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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 15:08:18 GMT -5
The Fear of God: Source by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached October 4, 1970
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This morning we continue our series of studies on one of the most vital themes of Scripture; that theme being, of course, the fear of God. One imminent commentator has said, "It is well known [what a blessing to live in a day when one could say this] that the fear of God is used to signify, not only the whole of his worship but all Godly affections whatsoever and consequently the whole of true religion." This commentator could say it's commonly understood by anyone who knows his Bible that the fear of God can be used as a synonym for the whole of true religion. I believe a study of Scripture leads to that conclusion. And there is this terrible negative implication: if the fear of God is synonymous with the whole of true religion, then the absence of the fear of God is indicative of the absence of true religion. And so, because of the great issues involved in this theme of Scripture, we have been seeking to come to grips with some of the broad outlines of Biblical thought as touching the fear of God. Since the references and illustrations of this are so numerous, it's been impossible to start in Genesis and trace it through to Revelation. We'd be here for years doing that, seeking to exegete and expound every passage. But rather, we've sought to collate some of the main threads of Biblical thought and set them before you in somewhat of an orderly fabric, that you might at least have a basic understanding of what the fear of God is so that when you come across these many references in your own devotional reading, you'll be able to attach to those references the meaning which Scripture warrants us in attaching to them.
Thus far we have considered the predominance of the fear of God in Biblical thought. Secondly, the meaning of the fear of God with its one aspect of dread but its predominant aspect being a fear of awe, reverence, and veneration. As one author has said, "That controlling sense of the majesty and holiness of God and the profound reverence which this concept brings constitutes the essence of the fear of God." And the practical outworking of that fear is that the person who understands God to be such a great being counts His smile as life's greatest blessing and His frown as life's greatest curse. So then, to walk in the fear of God is to so live that one's life reflects that perspective. God's smile is all that matters. Let the world frown; let it curse, but if God smiles, all is well. But if the world smiles and God frowns, nothing is well. So the fear of God, then, has practical and ethical implications. Hence, the people of God are exhorted to carry out progressive holiness in the fear of God, to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, to pass the time of their sojourning in fear. All of these admonitions which I've just quoted from the New Testament indicate that one saved by grace is one saved unto a life lived in the fear of God.
Having spent some time on the definition of the fear of God, we tried to come to grips with the essential ingredients of the fear of God. And I suggested that they are three: 1) right views of the character of God, 2) a pervasive sense of the presence of God, and 3) a constraining awareness of my obligation to God: to love Him supremely, to obey Him implicitly, and to trust Him completely. Wherever the fear of God is present, those ingredients will be there.
Now our goal this morning is to try to discover from Scripture the origin or the source of the fear of God. Now to show the relationship of this morning's study to what's preceded, let me use a very homey illustration, one I trust will not cause you to begin to salivate in all of your juices down here so work that you'll be distracted from the rest of the sermon because of what I use for an illustration. But suppose someone has never seen a nice cake, and so you bake a cake and set it before the person. The first question they ask is: "What is it?" And you say, "That is a cake. It is something to eat." Then they ask you, "What's it made of?" So you give them the ingredients. You say, "It's made of flour, certain forms of shortening, baking powder, and certain forms of spices." And so now you've told them, not only what it is but what makes it what it is. Then when you're done with that, they say, "Where did the ingredients come from?" You say, "The flour came from grain, which is grown out in the fields somewhere. And the shortening came from either grain or a certain animal which fed upon the field." And so you tell them the origin of those ingredients. Now what we've done in our study thus far is tell you what the cake is, what is the fear of God. It is that regard of God which, considering Him in the majesty and glory of His person, produces in us the sense that His smile is the greatest of life's blessings and His frown the greatest of life's curses. Now we say, "What is that made of?" And we've said three ingredients. It's made up of right views of who God is, a pervasive sense of His presence, and a constraining awareness of our obligation to Him.
But now someone says, "Yes, but where do those ingredients come from?" And so that's where we are this morning. Having looked at the cake, told what the ingredients are, we want to show what is the origin, what is the source of these things. And may I say at the outset, this is not an academic exercise. Some of you may sit here and say, "Ho-hum, why in the world doesn't the pastor tell us some nice sweet things. Here he's going to make us think again." Ah, my friend, one of the most crippling errors in all religious experience, even amongst Christians, is in this very area. It's not enough to know that a certain virtue is necessary, but you must know how to get that virtue.
Remember what Paul said about his fellow Jews. They knew you had to have righteousness to be saved. They knew that a righteous God could not accept unrighteous people in a relationship of friendship. But Paul says in Romans 10, "And they being ignorant of God's righteousness, went about to establish their own righteousness, having not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." What was their problem? They knew they had to have righteousness, but they weren't concerned to find out what is the source or the origin of the righteousness which alone is acceptable to God.
Now I hope if you've listened with even half of one ear, that you're convinced that if you don't have the fear of God, you're not a Christian. You know nothing of Biblical religion. I hope you're convinced of that. If you aren't--I say it lovingly--it will take hell to convince you. If all the testimonies we've brought forth from Scripture and laid them out--if these things have not convinced you that it's necessary that you possess the fear of God, I don't know what will.
Ah, but great crippling harm can come if you don't see the right place to get the fear of God. It's not enough to know you must have it but where you get it. And so this is not an academic exercise. It's a matter of great spiritual concern. And it's only because of that that I've wrestled with trying to lay out in some simple clear way the Biblical material on the subject. Well, how will we answer the question, then, "What is the origin or source of the fear of God?" I want to do it, first of all, by showing that the fear of God implanted in the heart is a distinct blessing of the covenant of grace. And then secondly, I want to demonstrate from Scripture how the fear of God is planted in the heart by the work of God's grace.
