixt true holiness and their attainment, as between a living body and an embalmed corpse. … for our natural abilities will serve us no more for sanctification, than the cripple’s legs will serve him to walk.

But for remedy in this, Christ is made sanctification. … And the most polluted sinner, whose lusts are most raging, may confidently try this grand method of sanctification, which can no more fail him than God’s device can fail to reach the end he designed for it.

(4.) Man by the fall is become mortal, liable to many bodily infirmities and miseries, and at length must go to the grave, the house appointed for all living. Nature could find no remedy for this. The learned Athenians mocked at the resurrection of the dead,

But man’s salvation cannot be complete without a remedy for this; therefore Christ is made ‘redemption,’ who will give in due time deliverance to his people from misery and death,

Boston lays out the troubles we face – and then notes that all our solution lies in the person of Jesus. It is not a bare knowledge about, but a communion and union with Jesus which transforms one’s life.

B. That all who partake of this salvation, must partake of it in him, by virtue of union with him: …

This then is the grand device of salvation, that Christ shall be all to sinners, and that they must partake of all in him; which is quite opposite to our natural imaginations, and exalts the free grace of God, depressing nature. (1.) They do not help themselves, their help is in another: He is made wisdom, &c. (2.) They do not so much as help themselves to their helper; for it is of God, by the power of his grace, that they are brought to be in him. It is not the branch itself, but the husbandman that ingrafts it.

Boston having thus provided a brief exegesis sets out the doctrine:

Doct. ‘God’s device for the sanctification of an unholy world is, that sinners unite with Christ, and derive holiness from him, whom the Father has constituted the head of sanctifying influences. Union with Christ is the only way to sanctification.’

I) What is holiness?  As to holiness, it is that disposition of heart and course of life which is conformable to God’s holy law, and pleases him. In this life it is imperfect, but in the life to come it will be perfected. …

A. True holiness is universal in respect of the commands of God, Psal. 119:6. Tit. 2:12. Gal. 5:19. &c.

B. True holiness is not only in external duties, but necessarily includes internal obedience of the soul to the will of God, Psal. 24:3. …. And though not without weeds of corruption, it is the holy man’s constant work to be labouring to root them up.

C. In true holiness there is a bent, inclination, and propensity of heart, to the acts of obedience to God. The spirit, that is, the new nature, has its lustings, as well as the flesh, Gal. 5:17. By Adam’s fall the hearts of men got a wrong set, a bent and propensity to evil, Rom. 8:7. Hos. 11:7. Now, in sanctification it is bent the other way, towards God and godliness, 2 Thess. 3:5

D. As the love of God is the great comprehensive duty of holiness, love is the fulfilling of the law; so love runs through all the duties of religion, to give them the tincture of holiness, Heb. 6:10. And without this, should a man give all his goods to the poor, it profiteth nothing. Where self-love is the domineering principle, their duties are in God’s account serving themselves, and not him. Holy duties are the obedience of a child who loves his father, and therefore serves him; not the obedience of a servant, who loves himself, and therefore serves for his wages.

E. True holiness is influenced by the command of God. The will of God is not only the rule, but the reason, of a holy life, John 5:30., Psal. 119:115.

F. True holiness has for its chief end the glory of God, 1 Cor. 10:31. …The want of this mars a man’s life and actions, so far as they are not holy, but selfish, Zech. 7:6.

G. Lastly, True holiness is universal. Sanctifying grace seeks through the whole man, and the whole of his course.

1. Mortification is universal, Gal. 5:24. …It is no true mortification where one lust is spared.

2. Vivification is universal, 2 Cor. 5:17. As when the body of Christ was raised, there was life put into every member; so when the soul is raised to live the life of holiness, the image of God is repaired in all its parts, and the soul embraces the whole yoke of Christ, so far as it knows the same.

Thus, holiness is a completely different life.

II. I shall shew how this holiness is derived from Christ, according to the grand device of infinite wisdom for the sanctifying of an unholy world.

A. God made the first Adam holy, and all mankind was so in him, Eccl. 7:29.

B. Adam, sinning lost the image of God, that holiness in which he was created, and turned altogether corrupt and averse to good.

C. Man’s sanctification by himself thus being hopeless, for his nature being corrupted wholly, he could never sanctify his own heart or life, seeing no effect can exceed the virtue of its cause; it pleased God to constitute a Mediator, his own Son, to be the head of sanctifying influences to all that should partake of them. And again, he set up the human nature holy, harmless, and undefiled, which was united to the divine nature in the person of the Son. So Christ, God-man, was filled with the Spirit of holiness, and received a holy nature, to be conveyed from him to those that are his by spiritual generation, Eph. 2:10. And the Mediator being God as well as man, and the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in him bodily, there can never be wanting sanctifying influences in him who is a full fountain.

The human nature taken up the God in the incarnation was holy – that is without defilement. Then, just as Adam conveyed original sin those who followed him; so Jesus will convey holiness to those who are spiritually born of him.

