Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Ligoneer Conference Video - Holiness of God

Check out these videos from the 2009 Ligoneer Conference on the Holiness of God

Gospel Worship

Gospel Worship

I am presently reading Gospel Worship by Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646). My reason for desiring to read this book is to stir up my mind and affections to God in Biblical worship. As I have been preparing for this coming Lord’s Day worship my mind has been fixed upon these words of Burroughs,

“It is fitting that God should be glorified, whatever becomes of you. You are dear to God, but God’s name is dearer to Him than you are.”

As God’s people come together on the Lord’s Day for corporate worship God is most concerned for the glory of his name and he will glorify his name as holy before the world in worship. Burroughs says that God’s name is glorified in two ways among his people. He says,

“The saints sanctify God in their hearts when they fear God as a holy God, and reverence Him and love Him as a holy God. They sanctify Him in their lives when their lives hold forth the glory of God’s holiness. Then God is sanctified.”

“But if we do not do so, God sanctifies Himself in ways of judgment upon those who do not sanctify His name in ways of holiness.”

God is sanctified in the minds and hearts of those who behold his beauty in holiness and worship him with right thoughts and affections in accord with his expressed commands. But if we draw near to worship with our thoughts and affections far from him and his holiness we should expect that God will be glorified as holy in his judgment upon us. This seems harsh to us who are more concerned about what our neighbors think about our worship than we are about God. But when the name of man becomes dearer to the church than the holy name of God we make a god of our own thoughts and desires and truth is hidden in darkness. And it is in this darkness that we make a mockery of God in our worship. Let us return to reverence for the holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.

Stages of Worship

In thinking about worship this week I was reflecting on some thoughts from Desiring God; Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, a book by John Piper. There are many reasons I pull this book off my shelf and reread the well worn pages. But on this particular occasion I was thinking about how he describes three stages we may go through when we worship God. These thoughts from chapter 3 on Worship have proven helpful to me because I often find myself at stage three sorrowful for my lukewarm heart before God and longing for my fragmented heart to be once again satisfied in the beauty and excellence of him. And so I pray, read his Word, sit in silence and cry with longing so that I may again taste and see that the Lord is good. You can read below an abbreviated version of his thoughts or use the link above to read the larger section or the entire chapter for your encouragement. John Piper says,

I see three stages of movement toward the ideal experience of worship. We may experience all three in one hour, and God is pleased with all three-if indeed they are stages on the way to full joy in him. I will mention them in reverse order.

1. There is the final stage in which we feel an unencumbered joy in the manifold perfections of God-the joy of gratitude, wonder, hope, admiration. "My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat and my mouth praises thee with joyful lips" (Psalm 63:5). In this stage we are satisfied with the excellency of God, and we overflow with the joy of his fellowship.

2. In a prior stage that we often taste, we do not feel fullness, but rather longing and desire. Having tasted the feast before, we recall the goodness of the Lord-but it seems far off. We preach to our souls not to be downcast, because we are sure we shall again praise the Lord (Psalm 42:5). Yet for now our hearts are not very fervent.

Even though this falls short of the ideal of vigorous, heartfelt ad oration and hope, yet it is a great honor to God. We honor the water from a mountain spring not only by the satisfied "ahhh" after drinking our fill, but also by the unquenched longing to be satisfied while still climbing to it.

3. The lowest stage of worship-where all genuine worship starts, and where it often returns for a dark season-is the barrenness of soul that scarcely feels any longing, and yet is still granted the grace of repentant sorrow for having so little love. "When my soul was embit tered, when I was pricked in heart, I was stupid and ignorant, I was like a beast toward thee" (Psalm 73 :22).

Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth. This is the ideal. For God surely is more glorified when we delight in his magnificence than when we are so unmoved by it we scarcely feel anything, and only wish we could. Yet he is also glorified by the spark of anticipated gladness that gives rise to the sorrow we feel when our hearts are lukewarm. Even in the miserable guilt we feel over our beast-like insensitivity, the glory of God shines. If God were not gloriously desirable, why would we feel sorrowful for not feasting fully on his beauty?

Yet even this sorrow, to honor God, must in one sense be an end in itself--not that it shouldn't lead on to something better, but that it must be real and spontaneous. The glory from which we fall short cannot be reflected in a calculated sorrow. As Carnell says, "Indirect fulfillment is stripped of virtue whenever it is made a goal of conscious striving. Whoever deliberately tries to be sorry will never be sorry. Sorrow cannot be induced by human effort."

