The Glory of God 38

November 3, 2015

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

As we view the world and even the professing Church, why do people love money and trust in it? What is it about money that is so trustworthy that men and professing churches trust it and covet it more than God Himself? The love of money comes from a love of self and self loves what money can do for it. Self thinks it can look out after self better than God can look after self and self does not trust God to do what the wisdom of self thinks God should do. The professing Church is much the same as those who make no profession at all. It trusts in money and it is constantly asking for money from the people. The love of money stems from self not wanting to be dependent upon God and His sufficiency and instead wants self to be self-sufficient rather than God.

Why do people want to be dependent on themselves? People don’t trust God and don’t really believe that He is sufficient for all that they really need. People don’t believe that God is wiser than them and so they strive to be sufficient for themselves. Unbelievers love themselves and hate God, so they trust themselves rather than God. This dependence on self and the wicked sufficiency of self both flow from a heart of self-love and as such a heart that does not love or trust God for anything. This is at heart the very nature of sin. The nature of sin flows from the selfish and proud heart while holiness flows from a humble heart that loves God and others.

Why are people so full of pride? It is because people are full of self and the love of self which desires to depend on self rather than love God and depend on Him fully. Proud man loves honor from others, but he cannot see that this great desire for others to honor him makes him dependent on others. This love of honor makes man think that he is self-sufficient, but it is nothing but an illusion. As man seeks honor from others, the heart of what he is doing is to place himself on the throne and seek what God alone should have. While we should seek the honor and glory of God, the heart that loves self seeks the honor and glory of self. The proud heart thinks that it is sufficient to gain these things from others, thus we see that man’s desire to depend on self and the sufficiency of self has many wicked tentacles.

We also see that people want to save themselves and trust in their own righteousness or at least some or just a little bit of their own righteousness. Man may rationally accept the fact that he has no righteousness of his own, but his heart which is so deceptive can trust in itself for many things as it convinces itself that it is trusting in Christ alone. Even the whole idea of faith can lead men to trust in themselves for faith rather than looking to the free-grace of God to give them faith. Man will leave places here and there for them to have just a slight part (they tell themselves) in some little aspect of salvation and yet trusting in self in one part is a mixing of works with grace which makes grace no longer to be grace. Man will fight and fight to retain some little part because to give up all hope in self and to look to Christ alone is to count all the righteousness of man as dung and that is beyond the power of self-sufficient and proud man to do.

Oh how the wickedness of men who fight for some little ability or the smallest amount of righteousness before God is seen in the things of religion. Man, in wanting to be like God, tries to bring honor to self in things like prayer and giving. Man longs to do good works that others see and while his mouth gives the praise to God, that can be just another way of getting people to praise him. It is in looking at the truth of the self-sufficiency of God that we see man in his desire to be like God and so understand sin as man trying to be like the self-sufficient God. Man wants to be sufficient for his own righteousness (or at least part) and he wants to be sufficient in and of himself to do some little something to please God. That little something is actually a huge sin against God and is at enmity with free-grace.

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Christ Preparing our Hearts 34

November 2, 2015

Be persuaded that your soul is far more valuable to you than the whole world and there are only two places (heaven and hell) that you will spend all eternity in.

The work of regeneration being of absolute necessity unto salvation, it greatly concerns ministers especially, in all ways possible, to promote the same; and in particular that they guide souls aright who are under a work of preparation. There are some who deny any necessity of the preparatory work of the Spirit of God in order to a closing with Christ. This is a very dark cloud, both as it is an evidence that men do not have the experience of that work in their own souls, and as it is a sign that such men are utterly unskillful in guiding others who are under this work. If this work should prevail in the land, it would give a deadly wound to religion. It would expose men to think of themselves as converted when they are not. (Solomon Stoddard, A Guide to Christ)

The idea of this particular strain of thought is that Christ prepares the hearts of sinners to be converted, which is also to say that Christ prepares the hearts of sinners for Himself and for Himself to dwell in. Salvation is not primarily about the welfare of sinners, but it is primarily about the glory of God in salvation and the continuing manifestation of His glory in and through His people. An unbroken and unhumbled heart is not ready to be converted as that heart has no real idea of what it means to be a sinner and as such no idea of what salvation really is. It is utterly frightening to hear ministers who think of themselves as Reformed calling upon men to believe the Gospel when they have not preached a Gospel. These same ministers will tell men that they must believe and yet they will not declare to these men that they cannot believe apart from the grace of regeneration. These ministers will not tell men that their hearts need to be convinced of sin and broken from all hope in self before they are converted. Men must be broken from trust in self before they will ever look to Christ alone. This is self-evident.