First of all, then, let's establish from Scripture that the implanting of the fear of God in the heart of any fellow, girl, man, or woman is a distinct blessing of the covenant of grace. All of God's dealing with men are on the basis of His covenantal relationship to them. God pledges to do certain things upon certain conditions which He Himself determines. According to Scripture, the blessings of the saving grace of the triune God come to us in the terms of what Scripture calls the everlasting covenant, described sometimes under the terms of the new covenant when the blessings of that covenant are contrasted with the Mosaic economy.
Now Jesus said in the institution of the first occasion of the Lord's supper, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood." In other words, all He's to do in the shedding of His blood has a distinct reference to the blessings to be secured within the framework of the new covenant. No man receives any blessing of the covenant apart from the blood which Jesus shed. But all who receive any benefits from that blood receive them in terms of the distinct blessings of the new covenant. So then, everyone who has any interest in the blood of Christ should be vitally concerned about the new covenant.
Now what blessings were promised in that covenant? And if you want a good exercise for your studies this afternoon to sanctify the Lord's Day, then study in detail the section in Ezekiel 36, Jeremiah 31 and 32 where you have the clearest statements in the Old Testament concerning the peculiar blessings God will bring under the new covenant. And we know these passages apply because the Holy Spirit quotes them in the New Testament, particularly in Hebrews 8 and 10. But the passage I have particularly concern that we look at this morning is Jeremiah 32, for of all the passages dealing with the new covenant, it alone speaks directly to the matter of the fear of God and its place in the new covenant. Now remember what we're trying to do, so you don't get lost in the woods and can't see the woods for the trees. We're establishing the fact that the origin of the fear of God is the blessing promised in the new covenant. All these blessings of the new covenant are couched in the language that is suffused with references to Israel and Judah, for God was giving His prophecies through that people. But we know they have reference to all the people of God, as they are thus used in Hebrews 8 and 10. Jeremiah 32:38-41:
"And they shall be My people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear Me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with My whole heart and with My whole soul."
Now in the climate of promising good to His people, God says He will put His fear into their hearts (v. 40) thus securing their perseverance in His way. Notice the relationship: "I will put My fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from Me." In the old economy, though God set His law before them; though they had such displays of His majesty and His power that they trembled and dared not touch the mount, they went a whoring from Him time after time until God had to send a whole nation into captivity because of their spiritual whoredom. Now He says,
"In the administration of this new covenant, of the blessings of the everlasting covenant, all the people who come under the blessings of this covenant will not go a whoring from Me. They will not depart from Me. And the reason they will not is this: I will put My fear into their hearts. I will so establish them in My fear from the heart (the seat of their beings) that they will cling to Me, cling to My ways, and will not depart from Me."
So then, what do we learn from this statement in the prophecy of Jeremiah? We learn first of all that the fear of God is a distinctive blessing of the everlasting covenant. No man fears God unless he has the fear of God within the framework of the covenant of grace. Secondly, it is a distinctly sovereign work of God: "I will put My fear in their hearts." How can God state it more clearly that He's going to do this? He will do it within the framework of the everlasting covenant. And He says, "I will put it into the heart." The realm in which He establishes His fear is the seat of a man's being, and what a man is in his heart, he is. "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
God says, then, what He does will not be a surface thing that will merely affect Him in time as the administration of the Mosaic economy when they trembled for a time. And when under the prophet Elijah, there is this demonstration of power and the nation falls for a time upon its face saying, "The Lord He is God." The pattern of the nation as a nation was spiritual whoredom and turning from God continually. But He says, "Not so, all who come under the blessings of this covenant will have my fear implanted in the heart; it will secure their cleaving unto Me."
And the fifth thing this passage tells us is that it will be done in a context of gracious blessing. Verse 41: "I will rejoice over them to do them good." So this implanting of His fear is in the context of the blessings of grace.
Now what can we conclude from this prophecy of Jeremiah? Two things.
First, there is no way to be a partaker of the fear of God but to have it put into our hearts as a distinct blessing of the new covenant. No such fear is ever found growing in purely Adamic soil. There's only one attitude to God you can grow in your heart by nature. Romans 3:18: "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Now by nature, if your conscience becomes awakened, you may dread God with a dread that wishes God were not, as Adam did. He was afraid when he heard the voice of God. He wished that somehow God would go into a state of nonexistence. But you won't fear God with this fear of awe and veneration that binds you to Him in a relationship of love and obedience. Only those who come under the blessings of the new covenant--there's no way to be a partaker of this sphere but in the way of the new covenant. It doesn't come by education. It doesn't come by spiritual osmoses. It comes only as you enter the blessings of the new covenant.
But the second conclusion we draw from this passage is that all who are partakers of the blessings of the new covenant will evidence that the fear of God has been planted in their hearts. There's no such thing as a sinner forgiven by the blood of the covenant who doesn't fear God. There's no such thing as one who comes to Jesus as the mediator of the new covenant and is pardoned but who then goes out to walk indifferent to God's fear. No, no, there's no way to know the fear of God but by coming under the blessings of the new covenant. All who are under any of His blessings are under this blessing of His fear.
Having established the first principle that the origin of the fear of God is that it is a distinct blessing of the new covenant, consider now with me the manner in which the fear of God is imparted to the human heart in the new covenant. I don't mean to be irreverent when I ask this question: does God, as it were, form a disposition called the fear of God and then, like you put money into a safe, just plunk it down in the heart of a sinner? Now I don't limit Him. He could do that. If He could put into the minds of heathen kings like Cyrus to be kindly disposed to His people in order to fulfill His words of prophecy, I have no question that God can do anything He wants along those lines. The Scripture says, "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He will."
