The Glory of God 23

October 10, 2015

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.

Isaiah 66:1 Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? 2 “For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD. “But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.

The appalling ignorance of God demonstrated by pagans led them to misunderstand and be deceived about the true God, about true worship, and of the nature of salvation. The same is true today. Those who are ignorant of God may indeed fill buildings with the name “church” on the door, but that does not mean that they know God. Eternal life is to know God, though indeed eternal life is more than knowing about God, yet can we know God without knowing truths about Him? It is surely obvious that we cannot know God without knowing truths about Him. On the one hand we seem to think that great knowledge is what keeps men from knowing God, but in reality whether one has great knowledge (or knows a lot of things) or not it is ignorance of God that is the real problem. We must also add that we can only know God through Christ so ignorance of Christ is a cause of ignorance of God.

Hosea 5:4 Their deeds will not allow them To return to their God. For a spirit of harlotry is within them, And they do not know the LORD.

Hosea 6:6 For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

In Hosea 5:4, just above, a spirit of harlotry and not knowing the LORD are linked. In Hosea 6:6 we are told that God prefers knowledge of Himself to burnt offerings which would include the commanded manner of worship. The knowledge of God and knowing God are vitally important and must not be casually dismissed or dismissed in any way. We must know God or we will perish. In a sense it is that simple and it is that plain. Men do not desire the knowledge of God and so they suppress the truth about God which is in them (Romans 1:18ff). But rather than suppress the truth of God, men are to pursue the truth of God that they may know about Him and know Him.

The Gospel is the good news of God in Christ. How can we trust in the God who gives good news if we are ignorant of the true God? The Bible is the Word of God, yet how can we trust in the Bible if we are ignorant of the God who wrote it? If we are ignorant of the true God, then we will not recognize His voice as He speaks in His Word. This Gospel is about the true God making people alive in Christ Jesus and doing so by grace alone. We cannot understand what grace is apart from knowing the truth of who God is and the fact that He exists in and of Himself and holds all things in existence at His mere pleasure. We misunderstand the Gospel of the glory of God if we think that God needs our help and that we can serve Him. Where does this eternal life of grace come from? It comes from knowing Him (II Peter 1:3). We must stress and press this home to people. They must give themselves to the study of knowing God and that this great God exists in and of Himself and that this attribute has a lot to instruct us regarding the Gospel.

In light of God’s self-existence and His not being able to be served, what are man’s works and efforts in terms of the Gospel? Man’s works and efforts in order to be saved show a great ignorance of God because He cannot be served and we cannot do anything for Him. Can our works earn anything from a God who upholds our existence each moment and has no need of us? Can we earn mercy from God or can He be inclined to show us mercy when He exists in and of Himself and has utterly no need at all? What did man do for Christ to come and save sinners? What did man do for Christ to come and suffer and die in the place of sinners? What did man do to raise Christ in the place of sinners? They did nothing, could do nothing, and can do nothing. We look to God for grace alone or we are not looking to the true God. There is only one reason and one causation of eternal life in the believer and that is God Himself alone. His self-existence & self sufficiency teach man how humble man must become to look to Him for salvation by grace alone, which is to say we have nothing to contribute at all.

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The Glory of God 22

October 9, 2015

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.

Isaiah 66:1 Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? 2 “For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD. “But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.

Acts 17:24 “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 the Gospel of God benefits man, it is a declaration and manifestation of the glory of God. We will never understand the Gospel by looking at men, but instead we understand the Gospel by seeking and beholding the glory of God. As we cannot understand eternal life without some understanding of Him as the self-existent God, so we cannot understand the glory of the Gospel of God without understanding the God who shines forth in and by the Gospel. Men are so given to self-love and pride that they think of themselves first and foremost, but what men must understand is that they do that because they are sinners and that is what they do a fallen men. God alone can think of His own glory first and foremost and that is His holiness, but when men focus on themselves they demonstrate that they are fallen. When men take the Gospel and think of themselves first, they are abusing the Gospel in incredible pride as they play God because the Gospel is all about God Himself.

