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Meditations on God 5

April 6, 2016

Isaiah 40:17 All the nations are as nothing before Him, They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless. 18 To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him? 19 As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, A goldsmith plates it with gold, And a silversmith fashions chains of silver. 20 He who is too impoverished for such an offering Selects a tree that does not rot; He seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman To prepare an idol that will not totter. 21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. 23 He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. 24 Scarcely have they been planted, Scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, But He merely blows on them, and they wither, And the storm carries them away like stubble. 25 “To whom then will you liken Me That I would be his equal?” says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.

In the passage above we see the greatness of God and the nothingness of man (in comparison to God). The Scriptures speak of creation as revealing the greatness of God as opposed to a mindless and godless evolutionary process. When God is removed from anything, those things will not be seen in the appropriate light. When the truth of the nature of God is removed from the churches, they will also not be seen for what they are either. The purpose of the churches will be diminished and they will become a flurry of human activity focused on humanistic things while still using the name of God.

The God of creation and the God of all things is utterly glorious in who He is and what He does. While man may think of politics and of evangelism as the center of all human life in terms of how things are done in the nations and in the churches, God is the One who is in actual control. It is God who plants the politicians and it is God who removes them at His good pleasure. The picture from Isaiah 40 is that all of human activity is under the sovereign hand of God and it is with great ease that He does what He does. The heavens are compared to a curtain that God spreads out at His pleasure and that He does so with great ease. Behold the true and living God!

In the churches there is great activity at many places trying and fighting to obtain converts for various reasons. While this is not entirely a terrible activity, the way it is done, however, is as if God did not exist. It is done in a way where the activity of evangelism depends on man’s initiative and efforts. Salvation is talked about in some sort of objective and unclear way without the true Gospel even being declared. The Gospel is no longer the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ, but instead it is the Gospel of human choice and power. However, the Gospel has to do with the glories and wonders of the true God of all creation and the true God of all Scripture. He is the One who is to be preached. He is the One who is to be declared. He is the One who is sinned against. He is the One who alone can take away the sins of man by the sacrifice of Christ. He alone is the One who can regenerate dead men. He alone is the One who can unite men to Christ. How dare men denigrate the Gospel by making it so dependent upon the frail arm of humanity? How dare men denigrate the Gospel of God by such humanistic preaching and messages? Evangelism can be idolatry as well as anything and when it is a false god or even presumed rather than the true God, evangelism is idolatry.

The glory of the Gospel of God is God Himself. He is the One that we should be talking about. The power of the Gospel is not in the arms and power of man, it is in the Spirit of the living God. When we lift up our eyes to the stars, we are to know that not one of them is missing and the reason for that is because of God Himself. The stars exist and are held into being “because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power.” So is each human soul and each human ruler, but also each preacher and each speaking of the true Gospel. When the false gospel is preached or presented or taught, a false god is being held forth as well. As evolution is false because it does not depend on the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, so evangelism and church activity is false when it does not depend on the greatness of His might and the strength of His power. In reality, men have erected an idol of church and evangelism that are covered with the false gold of humanism and it is in the power of men to keep their idols from falling. In beholding the light of the true God idols appear and should be repugnant.

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Meditations on God 4

April 5, 2016

Isaiah 40:17 All the nations are as nothing before Him, They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless. 18 To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him? 19 As for the idol, a craftsman casts it, A goldsmith plates it with gold, And a silversmith fashions chains of silver. 20 He who is too impoverished for such an offering Selects a tree that does not rot; He seeks out for himself a skillful craftsman To prepare an idol that will not totter. 21 Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. 23 He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. 24 Scarcely have they been planted, Scarcely have they been sown, scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, But He merely blows on them, and they wither, And the storm carries them away like stubble. 25 “To whom then will you liken Me That I would be his equal?” says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high And see who has created these stars, The One who leads forth their host by number, He calls them all by name; Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, Not one of them is missing.

In reality all things are about God. All things were created by Him and they were created for Him. As all things were created by Him, all things reflect something of God if only He would reveal them to us. In one sense nothing is like God, and yet in another all things reflect something of God. Most likely the word “like” is used in an equivocal way when we speak this way. There is nothing like God in the sense that He is beyond being compared to anything or anyone. In another sense, human beings are made in His image and are to be like Him, which is to say that they are to pursue a moral likeness.

