Spurgeon on Unity & Compromise

On all hands we hear cries for unity in this, and unity in that; but to our mind the main need of this age is not compromise, but conscientiousness. ‘First pure, then peaceable.’ It is easy to cry ‘a confederacy,’ but that union which is not based upon the truth of God is rather a conspiracy than a communion. Charity by all means; but honesty also. LOVE, OF COURSE, BUT LOVE TO GOD AS WELL AS LOVE TO MEN, AND LOVE OF TRUTH AS WELL AS LOVE OF UNION. It is exceedingly difficult in these times to preserve one’s fidelity before God and one’s fraternity among men. Should not the former be preferred to the latter if both cannot be maintained? We think so.

Tozer: A Warning from the Grave?

You would think after reading the following, that A. W. Tozer wrote this yesterday! What he saw as a mere seedling has now come to full bloom! One wonders how much farther we can go? 

Christianity today is man-centered, not God-centered. God is made to wait patiently, even respectfully, on the whims of men. The image of God currently popular is that of a distracted Father, struggling in heartbroken desperation to get people to accept a Saviour of whom they feel no need and in whom they have very little interest. To persuade these self-sufficient souls to respond to His generous offers God will do almost anything, even using salesmanship methods and talking down to them in the chummiest way imaginable. This view of things is, of course, a kind of religious romanticism which, while it often uses flattering and sometimes embarrassing terms in praise of God, manages nevertheless to make man the star of the show.  (Man: The Dwelling Place of God, p. 27)

What To Look for in a Wife by Jonathan Edwards

I happily quote Guy Davies’ "Introduction" to Jonathan Edwards. Davies confesses that he is "an Evangelical and Reformed Welsh preacher living in voluntary exile in the South West of England." We pastors sometimes have young people ask us about what attributes they should seek in the man or woman they might one day marry. Give Edwards a hearing; he has something to say to this. And please do not fall prey to what C.S. Lewis termed "chronological snobbery" by imagining that the older generations were too "out of it" to offer us any significant counsel today. I think if we were to consider it, we may conclude that while fashions come and go, people really do not change all that much. Read down and find out what Edwards admired in his "Sarah." Davies writes:

Jonathan Edwards was a great man of God who was mightily used by the Lord in the Great Awakening of the 18th century. He was a mighty pastor-theologian whose words are still read with profit today. But as the saying goes, "Behind every great man is a good woman." This was certainly the case with the New England preacher. In this series of posts, I want to give readers a glimpse into the "uncommon union" between Jonathan and Sarah Edwards.

Jonathan was born in 1703, eighty years after the Pilgrim Fathers landed in America. In Edwards’ time the English speaking population were subject to attack from Native Americans. The great European powers England and France fought for control of the New World. Jonathan Edwards was the son of a Congregationalist minister. He was converted in 1721, being given a “sense of new things” on reading 1 Timothy 1:17,

"From about that that time, I began to have new apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him. An inward, sweet sense of these things, at times, came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged to spend my time meditation on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of his Pearson, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in him."

Edwards first met his wife to be, Sarah Pierrpont when studying at Yale College. He probably spotted the attractive young girl sitting next to her widowed mother in the congregation of First Church, New Haven. Sarah was only thirteen at the time, but the twenty year old Edwards was deeply impressed by what he had heard about her deep piety,

"They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for any thing, except to mediate upon him - that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up to heaven; being assured the he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight for ever." [italics mine-Dave]

Like Jonathan, Sarah was a child of the manse. She was the daughter of James Pierrpont, who was minister at New Haven from 1685 until his death in 1714. He was remembered as ‘clear, lively and impressive’ preacher who was ‘eminent in the gift of prayer.’ Pierrpont was a leading man in Connecticut. He played a prominent role in establishing Yale College. Sarah’s mother, Mary was the grand-daughter of the great Puritan divine, Thomas Hooker.

They married in 1727. Sarah was 17 and Jonathan 23. According to Samuel Miller, “Perhaps no event of Mr. Edwards’ life had a more close connexion with his subsequent comfort and usefulness than this marriage.” Soon Edwards was settled at the assistant pastor to his grandfather Solomon Stoddard in Northampton. Stoddard had served the congregation for 60 eventful years. Edwards became sole pastor on Stoddard's death. Northampton was to be the scene of the some of the greatest triumphs and tragedies in the lives of Jonathan and Sarah. Together they had eleven children, ten girls and one boy.

Privilege, Not Sacrifice -- David Livingstone

    "For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice."

Thomas Boston--"Useful Directions for Reading Scripture"

Thomas Boston (1676-1732) hailed from lowland Scotland and only ever served in two very obscure churches. Yet he was affectionately labeled by his biographer "a commonplace genius." Quite capable, and sometimes invited elsewhere, he found satisfaction in doing God's work in the place assigned him. He is most well known for his book, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State. Yet, one can secure the 12 volumes of his works. Even considering the time in which he lived his writing could be considered somewhat Shakespearian in style, but never was it affected. 

Useful Directions for Reading Scriptures. (Abbreviated & with light editing):

1. Follow a regular plan in reading of them, that you may be acquainted with the whole; . . . Some parts of the Bible are more difficult, some may seem very barren for an ordinary reader; but if you would look on it all as God's word, not to be scorned, and read it with faith and reverence, no doubt you would find advantage.

2. Read with a holy attention, arising from the consideration of the majesty of God, and the reverence due to him. This must be done with attention, first, to the words; second, to the sense; and, third, to the divine authority of the Scripture, and the obligation it lays on the conscience for obedience, 1 Thess. 2:13, "For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe."

3. Let your main purpose in reading the Scriptures be practice, and not bare knowledge, James 1:22, "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." Read that you may learn and do, and that without any limitation or distinction, but that whatever you see God requires, you may study to practice.