If Stoddard was and is right about the lack of teaching men that their hearts needed preparation by the Holy Spirit is a deadly wound to religion, then there is no wonder that Christianity is so weak in our day. It is true that there are plenty of buildings around with “Christian” on the sign and plenty of educated men (educated in something) standing behind pulpits who are declaring certain things with the name “Christ” on their lips, but the Gospel seems to virtually be gone. There is a plethora of Bibles, DVD’s, and all sorts of helps in all differing kinds of media. But the Gospel is not being preached. But again, there may be a lot of things being taught and some even use the name “Jesus” some, but that is a far different thing than preaching the Gospel and what precedes the Gospel.

If the Lord Jesus does not teach the heart Himself, it is not taught. If He does not teach the ministers, they are not taught even if they have several degrees from the best schools in the land. It is absolutely necessary for the soul to be humbled or the soul is not even ready to understand grace much less receive it. It is absolutely necessary for the soul to be broken from pride as the proud in heart will never receive grace or Christ as Lord. It is absolutely necessary for the soul to be broken from self and the love of self or it will never be united to Christ and love Christ with all of its strength and being. The command to love God with all of our being is a command not to love self with any of our being but out of a love for Him. The command to love God with all of our being is a command to be broken from the reign and rule of self-love. Oh how our vile hearts love self and do all things for self, even trying to convince ourselves that we believe in Christ. We can believe that God savingly loves us out of love for self rather than for biblical reasons. But again, this exposes men to think that they are converted when they are not.

Christ prepares hearts for Himself by using preaching. Faithful preaching will try to expose the hearts of men to themselves and of their utter inability to do anything spiritual apart from Christ, though it must be admitted that it is Christ alone who can use that preaching to pierce and break the hearts of men from love of self and pride. Will King Jesus dwell in a heart that is full of hatred toward Him which all hearts that are governed by pride have? Can we really even think that the kingdom of God dwells in the heart when that heart is really guided by and reigned over by the kingdom of self? How can we even think that we are preaching the Gospel of free-grace alone unless we are pointing out to sinners how helpless they are apart from Christ and His grace? How can we think we are preaching grace alone when we are not pointing out to sinners that their pride opposes His grace? The work of Christ is to break hearts and save sinners to the glory of His name. He uses preaching as an instrument to do so.

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Musings 93

November 2, 2015

Amos 8:11 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “When I will send a famine on the land, Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, But rather for hearing the words of the LORD. 12 “People will stagger from sea to sea And from the north even to the east; They will go to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, But they will not find it. 13 “In that day the beautiful virgins And the young men will faint from thirst. 14 “As for those who swear by the guilt of Samaria, Who say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’ And, ‘As the way of Beersheba lives,’ They will fall and not rise again.”

I recently heard a minister during the sermon say that the famine of the word was for the time up until the time of Jesus. He then went on to say that we are not in a famine in our day because we have so many Bibles in our day and we can think of ourselves as being blessed because of that. I will admit to being rather surprised to hear that as the presence of Bibles in a country is not the sign of being blessed. The Pharisees had many scrolls and had a lot of knowledge of the Bible, yet Christ told them that they searched the Scriptures thinking that in them they would find eternal life and yet the Scriptures testified of Him and they (the Pharisees) would not come to Him for life.