The human heart if full of self, pride, and clearly, therefore, full of idolatry. The fallen human heart wants to use all things for self rather than for God, and that includes self. The fallen human hearts is centered upon itself in self-love and wants to be at the center of all things. The fallen human heart will change and twist reality in order to allow it to be at the center of all things, so the human heart will twist and distort the truth of God. When it has worked and worked to distort enough, it will erect idols in its own image and after its own likeness. The fallen heart finds out craftsmen and builds an idol made out of gold according to what it wants the idol to be. It is impossible for any idol to reflect the truth of God and so idolatry is strictly forbidden.

While it may be rare in the United States and Europe in our day to find people building idols in the same way, though indeed Roman Catholicism has idols and many other religions do too, but it is not the common thing to do in so-called evangelical circles. However, idols of the heart in wrong theology and coveting are rampant. In sermon after sermon and book after book God is likened to man and He is twisted and distorted to become like man or like man wants. Men want a God that they can control and they want a God that they can manipulate through what they think is faith or what they call prayer. It appears that the vast majority of evangelicalism of today is head over heels in idolatry as they have wrong gods and think that the true and sovereign God will do what they want.

If men would simply look into the heaven they would behold the true God on display, though of course He is more clearly on display in Scripture. If it is true that “All the nations are as nothing before Him” and “they are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless,” then the so-called god of the modern pulpit is nothing but an idol. The God who can change is an idol. The God who is anything less than absolutely sovereign is an idol. The God who can be moved by anything other than Himself is an idol. The God who is pleased with men apart from Christ is an idol. We must behold the living God and we must see our utter helplessness before Him. We must behold the living God and see our utter weakness and nothingness before Him. We cannot serve this God, but instead the only thing we can do (spiritually or good) is what we receive from Him. We cannot seek Him with hearts that don’t love Him and we cannot seek Him with hidden idols in our hearts. We cannot fool Him and manipulate Him to do anything at all. We cannot even avoid sin apart from His mercy. We are at His mercy in all things. He is utterly and totally sovereign, we are utterly dependent upon Him.

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Nature of True Preaching 4

April 4, 2016

Christianity sounded in men’s ears as good advice, rather than good news; an exhortation to be up and doing, to fight the good fight and follow the gleam, not the announcement of something which God had already done, decisively and for ever. There was accordingly an inclination to regard the preacher as the purveyor of religious homilies and ethical uplift, not the herald of the mighty acts of God, So far did the prevailing mood push the tendency to “change the glory of the uncorruptible God into the image of corruptible man” that there appeared a plagiarizing hymn, “Nearer, Mankind, to thee, Nearer to thee.” (James Stewart, Heralds of God)

While Stewart thought of those things as perhaps history, they were not and are not. These attitudes are still around and have never really left, though they seem to take on new dresses or appearances in each generation. The Gospel (good news) is not advice; it is the one thing that sinners must hear. The good news is about Christ and apart from Christ there is no salvation at all. The Gospel is not just exhorting people to do things, it is the good news of the glory of God in Christ. True preaching focuses on the essentials regardless of what else it is doing. The Gospel is good news to all kinds of sinners and saved sinners need to hear it and grow in the knowledge of it.

In the Bible the Gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ is the central message and the essential message. When preachers (so-called) treat it as optional and as simply good advice, they are not true preachers. Men are only preachers when they are heralding the wonders and glories of God in a way where men are confronted with the truth of God and brought face to face with Christ. When a person is in some way in the presence of God, it is silly to tell the person little stories and humorous anecdotes. True preaching is about God and His glory and the zenith point of that is in Christ and the cross of Christ.

It is true that the simple reading of religious homilies and uplifting talks or moral encouragements are what people used to talk about and it is the same thing today as well. It is also true that some people like preachers who yell and scream and basically throw what appears to be fits as they yell about certain things in the Bible. But what is needed for true preaching are men who have been in the presence of God who come forth speaking the wonders and glories of God with reverence and awe. These are men who come from the presence of God and desire men and women to come into the presence of God with them. These are men with fire in their souls and deep convictions about the eternal truths of God and His eternal Gospel. They don’t have time to deal with the silliness of the day or mess around with little homilies and moral platitudes. They are going to deal with God and seek to have others deal with God as well.