The promises of the Gospel depend completely on the self-existence of God who needs nothing from man to fulfill His promises and needs nothing from man or any other to fulfill His Word. Human beings try to help God out, but once again they are in terrible sin of pride and self when they do so. We cannot obtain life by any other way than my looking to Him who is self-existent life. We cannot obtain or fulfill any of the promises of the Scriptures and the Gospel comes to us by promise alone. There is nothing we can do to keep ourselves in existence and there is nothing we can do to obtain the slightest part of eternal life. We are completely and utterly dependent upon God for our physical existence each moment and for our spiritual life each moment as well.

It is so hard for man to think of receiving a salvation that depends on God alone. This is excruciatingly painful for proud man who hates to depend on anyone for anything, but especially to be totally and utterly dependent upon God for salvation. Man must repent from his own works, but man will try to repent of his own works by depending on himself to repent of his own works. God must work grace in the soul of man and show man what it means to depend totally on His grace and Christ for salvation alone. God must show men the utter vileness of the sin of looking to self rather than Christ alone for salvation and sanctification. It is vital to set out that it contradicts the very nature of God in His self-existence for man to try to help God save man. It contradicts the self-existence of God for God to save men while waiting on or depending on man to do one thing to help God. Eternal life can only come from the self-existent God and it can only come from Him by grace alone or it will contradict His very nature. Oh how hard this is for proud man to swallow and how men should strive for broken and humbled hearts before God in order that they may receive this great truth.

The Gospel of God comes to people who are dead in sin and excluded from the life of God. What kind of promise does the Gospel make to dead people? It is that God must make them alive by His grace alone and that they will rise from the spiritual dead and have eternal life. How can it be that any man can contribute to his own salvation in this light? How can it be that a dead man can help God give himself life? How can it be that a man who is dead in sins and trespasses can move God to show grace to him? How can it be that anyone could think that a dead man can come up with an act of faith and that will move the self-existent God to save that man? How can it be that the God who exists of Himself and supports all other beings in existence needs help or assistance from man to save a man? Behold the glory of God and repent from thinking that salvation is anything but by grace alone.

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The Glory of God 21

October 8, 2015

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.

Isaiah 66:1 Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? 2 “For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD. “But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.

God created all things with the intent, purpose, and goal to glorify His name. This is to say that regardless of what happens God will be glorified because His perfect will cannot possibly be frustrated and it is not possible for what He has decreed should and would happen not to happen. The God who exists in and of Himself and all that ever came into being came into being through Christ has brought all those things into being in a way that manifests His glory to Himself, the angels, spiritual beings, and human beings. All creation is a display of the glory of God and exists at His mere pleasure. When the fall occurred, it was no accident and it was not out of His control. The fall, though a wicked act as indeed all sin is wicked, also had a purpose regarding the glory of God. The fall serves as the awful backdrop for the beauty and glory of the Gospel of God.

Romans 1:1 Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God

II Cor 4:4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 6 For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

We must make no mistake about it. The Gospel is not primarily about human beings, it is without question primarily about God Himself. The Gospel is the Gospel of God and it magnifies, manifests, and displays His glory in Christ Jesus. Yes, the Gospel is all about God, but it is also for God. While God created the entire universe to display His glory, the Gospel is the primary way that He shines forth His glory. Salvation is the free gift of God to weak and helpless sinners, yet in giving salvation to sinners the glory of the great Giver shines forth. In giving salvation to sinners, He gives sinners who have earned death eternal life. Yet apart from His self-existent life, how could He have eternal life to give? He must exist in and of Himself with no need to have life in Himself and as such share His life with sinners.

The Gospel of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ depends on He who is Life Himself giving or sharing life with those who have nothing to earn it and nothing in them to move Him to give it. As every human being (and all things as well) exists each moment at His mere pleasure and depends (knowingly or not) upon His self-existence in the physical realm, so the Gospel display the utter dependence sinners have on Him for eternal life. No man can serve God in giving Him something from the physical world, but neither can man do something for God in the spiritual realm either. We receive our all from Him, and that includes our life and breath.