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Patrick of Ireland, Our Daily Life

While reading to my family about Patrick of Ireland tonight I was lead to two thoughts about church life that I think would greatly affect the Redeemer Presbyterian Church and the community we live in. These thoughts come from the reading of Patrick’s Confession where he says,

“But it was here in Ireland that God first opened my heart, so that – even though it was a late start (he was sixteen when he was taken as a slave to Ireland) I became aware of my failings and began to turn with my whole heart to the Lord my God. For he looked down on my miserable condition and had compassion for me, young and foolish as I was…Because of this I cannot – I will not – be silent. I will tell of the great blessings God has granted to me and the grace he has shown to me in this land of slavery. Because this is the way we should behave toward God – when he has shown us why we were wrong and we have admitted our sins, we should praise him and proclaim his kindness to everyone in the world.”


Thought #1: A Refusal to be Silent
Patrick looked to his sin and then to the mercies of God and he could not be silent. He had grown up in a home where his father was a deacon in the church and his mother taught him to follow Christ, but he went in the way of his sin. He said, “I was lead away as a slave to Ireland…We deserved slavery – for we had abandoned God and did not follow his ways.” And it was in the midst of his sin that he saw the kindness and loving kindness of God and could not be silent about it. His mouth spoke of his sinful condition and the mercies of God toward him in that condition. He was compelled to “proclaim his kindness to everyone in the world.” Many in the church refuse to speak of their sin and the grace of God in Christ Jesus because we know it is a disadvantage to our position in the world. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors.” The saints who refuse to be silent about the glory of God in Christ in the midst of a fallen world will suffer reproach but not from God who has shown them grace and mercy in the midst of sin and misery. This refusal to be silent will result in God giving people new hearts so that they will repent of sin and find life in him through Christ.

Thought #2: Proclaim His Kindness to Everyone
Patrick said, “I will tell of the great blessings God has granted to me and the grace he has shown me in this land of slavery.” Patrick would not be considered politically correct to think that there is blessing and grace in the midst of slavery. But how different would the church be if her people counted it all joy when she faced various trials and afflictions knowing that through them the Lord is bringing her to completion in Christ. How different we would be if we were speaking to one another in the church of the loving kindness of God from his Word. God’s people are living in the midst of a fallen world with the struggles of theirs and others sins; therefore they are need of knowing the kindness of God for encouragement.

What if everyday Redeemer Presbyterian Church refused to be silent and proclaimed his kindness to everyone? What if everyday we spoke of the gospel to someone and bore one another’s burdens with the loving kindness of God?

Reflection 15 - Calvin's Institutes; Goodness

We are all looking for the good. We either delight when good is done toward us or we delight when we see good come from us. But the truth is revealed in us when our delight is in God who is our only good from which goodness springs toward us or from us by his grace.

When a man knows “that you have all things from God: whatever good you have is from him; whatever evil, from yourself” , then the truth is in him. The man who thinks that all things are from self: whatever good is from the choices he has made; whatever evil, from the choices others have made, then he dwells in falsehood.

Man is to look for good from God. If good is to come to him in his wicked state then God must be gracious, and if good is to come from him then God must be gracious. This makes regeneration necessary. There must be a new nature given man if he is to confess his sins and wickedness before God and receive in Christ the forgiveness of sins and life in him. And there must be a new nature given man if he is to live in the good that God delights in. Therefore it is necessary for us to hear Jesus say, “you must be born again” , and David pray, “create in me a clean heart, O God,” and Paul say, “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” . A man who looks for good from self is a man searching in vain. He is like a man shucking oysters hoping to find a ruby. As Augustine said, “Nothing is ours but sin.” But a man who looks for good from God will find that God is good and does good to all who seek him by faith in Christ.

But what of the struggle that the man faces who is born again by the Spirit and alive in Christ Jesus to trust God’s goodness and to do good? This struggle is natural for the spiritual man being sanctified. As Paul says, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” You want to trust, praise, thank and obey God because the Spirit dwells in you, but your desires lead you to trust, praise, thank and obey man. As Paul says elsewhere, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” The man who has a new nature also retains a sinful flesh or “sin that dwells within” . Therefore throughout this new life in Christ a person with a new nature in Christ will continue to struggle to know, believe and trust God as good and to do the good that God delights in. But the answer for this struggle is not a better you, it is God who is good and does good. The struggle is met when man continually turns to him in repentance and faith for more of his grace in Christ Jesus (Rom.7:25) through the Spirit (Gal.5:18) that he might see more of his goodness toward him and live in his goodness from him. The good that man desires is God and the good that man seeks must come from God.