The methods of church growth and church starting and all things of that type are focused on man-centered things. In those things the self-love of man is what is thought of the most and planned for rather than showing man how that self-love is sin. How full we can get buildings when we play the right music and speak little of sin and make man the center of it all. How happy people are to hear how God wants them healthy and rich. Oh how conservative ministers tend to do the same thing in order to keep their jobs, but of course they will not admit to that. The Gospel cannot be watered down or it becomes another gospel, yet we do this in order to keep from being called names. We dare not confront men with the glory of the sovereign God over all things. We dare not declare that God must bring men to Himself or men will not come. We dare not stand against free-will and declare that God is sovereign over those things as well. We dare not preach that the Bible tells us that all the nations are as less than nothing before Him and meaningless.

True preaching is in one sense to take the side of God against man and all the things of man. Part of the Gospel of free-grace is that God grants some people repentance and gives them faith. As long as men think that it is up to them and their choice, they will put things off. We must go after this man-centeredness and strive to speak to men with the hope that God will use our words to strip them of their pride and their self-righteousness. We must know that man must lose all hope in themselves if they are going to look to Christ alone. We must know that if men are going to rest in the Gospel of free-grace alone they must not rest in their own righteousness at all. Preaching is not just a nice guy saying nice things, but it is a man who is gripped with eternal realities and he is there to tell people the real nature of their hearts and the real nature of the sovereign God. We can be winsome and nice and people may become orthodox and moral and on their way to hell past our moral and orthodox pulpits. We need preaching that will thunder the greatness and the glory of God and beauty of the Gospel of free-grace. Nice preaching is no preaching at all as it tickles ears rather than the man being a herald sent from God.

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Nature of True Preaching 3

April 3, 2016

It was an intoxicating prospect. Would not social effort, reinforced by all the resources of technology, speedily bring the New Jerusalem down to earth from heaven? Surely the wilderness wanderings of the children of men were over, and the path of progress must now lead straight and unbroken to the shining Utopia of their dreams. The Renaissance humanists and the ancient sophists had been perfectly right; man was indeed the measure of all things. His will was the architect of destiny. His intelligence, storming the secrets of the universe, had occupied the throne of God. “Thou art smitten, thou God,” shouted Swinburne vociferously, “thou are smitten; thy death is upon thee, O Lord. And the love-song of earth as thou divest resounds through the wind of her wings—Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of things.” (James Stewart, Heralds of God)

The following was written several years ago when there was a more stated hope in what man could accomplish. However, this is still at the heart (though subdued some) of many if not most of people. If they do not share the optimism of humanists and how we are going to make great progress and usher in new eras, they do share in the thought of what man is. This is precisely what drives most of modern ways of thinking. The Bible teaches us clearly that man is at enmity with God and that man hates God and longs for God to be anything other than the sovereign ruler of all things. Man, in his enormous pride and love of self, strives after self and after ways of bringing God down to the level of man.

Preachers must know that they are to speak for the true God and go after the thoughts of man that rise against the living God whether by man’s own heart or the deception of the evil one. Man is constantly at war with the will of God by asserting his own will moment by moment. Man, since the fall, wants to determine his own way by his own wisdom and his own knowledge. Man wants to determine his daily life as well as his eternal destiny. True preaching must attack those by speaking the truth of who God is and the truth of who man is. Men are always at war with God regarding who God is and who they are, so true preaching must always exalt God and seek to humble man.

When we view churches in our day and the so-called preaching that comes from the pulpits (or stands or lecterns or…) we are assaulted with the diminishing of God and the exaltation of man. It is true that these are ways that will increase attendance and the offerings, but those are pitiful substitutes for the presence of the living God. How men are exalted at the expense of the glory of God in sermon after sermon and program after program, but God is really and truly sovereign. If we refuse to preach the absolute sovereignty of God, we are allowing for the modern way of thinking to hold sway over the people. We deal with people in the churches today who worship and unknown God. The living and true God is the One that we must sing and preach “Glory to God in the highest” and may man be humbled in the dust that they may behold His glory.