Acts 17:24 “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 Gospel should show us our utter dependence upon God for all things, but instead in our day it seems as if the majority makes God depend upon us. We seem to think that God needs our evangelism and that God needs our preaching and our service. He does not. However, God graciously uses fallen sinners that He has redeemed to the glory of His name to be those whom He shines His glory through. The Gospel does not teach us that God is waiting on us to do something so that He can save us, but it teaches us that we are utterly dependent upon Him to save us because of who He is. He exists in and of Himself. Therefore, we are utterly dependent upon Him.

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The Glory of God 20

October 7, 2015

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.

Isaiah 66:1 Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? 2 “For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD. “But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.

Sin is the desire to be like God and in this context it is a desire to be like Him in His self-existence and perfect independence. On the other hand, the humble desire to be low before God and receive all things from His hands as nothing but gifts and desire nothing but what God desires for them. Pride is a puffing up of self, yet humility is being empty of self. Becoming more proud is to have more of self, while becoming more humble is to have less of self. Pride blinds souls to God and themselves, but the humble have God showing them the truth about themselves and Him. The proud heart thinks it can do something to please God and even do things for God, but the humble know that they can only do something to please God if He works it in and through them. The difference between pride and humility is virtually infinite because pride is the work of the finite devil and humility is the work of the infinite God. The devil can work in a false humility, but true humility is beyond his power. He who is full of self and self-love cannot by that same power cast out self, but out of his great self-love he can work a false humility in his ministers and his people. Only the living God can cast out the power of self-love by giving a soul a new heart and the life of Christ in it.

In light of the nature of what pride is and what true humility is, it should be clear which one the self-existent God works in His people and which one He will use to glorify Himself. He does not need proud men who preach well and He does not need people with big names to do anything for Him, but instead He alone can glorify His name and He uses the humble and the broken to glorify Himself through. The proud may indeed preach orthodoxy and they may have large ministries, but God will only truly use the humble to glorify Himself through. The proud will preach orthodoxy and even things about Christ as a means of exalting self rather than Christ. The proud may indeed put on a show of humility for the sake of self, but indeed it is nothing but a show of humility rather than the real thing. The proud love to be exalted even if it means some suffering for what it thinks is the name of Christ, but again that is only suffering for the sake of self since the real desire is to have self exalted.

The hideous reality behind each sin is that in trying to be like God we are a “god” to ourselves (the self-god). This brings fresh meaning to Psalm 51:4 where David confesses his adultery and murder as sin against God. Yes, it is true that David violated the sixth and the seventh commandment and violating the commandments is against God. But it is also true that David chose to follow his own selfish heart and his sinful passions and that was an effort to be like God as well. The self-existence of God demands that His creatures live in complete dependence upon Him in their hearts which reflects reality, but the sinful heart of man wants to choose his own way and depend upon himself for wisdom and for moral decisions.

True humility is the nothingness a creature has before God its Creator because that is the proper position of a creature before its Creator who upholds each creature and its life-breath as He pleases. Living in the presence of God who is truly God demands us to be nothing in His presence and to bow before Him in utter nothingness and complete helplessness because that is our reality. Yes, proud sinners should seek humility, but in light of who God is we must ask for humility to come by grace (1 Peter 5:5-6). A humility that comes from anything or anyone but the true God and by grace alone is a false humility. A true humility can only exist and be sustained by the one and only self-existent God who supports His people at all times and in all ways. While man longs to help God even a little in man’s own salvation and sanctification, the great need is for man to be broken from his prideful desire to provide part of salvation and sanctification for himself. Only God can do that. The vast majority in our day seems to want to help God just a little in their own salvation, but that is not a desire to be saved in accordance with the truth of God. Instead, it is a desire to be saved in accordance with the fallen heart of man. The Gospel of the self-existent God is a Gospel of grace alone.

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The Glory of God 19

October 6, 2015

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.

Isaiah 66:1 Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? 2 “For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD. “But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.