I will argue that we are in the midst of a devastating famine in the land. While there are many preachers and many Bibles, the famine spoken of in Amos is a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. This is to say that while there may indeed be many Bibles and many preachers, this is not the same as people actually hearing with understanding the truth of the Scriptures. God can curse a people by ministers who preach the externals of the Scriptures and yet have not understanding themselves and certainly the people don’t hear either. There is a spiritual understanding of the Scriptures that God alone can give. Personally, I am very weary of hearing an academic and external meaning of the Scriptures that ignores the heart of the Bible and the spiritual meaning.

Ephesians 4:18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;

Colossians 1:9 For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,

Colossians 2:2 that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself,

1 John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

An understanding of the Scriptures which God alone can give is what we need. People are darkened in their understanding and excluded from the life of God, which shows that we need understanding and not just a few facts about the Bible. Paul prayed for the people that they would have the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, which would lead to a true knowledge of God’s mystery which was Christ Himself. No matter how many Bibles a person owns and no matter how much academic understanding of the Bible people have, apart from the understanding that the Song of God gives they will not know God.

We know that God gives grace to the humble and He leads the humble in understanding and is said to teach them in the inner man. The Lord Himself must break our proud hearts so that we would look to Him for real understanding rather than our commentaries alone. While commentaries can be helpful to understanding the externals of what is written, only the Lord Himself can give us a true understanding. We are indeed in a deep judgment and a terrible famine. People are satisfied with an external understanding of the Scriptures that unbelievers can have if they study enough. That is not what the Lord has for His people. “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.” 10 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God” (I Cor 2:9-10).

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Musings 92

October 30, 2015

Others have set up with conditional offers, with conditional proposals, and with conditional tenders. That is, you shall enjoy heaven and salvation, if you repent and believe, and perform sincere obedience to the Condition of the New Law. And thus the Neonomians interweave a coarse thread of Popery {out of which the terms of New Law and Conditions first arose} which runs through all their fine cloth they make up for heaven, out of other men’s spinning, into the reformation of manners, and sincere obedience. But how short is this of the fine linen, white and clean, and the white raiment, {Rev.3:18,} which is the Imputed Righteousness of Christ put upon the ungodly, and therein made the righteousness of Saints, as the Holy Ghost calls it, “and to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” Rev.19:8.

Grace is either free of all conditions that man can perform or it is given to men based to some degree on conditions that they can keep. This should be kept in mind in all situations and in all cases when we are speaking and thinking of grace. If we think or speak or write and grace is based on a condition that a person must perform, then it is something other than grace that we are dealing with. Regardless of whether we call it grace or not, if there are conditions that we can meet that God then responds to us by giving grace, then we are no longer speaking of grace at all. In that case we have turned grace into a form of works.

It is very true that we must repent, but do we repent in order to obtain grace or is a true repentance a result of grace? This is a point where the truth of our hearts may be seen. If we truly think that we can repent apart from grace, then our hearts should reveal that we don’t truly believe in grace alone. If we truly think that God will not give grace until we repent, our hearts should reveal to us that we don’t truly understand the nature of true and free-grace. This is a vital point and it separates Arminians and modern Calvinists from the old Calvinism. Modern Calvinism holds to works for grace at many points and as such is no longer biblical. We must fight and content at this point at all times for the view that grace is conditioned upon God as triune and there is nothing a fallen human being can do to earn grace or even make it more likely that God will give grace. True grace is contingent upon God and nothing else. True grace is given from the sovereign hand of God quite apart from any worth, value, or condition that man can meet.

We are told that we must believe so that God will save us. Once again, let us put it plainly. If the sinner will work up faith apart from grace, then God will give the sinner salvation because the sinner came up with faith. This is clearly a system of works. Yes, the Bible speaks of faith and of sinners being justified by faith apart from works. However, in the modern day we mean something different by “faith” than the Bible does. It is true that the person with faith is saved, but it is not true that the person with faith was saved because s/he came up with faith. It is true that the Bible speaks of being saved through faith, but it does not teach that we are saved because of faith. We must fight with ourselves and content earnestly with the teachings of the modern day in order to remain free of the works salvation and the conditional salvation that is taught so widely in our day using the word “faith” with a meaning that is far different than the Bible’s usage.