It seems as if modern preachers can only give intellectual sermons or non-intellectual ones as they either appeal to the intellect of people or they appeal to those driven by feelings. Knowledge puffs up and as such sermons that appeal to the intellect only will produce proud hearers. Sermons that appeal to the feelings of people try to move them with sob stories and motives of impending doom if they do not do what the preacher says. True preaching exalts God to the mind and to the heart. True preaching will not want men to get fired up at the expense of truth as that leads to false conversions. Either way, however, whether the preaching is intellectual only or feelings only, the real issue is that man is being treated as the measure of all things.

Arminian evangelistic preaching, for example, will play on the feelings of people and get them to pray a prayer or come down an aisle. What the Arminian evangelist is doing is to place men at the center of it all and treat them as if they determine their own destiny and that they are their own master. This could not be much farther from the truth. God is sovereign and on His throne. He must save sinners and all things are focused on Him. He intends all things for His own glory and true preaching will take that into account and preach that way. God is absolutely sovereign and does all things according to the counsel of His own will, which is to say that man is not in charge and man is not the architect of his own destiny in this life or in eternity. True preaching must always seek to exalt God and put man in his place. If not, humanism will reign in the absence of true preaching.

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Nature of True Preaching 2

April 3, 2016

For you the issue has been settled. To bring men face to face with Christ has seemed to you a matter of such immense and overruling urgency that you propose to devote your whole life to doing nothing else. You are determined, God helping you, to go down to the world of men, and show them what you have learnt—what indeed you shall go on learning more clearly every day you live—about the eternity of redeeming love and the beauty of the Lord. (James Stewart, Heralds of God)

There are several points in the paragraph just above that point to true preaching. There is nothing in the paragraph that points to the ability to tell jokes and entertaining stories, nor does it speak of a charismatic personality. What it says is that the goal is to bring men face to face with Christ and that this is an immense and overruling agency that should bring a person to devote his whole life to. The desire to bring men face to face with Christ is a far different thing than simply teaching biblical passages and even truths from a pulpit. It is not just proclaiming things that are true, but it is the desire for those with eternal souls to come face to face with the living God in the Person of Christ.

We can think of some of the Old Testament prophets and how they would weep over the people. We think of Paul who while in Athens was provoked by the idolatry of the people. We can think of Paul again who said that he was willing to perish if only he could save some of his people. Above all, however, we should think of the Lord Jesus who was willing to divest Himself of heavenly garb for the lowly flesh of a servant and come to earth and suffer in the place of His enemies. In other words, preaching is not for those who simply want to give cold, intellectual lectures. Preaching requires a heart in the preacher and in order to truly preach the Gospel of a suffering Savior we must preach from hearts that have learned these things in the heart and we must have been taught of Christ Himself. A man who knows only the intellectual parts of Christianity is not fit to be a preacher. Preaching requires the heart of the living Christ to be worked in and shared with the preacher that the preacher may speak forth the words of Christ with the heart of Christ.

The preacher, at least in a sense, goes down to the people. This pictures at least two things. First, the true preacher is sent by God and as such comes from the presence of God to herald forth the things of God and the might works of God. The second thing is that the preacher has a specific purpose in going from God to men. He is not there to entertain them and amuse them, but he is there to show these men by his preaching what God Himself has shown the preacher. The preacher may use books, but it is the living God who teaches men spiritual things and gives men a sense of reverence and awe in His presence. The preacher must be taught of God in his heart or he will be taught of man. The preacher who does nothing but give a commentary (so to speak) of a text has not been taught of God the deep things of God.

The preacher that has been taught of God has no time to waste on silly things, but instead the Lord has put the things in his heart and he is a man on a mission and has a message from heaven for the people. This type of man has an earnestness that the one who has only book learning will never have. The man who has learned from God will want to learn more from God and so is always learning and always bringing forth new aspects of old truths. The Word of God will never run dry as long as ministers look for the mighty works and the wonderful attributes of God as displayed and manifested in Christ.

Note the things that Stewart mentions that the preacher learns more of all the time. These men learn more of the love and beauty of God. These things can be studied in an academic sense, but they can only be truly and spiritually learned when the living God teaches them. Here the humbled and broken heart of the preacher prays and seeks the Lord for more of a sight of them and a taste of them. Here the true preacher has a compulsion to know these things in the depths of his soul and by spiritual taste rather than by definitions and descriptions only. It is perhaps at this point that is the greatest difference between those who lean on book learning and the intellectual approach and those who seek the Lord to teach them. The one leaning on book learning can only preach/lecture what he has studied and learned, which means that he is limited to the wisdom of men. The one who is taught of the Lord has the Lord in heart and the Lord is sharing Himself with that man. This is the kind of preaching that men need to hear. This is the kind of preaching that God uses to awaken sinners and to feed His people.