So the question is not "What God can do?" but "Has Scripture revealed how He puts the fear of God into our hearts?" That's the issue?" And it's a beautiful thing when we discover that with so much of God's working in grace, it does not bypass the natural structure of how man is made, the operations of his mind and his affections. But it works behind and underneath and in and through them so that many times it's difficult to discern our working from His working. Philippians 2:13 says, "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."
Does this mean He bypasses your wishing, desiring, choosing, willing, and doing; that we're just sort of little puppets at the end of the strings of God working, waiting for impulses to move us to pray, to move us to witness, to move us to holy deeds? No, no, God works in you to will. He works beneath my consciousness. All I'm conscious of is that I chose to come to church; that I chose, when Mr. Bishoff was praying, to give myself with him as he prayed, as he worshipped. I chose to have my heart go out with him. God was working in me to will and to do of His good pleasure. So then, He doesn't work in us bypassing what we are as human beings but laying hold of all that we are, working beneath and above and outside and through and in. And this is the beauty of the working of His grace.
And so turning to Jeremiah 31, we can see how He plants this fear in our hearts as we parallel this passage dealing with the blessings of the new covenant with what we've already read in Jeremiah 32. Verses 31-33:
"Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which My covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people."
What's the first distinct blessing, then, of the new covenant? And this is the passage quoted almost word for word in Hebrews 8. God says,
"This is the first thing I will do: I will powerfully and inwardly incline them to a life of obedience. What I require of them will not only be external to them. They had that in the Mosaic economy. They know what I required of them. I wrote it with My own finger upon tablets of stone. But with a few exceptions of those true Israelites within Israel, very few of them could say with David, 'I delight to do Thy will, O my God. Yea, Thy law is within my heart.' But in the new covenant, everyone who comes under its blessings will not only have the external standard of My law to tell them what to do, but I will write My law upon the heart. There will be an inward affinity to that law so that there will be an inclination to keep and to obey that holy law. I will not only set My requirements before them, but I will inwardly incline them to a life of obedience."
Now, what is that but the third ingredient of the fear of God. I've called it a constraining awareness of my obligation to God. God says, "I will put that in you. I will write my law upon the heart so there will be a constraining awareness of your obligation to Me and a delight to perform your obligation." "I delight to do Thy will, O my God." Why? "Thy law is within my heart [external, telling me what to do, yes, but internal within me, inclining me to a life of obedience]."
What's the second thing God says He will do? Notice the latter part of verse 33: "I will be their God, and they shall be My people. [They will not only own Me as I revealed Myself in the new covenant, which takes in the whole revelation made in the person and work of His dear Son, but I will own them.]" Now what is this but God bringing Himself into an intimate covenant relationship to His people, filling them with this pervasive sense of His presence and their relationship to Him and His to them. And isn't that the second ingredient of the fear of God, when I recognize this great, mighty, transcendent, holy, powerful God is not a God out there somewhere, but He's my God, and I am His child. I belong to Him, and He belongs to me in this covenantal relationship.
God says, "This is what I will do." He'll commit Himself to an intimate relationship with His people, which is one of the pivotal issues of all God's covenant relationships. You see it come to its fullest expression in Revelation 21 where the new heaven and new earth are described, and John says, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God." That's what heaven's all about. And God says, "This is what I've pledged in the new covenant."
And what's the third thing He promises here? Verse 34: "And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD." God says in the new covenant He will impart a true and inward knowledge of Himself to His people. Under the old economy, there were some that truly knew God, but the great masses of them didn't know Him. They saw such mighty demonstrations of His power, but they were utterly ignorant of His heart. God tells them, "I hear your groaning down here in Egypt. I'm moved with pity and compassion. I send Moses down to be a deliverer; to bring you out in My pity and compassion." And they're no sooner out of Egypt down by the Red Sea, and what do they do? They come to Moses and say, "God brought us out to kill us." They didn't know Jehovah. They had no knowledge of His heart. To think that of God, the God who said, "I've heard your cry. I've heard your pleas. They've come up into My presence. In love and pity, I will redeem you." They turn around and say, "He brought us out to kill us." How would you feel as a father if you told your son, "Look, I've planned a wonderful day for you. We're going to do thus and thus." And you no sooner get into the car, and he says, "Daddy, are you going to take this car and run it off a cliff and kill me?" He'd say, "Son, you don't know me." They didn't know Him. O, a few did, but most didn't. They didn't know His power. They'd seen those miracles and the plagues upon Egypt, and yet here's a little sea, and they say, "That sea's bigger than our God. We've had it." They didn't know Him. But He says in the new covenant, they'll not need to be tutoring one another saying, "Know the Lord," for one of the blessings of the new covenant will be the impartation of a true and inward experimental knowledge of God. And what is that but what I called earlier, right views of the character of God inwardly and spiritually perceived.
And so the three ingredients of the fear of God are all here. God says, "I will put these things into their hearts," and by putting the ingredients there, you get the cake. When you put the flower, the shortening, the leavening, and everything in the right proportions, you come up with a cake. Where the ingredients are put together, you get the end product. God says, "I will put My fear into their hearts." How will He do it? By inwardly disposing them to a life of obedience, making them aware of their obligations to Him and then delight in the discharge of that obligation.