The grace of God comes to poor sinners who are dead in sins and trespasses and have absolutely nothing to commend themselves to God. The living God who sent the Son to die for them 2,000 years ago also sent the Son to purchase faith and repentance for them. Faith is a gift of God that was purchased by Christ and repentance is also granted by God on the basis of grace. Sinners who have received grace repent and sinners who have new hearts of faith are those who have faith. Grace must precede our faith and repentance or those things are works that contribute to our salvation. Grace is given before salvation but it works salvation and gives more grace. Sinners are never, ever, ever given grace because of their own work of faith and repentance, but when God shows them mercy and grace and works a new heart in them by grace, they will have faith and repent. The Gospel is not BY faith alone, but it is BY grace alone THROUGH faith alone. Our faith is a result of grace, but if we make grace a result of faith, we have a different gospel. All conditions of the Gospel (speaking in this way) are met by Christ as we have no ability to do so and all grace must come because of Christ and not because of us.

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The Glory of God 37

October 29, 2015

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

The glory of the self-sufficiency of God shines in Christ and man as made in the image of God should glorify God in that. However, Satan deceived the woman regarding self-sufficiency and she wanted to be like God and so ate of the fruit and gave some to her husband. Man is now full of self and longs to be self-sufficient. Man thinks that he is sufficient in wisdom to determine who he is to live and then how to be saved. Man thinks that he is sufficient to do good and to do something that helps save himself. Man is full of pride and self and trusts in himself rather than look to Christ for grace alone. Man, in wanting to be like God, leans on himself and his own sufficiency rather than rely on God for all things. The Fall occurred when human beings were turned from trusting in the sufficiency of God alone to their own sufficiency.

Luke 12:15 Then He said to them, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” 16 And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. 17 “And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 ‘And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”‘ 20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ 21 “So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Jesus warned against greed and of thinking that life consists of an abundance of possessions. The parable that He gave is really a warning against our own self-sufficiency. Greed is the desire to have many things, while resting in God is to be content with what God gives. The rich man wanted to store up a lot and then he would live as he wanted to live (v. 19), which is simply to say that he wanted to be self-sufficient and live according to his own wisdom and sinful heart. But God called the man a fool and told him that his would be required or him that very night. All that the man possessed would be given to others. This is what happens when men long and strive to build treasure for themselves which is an effort to be self-sufficient for both now and the future. Man’s possessions cannot make him sufficient to ward off death and there is no way man can be sufficient in spiritual things.

When we view the doctrine of sin in light of God’s self-sufficiency, what we see is that man is trying to be sufficient apart from God. Man wants to depend on himself rather than God and man wants to trust in himself rather than God. Man would rather trust in his own efforts and works rather than the sovereignty of God and His giving all things in accordance with grace. This is seen in the parable of the rich fool above. He thought that by building and storing enough for years that he was sufficient to live the good life. However, what he had could not deliver him from the hand of God in death. What he had was not enough to save his soul from hell. God alone can give man his life, every breath, and all things. It is God who sustains men, though He works through their work as means. However, it is God who sustains them. When men die, they will find out just how much God sustained them and of how their very work itself was out of pride and a wicked self-sufficiency. When men die they will find out that all that they did out of love for self was idolatry since it was not out of love for God. When men die they will see their utter and absolute need of Christ as their all-sufficient One. We live in a vale of tears and much sorrow, but we are so blind when we don’t see the sovereign hand of God working through second causes.

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Christ Preparing our Hearts 33

October 28, 2015

Be persuaded that your soul is far more valuable to you than the whole world and there are only two places (heaven and hell) that you will spend all eternity in.

Take it for granted, that there is no name under heaven whereby you can be saved, but Jesus Christ. All grace and mercy for this life, and then to come, must come to you through the channel of Christ’s blood.