When we view sin in light of God and the fact that the temptation that Satan put before the first couple was that they could be like God, sin is then seen as something other than behavior. Perhaps it would be better to say that behavior is seen as symptoms of the real issue which is pride and self in the heart. Sin is man wanting to follow his own reason and wisdom. Sin is man following the desires of his own fallen heart and justifying himself in doing so. Sin is man trying to be a god to himself and as such man wants to be independent and exist by himself and by his own power. Sin is man living in open rebellion against God in open sin, but perhaps even worse is man being very religious and thinking that he can please God by his religion.

This is so pointed in the modern day. Yes, we have a flood of liberalism that seems to cover the earth as the flood in the time of Noah. At the very heart of liberalism is the desire to come up with standards that man’s fallen reason can come up with and the desire to pull God down to the level of man. In conservative circles, however, we have the same motives in many ways. When men have a conservative religion that they use to please God they have done the same thing as the liberals in coming up with standards that fallen reason can be happy with. They also, though conservatives have better creeds and better theology, have a desire to pull God down to the level of man. One can use liberal thinking or conservative thinking to pull God down from His throne (in the minds of men) and for men to assert their own desire to be self-existent.

Fallen man is independent in spirit and desires to be free of all restraints so he can depend on self. Pride wants this freedom, though this freedom is indeed nothing but an appearance of it. Man will hold to liberalism in order to operate according to his own perceived freedom, but man will also hold to severe conservatism in order to convince himself that he is saved or to earn some form of righteousness. In this way the pride of man is able to be free of the sovereign God, though indeed he may even give that lip service, and man can blind himself with the truth so he can hold to his own power and freedom. Oh how pride blinds men to the truth and to the truth of their own hearts. Man wants to stand by his own power and his own freedom and he will deceive himself with either liberalism or conservatism to do so.

There are aspects of the power and insidious nature of pride in the heart of man can only be brought to light in the light of the glory of God. The self-existence of God is an attribute of God that we must hold to and is at the very heart of who God is, the fall of man, and indeed the Gospel. In trying to be like God, man wants the illusion of something like the self-existence of God and yet that can only come from the horrid pride of the heart of man and man cannot see depths of this wickedness of pride apart from viewing the self-existence of God. Men do not know themselves and their own hearts because they make gods for themselves from their pride rather than looking at the true God to see how far they have fallen. This is why it is utterly vital to study and meditate on the true God.

The liberalism and it appears much of the conservatism of today have fallen into forms of humanism and so they judge man by man and God by man rather than looking at God and viewing all things in accordance of Him and His glory. Arminian theology and Pelagian theology are really just ways of man trying to determine his own existence as he pleases rather than bow to the sovereign God. Even in modern “Calvinism” there is the stress on human responsibility to the degree that God’s sovereignty and self-existence disappear into the background. It should be asserted from every Christian pulpit that God exists in and of Himself and has no need of anyone or anything. All things exist as He pleases and all things happen as He has decreed from all eternity. While man has obligations to God, he must seek the Lord for grace to carry those things out, even the tiniest of them.

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Christ Preparing our Hearts 30

October 5, 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.

Did I ever see sin odious, black and hellish, defiling and damning? Have I seen it in the glass of the law, bloody and killing? But in [light of] Christ’s blood exceeding and above measure sinful?

Seeing sin as odious, black and hellish, defiling and damning is important, but it is also important for men to see themselves and their sin as odious in the eyes of God. It is one thing to have some intellectual apprehension that sin is odious to God, but it is quite different to come to grips with the reality that I am odious in the sight of God and even in the presence of God. It is not just that my sin is hellish, but because I sin and am a sinner by nature and practice I am hellish before God. It is not just that my sin is defiled, but I am defiled. It is not just that my sin is worthy to be damned, but I am worthy to be damned. These are the things that Christ alone can teach in the soul as He teaches the inward man by the Spirit who illuminates the Scriptures, the character of God, and our own foul hearts as we are before God. It is Christ alone who can safely guide the soul into a knowledge of the depths of its utter wickedness and inability before God and make the soul feel disgusted with itself and gently take the soul and show it the wonder and glory of free-grace.