"I will," He says, "commit Myself to an intimate relationship to them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people." And He says, "I will bring them to an experimental knowledge of who I am." But now notice carefully, I left out one phrase at the end. And this is, as it were, the pivot upon which everything else stands and rests: "For I will do all of this in the light of and with reference to and because of this great blessing: I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more." In other words, the base upon which all these other blessings rest, and that by which the others are supported is the blessing of full and final forgiveness of sin. "All these things I said I would do: inclining you to do My will, giving you an experimental knowledge of Myself, owning you as My people so that you own Me as your God." All of this is inseparably joined to the forgiveness of sins. And only he who receives that forgiveness will know the other blessings of the new covenant implanted in his heart. And so you see there is in the development in the thought of the prophet--and again I remind you it's quoted in Hebrews 8 to show this is what Christ came to effect. There is this inseparable relationship between having the ingredients of the fear of God and therefore having the fear of God and being in a state of conscious forgiveness through the blood of the covenant.
Now there's one text of Scripture that ties those two thoughts together beautifully. And let me exhort you to gird up the loins of your mind and pray that the Spirit of God will make this truth increasingly real or perhaps real for the first time. Here in Psalm 130, the context is a state of dejection by the people of God. They are in what the Psalmist describes as "the depths." Verse 1: "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD." When you're in the depths, you may not be able to shout, but you can cry. And that's what he does. "Lord, hear my voice: let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications." Now we get a little hint as to what his depths are. "If Thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" As he contemplates who God is (holy, lofty, spotless light, purity, inflexible justice), he says,
"Lord, if a God like You should mark iniquities; that is, if You should take account of every sin I've committed, every deflection from Your holy law in thought and word and deed, if you should mark all that I've done that is contrary to Your law, if You should hold me to account for all that I failed to do that is required by Your law, who, Lord, could stand, that is, who could abide in Your presence?"
As Psalm 1:5 says, "The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment." They shall be overcome. They shall shrivel before the sight of God's burning holiness and their own guilt and sin. And so the Psalmist asked the question, "If Thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" And if we can't stand before God with delight, we can't walk in His fear. How can you walk in delightful communion with a God with whom you sense nothing but dread and terror? "Who could stand before you, God?" There's the question, but then verse 4 brings out the affirmation, "But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared." He says,
"Lord, no one could stand before You if You mark iniquity; if You're to punish iniquity; if You're to give me what I deserve. And if I cannot stand before You, I will know nothing of a heart inclined to do Your will; I will know nothing of being able to own You as my God and have You own me as Your child; I will know nothing of this inward experimental acquaintance with You that makes You delight in me and me in You. Hence, Lord, I will know nothing of true fear. I can know dread. I can know the terror of a Felix who trembles, but Lord, I cannot stand."
But he says, "The answer to this dilemma is, a way of forgiveness has been discovered in God. And the result of discovering forgiveness in God is that it brings the discoverer into the fear of God." So what does this text tell us? It sets before us in a beautiful synthesis what I've been trying to say: that the end of this disclosure of His way of forgiveness on the part of God is to have a people who truly fear Him. And a discovery of God's way of forgiveness will always secure the fear of God in the heart of the one who discovers it.
You say, "How is that? If the text had read, 'There is justice with God that He may be feared,' I could understand that. But how does the forgiveness of God discovered secure the fear of God?" May I suggest two ways.
Number one: Because in that which was wrought to work out forgiveness, there has been the fullest, most intense, and glorious display of all the attributes of God. If the fear of God begins with right views of God's character (seeing His majesty and His glory), then I say that discovering God's way of forgiveness is to discover the brightest display of all His glorious attributes. Therefore, because there is forgiveness with God, He is feared.
How did that forgiveness come? Are you staggered at the wisdom that framed worlds, that formed the intricacies of a little cell as well as the expanses of the galaxies. That's all like kindergarten knowledge when you stand baffled before the wisdom of a virgin's womb, of an incarnate God, the wisdom that could conceive of a way forgiving sinful men by God Himself actually becoming a man; the offended God taking the offense upon Himself and so discharging that offence that He can be just and the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus. No wonder Christ is called the wisdom of God. What a display of wisdom.
Ah, but what about His holiness? Do you see His holiness when you look out with those escaping ones from Sodom and Gomorrah and see the plains going up in fire and brimstone, and you say, "Who's doing this?" God is. You say, "O, what a holy God He must be, hating the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain so much that He makes, as it were, heaven to be a belching oven to pour out fire and brimstone." My friend, that's no display of God's holiness in comparison with Calvary. But when you look to the cross and see the shrouded heaven covered in blackness; look upon the heaving bosom of the Son of God, then you hear that cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?", the only answer is, God is so holy that when His own beloved Son, the One of whom He spoke from heaven on several occasions and said, "This is the One in whom I'm well pleased." When the sins of men are being imputed to Him, the Father must bring down the stroke of His wrath upon His own beloved Son until He cries out with a cry that eternity will not be able to fathom, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
"There is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared." You see, to discover the way of forgiveness wrought out in the incarnation of Christ, in the terrible agonies of Christ, is to see a display of wisdom far beyond any other display God has made. It is to see a display of holiness far beyond any other display God has made. It is to see a display of power far beyond any other display God has made, even the power that raised His Son from the dead. For we read in Colossian 2 that Christ made an open show of the powers of darkness when He triumphed over them in His death and in His glorious resurrection. Think of all of the powers of hell that would have sought to keep Him in a state of death. And when Paul would try to somehow gather some analogies or illustrations of the power of God operative of believers in Ephesians 1, what does he reach for? He speaks of the power of God's might, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. There's the display of God's mighty power. The display of His love, who can speak of it? "God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The display of what I know no other way to describe than majestic condescension. Philippians 2:6-7: "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 2: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men."
Now do you see why the way of forgiveness discovered produces the fear of God? How can you discover those things without standing amazed before such a God. Can you? Impossible!