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Nature of True Preaching 1

April 1, 2016

I have chosen to stress one fundamental fact, namely, that preaching exists, not for the propagating of views, opinions and ideals, but for the proclamation of the mighty acts of God. This is demonstrably the New Testament conception of the preacher’s task; and it is this that will always give preaching a basic and essential place at the very heart of Christian worship. (James Stewart, Heralds of God)

At the very heart of preaching is indeed Christ and Him crucified, but in preaching Christ in accordance with Scripture we must understand that He is the shining forth of the glory of God. There is no preaching of the true God apart from preaching Christ and Him crucified, but also there is no preaching of the true Christ apart from preaching the glories of the true God that He came to manifest and set forth. True preaching is not a simply matter of standing up front and explaining a text of the Bible, it is to proclaim (be a herald of) the mighty acts of God. Not only that, but it is to proclaim the mighty acts of God in a way where God Himself is set forth.

Preaching has become something of a form of teaching and instructing rather than a man sent by God who stands and declares the wonders and glories of God. Worse than thinking that preaching is simply setting forth some propositions of truth to people from the Bible, it seems that preaching has become man-centered and as such men think they are preaching when they are telling jokes and stories. It is utterly an abuse of preaching to do anything but set forth the wonders and glories of God. Yes, it is true, man has obligations to God, but if we are not careful we fall into legalism and leave men with nothing more than duties to perform. The obligations that men are to carry out are to be carried out in the strength of grace or they will be done by religious men thinking they are carrying out deeds of righteousness. The primary obligation that man has to God is to love God with all of his being first and foremost and that starts with adoration and worship. The obligations of man start with worship and adoration and move from there.

Preaching, according to Martin Lloyd-Jones, was logic on fire. That is one way of getting at one point, but another way of thinking of preaching is to think of it as a man sent from God who is heralding the truth of who God is and of what He has done. Preaching is not just telling people abstract truths about the Bible, it is to bring people into the presence of the living God or perhaps it is to preach in such a way that God comes down and visits His people. No, this is not in the power of the preacher to bring this about, but the preacher is to seek the Lord Himself and to come to the task of preaching with love for God and the power of God in his soul that he may herald forth the truths of God and seek the face of God.

When preachers do nothing but set out doctrines and ideas, they have fallen from heralding the truths to simply giving reasons for them. A man does not preach when he is simply giving reasons for certain ideas, though indeed those reasons may be good and the ideas may be true, but a man is not preaching until his soul loves God and he longs for the people to know this God and love this God. It is not enough for men to inform; they must long for and aim to set forth the glories of God in a way that people begin to cry out in their hearts to know this God. Preaching is when men are filled with the wonders of God and long for people to know this God in their hearts and to be drawn to Him and be filled with Him.

We tend to think of worship as the time where there is singing, but preaching is the central part of the worship service. It is true that the modern day has lost this concept, but it should not be a matter of singing and then being instructed in the Bible. All that is done is to be worship of the living God. Preaching, then, must be an act of worship on the part of the preacher and it should be aimed at proclaiming the living God in such a way that people are drawn to adore and worship in the preaching. The fact that one who claims to be a preacher and stands up and does what is thought of as preaching does not mean that true preaching is done. I would argue that epitome of true preaching is when the preacher worships while he is preaching and the congregation is drawn to the living God in true worship. When that happens, God has come down and is dwelling in His people in a “sensible” way.