D. Jesus Christ took on him the guilt of all the elect’s sins, and the curse due unto them; and these sins of theirs did hang about him till they brought him to the dust of death. … For the guilt of sin and the curse being taken away, sanctification follows of course; that being removed which prevented sanctifying influences, and a communication opened betwixt heaven and the soul again, upon its reconciliation with God.

Jesus sets up a possibility of communion (whether ground or space or cause, Boston does not neatly distinguish).

E. Though by the death and resurrection of Christ, the sanctification of his people is infallibly insured, as the corruption of all mankind was by the fall of Adam; yet we cannot actually partake of Christ’s holiness till we have a spiritual being in him, even as we partake not of Adam’s corruption till we have a natural being from him. And for the effecting of this union with Christ, he in the time of love sends his quickening Spirit into the soul, whereby he apprehends us; and thus there is a passive reception of Christ. And the soul being quickened, believes, and so apprehends Christ. Thus that union with Christ is made up by the Spirit on Christ’s part, and faith on ours. So the soul being united to him, lives by the same spirit of holiness which is in him, and takes of his, and gives to his members for their sanctification.

This description of the nature of union with Christ and its relationship to the order of salvation is the one of the most detailed I have yet seen. Note that the initial relationship caused by the Spirit is “a passive reception of Christ”. Thereafter, faith “apprehends Christ”; thus leading to an active reception.

This two-fold reception of Christ seems to provide a basis for understanding the nature of union in the believer. There is a manner which the union is indissoluble (the passive union); and yet another manner in which faith lays upon Christ (the active union). The active union would thus be capable of development; while the passive union could not be lost.

F. Lastly, As Jesus Christ is the prime receptacle of the Spirit of holiness, as the head of all the saints; so the continual supplies of that Spirit are to be derived from him for the saints’ progress in holiness, till they come to perfection. And faith is the great mean of communication betwixt Christ and us, Acts 15:9. And thus it does, as it empties the soul of all confidence in itself for sanctification, and relies upon him for it according to his word: putting on the saints to use the means of sanctification appointed by him, yet taking their confidence off the means, and setting it on himself, Phil. 3:3. And for the ground of this confidence it has his word, so that his honour and faithfulness are engaged for the supply of the Spirit of sanctification this way, being the way in which he has commanded us to look for it.

Use I. Of information.

A. The absolute necessity of holiness. … There is more evil in sin than suffering, more in man’s sin than the wrath of God. Nay, suppose a man saved from wrath, but not from sin, he is a miserable man; because of his unlikeness to God; for as happiness lies in assimilation to God, it must needs be a miserable case to be so unlike him as sin makes us.

B. In vain do men attempt sanctification without coming to Christ for it. Those that know not Christ may attain to a shadow of holiness, but can never be truly sanctified.

C. Unholiness ought not to stop a sinner from coming to Christ, more than a disease ought to hinder a man to take the physician’s help, or cold from taking the benefit of the fire. And they that will have men to attain to holiness before they believe, are as absurd as one who would have the cripple to walk before he use the cure for his lameness.

D. True faith is the soul’s coming to Christ for sanctification as well as justification. For faith must receive Christ as God offers him, and he offers him with all his salvation. Now, he is made sanctification: Wherefore the soul, being willing to take Christ with all his salvation, to be sanctified, comes to him for it.

Use II. Of Exhortation. Come then to Christ for sanctification.

To press this, I offer the following motives.

Mot. 1. If ye be not holy, ye will never see heaven.—Heaven’s door is bolted on the unholy, Heb. 12:14.—There is another place provided for the unholy impure goats.

Mot. 2. Ye will never attain holiness, if ye come not to Christ for it. How can ye think to thrive following another device than God’s for your end? Ye may do what ye can to reform, ye may bind yourselves with vows to be holy, watch against sin, and press your hearts with the most affecting considerations of heaven, hell, &c. but ye shall as soon bring water out of the flinty rock, as holiness out of all these, till ye believe and unite with Christ. Consider,

1. While ye are out of Christ, ye are under the curse; and is it possible for the cursed tree to bring forth the fruit of holiness?

2. Can ye be holy without sanctifying influences, or can ye expect that these shall be conveyed to you otherwise than through a Mediator, by his Spirit?

3. Ye have nothing wherewith to produce holiness. The most skilful musician cannot play unless his instrument be in tune. The lame man, if he were ever so willing, cannot run till he be cured. Ye are under an utter impotency, by reason of the corruption of your nature.

Lastly, If ye will come to Christ, ye shall be made holy. There is a fulness of merit and spirit in him for sanctification. Come then to the fountain of holiness. The worst of sinners may be sanctified this way, 1 Cor. 6:11.

Wherefore be persuaded of your utter inability to sanctify yourselves, and receive Christ for sanctification, as he is offered to you; and thus alone shall you attain to holiness both in heart and life.

 

Mystical Bedlam.4

16 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Ecclesiastes, Puritan, Thomas Adams

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

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(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.