The law is preached in many corners today, but is it preached lawfully and with the same intent that the law was given? The law was never intended to give people the idea that it could be obeyed and it was never given so that sinners could deceive themselves about having any form of self-righteousness, but the law was given to show us how wicked and vile we are so that we would never trust ourselves and look to Christ alone. Oh how our vile hearts will take what God gives us to show us our vileness in His sight and we take it and use it as a way to feed our pride and imagine that we could obtain self-righteousness. What horrid hearts we must have! The law can only begin to be kept by love and the only way we can love is to receive it first from God through Christ by the Spirit. We need Christ to be our life and our Prophet to even take the first step toward keeping any commandment, but the truth of the matter is that we will always disobey any particular law more than we keep it. This is to say that in the light of the spiritual nature of the law in this life we will always violate the law more than we keep it.

The greatest sight of our sin, however, is not in the letter of the law or the spiritual nature of the law. The greatest sight our sin is seen in the blood of Christ. Our sin is so hateful to God that once it was imputed to Christ He did not hold back but instead poured out His wrath upon the Son. The Father and the Son lived in perfect and infinite love from all eternity past, but sin is so abhorrent and vile that the Father poured out His wrath on the Son when the Son stood in the place of sinners. He who was life itself took a human body that He might bear the wrath and then death in the place of sinners. He who knew nothing but the eternal pleasure and joy of perfect and infinite love took the sins of sinners upon Himself and suffered the eternal wrath and misery of sin. He who was perfectly holy and knew no sin took upon Himself all the sins of God’s people and felt the misery and vileness of it upon Himself at the cross.

There was no possible way for sin to be taken away except by the suffering and the blood of Christ. There is no way that sinners have any way to take the wrath of God away from themselves and they can do nothing to obtain a righteousness that pleases God. This is all seen in the cross of Christ. If the Father would not withhold His wrath when His Son took sin upon Himself, He will not withhold His wrath even though we plead for mercy. His Son willingly took human nature in order that He might suffer in the place of sinners, so we can be assured that there is nothing we can do in our sinful nature to satisfy the smallest part of the wrath of God. It is Christ alone, however, who can open our eyes to the depths of our sin and prepare our hearts to give up all hope in ourselves and in our own works. It is Christ alone who can show us the spiritual nature of sin and of what He did in suffering for sin. It is Christ alone who can prepare our hearts by breaking them from all hope in anything but the grace of God in Christ. He must teach the soul how exceeding and sinful it really is or the soul will not be taught. If we don’t see how exceeding and sinful we really are, we will never see our need for Christ alone and grace alone.

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Musings 91

October 4, 2015

2 Corinthians 4:5 For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake.

Galatians 1:8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!

2 Timothy 4:2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

In thinking about church and preaching again, it still appears that God has withdrawn His presence and has left men to themselves in terms of preaching. Men are left to their own wisdom in terms of content and methods. Men want to set forth the Scriptures in some way, but setting out things that are true is not the same thing as preaching the truth of God and the Gospel. It is not enough to preach the Scripture unless one preaches the truth of who Christ is and what He has done, which is to say that the Scriptures point to Christ and not themselves. It is so sad to hear men who preach the Scriptures and yet don’t point to the true Christ, though they might mention Him.

It is not enough to preach the Scriptures without preaching the glory of God and the Gospel of His glory. It should also be said that one cannot preach the truth of Scripture with the true intent of Scripture without preaching the glory of God. Surely it is obvious that God has created all things for His glory, the Lord Jesus was the tabernacle of His glory on earth, and the Church is the dwelling place of Christ or the dwelling place of His glory. Preaching that has a focus on jokes and stories rather than the glory of God is not preaching at all. Preaching that focuses on a text and the verbal content of the text and yet misses God and His glory is not preaching that real purpose of the text. In our day the glory of God in the face of Christ is like a mystery that has been hidden.