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Free Grace 33

March 31, 2016

Nothing in man doth precede or prevent the grace of God. The light and beams of grace do dispel the clouds of our sins. Not for our sakes, but for his Name’s sake he covereth our sins. It is God’s prerogative to free us from sin by grace, and to remove them far from us. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” {Ps.103:12} He only can remove sin against whom it is committed. He only can cast sin into the depths of the sea, who hath an ocean of grace in himself, in which he swalloweth them up. John Simpson {Perfection of Justification, 1648}

So that mercy is love to those who are miserable. Grace is love in him that is unobliged. Unobliged, I say, either by necessity, merit, or motive. Grace then, in God, is nothing but free love. 1. Free in respect of constraint; when there is no necessity he should fix his love upon this object at all, or upon this rather than another, this is spontaneum. 2. Free in respect of merit; when there is nothing in the object that deserves love, either absolutely or comparatively, this is gratuitum. 3. Free in respect of motive; when there is nothing in the object to move this affection to pitch upon it at all, or upon it rather than another, this is liberum, though it expresses it not fully. [David Clarkson, A Discourse of Free Grace]

Ephesians 1:5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us.

In the two statements above and the Ephesians passage we have the very heart of the Gospel. This is not to say that the heart of the cross and the imputed righteousness of Christ are set out as such, but the motives of those things and why God did those things are set out. The heart of God is set forth in these things and we can see His glory in them. There is an old hymn where the writer wonders how it could be that God would save him or her. It is true that if God saved us on account of ourselves we would wonder that, but God saves sinners on account of His name and to the praise of the glory of His grace.

All the constraint of God is found within Himself as triune. All the merit that God beholds is found in Christ and only in Christ. All the motives that moved God are found in God Himself and nothing outside of Him. Yes, this may be redundant in some ways but our hearts are so deceived by so many things that they will not receive the nature of free-grace apart from repetition. The glory of free-grace is that it is the whole character of God displayed in the salvation of sinners, but not just that the whole of His attributes and His desire to glorify His own name and do all out of love for Himself and His glory and in full display in Christ and free-grace. Jesus Christ came to save sinners and not because they were worth it in any way, but because the glory of God was and is worth it.

If we could at any moment understand fully that the glory of free-grace is that it is up to God to show it or not, we would bow in utter wonder. There is nothing about the cross and the work of Christ that would pump up our self-esteem, but instead all those things should humble us in the dust and to behold the glory of free-grace as fully and wonderfully free. God covers our sins by the blood of Christ for His name’s sake and nothing else. The love of God is freely given in Christ and in no other place. The love of God is given apart from anything and as such it is free-grace to those who receive it.

The soul of man cannot truly conceive of free-grace as long as it is unregenerate. It is the Lord alone who can teach this truth to the soul, though man strives with men to get them to understand it in the mind. The Lord will not just give any unbroken heart Himself in His free-love and free-grace, but His love and grace are such that He breaks the hearts of people and humbles them into the dust that they may behold such a wonderful attribute in Him as self-sufficient grace. Man must be turned from His pride and self by the grace of God in order to behold and rest in free-grace alone. The heart of man is at enmity with God and as such is opposed to free-grace, so the heart of man must be broken, humbled, and assuredly regenerated. Men argue when this humbling takes place, as to whether before or after regeneration, but I would argue that it happens on both sides of regeneration. God humbles man by the Law before regeneration and then by the glory of His grace after regeneration. Indeed men are made willing in the day of His power, but part of that is His sovereign work of humbling souls. After all, only the humble receive grace and yet it is His great mercy that He humbles the soul that it may receive grace.

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Free Grace 32

March 30, 2016

Nothing in man doth precede or prevent the grace of God. The light and beams of grace do dispel the clouds of our sins. Not for our sakes, but for his Name’s sake he covereth our sins. It is God’s prerogative to free us from sin by grace, and to remove them far from us. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” {Ps.103:12} He only can remove sin against whom it is committed. He only can cast sin into the depths of the sea, who hath an ocean of grace in himself, in which he swalloweth them up. John Simpson {Perfection of Justification, 1648}

So that mercy is love to those who are miserable. Grace is love in him that is unobliged. Unobliged, I say, either by necessity, merit, or motive. Grace then, in God, is nothing but free love. 1. Free in respect of constraint; when there is no necessity he should fix his love upon this object at all, or upon this rather than another, this is spontaneum. 2. Free in respect of merit; when there is nothing in the object that deserves love, either absolutely or comparatively, this is gratuitum. 3. Free in respect of motive; when there is nothing in the object to move this affection to pitch upon it at all, or upon it rather than another, this is liberum, though it expresses it not fully. [David Clarkson, A Discourse of Free Grace]

Ephesians 1:5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us.