What an utterly glorious quote the above quotes are and both are from an unknown (to human beings) author. Oh how we should take it as an absolute verity beyond any real questioning that there is no name under heaven by which we can be saved other than Jesus Christ. How it would change the professing Church if even a small percentage of people would take these statements and seek the Lord to show them how much truth there is in them and how they should never deviate from them. Oh how the false gospel of today would change to a true Gospel if only men would seek the Lord to be broken from their false hopes of works for grace and seek Him for true grace. But of course those things will never happen unless the Lord of grace breaks the hearts of men from their false views of grace and gives them a sight of Himself and His free-grace.

What is perhaps most hated by men today is not the doctrines of grace, but of the reality of grace as worked by the Lord Jesus Christ in the soul. Oh how there are many men today who will defend the doctrines of grace as in certain creeds and catechisms, but those same men will fight against true grace when they hear that Christ must prepare the soul by grace in order for men to understand the reality of grace. Those defenders of the doctrines of grace fight the reality of grace in life when they say that all we have to do is believe. Of course it is true that Christ must give us new hearts that believe, but that is not the point. Does Christ have to prepare a heart by breaking it from pride and self before He gives it life to where it is humbled and full of Himself? Does Christ have to break an unbelieving heart from its great love for self before it can be a believing heart that loves Him?

I will argue that the Bible teaches us that the soul must be humbled in order for it to receive grace and it teaches that both in the context for unbelievers and believers. I will also argue that no one can truly break and humble his own heart but that the only One who can do it is Christ. The power of sin and the evil one cannot be overcome by the weak and ineffectual works of man, but instead they can only be effectually overcome by the power of Christ and His blood. The proud heart of man wants to think that if he can make himself just believe the doctrine of a creed that he will be okay, but the Scriptures teach us that these things must be realities about us and that they can only happen in the soul by His power.

Matthew 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, 3 and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

In this greatly neglected passage (just above) we see the disciples wanting to know which of them (in reality) was the greatest in the kingdom. Jesus answered them by taking a small child and telling them that unless they were converted and became like children, they would not even enter the kingdom. The verb for converted is in the passive, which tells us that this is something that must happen to us. God must convert us or turn us to where our proud hearts are changed and instead of trusting in ourselves we are now like helpless children looking to Him for all things. It is Christ alone who can change the proud heart and make it a broken one. It is Christ alone and the power of His blood that has the power for such a work of new creation.

In verse 4 we see that Jesus speaks of the greatest as those who humbled themselves as this child. How did that child humble himself? I would argue that in the context the only thing that the child did was to obey the command of Christ to come to it and then to be in His hands. True humility is not just a momentary work of the moment that we do, but instead the truly humble life is the life of Christ in our soul. Humility is not a work we can do, but instead it is Christ in us. A truly humbled soul is one that Christ has humbled, though there is a sense that we humble ourselves by bowing to Him and recognizing that we cannot do this great work in our own hearts and looking to Him to do it. Only Christ can humble us and only Christ can live the humble life in us by grace alone.

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Christ Preparing our Hearts 32

October 27, 2015

Be persuaded that your soul is far more valuable to you than the whole world and there are only two places (heaven and hell) that you will spend all eternity in.

Take it for granted, that there is no name under heaven whereby you can be saved, but Jesus Christ. All grace and mercy for this life, and then to come, must come to you through the channel of Christ’s blood.

The statement above is a statement that is full of truth and doctrine, but it is also one that the heart must be prepared by Christ to receive. It is far easier to accept the above statement as a doctrine that is true or one that the Bible teaches than it is to accept it as true for me from the depths of the soul. Oh how few in our day seem to recognize how deceitful our hearts are and how hardened our hearts are to the spiritual realities of our true helplessness and inability before God. Even harder for people to accept, however, is the fact that believers are also in great need for grace and mercy. While we are to live by grace alone, it is so hard for people to accept that as a doctrine and then even harder to accept that as a vital truth of the Christian life.

Perhaps the hardest truth for anyone to accept as a doctrine, however, is that for all eternity those in heaven will be in utter dependence upon Christ and that the blood of Christ will always and forever be needed. While it is not the case that anyone will sin in heaven, it will always be the case that heaven was purchased for sinful people by the blood of Christ. It may not be the case that people will sin, but those in heaven will have been great sinners one earth who were purchased by the blood of Christ. It may be those in heaven will not look to the blood of Christ to be saved by the blood of Christ, but all grace that they will ever need was purchased by the blood of Christ. No prayer in heaven will ever be to some throne that is other than the throne of grace. It will always be an absolute verity that people will live by the grace of God and yet by the grace of God purchased by Christ.