Restoring Joy in God's Salvation

What does it mean when we pray, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation,”? David prays this in the context of Psalm 51, a prayer of confession and repentance. In this portion of the Psalm he has confessed his sin before the Lord and now he is asking God to restore him to covenant faithfulness in the way of a restored joy. But the joy he seeks is in God’s salvation. He does not ask to be restored in the joy of his own salvation. He asks that God will give him the grace to look away from himself to God and his salvation. Salvation belongs to God and he gives it to whomever he wills. His children may wander in sin and faithlessness but to those who he has given salvation it will be their yearning to be restored in the joy of his salvation as they have tasted again the misery of sin. Therefore to pray this prayer is to be like one who has a bitter taste in his mouth and is yearning for the riches and tastes that has satisfied him before. But as we learn to trust God in his means of grace by praying this prayer with David is there something that he gives in addition to prayer to restore us to the joy of his salvation?

A Christian man who has lost his job is praying for God to give him his daily bread and he knows he is worse than an unbeliever if he does not provide for the needs of his own family. Therefore while he prays he uses the time God entrusts him with everyday to look back at how God has provided, contact employers, send out resumes and do odd jobs while looking forward to what God promises. So also we can confess our sins and pray that God would restore to us the joy of his salvation while we continually look back at God’s salvation worked for us in the past and look forward to the promises of God’s salvation in the future. I would suggest these five points of action, some of which derive from the chapter The Cross Centered Day form C.J. Mahaney’s Cross Centered Life while you pray for God to restore you to the joy of your salvation.

1. Learn the Gospel:
C.J. Mahaney encourages the reader to memorize the gospel so that we have the promise of his gospel in our hearts wherever we may be. But memorizing and learning are different. If memorizing is defined by hiding God’s Word in your heart then I think we are learning. To learn something means to be changed by it because ideas have consequences. There are many people memorizing information for a test, but it is quickly forgotten. But learning of God’s salvation is allowing it to penetrate your hearts so that your thoughts and affections are changed. When what you have learned is remembered and meditated upon it continues to be a means God uses to build you up to his grace in his salvation.

2. Pray the Gospel:
As you pray, “Lord, restore to me the joy of your salvation,” sit with your Bible open in your lap and your eyes upon the page in search for the God of the gospel. Search the Scriptures and pray them back to him in thanksgiving with wonder and amazement of who he is, what he has done and what his promising to do. This morning I sat with my Bible open to Psalm 47 and prayed with awe to the God of the gospel who, is a great king over all the earth, subdues peoples under us, and nations under our feet, chose our heritage for us, has gone up with a shout, sits on his holy throne, and is exalted. It is in these times that God restores to me the joy of his salvation.

3. Sing the Gospel:
Search for and sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs that reverberate with the lyrics of God’s salvation. There are songs that make us feel good by the form of the music and we need to be careful not to mistake this for the restoration of the joy of God’s salvation. Sing songs that speak the truth of God as the gospel. Search for hymns that reflect the truth of God’s Word and cause your mind and heart to look away from self to God. Sing hymns, psalms or songs that are God centered upon God’s gospel. Order and keep a hymnal with your Bible so that you can sing to the Lord a new song.

4. Preach the Gospel:
Restoring the joy of God’s salvation in our hearts comes when we preach the gospel to ourselves and our neighbors. In Psalm 42 the Sons of Korah teach us to say to ourselves why are you downcast, set your hope on God. When we remember the God who is the gospel to our souls then our souls are lifted up beyond our situations and circumstances to hope in him who has and continues to bring us through them for our good and his own glory. As Martin Lloyd Jones says, “You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself…You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’ – instead of muttering in this depressed and unhappy way.” You may not be depressed or discouraged but if your joy is not in the God of the gospel then you are and will find your soul experiencing the misery of your sin. So it is better to preach to yourself now that you “shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Your joy in God’s salvation is also found when you preach the gospel to your neighbor. We talk about what we enjoy and we enjoy it all the more when what we talk about in our understanding. The more you talk about the joy of God’s salvation then the clearer its beauty in your own soul. We become like the apostles in Jerusalem who could not speak of anything else but Jesus and his salvation for them because he was their delight and the God of their salvation.