Grace is so beautiful when viewed in the context of the nature of God rather than just from man’s perspective. It seems that the primary way of viewing God, man, and salvation in the modern day is from the perspective of what is good for man and that in a materialistic way for the most part. Both statements (Simpson and Clarkson) start with and end with God, which clearly is what Ephesians 1 does. If we take out all the constraint, the merit, and motives moved by man, we can see that grace is totally and only from God. This means that the Gospel is all about God even when man benefits from the Gospel, but the primary benefit of man from the Gospel is that man receives God and is given a taste of His glory and is enabled to share in His life. There are reasons that the Gospel is the Gospel of God, the Gospel of the glory of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the Gospel of the kingdom of God.

If we simply ask questions from the text we can see the thorough God-centeredness of the text, which is to say the very God–centeredness of God. It was God who predestined sinners as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself. It was God who did this according to the good pleasure of His will. There is nothing said about merit or any motive God would find in man, but instead God saves sinners according to Himself and His own glory. The text tells us that God’s motive in saving sinners is to the praise of the glory of His grace. Again, nothing in man is given as what moved God, but instead it is something of God that moves God. When Scripture speaks this way, men should speak this way and men are to find encouragement and assurance in the things of God as revealed by God.

It is in Christ that sinners have redemption in His blood, not by the so-called free-will of man or the choice or prayer of man. Scripture is so clear that sinners have redemption in Christ according to the riches of His grace. In no place do we see that men have redemption according to their choice or according to their prayer. We also don’t see that men are saved according to their faith. Men are saved according to the riches of His grace. If men would only think of this for even a moment, they would see that they could not possibly be saved because of their faith or anything about them because there is nothing about them that would save them and all that they have in truth is given to them by grace.

The hearts of men must be broken from hanging on to self in some way and they must come with nothing in their hands asking for free-grace. In truth, however, it is free-grace that will break them and bring them to the foot of the cross as broken and naked and utterly impoverished of righteousness. On the power of a proud heart that will hang on to self in some way at all times. Even when we think self has been broken, self will hang on to that brokenness as a shred of hope. It is the grace of God that must work in us to deliver us from all vestiges of hope in self and find no reasons for hope but in the grace of God. Then the soul will find comfort in Christ and His free-grace alone and look upon self as nothing but what must be repented of.

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Justification by Christ 15

March 29, 2016

1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 11
1._____ Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God.

Justification by faith alone is the article upon which the Church stands or falls. Martin Luther

Romans 9:13 Just as it is written, “JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED.” 14 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 15 For He says to Moses, “I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.” 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.” 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. 19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?”

While it may not only appear repetitive but actually be so, it must be stressed over and over to our hearts which so tend to rely on self in some way that we are justified quite apart from ourselves. This requires a stripping of self and pride to even grasp this beyond the mere intellectual propositions, but for the heart to grasp this it requires a deeper and deeper humility. We must grasp this in the depths of our souls and we must personalize it, though perhaps we should say that God must work it in us that it would be personalized.

Jonathan Edwards spoke of an evangelical humility which was deeper than any legal humility could bring. This is very, very true. A legal humility can only bring us to the point of seeing that we cannot keep the law, though that is very important, but grace brings a humility that empties us of our tenacious grasp on self. Grace will bring the soul to where it delights in abasing itself and delights in being saved by free-grace alone. The soul must be taught of the Lord these things and it must learn them from the depths of the heart that these things are true of it.

When we see that only those who are effectually called are freely justified, we must know that is true of me. Now what must I do? It empties us of all hope in self if we truly grasp that. It empties us of all hope in anything we can possibly do and it causes the soul to cry out to the Lord with a broken heart. This broken heart has learned that it can do nothing to cause God to save it, but that does not keep it from seeking the Lord and crying out for grace so that it can seek Him truly. This soul is so deeply humbled that it sees that even its seeking falls short of His glory. At some point this soul will stop working and striving for righteousness and look to Christ and His righteousness alone. Oh how the humbled soul knows that salvation is for the sake of Christ and it loves that as well.