While it is perhaps the hardest doctrine for anyone to accept (in this context) is that people will always need grace even in heaven, the hardest to accept now is that Christians live by grace alone. Not only must Christ prepare hearts by breaking them from pride and self so that they may look to Christ alone for salvation, but He must break the hearts of believers from any form of self-sufficiency so that they will learn more and more to live by grace alone. There are so many in our day who hold to a form of works for grace that it is impossible to point to very many at all in this little BLOG. We hear preachers telling others that there are conditions that they must meet in order to be saved. We hear preachers telling others that there are conditions that they must meet in order to be sanctified. On the other hand, we have Scripture telling us that Christ is our justification and Christ is our sanctification. Christ and Christ alone is our need who fulfills all of our conditions.

There are many in the Reformed movement (and others) who are so big on the means of grace in our day. They tell people that God operates through the Scriptures (reading, study, preaching), prayer, and the Sacraments. What happens, then, is that people are told that they can avail themselves of grace if they give themselves to those three things. It is true that God does work through those things, but at some point people must understand that just because God works through those things does not mean that He does or that He is obligated to do so. It is when the means of grace become a way that God is obligated to give grace that we have left the biblical teaching on grace far behind. When the thought enters our minds that if I do X then God will give me grace, we are no longer thinking of grace. God may show grace when we hear the truth of God, but He is under no obligation to do so. God may show grace when we pray, but He is under no obligation to do so. In fact, if we come to the throne of grace as in real prayer we will understand that He has utterly no obligation to show grace. God may show grace in someone receiving the Supper, but He is under no obligation to do so. We must get that through our heads and hearts.

There are also books teaching on the Spiritual Disciplines and things like this. Disciplining ourselves in order to obtain grace is a vicious form of works. Learning to be disciplined in our use of Scripture and prayer in order to please God is a vicious form of works. Oh that sinners would be awakened by God to see that we are to live by grace each moment and that there is nothing we can do to obtain grace as a result of our own efforts. It is Jesus the Messiah who is Priest, Prophet, and King who can overpower self and pride in our hearts and teach us so that we come to Him empty and without any hope of grace but what He gives at His sovereign pleasure in Christ. Only Christ can empty the soul of self like that and only Christ can teach the soul the real way of receiving grace. Our discipline will only fill us with pride and harden us toward the work of Christ in our hearts. Grace alone does not teach us to work for grace, but instead that we can do nothing to obtain grace but look to Christ if He is pleased to do so.

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Christ Preparing our Hearts 31

October 27, 2015

Be persuaded that your soul is far more valuable to you than the whole world and there are only two places (heaven and hell) that you will spend all eternity in.

Do I see in Jesus Christ, a beauty and excellency; a fullness and all sufficiency? Is He the chiefest of ten thousands, altogether lovely in your eye? Can I say, oh, thousands of gold pieces (if I had it) for an interest in Christ’s blood? None but Christ. All is dung that I may win Him.

The soul is weighed down with earthly possessions, desires, and concerns. It is necessary to have some worldly concerns, but they are to be in their place and that as simply means by which we may seek the Lord. But the things of the world consume the worldly and are not to consume those who see themselves as but pilgrims in this world with their real home in heaven. Christ must prepare the heart of His people so that they will see that there are only two places to spend eternity in and that only those who truly have Christ as their chief love will spend eternity in heaven. Only those who see the true value of eternity (to some degree) will see Christ as supremely valuable.