5. Read the Gospel:
Restoring the joy of God’s salvation in our hearts comes when we read the Bible and what others have said about God’s salvation and the effect it has had on their lives. I suggest that you have a regular daily reading plan through the Scriptures. In doing this you need to pray and read asking God to reveal himself and his salvation to you through Christ everyday. He will make known to you who he is, what he has done, what he is doing and promises to do that you may glory in his salvation. There are a number of plans you can use. There are M'Cheynes daily readings posted on our website or you can use some of the reading plans suggested by Bible Gateway. I also suggest you read twenty minutes a day from theological or biographical literature that will build you up to the joy of God’s salvation. Here are a few ideas to get you started, but if you are interested in a suggested reading list please email me.
 God is the Gospel, John Piper
 Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges
 The Cross, John Stott
 The Christian Life, Sinclair Ferguson
 The Swans are Not Silent Series, John Piper (Biographical Series)
 Body of Divinity, Thomas Watson
 All Loves Excelling, John Bunyan
 The Christ of the Covenants, O. Palmer Robertson
 Written in Stone, Philip Ryken
 The Holiness of God, R.C. Sproul

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Reflection 14- Calvin's Institutes: Original Sin

Classic works of literature are sometimes like classic rock, they have shaping influence upon culture. Calvin’s Institutes should be considered a classic work of literature because of its truth, beauty, and the shaping influence it has had on not only the church but cultures around the world. Classic rock, from the sixties and seventies, (contrary to pop culture, eighties rock is not classic) has also had its influence upon many cultures despite its lacking of truth and beauty. However, there are arguably movements in those works that can be described as beautiful, and lyrics that articulate truth. Yet we would hardly place Chaucer alongside Mick Jager. But in reading Calvin on the doctrine of original sin my thoughts wandered to The Who and there popular song, “Who Are You”.

What does John Calvin on original sin and The Who playing “Who Are You” have in common? Roger Daltrey is the lead singer in all the recordings and most performances The Who did of this song but Pete Townshend wrote the lyrics. Pete Townshend, an excellent guitarist and pretty good song writer, penned some truthful words in this song that relate well to John Calvin’s view of original sin. I have no desire to defend Pete Townshend’s idolatry and false worship but I do appreciate the truth in these words as he reflects upon who man is,

My heart is like a broken cup
I only feel right on my knees
I spit out like a sewer hole
Yet still receive your [God] kiss.

John Calvin and Pete Townshend both recommend that man have a correct view of God and himself. But this is where we have to change buses. Pete Townshend followed the self proclaimed “perfect master” Beher Baba, who considered himself the Avatar, god in the flesh. Down this mystic road of many stops his view of “God” is false and therefore his view of man is also, but there is a stop or two by God’s common grace that he gets it right. But John Calvin took a different route following the only true and living God of the Bible who revealed himself in the only true incarnate Son of God. Therefore he can offer to us a view of God and man that is accurate through the Scriptures. But John Calvin like Pete Townshend does see our lives as broken, spewing out the filth of sin from our corrupt natures and so the only correct posture of man’s life is humility before God who is gracious both in common and special grace toward filthy sinners.

John Calvin believes that God’s truth requires us to examine ourselves to find “the kind of knowledge that will strip us of all confidence in our own ability, deprive us of all occasion for boasting, and lead us to submission.” Man has a deluded self admiration until like Pete Townshend he finds himself kicked awake by a policeman in a Soho doorway and told to go home and sleep. Through common grace his experience tells him that he is a broken cup that can’t hold water and a sewer hole spewing out the filth of his heart. And then he goes home and watches “The Pursuit of Happiness” or Joel Osteen and his pride is tickled by the alluring talk and he finds out he’s not so bad after all and that he can become a better person even while living in a homeless shelter. Instead of hiking through Europe listening to The Who to find the truth about self Calvin suggests these two considerations. “First, he should consider for what purpose he was created and endowed with no mean gifts. By this knowledge he should arouse himself to meditation upon divine worship and the future life. Secondly, he should weigh his own abilities, or rather lack of abilities. When he perceives this lack, he should lie prostrate in extreme confusion, so to speak, reduced to nought. The first consideration tends to make him recognize the nature of his duty; the second, the extent of his ability to carry it out.” It may appear that John Calvin would lead a person to fatalism and despair, but this is actually the way to life. When man rightly examines himself in light of God’s glory in Scripture and sees it confirmed in experience that he is a sinner separated from the majestic God then he rightly falls upon his knees and cries for mercy from him who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and full of lovingkindness, yet who will not clear the guilty. For until man sees his “nature is not only destitute and empty of good, but so fertile and fruitful of every evil that it cannot be idle” , he will not cry out to God for mercy and grace. We are sewer holes spewing forth filth and therefore children of wrath , but it is Jesus Christ who became a sewer hole for us in order to suffer the wrath we deserved that we might receive the kiss of his grace and mercy for life. The only place we should feel comfortable is on our knees crying for mercy.