Jul
25
Baxter: Lord, it belongs not to my care
Filed Under Ave atque vale, Christian Living, Holiness, Puritans, Tragedy, Worship | Leave a Comment
Here’s some potent verse from English Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (1615-1691), who is generally better know for his prose than his poetry:
Lord, it belongs not to my care,
Whether I die or live;
To love and serve thee is my share,
And this thy grace must give.If life be long, I will be glad
That I may long obey;
If short, yet why should I be sad
To soar to endless day?Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than he went through before;
He that unto God’s kingdom comes
Must enter by this door.Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet
Thy blessed face to see;
For if thy work on earth be sweet,
What will thy glory be?Then shall I end my sad complaints,
And weary, sinful days,
And join with the triumphant saints
That sing Jehovah’s praise.My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
But ’tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.
Jul
21
What a team of friends we have through Jesus
Filed Under Christian Living, Holiness, Prayer, Trinity | Leave a Comment
Here’s some profound insight from Dr. J.I. Packer from a recent interview in Modern Reformation:
J.I. Packer: “I’m a great believer in the importance of Trinitarian thinking in discipling. A lot of what has weakened discipling is the result of thinking of only one person of the godhead at any one time–think about the Holy Spirit and what he does; think about Jesus and his death on the cross for us; think of the Father and of his love and goodwill. But you’re not thinking, you see, of the three together: the divine team which works in the unity of a single program and plan, each person in the team fulfilling his part in our salvation, so that the gospel is much less ‘what a friend we have in Jesus,’ but ‘what a team of friends we have through Jesus’–it’s the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our discipling instruction will be infinitely strengthened if we present it that way. Sometimes people say, ‘I’ve never heard it put like that before.’ People will be deistic unless they are taught the Trinity.”
Jul
16
A word from our namesake
Filed Under Christian Living, Holiness, Holy Spirit, Prayer, Puritans | Leave a Comment
The Sweet Dropper is named for English Puritan Richard Sibbes (1577-1635). Read our tribute to Sibbes. These words come from Sibbes’ The Soul’s Conflict, and Victory over Itself by Faith:
It were an easy thing to be a Christian, if religion stood only in a few outward works and duties. But to take the soul to task, and to deal roundly with our own hearts, and to let conscience have its full work, and to bring the soul into spiritual subjection unto God, this is not so easy a matter, because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into itself, lest it should have other thoughts of itself than it would have.
The words speak of the depravity of the heart and the deceitfulness of sin. It’s no easy or pleasant task to think rightly about our lives. Many of us may enjoy analyzing our problems, but are we doing so in the light of God’s Word? Perhaps we are analyzing our lives in a self-serving, self-justifying way. We replay the mental DVD of wrongs committed against us. We sooth ourselves with arguments that hide the truth and shift the blame to others. None of us wants to acknowledge things about ourselves that we would rather deny. How do you learn to see straight when something inside is bending in the wrong direction? My old campus minister, Hal Farnsworth, is fond of asking people, “If you were deceiving yourself, would you know it?”
Join me in asking God to overthrow self-righteousness–yours and mine. Ask the Spirit to help you have “other thoughts of yourself” and to see clearly the grace of Christ Jesus coming to you in your sin and misery. Face up, and find mercy.
Apr
8
Tops of the mountains of our guilt
Filed Under Christian Living, Evangelism, Holiness, Justification | Leave a Comment
“Standing at the foot of the cross, and beholding the Redeemer in his expiring agony, the Christian may indeed gather courage. When I think of my sin, it seems impossible that any atonement should ever be adequate; but when I think of Christ’s death it seems impossible, that any sin should ever be great enough to need such an atonement as that. There is in the death of Christ enough and more than enough. There is not only a sea in which to drown our sins, but the very tops of the mountains of our guilt are covered. Forty cubits upwards hath this red sea prevailed. There is not only enough to put our sins to death, but enough to bury them and hide them out of sight. I say it boldly and without a figure, — the eternal arm of God now nerved with strength, now released from the bondage in which justice held it, is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Christ.”
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “The Believer’s Challenge,” delivered June 5, 1859
Feb
11
A Savior not satisfied
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Holiness | Leave a Comment
He shall see the labor of his soul, and be satisfied. [Isaiah 53:11].