Then the second reason why forgiveness and fear are joined together is that a believing reception of that forgiveness which God offers through His Son brings peace and rest from the fear of dread and terror and binds the heart to God in grateful love and glad submission, even the submission of an adopted son. Who can discover that kind of forgiveness in God without saying, "Here, Lord, I give myself to Thee. 'Tis all that I can do." So God, by showing mercy upon the undeserving and displaying forgiveness, brings His people into this fear. So we see, then, that the fear of God is secured on the basis of mercy and grace in a way that all the terrors of the law could never approach. It considers God's mercies and benefits given more than His judgments promised. The fear of dread thinks of judgment and trembles. The fear of God thinks of mercies given and worships. It regards more the open hand of God's blessing than the closed fist of His judgment.
This brings me to close the message this morning by drawing out several practical implications of this teaching. As to the source of the fear of God, one very basic doctrinal implication and then several practical.
Behold the folly of all man-made religions, for they will either seek to produce the fear of God on another basis other than forgiveness, or they will promise forgiveness in a way which doesn't produce the fear of God. All deflections from Biblical religion will do one of two things: They'll say like the Romanists, "Why, you can't tell people they're completely accepted and forgiven, they'll go out and live like hell." That's the claim of Rome. "You don't dare do that. They'll go out and raise cane. You mean tell a man he's forgiven, accepted; heaven is just as certain now as though he were there. Why, he'll live like the devil." And so their way to produce the fear of God that produces obedience is to rub the conscience raw with terrors and insecurities and doubts about one's acceptance. Keep the conscience raw. Rub it with duties, rub it with terrors, rub it with judgment. Then people will tremblingly try to obey God, hoping they'll make it. That's not Biblical religion; that's heathenism. And this truth we've dealt with this morning exposes it for what it is. O no, God takes the raw conscience full of the terrors of the damned, and disclosing the way of forgiveness, binds that heart to Him in fear, true fear based upon love and trust.
But then the second aspect of false religion is this, and this is what you find much in our day: They'll say, "O yes, through the blood of the cross, full and complete forgiveness." And they're people sitting here this morning who have no terrors. You don't tremble like some of my poor Roman Catholic friends do, hoping and wondering if you'll wake up in purgatory tomorrow. You're dead sure you're going to wake up in heaven because you're forgiven through the blood of the cross. But your forgiveness has come in a way that has left your heart utterly devoid of the fear of God. You don't know what it is to walk before Him with a careful conscience. You don't know what it is to be powerfully inclined to obedience to His holy law from the heart. You'll go out and desecrate this day. You've thrown your two hours before God this morning. You'll live the rest of the day as you please with no reference to His law. You order your home, the use of your TV, your time with no reference to His law, and yet you don't have any terrors of the damned. Why? Because, my friend, you've believed a lie, that you could have forgiveness in a way that leaves you a stranger to His fear. Both of those are errors that are damning to the core. You can't fear God until you come into the climate of full forgiveness. But if you come into the climate of full forgiveness, you must fear Him. And if you don't, you've never known His saving mercy.
Well, then, several practical words of direction in closing. There are some of you here this morning to whom I would give a word of direction. I'd call you awakened souls. You've got a conscience that is rubbed raw. The terrors of the law and of God track you down, and you have a fear of dread. But you know nothing of that fear that is based upon forgiveness. You have the spirit of bondage. But you know nothing of the spirit of adoption which makes you cry, "Abba Father." I say to you, you'll find no rest and no true fear of God until you come as you are to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and see Him seated upon a mercy seat. There is a way of forgiveness that He may be feared. You'll not fear Him until you trust Him as your Savior. And I plead with you to cast yourself upon Him just as you are, for that's how He bids you come.
Then a word of consolation for some of you troubled souls, true children of God who feel yourselves so sinful. At times you wonder how it can be that God bears so long with the likes of you. Ah, my friend, don't listen to people who tell you, "Forget your sin; just rejoice in the Lord." No, don't forget your sin. You let the Holy Spirit show you all He wants to, realizing He's only shown you the one-thousandth part of it. But don't stop there, for when you've said verse 3, "God if You should mark iniquities, who could stand," the more you see of your sin, the more you'll be amazed at the display of all the magnitude of God's glory in providing forgiveness. And the more you see the magnitude of God's glory in providing forgiveness, the more you'll fear Him.
"There is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared." Jesus said, "To whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much." So when God's showing you more of your sin, it's because He would draw you deeper into His love. Don't run away from that which would make you love Him more. The way to love Him more is not to think positive thoughts and say, "Well, if I'm accepted in Christ, I'm not going to think about my sin; I'm not going to think about my foul motives; I'm not going to think about the windings of my corrupt heart. I'm just going to be happy, happy, happy in Jesus all day long." Rubbish! The Holy Spirit never told anybody that. If we live in the Psalms, it will keep us from that. Let the sight of your sin bring you to tremble with David in verse 3: "Lord, if you should mark my iniquities...." That's a child of God talking. That' not somebody who hadn't been converted. He says, "Lord, if you should mark my iniquities, I who am your child, how could I stand? But with Thee there is forgiveness." Octavius Windslow, that great devotional writer who wrote the book Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul, said, "Soak the roots of thy profession daily in the blood of Christ. And as you soak them in the blood of Christ and come again and again to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, that's how the fear of God will be deepened."
Then I would close with what I trust will be a word of conviction to some of you who are deceived. There are many of you here this morning who feel yourselves to be forgiven--no dread, no fear of hell, because you feel all is well. You say, "I have the blessings of the new covenant." But my friend, where is this fear? He said if He's brought you into that covenant, He's put His fear within your heart. Do you display the constraining awareness of your obligation to Him? Do you display the pervasive sense of His presence? As one servant of God has said, "But if any who imagine themselves partakers of God's forgiveness who do not at the same time feel their hearts struck with a Godly fear of the divine majesty, let them know that all their joys are self-invented deceptions, since it is to this very end that there is forgiveness with God that He may be feared." Has your understanding of forgiveness bound you to a life lived in the fear of God?