Preaching (so-called) that basically only speaks of God as if He has done all He can do and is now waiting on man to make a choice in order that He might do something is opposite of the truth. Man is not the focus of God, but instead God is the focus of God. Preaching is to take God’s side over men and preaching is to declare the rights of God and His glorious sovereignty in the affairs of men. When God is thought of as nothing more than One who focuses on men and waits on men to make a choice that He can then do something, that is false preaching. God, the love of God for Himself, and the absolute freeness of God to show and give grace as He is pleased is necessary to the Gospel and sanctification. Preaching is about God and His works and choices rather than men. Men are to seek God for grace and salvation rather than God waiting on men to make the choice themselves.

We can preach (so-called) that men ought to love and they ought to be holy, but it is not in their power to do so. For a man to love or be holy that man must have God work that love and holiness in him. A man cannot love apart from a source of true love and the only source of true love is in God and is not in the power of the will of man. A man cannot be holy apart from the grace of God as true holiness can only come when man becomes a partaker of holiness. A man is not holy because men make a choice to be holy, but because God works holiness in their hearts by His grace and that holiness then comes out in the life.

When a preacher tells people to make a choice to be holy and to love rather than telling them to seek the Lord for hearts that are holy and share in His love, he is encouraging them in a way of works. When a preacher tells people to choose to be holy and to love rather than preach to them that they must be made a partaker of those things by grace alone, he is preaching a system of works. Oh how abominable works are to God when they are works that come from the will and power of man rather than from the strength of grace. If grace is to be grace then it must always be free-grace because that is the only kind of grace that there is. Men are holy and they love by grace alone and not because they have the power to choose to do so and then God helps them do it. Men should seek the Lord for a holy heart of love that they may be instruments of His glory in the world. Only when preachers preach God and the glory of God and His sovereign grace can men live by grace rather than their own wills.

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Christ Preparing our Hearts 29

October 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.

Did I ever see sin odious, black and hellish, defiling and damning? Have I seen it in the glass of the law, bloody and killing? But in [light of] Christ’s blood exceeding and above measure sinful?

One of the ways that the Lord Jesus Christ prepares the hearts of His people is by showing them the nature of sin in several aspects. He shows them their sin as to what it is to them, but also in light of the law and in light of the blood of Christ. There is an academic or letter of the law approach which will show men their sin to some degree, but when Christ teaches men about their sin He seems to dangle them over the fires of hell and makes them to feel the awfulness of their sin. With some He will give them just a little taste of their sin, but with others He will give them several meals and even feasts of it. Someone said, a few centuries ago, “Until we taste sin as bitter Christ will not taste sweet.” The Lord Jesus will have His people taste Him as sweet.

The very nature of sin is that it is odious to God and in the more obvious aspects of it is also odious to men. The idea of odious is something which deserves hatred or repugnance. Sin is hated by God and sin is repugnant to God. Sin is despicably black in the eyes of God and is the offspring or even vomit of hell. Sin is what defiles all it touches and makes men worthy of eternal damnation. Those who are unrepentant sinners are those who are throwing sticks upon their own fires as they treasure up wrath for the day of wrath. These words and concepts describe the true nature of sin and what sin is in the eyes of God, yet unregenerate man loves sin. Unregenerate man may see sin as harmful in some ways and some sin will be seen as immoral, but unregenerate men will not hate sin as sin. It is only when Christ is teaching the heart by His Spirit that the soul comes to understand something of the very hellishness of sin.

Unregenerate sinners are in darkness and as such they cannot see the true nature of sin. Unregenerate sinners are dead to the spiritual nature of things and as such they don’t see the horror of the spiritual nature of sin. Sinners must be taught the nature of sin and they must be taught the nature of sin in light of the law and of the blood of Christ, but we must know that the unregenerate will not know the depths of sin unless Christ Himself opens the eyes of the heart and teaches them. It is one of the “jobs” of the Holy Spirit to convict of sin and only as He illuminates sinners in accordance with the prophetic office of Christ will sinners begin to see.