The soul taught of the Lord realizes how much religion that it has trusted in and how much of self it had previously trusted in rather than Christ alone, though indeed it thought it did. The soul that the Lord teaches will be brought to a point where it sees that it studied by Bible for self and prayed for self, but now it is broken by grace and it looks to Christ and His righteousness alone. Perhaps the soul was trusting in self to have faith and the Lord broke that heart from trusting in self for faith and now the soul looks to Christ for faith as well as looking to Christ for faith.

This humbled and broken heart now knows that it was not because it was special in the eyes of God that He saved it, but it was for the sake of Christ and His name that it was saved. While this will be frightening to the soul at first since the soul is loathe to be broken from trusting in itself for something, the kindness and love of God will not leave it alone to trust in itself. The soul must be moved by the kindness of God who teaches these things in the inward man to realize that a full trust in Christ means to trust that God saves sinners for the sake of His name alone. Oh how this is a dagger to the pride of man, yet in the hands of the gentle Savior it is a loving strike of the dagger and it is precisely what each soul needs. The doctrine of justification is not just a series of propositions that the mind holds to, but instead it is a glorious teaching of what God does in the soul as well. Our minds may accept these things as true, but we don’t hold them from the heart until the Lord teaches them to us. This requires painful work in the soul as only the Physician of souls can do.

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Justification by Christ 14

March 28, 2016

1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 11
1._____ Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith, which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God.

Justification by faith alone is the article upon which the Church stands or falls. Martin Luther

Romans 9:13 Just as it is written, “JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU I HATED.” 14 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be!15 For He says to Moses, “I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION.” 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.” 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. 19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?”

The sovereign pleasure of God is displayed in the certain redemption of His elect from their fallen estate to spiritual and eternal life. In this great work, He has done whatsoever He has pleased. It is true, that the unalterable decree of election rendered redemption unavoidable; notwithstanding, it is impossible that it could ever become undesirable, in the eyes of the God of everlasting love. It pleased Him to choose them, therefore it must be pleasing to Him to redeem and possess them. (John Stevens)

It is such a delight to meditate and think upon what it is to be freely justified by free-grace. There is no assurance in modern views of justification that depend upon man’s choice or man’s repentance or man’s works. It is almost as if some say that one is justified by faith but then go on to hold to sanctification by works of some kind. God saves sinners according to His good PLEASURE, and we must not forget that pleasure part. It pleases God to save some to the glory of His great name. There is not one unimportant aspect to justification, and this is certainly one that we must not forget.

When the 1689 says that God saves for Christ’ sake alone, we must know that it is the Son that the voice from heaven said that in Him (the Son) He (the Father) was well-pleased. The pleasure of God is in His Son and the pleasure of God is in all that the Son dwells in and manifests the glory of God in and through. It is the very pleasure of God to shine forth His glory in and through the Son and it is the doctrine of justification where the attributes of God meet in the Son. In the doctrine of justification we have the meeting of the indwelling glory of God in His people by the Son. In the doctrine of justification we have the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son set forth. In the doctrine of justification we have the cross of Christ and His free-gift of righteousness imputed to sinners meeting and kissing to the glory of His great name.

As this great doctrine is the doctrine that the Church stands or falls upon, it is not just some dry setting forth of doctrine, but it is here where God shines forth His glory and His pleasure in His glory. It is here that we can behold the glory of God and His delight in His own glory. It is here that we must lose all hope in ourselves and behold the free-grace of God in giving His Son that He delights in and delighting Himself in bruising the Son (Isaiah 53) because in that He could behold His glory in the Son and in the Son saving sinners. God is pleased to save sinners in the Son and it is here that sinners can have assurance.

In the doctrine of justification we are enabled to behold the glory of God shining forth in Christ and His saving sinners to the glory of His free-grace. In the doctrine of justification we are enabled to see and taste of the very pleasure of God in saving sinners for the sake of His own name and for Christ’ sake. When the Lord is pleased to turn our hearts from ourselves and our works as having any part in our justification, then we can see how the pleasure of God in Christ is our assurance. The Father’s wrath was satisfied by the work of Christ on the cross and His requirement of a perfect righteousness was satisfied in the life and obedience of Christ. When sinners are enabled to see that in Christ all the wrath of the Father is gone and that He has given them a perfect righteousness and that He has had great pleasure in doing so, they may rejoice in the pleasure of God and their hearts may be quieted and humbled.

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