Let me make it more personal. If I were to ask your children what's the one thing that characterized your Dad above everything else, would they say, "He fears God." In everything in the home, Daddy's first regard is, "What's God say? How do we keep the Lord's Day? What's God say? How will we plan our lives? What's God say? What will we do as a family? What's God say?" Would your children say that's the dominant characteristic of you as a father? What about you as a mother? What do your children think most of when they think of Mom? Would they instinctively say, "I don't know how to describe it, but all I know is that in everything Mom does and says, it's what God says that matters most; it's knowing God, believing Him, trusting Him, loving Him. Is that what your kids would say of you? Or would they say, "That which characterizes Dad most is...." Now let your conscience go to work. What would they say? "That which characterizes Mom most is...."
How I thank God that I can give that testimony to my parents. If anyone asks me, "What did your mom think most about?", I would have to say before I was converted, with clinched teeth, "Everything's God, God, God." Now I can say, "Thank God, everything was God, God: what did He say about rearing children, not what did psychology say; not what did society say about the home, but what did God say?" Are your kids going to make that testimony about you? My friend, you can't buy that. You can buy pretty clothes to keep up with fashions, but you can't buy that witness. You've got to earn it, and you earn it in a life lived in the fear of God.
Thank God, I know there are some of you kids that would jump off of your bench this morning and say, "Pastor, that's my mom and dad." But there's some of you who wouldn't dare go home and ask your own kids if they could be ones that would jump off their bench this morning because you know they couldn't if they were honest. Can I make it any plainer? Will you go out another Lord's Day with just a Christ of convenience, or will you say, "O God, by Your dear Son in the Spirit, give me such a sight of forgiving grace that I'll begin to truly fear You.
That's the origin of the fear of God, the climate of the gracious provision of the new covenant. Isn't it wonderful, child of God, to look back and say, "You mean God did all that to bring me to fear Him?" Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of time. But the Scripture says that the works of God are sought out of all those who have pleasure therein. Has it been a pleasure to trace out this morning how God put His fear into your heart? Doesn't it make you want to shout, "Halleluiah, what a Savior!" When God said, "I'm going to take that sinner; I'm going to bring him in tow, and I'm going to put My fear into his heart." Then He gave us such a saving sight of mercy that it broke us. We didn't know what happened.
I look back now and say, "How stupid I was." But all I found was I couldn't keep away from this Book. I wanted to know what it said, and I wanted to obey it. And God wasn't just a word that Mom and Dad talked about. He was my God, and I knew Him, and I knew that He owned me. He did all of that for a little dirty-mouthed senior in high school in Stamford, Connecticut. O amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
Ah, dear friend, if you can't be amazed in tracing out the work of God, may God grant that you'll cast yourself upon His dear Son, the mediator of the new covenant. This is what Jesus does. Flee to Him and ask Him to have mercy upon you.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 15:11:42 GMT -5
The Fear of God: Relationship to Conduct, Part 1 by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached October 4, 1970
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In our previous studies, we have considered the predominance of the fear of God in Biblical thought, underscoring the fact that from Genesis to Revelation, literally and many verses in each book between Genesis and Revelation, the subject of the fear of God comes before us explicitly, that is, distinct, specific references using those very words "the fear of God," and then many other times implicitly where, though the words are not used, the thought of the fear of God is very evident in the portions of Scripture thus considered. And having looked at the predominance of the fear of God, we spent some weeks trying to grasp something of the meaning of the fear of God. What does Scripture mean when it says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"? When Peter says, "Fear God, honor the king," what are we to understand by those words?
We have seen that Scripture teaches that one aspect, though a very small aspect of the fear of God, is the fear of dread or terror, which God's enemies ought to have when they think of His righteous judgment funneled upon them and directed toward them. But that fear of God which is most commanded and commended in Scripture is the fear of veneration, reverence and awe. It is to live under the constraint of God's holiness, His majesty, and His goodness; to regard God in such a light that His smile is life's greatest blessing and His frown life's greatest curse.
Then having considered the predominance of the fear of God and something of its meaning, we spent a couple of weeks seeking to lay hold of the essential ingredients of the fear of God. Wherever the fear of God is present in a man or woman, fellow or girl, there are certain ingredients which will always comprise the fear of God. And there are basically three: right views of the character of God, a pervasive sense of the presence of God, and a constraining awareness of our obligation to God.
Then last week we came to the fourth area of study, namely the origin or source of the fear of God. Whenever those ingredients are present in a man or woman, where do they come from? Is that fruit found upon nature's tree? Does it grow upon Adamic stock? Or is it the fruit of God's work in grace? We saw in our study of Jeremiah 32 that the fear of God is a distinct blessing of the new covenant of that which God is committed to do by virtue of the death of His own dear Son. Therefore, whenever the fear of God is present, it's because God has applied with power the blessings of the new covenant purchased by the blood of Christ. And so the fear of God being a blessing of the new covenant is a blessing that is inseparably joined with the joy and the realization of the forgiveness of sin.
As one author has so beautifully said, "The heart is shy of a condemning God, but closeth with and adhereth to a pardoning God." That's simply stating in beautiful poetic language what David said in Psalm 130:4: "There is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared," indicating that until a man knows the forgiveness of God based upon the blood of the everlasting covenant, he will never rightly fear God. He may have a terror of God; he may have a dread of God, but that terror and dread will drive him from God. But the fear of God couched in the consciousness of forgiveness is a fear which causes us to draw nigh to God and to cling to Him and His ways.