The first sermon I ever preached was on Isaiah 53, and I think I have destroyed all recordings. Ever since, I have been captivated by that statement in v.11. Isaiah portrays Messiah as stricken, smitten and afflicted, led as a lamb to be butchered. BUT, he shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. His suffering was not purposeless and ineffectual. There is no need to pity Jesus the Suffering Servant. There is a joy set before him–the joy of bearing and removing the sin of his people and making intercession for them. He did what he set out to do. He cried from the cross, ‘It is finished!’ He fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law.
But Isaiah speaks of the satisfaction as future, not past or present. In a sense, Jesus is not yet satisfied. We will sing this coming Lord’s Day in public worship, ‘Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and heaven be one.’ God is at work. Redemption accomplished is not yet fully applied. The full number of the elect has not yet come in. There are others whom Jesus wants to put in our pews as worshipers. I am thankful that I am not what I once was, but I am just as thankful that it has not yet been revealed what I shall be either!
Today I found a similar meditation on Paul Tripp’s blog, and think it’s worth sharing with you…
The One on whom we wait is a dissatisfied Messiah. He will not relent, he will not quit, he will not rest until every promise he has made been fully delivered. He will not turn from his work until every one of his children has been totally transformed. He will continue to fight until the last enemy is under his feet. He will reign until his kingdom has fully come. As long as sin exists, he will shower us with forgiving, empowering, and delivering grace. He will defend us against attack and attack the enemy on our behalf. He will be faithful to convict, rebuke, encourage, and comfort. He will continue to open the warehouse of his wisdom and unfold for us the glorious mysteries of his truth. He will stand with us through the darkness and the light. He will guide us on a path we could never have discovered or would never have been wise enough to choose. He will supply for us every good thing that we need to be what he’s called us to be and to do what he’s called us to do in the place where he’s put us. And he will not rest from his work until every last microbe of sin has been completely eradicated from every heart of each of his children!
Dec
5
Proverbs: urban lions
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Holiness, Proverbs | Leave a Comment
The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion in the road! There is a lion in the streets!’
As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed.
The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth.
The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.
~Proverbs 26:13-16
Proverbs’ depiction of the sluggard contains a vivid illustration of the deceitfulness of sin and its operations in the human heart. Twice in Proverbs we hear the sluggard claiming that there is a lion in the streets. Why would he do that? He is creating imaginary circumstances to justify neglecting his work. He shifts the discussion from the sin of laziness to the danger of lions. No one will condone his staying home because he is lazy. But they might sympathize with him and agree with his decision to stay home if there is real danger in the streets. So, to hide his laziness and justify himself, he deflects attention away from laziness (truth) to lions (an illusion).
Do you see the broader insight into the human heart Scripture is giving us? The heart can exploit the mind to justify what the heart wants. We are not always willing to deal with things as they really are. We are not neutral when it comes to understanding our situation. On the contrary, we feel powerful desires and pressing fears, and then our mind can bend reality to justify the desires and fears and seek fulfillment or find relief.
The sluggard desires to stay at home and avoid work. Instead of dealing with his evil desire, he uses his mind to create unreal circumstances to justify his desire. He may even believe the excuses he has fabricated. [Remember George Costanza's advice to Jerry: "It's not a lie if you believe it."] The deceitfulness of sin can actually make us mentally deranged!
Understanding this truth makes Proverbs 26:16 come alive: “The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can give a discreet answer.” The self-deception makes the sluggard resistant to any truth that exposes his sin. When seven wise men confront him and say, “There is no bloodthirsty urban lion in the street. We walked here safely. We’ve searched the neighborhood. You are not in danger of becoming a lion’s lunch,” the sluggard still will not get out of bed. Their testimony won’t change his mind. He knows better. He insists that the hungry urban lion is out there. Otherwise his laziness is exposed for what it is. Truth gets flushed down the toilet of self-justification.
No one is immune to this. It goes far beyond the matter of work ethic. Walking in the darkness of evil makes us hostile to the light of truth–and in the process our mind concocts and spits out “spin”–half-truths, equivocations, sophistries, evasions and lies - anything to protect the our evil desires from exposure and reproof.
The longer I serve as a pastor, the more I see this at work in people with addictions, people who harbor bitterness, people whose marriages are crumbling–in other words, sinners who need help. And, at the same time, it makes me cry out to God to deliver me from my delusions as well. I must reckon with God’s grace and truth as I really am and in the situation I am really facing–that is, without the urban lions.
Thanks are in order to John Piper for being the catalyst for these insights.