People can be quite against a lot of sin and join forces with groups for morality and still have no true concept of sin. We see Roman Catholics as opposed to abortion and yet they stand firmly against the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This shows that men can stand against sin in one sense while they truly have no understanding of the nature of sin. These people can know that something is wrong and can know that it is wrong in the eyes of God, yet they have no sense of the odiousness of sin themselves or what it is in the eyes of God. Each person must ask him or herself the question from the top of the page. “Did I ever see sin odious, black and hellish, defiling and damning?” Am I just against outward sins because down deep I know they are wrong? Am I just against some sins because the Bible says that they are wrong? Has God in His great mercy ever opened my eyes to see the true nature of sin? Has the Holy Spirit truly convicted me of my sin as against God and the true hellishness of the nature of it? Have you ever known and felt deeply in you soul just how worthy of hell that you are and that truly you deserve nothing but hell? You see, it is not just slight feeling that is conviction, but a true conviction comes with something of horror to it.

While it sounds so nice to think of Christ preparing hearts for Himself, it is truly a painful thing. Our hearts must be stripped of pride and of self, especially of religious pride and self. We must see that no only are our obvious sins hateful in the eyes of God, but our religious acts apart from Christ are perhaps even more obnoxious to Him. Our righteousness is as filthy menstrual cloths to Him and we have no way or making up for our past sins. The Lord Jesus will begin to open our eyes to sin and it will be painful to see ourselves in the eyes of God as we are in truth. We deserve nothing but wrath upon wrath and that forever. We have no way of making up for the least sin and our every effort to make up for sin is just more sinful. We are helpless in the hands of the one and only sovereign God who alone can teach us about sin and who alone can take our sin away and give us a right standing in His presence in Christ by free-grace alone. Salvation is caused by Christ and nothing we can do helps our case.

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Christ Preparing our Hearts 28

October 1, 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.

Search and try your hearts, whether you are in the faith, and your hearts sound in the faith, and your hearts sound in God’s statutes. Ask seriously, have I the love that is sincere, the faith that is sound, soul-saving, sin-killing, and life reforming? Am I sure, my face and heart are really set Zion-ward and heaven-ward? II Corinthians 13:5

The Scriptures tell us to do the following things:

II Cor 13:5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves;

I Cor 11:28 But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

1 Cor 11:31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged.

Galatians 6:4 But each one must examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another.

Titus 1:16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.

Hebrews 4:1 Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.

Hebrews 12:15 See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;

James 4:4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

When we see that the Scriptures are full of warnings, and many that tell us not to be deceived, we should take great heed of that. We should listen to the Scriptures when they tell us not to be deceived and that we should examine ourselves. We are to search our hearts and we are to put our own hearts on trial. We are to judge them by the Scriptures and the character of God rather than just going by what our feelings tell us and what our fallen reason and desires tell us.

This searching of the heart may lead people to a more settled assurance, so this searching of the heart should be seen as Christ teaching the hearts of His people and is a way of His stripping them of wrong ideas that stand in the way of their assurance. The searching of the heart, however, may also be the teaching of Christ in the inward man and be a way where He strips a person of the false idea that the person is saved. Instead of our own self-love and pride doing the judging concerning ourselves which will never give us an accurate judgment, we must seek the Lord to give us a true sight of our hearts. It will be the case that if the Lord gives us a true sight of our hearts, we will see more sin in the heart than we thought possible. But again, the Lord can give an assurance despite the sight of our heart. The eyes of self-love and wrong ideas of God will always try to blind us to the truth of ourselves, but we must have Christ teach us and prepare our hearts for the truth.