It will be my purpose this morning and next Sunday morning, God willing, to deal with what I'm going to call the relationship between the fear of God and conduct. Having given this broad overview of the fear of God, I have at distinct points sought to bring in some application simply because I feel it's never right to teach objective doctrinal truth without application. But I've not been able to digress too long from the main structure.
We've looked at the predominance of the fear of God, the meaning of the fear of God, the ingredients of the fear of God, the source of the fear of God. Now after all this teaching, you sit there and say, "So what?" Well, I want to answer that question. What then is the relationship of all that Scripture teaches on the fear of God to this whole matter of conduct? And I will lay two propositions before you, one this morning and another, God willing, next week. The first: the fear of God is the holy soil which produces a Godly life. And the second: the absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil which produces an ungodly life. There will be some overlapping, but I trust to stick rather closely to this two-fold outline.
First of all, the fear of God is the holy soil which produces a Godly life. What is the practical outworking of this fear of God, this fear of God which is an essential element of true religion, which is a distinct and indispensable blessing of the new covenant? What is the practical effect of the fear of God? Well, I want you to look with me at seven or eight texts of Scripture. Qualitative selectivity has governed these texts, for we see different men and women in Scripture under a great variety of circumstances. And yet in each case where there is true Godliness, it will be attributed to this soil of the fear of God.
The first text is the first passage in which the fear of God is distinctly mentioned in Scripture. Genesis 20. Now let me give you just a brief digest of verses 1-10. Abraham has been called out by the word of God. And as he's sojourning with his wife Sarah, he comes into the area which we would call the Philistines area. And he knows that in that area there's a heathen king. And he knows something of the practice of heathen kings when they see pretty women. And he knows enough of his wife to know she still qualifies as a pretty woman. So he reasons, "If I come into that area and that king sees my wife, and she's a good-looker, he's going to set his desire upon her. And I'll stand in the way; therefore, he'll dispose of me to get my woman." So he says, "I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll sort of tell a half-truth. I'll say she's my sister." Well, there's some relationship there, but that's not all she was. The impression was, "We're just a brother and sister taking a little summer vacation." So the king, Abimelech, takes Sarah into his house, but God wonderfully restrains him for cohabiting with her. He doesn't live with her as a husband. There is no sexual relationship. And God reveals Himself to this heathen king and says, "You go ahead and do this, and you're a dead man." And so Abimelech comes to Abraham and says, "Why did you do this to me?" Now we pick up the narrative in verse 8:
"Therefore Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants, and told all these things in their ears: and the men were sore afraid. Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said unto him, What hast thou done unto us? and what have I offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and on my kingdom a great sin? thou hast done deeds unto me that ought not to be done. And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What sawest thou, that thou hast done this thing? [In other words, Abraham, what did you see when you came into our kingdom that would make you lie to me and therefore encourage me to take your wife to be my wife and almost plunge myself and my whole country under the judgment of God for this terrible sin? What did you see that made you so act with reference to me?] And Abraham said, Because I thought, surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will slay me for my wife's sake. And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife."
Do you see what he says? He says,
"Abimelech, you asked me for a reason as to why I was fearful that you would think nothing of killing me and taking my wife. It's because I reasoned this way: This is a heathen land; you are a heathen king. Since there is no true knowledge of the true God who has revealed Himself to me; therefore, there is no fear of God. For where there are no right views of God, there cannot be any fear of God. And if there is no fear of God, there will be no ethical sensitivity. Where the fear of God is absent, your conduct will be a reflection of the absence of His fear; therefore, I did what I did."
Now, Abraham was wrong in assuming that he had all the facts. He did not know that just like God revealed Himself to him, He could have revealed to Abimelech that this was a special servant of God, and he was not to touch his wife nor touch him. But Abraham staggered here in his faith, though he was the friend of God and great in faith in other places. And though Abraham was wrong in assuming there was no knowledge of God, Abraham was exactly right in assuming that if there was proper knowledge of God, it would reflect itself in the brutality of conduct in this practical way. Now, you see the relationship? Abraham assumed that the only soil out of which Godliness could grow was the fear of God. And if that soil was not present, neither would the produce of the fear of God be present. And so Abraham shows early in the revelation of God here in Scripture that there is this inseparable relationship between the fear of God and practical Godliness.
Now turn to Genesis 42, and we'll give another instance. Now just stick with us as we go through these seven or eight passages. And I think it will be worth your trouble, for when we come to the matter of distinct and specific application, I hope it will open up many areas that perhaps have been clouded up until now. We're in the section dealing with the life of Joseph. And you'll remember the story of how Joseph's brothers come down to Egypt to get grain. And Joseph sits there on the throne second only to Pharaoh himself. And we read in this particular section of Scripture that Joseph is laying out certain propositions. He's telling his brothers, "Now if you do this and this, I will do this." Now to convince them that's he's a trustworthy man; to convince them that's he's an honest man; to convince them that his demands are just, notice what he says in verses 18 and 19: "And Joseph said unto them the third day, This do, and live; for I fear God: if ye be true men, let one of your brethren be bound in the house of your prison: go ye, carry corn for the famine of your houses." Joseph says, "Do you want some assurance that my demands are just and my word is true? I could give you lots of reasons, but this is the most pivotal: I fear God." He said, "I need give no other reason as a basis for my Godly, honest dealings with you than that I am a man in whose heart is the soil of the fear of God. And out of that soil will grow practical Godliness." So Joseph showed that he understood this principle, that the fear of God is that holy soil which produces a Godly life.