The soul cannot just turn a switch or make a choice and see and delight in Christ as everything to it. The soul does not have a will that has the power or ability to see Christ in His glory, but instead the soul must be taught these things in the inward man. It is a verity that man must see Christ as beautiful and as excellent beyond compare, but until a man’s heart has been broken from love for self and his pride he will be blinded by those things and not see Christ. But even if Christ works and breaks men from self, the sight of Himself does not come automatically to the soul. The soul must be illumined with light and Christ must reveal Himself to men. Christ works in the soul to prepare the soul for a sight of Himself and His presence by humbling it and breaking it from self and the world. Until the beauty of the world vanishes, Christ cannot be seen as beautiful. Until the excellencies of the world dim, the glories of Christ the Light will not be seen or appreciated.

It should be obvious to all who have even a glimmer of light that as long as the heart is a worldly heart it will not entertain and value spiritual realities. The soul that is full of the world and yet a rational soul may indeed love the thought of heaven merely out of self-love and the fear of the wrath of God, yet self-love is what the work of Christ alone can break the soul of. The soul that is full of self-love can still have many religious ideas and values that it picks up from the Bible and attending church, but it will never love those things above all until Christ breaks the soul from its own self-love and pride. Human beings are born dead in sins and trespasses and as such are controlled and filled with a supreme self-love and pride. The Great Command to love God with all of their being is something that is utterly impossible for the fallen creature that is controlled and dominated by self-love. Until Christ breaks that heart of self-love, the soul has no ability to love God since it loves self with all of its being.

The soul is capable of great acts of religion and great acts of devotion while using the name of God, but the self is what it is really serving until Christ breaks it from self-love. The soul that is spiritually dead and full of self-love and pride may even think that it is serving God while doing acts of self-denial, but it is really denying an external form of self by the love of self. The soul can also think that it loves God but what it is really doing is loving a false god that it thinks loves it, so in reality the soul is just loving those who love it. Christ can be lovely to the eye of the person in the grips and domination of self-love, but it is a false Christ and only loves Christ in that it thinks that Christ loves him or her. It is even possible for a person to rationally choose Christ over a thousand pieces of gold, but that does not mean that the heart is truly broken by Christ. One can choose Christ in one sense thinking that Christ is best for the soul and it is better to spend eternity in heaven than hell, but that heart has not changed a bit and is still in the grips of self-love.

The real issue is whether a person’s heart, even after being saved, desires Christ more than gold. Is Christ and His glory what attracts the soul and its true desires? Oh this must come from Christ and nothing else. Only He can break the pride of the heart and work in the heart a supreme desire for Himself. It is when from the depths of the soul that the desires for Christ are so strong and He is so lovely that the whole world is viewed as dung that a person can know that s/he has a changed heart and a new heart. Christ in the soul gives the soul a love for Himself and the things of the world grow dim and then become dung. He must prepare the heart or it will not be prepared.

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The Glory of God 36

October 24, 2015

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

While few would argue that God is not self-sufficient, there are disagreements on where His sufficiency starts and begins in His relations with human beings. The argument here is that God alone is self-sufficient and there is no starting place and there is no ending place for His sufficiency regarding human beings. He is sovereign and self-sufficient in all things and human beings are completely insufficient for anything good. Human beings are depraved and have no ability to do anything good unless it is given them by the gift of the self-sufficient God who gives these things in and through Christ. When Jesus says to His disciples “apart from Me you can do nothing,” He meant that as literally as it can be meant. There is nothing we can do in the spiritual realm unless it is given to us by Christ first. We can go no farther than His sufficiency will sustain and uphold us.

Ephesians 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

This passage (just above) is rich and glorious in what it does in setting out the self-sufficiency of God and how it comes to sinners through and by Christ. The mercy and grace of God are fully sufficient to do all that He desires in raising sinners from the dead and He does not need any help from them. The mercy and grace of God not only need no help from sinners, but they cannot be helped by sinners since sinners are dead and nothing but dead. What can sinners do to make themselves spiritually alive? What help are they to God when they are dead and have no ability at all? Behold the glory of the self-sufficiency of God in taking dead sinners and making them alive by Himself and with no help at all. There is nothing in the sinner that can help God or anything raise itself, so clearly God has to be self-sufficient in this work as there is no one to help Him. There is nothing in the sinner to move God to raise the sinner from spiritual death. The sinner is sinful by nature and practice. The sinner is not good and has no good to move God. The sinner is full of obnoxiousness and things that God hates. So, once again, God is self-sufficient in all things in order for this dead sinner to be raised to spiritual life.