Regardless of whether we are deceived about our conversion or not, every single unconverted person will depart from Him into the eternal fire. We must cry out to Him and seek to know the truth of our own hearts. We must not spare our sinful self-love and our pride, we must seek Christ to give us the truth of our own hearts. We must not be concerned about what others will think of me, but we must seek Christ to give us the truth about ourselves. If we are deceived, we must know that rather than riding on a cloud of self-deception to hell. Christ must prepare our hearts or we will perish. We must not give in to the modern nonsense of praying a prayer or things like that, we must have new hearts or we will perish. This is not a small thing (in comparison) like finding out we have a serious disease, this is an eternal situation. Our eternal state is what we are looking at now. When Paul wrote that we should examine ourselves, he was writing as the apostle (sent one) of Christ. That means we should and that means that without that examination we may be deceived.

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Christ Preparing our Hearts 27

September 30, 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.

Search and try your hearts, whether you are in the faith, and your hearts sound in the faith, and your hearts sound in God’s statutes. Ask seriously, have I the love that is sincere, the faith that is sound, soul-saving, sin-killing, and life reforming? Am I sure, my face and heart are really set Zion-ward and heaven-ward? II Corinthians 13:5

Since the soul is far more valuable than the whole world, it should be examined with that in mind. Sinners must not allow their pride, self, and deceptions to keep them from examining their own hearts and their faith, but instead should do so. Since there are only two places to spend eternity in, sinners should live in light of that eternity and seek the Lord Jesus to work in their hearts to prepare those hearts for Himself. But it is so hard, people say, to examine my heart as I only want to hear the positive things. Oh dear soul, you need to take a long and hard look at your soul. Paul told us to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith and to see if Christ does indeed and in reality live in us. Oh if only people would see just how valuable their own souls are to them they would eagerly seek the Lord to show them their true spiritual condition. If only people would see just how valuable their own souls are to them, they would see just how little value the entire world should have to them.

The modern religious person will simply ask self if s/he believes and of course s/he does believe in some way, but that is far different from asking the soul if it has been born from above and truly has faith. It is one thing to simply have a belief about Christ, but it is quite another to have true faith. It is a dangerous thing to think that Scripture (in our English translation) means the same thing by “belief” as we do in the modern day. We know from the book of James that faith (translated as “belief” in many places) without works is dead. We should also know that it is a dangerous thing to ask our own hearts if we love God and others if we are using the modern culture as our way of defining love. It is easy to deceive our own hearts and have others deceive us when we use words that the English Bible uses and yet use a different meaning than the Bible uses.

It appears that it is common for people to think that they love God, yet in an age where people are taught that God loves each and every person it is not surprising for people to think that they love God. After all, Scripture teaches us that even sinners love those who love themselves (Mat 5:46). Even the tax collectors loved those who loved them. But how many people truly love God when things begin to turn against their worldly interests? How many people love God when they have a bad medical report? How many love God when there is a death of someone in the family? How many love God when they lost all of their financial security? How many love God when God appears to be against them in His providence and brings hard things into their lives? In other words, it is understandable when people profess to love God when things are going well in this life, but that is no proof that people have the love of God in them.

For those who are truly interested in knowing if they are converted or not, they need to search the Scriptures to find out what biblical faith is, what biblical love is, and what it means to really kill sin. Killing sin is not the same thing as suppressing the desires to do a certain action; being afraid that one will get caught doing an action, and becoming too busy to do the action. Killing sin is when God brings a trial to a person and the person is tested beyond his or her strength and has to die to all hope in self and the strength of self. Killing sin is not just stopping the sin, but it is dying to the love of that sin and being brought to a sense of being dead to that sin.

All of these things fall under Christ the Mediator and His offices. It is Christ who must prepare the heart by teaching the heart just how valuable it is to the person. It is Christ who must prepare the heart by teaching it about the true nature of Himself and what true faith is. It is Christ who must prepare the heart to kill sin by working death to self in the soul. It is Christ who must teach the person that all that comes from the strength of self is pride and self and that the person must look to grace alone. It is not coming up with faith that saves the soul, it is Christ alone by grace alone that saves the soul and grants faith to the soul. It is not loving God or others than saves our souls, it is Christ alone by grace alone that saves the soul and then abides in the soul giving it true love. The heart must be broken from thinking that it can break itself and it must look to Christ alone for that breaking and true faith.

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