4. Beg of God and look to him for his Spirit. For it is the Spirit that inspired it, that it must be savingly understood by, 1 Cor 2:11, "For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God." And therefore before you read, it is highly reasonable you beg a blessing on what you are to read.

5. Beware of a worldly, fleshly mind: for fleshly sins blind the mind from the things of God; and the worldly heart cannot favour them. In an eclipse of the moon, the earth comes between the sun and the moon, and so keeps the light of the sun from it. So the world, in the heart, coming between you and the light of the word, keeps its divine light from you.

6. Labour to be disciplined toward godliness, and to observe your spiritual circumstances. For a disciplined attitude helps mightily to understand the scriptures. Such a Christian will find his circumstances in the word, and the word will give light to his circumstances, and his circumstances light into the word.

Sin, By Any Other Name . . .

The following is a complete quotation from a friend and colleague, Kerry Skinner, with whom I attended Gordon-Conwell Seminary. His email is kerry@kerryskinner.com. Kerry writes: This "article . . . comes from the first book [Henry Brandt] and I wrote, Breaking Free from the Bondage of Sin.

Who Knows the Truth?

In 1973, Dr. Carl Menninger wrote a book entitled Whatever Became of Sin? In it he noted that in 1953 (20 years before he wrote the book) President Eisenhower quoted Lincoln as part of his declaration of a day of prayer: 

It is the duty of nations, as well as of men to own their independence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble, sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon. 

Dr. Menninger emphasizes that for the next twenty years presidential declarations have eliminated reference to sin. As a nation, he said, we officially stopped sinning after that declaration.

Menninger offers a reasonable explanation for people leaving "sin" out of their vocabulary. At the turn of the century the use of the scientific method led to new theories of behavior and learning. Here are a few of them:

*    Messner demonstrated that under hypnosis one could be induced to do or think what he did not realize he was doing or thinking or remembers that he had done so. 

*    Pavlov and then Watson experimented [with considerable success] with ways of conditioning people to have a reflex response to a specific signal.

*    Freud emphasized that understanding one's self better; often leads to controlling one's self better. Examining the motivation behind behavior has a certain enlightening or freeing effect. He asserted that a love/hate conflict toward relationships with partially buried, partially exposed memories be labeled a neurosis and regarded as illness.

*    B. F. Skinner declared that what is believed to be voluntary behavior is pre-determined by past stimuli.

*    Rogers discovered that listening can relieve sufferers from doubt, anxiety, depression, phobias, and hysterical pain.

*    Menninger declared that misbehavior has explanations other than sheer willfulness or aggressiveness.

*    The medical profession prescribes mood-altering drugs that provide patients with a temporary escape from pain, anxiety, boredom, and remorse.

With all this "scientific" methodology, there has come a wide departure from simple good/bad behavior. Physical problems were treated as a symptom for badness. There is an underlying disease for which the offender is not entirely to blame.

It is your privilege to be upset, to be miserable. As long as you insist on retaining your misery, you will have it. The knowledge of sin, however, does not eliminate sin or the problems that sin causes. Wise is the man who heeds the advice of the Apostle James:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.(James 1:22-25 NKJV)

My Thoughts:

1)   Sin by any other name is just as evil and deleterious. 

2)   Abuse of the doctrine of sin does not diminish it's truth. Preachers may have bludgeoned their hearers with the heinousness of sin. But that in itself does not mitigate the wickedness of sin. 

3)   Further, it is not loving to skirt the issue, for it leaves men in their sin. If sin is an affront to the eternal Majesty of God, we do well to soberly consider it's implications. To redirect someone away from the dread of sin's misery is to leave them vulnerable to sin's pernicious effects and potentially catapults them into eternal punishment.  

          

The "Forked-Tongue" of Discipleship

Christians endure the tension of living between two worlds, and the language of both comes easily to their lips. In a sense they speak with "forked-tongue," though this term comes laden with negative baggage. What Isaiah promises by way of escape, we believers willingly shoulder by choice--that is, to take on foreign cultures and speak for one King. 

New missionaries from our church are happily, if not awkwardly studying the language of their new country, Tajikistan. It is to be expected of all cross-cultural missionaries that they will have to enter their respective countries at the low end of the learning curve. It can be a harrying experience. So it is with the true Christian. He lives in a land not his own. He represents a God who is not wanted. He speaks a language that is not appreciated. A major difference is that he has no choice where to live, for all of this world is foreign territory. It is not a national issue, but spiritual. He can say truly, “I am not at home in this world anymore.” Hear Isaiah:

You will see no more the insolent people, the people of an obscure speech that you cannot comprehend, stammering in a tongue that you cannot understand (Isaiah 33:19).

Consider: 

1) Isaiah is preaching to an Assyrian-oppressed Israel due to their own persistent sinfulness. Thus, they had been subjected to a foreign way of life, to a people who are barbarous (for that is what "insolent" infers), speak an obscure language which cannot be understood. Their sin betrays that they had no love for God's ways, so they must suffer the "ways" of a hostile foreign culture! 

2) By contrast, Jesus' redemption reconnects the division between God and man, renews their language and reconstitutes them citizens of heaven. This is RE-creation at it's best! Peace among those with whom God's is pleased (Luke 2). 

3) Missionary activity combines both of the above turning the foreign into something good. How? Christians choose to learn a language "not their own," and enter a country often hostile to themselves. They do this out of love for God. Ironically, it was out of hatred for God that Israel was forced into exile! Now, out of love for God the redeemed volunteer! See the contrast? It is instructive and paradoxical.

Such is the nature of the true disciple's life--he lives between two worlds, fighting off the lure of temptation here in order to secure the preferred benefits of the city of God. It's two-sided, but not necessarily forked, for it does not have to be hypocritical.