The text displays the self-sufficiency of God in Christ in all possible ways. Why does God raise sinners from the dead? He does it in Christ and by Christ. Why does God set His love on sinners in order to raise them from the dead? It is simply because He is sufficient in love within Himself as triune to do so. God does not need to look outside of Himself to find motives and reasons to save sinners because He does it all in Christ. It is the Lord Jesus who has purchased sinners and it is on behalf of Christ that the Father raises them and makes them alive. Not only does the sufficiency of God display its power in Christ, but also the motives and desires are also found only in Christ. The Lord Jesus is the self-sufficiency of God on display if we have eyes to see. Those eyes should also take note that it is by grace that sinners are saved through faith, yet even that faith is not from the sinners but is of God. If the salvation of men had the slightest bit of man’s act or sufficiency in it, then God is not self-sufficient and God does not save by grace alone. Once again the glory of His self-sufficiency shines brilliantly in Christ for those who have eyes to see.

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The Glory of God 34

October 22, 2015

An attribute of God must be determined from what He is within Himself rather than judged by our own standards. God is the standard of Himself and of all things.

Acts 17:22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.

God is completely and fully sufficient within Himself in and for all things He is pleased to do and apart from Him there is no sufficiency for anything to happen. It is in Christ that He created all things and it is in Christ that sinners are saved. It is in Christ the believers are enabled to do all that they do spiritually. Once a person comes to accept this, a person will never see the world (worldview) in the same way again. It is to see God in everything. When we view the Church, we must see that Christ is Lord of the Church or nothing spiritual will happen. While men give their best efforts at doing things for God, not only does He not need their help, all that they do in their own strength is not spiritual and is done apart from Christ. All worship that is apart from Christ in reality and does not come from Him (whether it uses His name or not) is false worship. Even if all worship is determined by some biblical principle, if it is not from Christ and energized by Christ it is strange fire. God alone is sufficient for true worship and He only gives true worship in and through Christ.

Romans 4:1 What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. 5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:… 16 For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all,

This is an amazing passage at any point, but especially so when it is seen in light of the self-sufficiency of God. Abraham is known as a man of faith and the Jews admired and even revered him. But is the point of faith to exalt the person with it or the God who gives faith as a gift and sustains it at His mere pleasure? But again we butt up against differing views of faith and see just how important it is to be relatively clear on the matter. Faith is either the work of man or the work of God. Faith either depends on man or on God. If faith depends on man, then faith depends on the sufficiency of man to maintain it. If faith depends on God, then faith depends on the sufficiency of God to maintain it. If God responds to man’s faith, then if faith is of man grace is not a free-grace and God responds to man according to how man works up his own faith. The text (Romans 4:1-2) tells us that Abraham has nothing to boast about before God. Therefore, faith depends on the sufficiency of God and not that of man.

Romans 4:16 is a good verse to help get a grip on what the text is actually teaching in 4:1-6. Why does God work through faith? This is a very important question. First, we see that it is so that it may be in accordance with grace.
Second, since it (the Gospel) is in accordance with grace, the promise is guaranteed to all the descendants. Another way of stating this, then, is that since faith depends upon the sufficiency of God and His grace, the promise is absolute to every single descendant of Abraham the man of faith. The promise of the Gospel can only be guaranteed if the promise of the Gospel relies on the sufficiency of God and not the sufficiency of man. Faith must rely upon the sufficiency of God and His grace since man is totally insufficient for such things. If this way of looking at things is at all correct, and I would argue that it is correct in light of who God is, then our salvation does not depend on our faith, but our faith and our salvation depends entirely on the sufficiency of God in Christ. Our faith, salvation, and our works do not depend on our sufficiency, but instead our faith, salvation, and our works depend on the sufficiency of God in Christ alone. We have utterly no reason to boast since all (faith too) is His gift.

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