Now turn to Leviticus 19. Tthis is an unusual passage. And I'm even going to bring a little application here because it's so pivotal I can't pass it and wait till the end. And I see a few of you young people--you aren't with me this morning as though this was something over your head. Now this is a lot more important than what you'll get in school. If you pay attention there to get some good grades, you pay attention this morning. Especially notice this verse. Here are these various and sundry regulations God is giving through Moses to His people. And He says in verse 14, "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD." Now let me ask you kids something. If a man's deaf, can he hear you if you cuss at him? No. Well, if he can't hear you, can he get mad at you for what you say? No. If he can't hear you, can he be hurt by what you say? No. And yet God says, "Don't curse the deaf man." Even though he can't hear you; even though you won't jeopardize your own reputation; even though you may not jeopardize your own well being by cursing, don't curse him. The second thing God says is, "Don't put a stumbling block before the blind." Suppose you stick your foot out to trip a blind man, does he know who did it? No. He can't think less of you. He can't retaliate. Well, why shouldn't you curse the deaf man if he can't hear you and trip up the blind man if he can't see you? He can't turn you into the cops. He can't see you. Here's the reason given: "Thou shalt fear thy God."
What's He saying? What's the relationship between these two things? Here's what God is saying:
"Your conduct with reference to men must not be governed by their ability to retaliate your wrongdoing. It must not be governed by your reputation before them. One principle is to govern all your conduct with all men in all circumstances, namely, My eye is upon you, and I see; My ear is open, and I hear. My smile is there to be gained; My frown to be incurred."
Never let your conduct with any man be governed by any lower principle than this: How will God view that conduct? So what if the blind man can't see if you trip him up. Does God see? So what if the deaf man can't hear if you curse him. Does God hear? So then, what is the soul out of which Godliness was to grow, even the practical Godliness that makes a man as careful with his words in the presence of a deaf man as in the presence of a man with acute hearing; as careful as in the presence of a blind man as in the presence of people with 20/20 vision? Here's the principle that makes him as careful: he walks in the fear of God.
Listen to me, young people, that's why you don't cheat at school. If you're walking in the fear of God, your teacher could go on a three-hour vacation when you take your final exams. It won't make a bit of difference as to your honesty in only putting down on that paper what you have learned and never once sneaking a look to the other desks, never once pulling out a crib sheet. And I say to every one of you kids in school who is a confirmed cheater, that's all the proof I would need and all God would need to condemn you at the day of judgment unless you repent that you know nothing of the fear of God. So what if the teacher can't see? Does God see?
Some of you kids have two vocabularies: one you can use around the home and the preacher and one you can use out on the ball field with your buddies. And you can say your hells and damns as good as any one of them. But you never let Mom hear one; you never let Dad hear one. They might wash your might out. What is Mom and Dad? Does God hear? He's recorded all those hells and damns and Jesus Christs. If you're content that Mom and Dad don't hear and know, and the preacher doesn't hear and know, then it's an indication you're not walking in the fear of God.
That's why when you adults fill out that form every April that Uncle Sam sends, you're just as careful to cut no corners as though every single tax agent from Maine to California was breathing over your shoulder. Why? Because you fill out that income tax form in the fear of God. And you want what you put there to pass the test of the eye of omniscience, not just the eye of the Internal Revenue man in Newark or Trenton. If you can cheat on your income tax statement and claim more deductions for the church or charity than you actually gave, and this is the pattern of your life, my friend, you know nothing of the fear of God, absolutely nothing. And God will bring it up as a witness in the day of judgment unless you repent.
This is what makes the man in the office or the shop just as careful about flirtatious glances as though his wife were standing at both sides of him, and she was a jealous witch. Ever see a guy who's got a jealous wife? When she's with him, he's just like a horse with blinders. My friend, if you walk in the fear of God, you're a man with blinders. And there's a check upon your tongue and your eyes. Why? Because you know it's not ultimately what your wife sees and knows. It's what He sees and knows. And you're seeking to keep a heart that is pure before His eye. And I say to any of you men who can be flirtatious with your looks and your words, and this is the pattern of your life, you know nothing of the fear of God.
That's why when you're out on that highway, and there isn't a car to be seen in the rear view mirror and none through the front windshield, you have conscience about the speed laws. And if you only have conscience about the speed laws when you see a car in the rear view mirror that's got a rotating light or a box up ahead that looks like a radar box, my friend, you know nothing of the fear of God if this is the pattern of your life.
Now you see how practical this is. "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but [all of your conduct must be governed, not with reference to what man sees and how man may react, favorably or unfavorably, but with what God sees and with what God knows and how He reacts]." Well, I'll resist the temptation to work that out in more detail. I think I've established the principle and illustrated it enough.
Turn to Proverbs 8. Remember what we're doing. We're trying to show that the fear of God is the soil out of which practical Godliness grows. So identified is this matter of Godliness and the fear of God, that in these texts in Proverbs, they're actually equated. Verse 13: "The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate." You see how the thought drifts? It says the fear of the Lord is to hate certain things. And it ends up as though God were speaking in the first person and saying, "These are the things I hate." So what is the fear of God then? What is it to walk in His fear? It's to walk in such a way that I share God's attitude to evil. Notice, not just evil that men can see, but pride. That's an evil only God can see and you can know. And the man who walks in the fear of God is then governed in the attitudes and dispositions of his heart and mind as well as the conduct of his life. "...arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate."
A parallel passage in Proverbs 16:6 actually states that the fear of the Lord is to depart from evil. "By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil." So we see, then, that the soil out of which Godliness grows in its negative form is departing from evil, or in its positive form is performing what is good. Here it is. The fear of God is that soil.
Now turn to the Nehemiah 5 where we have another real life illustration of how the fear of God operates in a very practical level. In verse 14, Nehemiah says,
"Moreover from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year even unto the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that is, twelve years, I and my brethren have not eaten the bread of the governor. [In other words, he says, 'For 12 years, we have not used our official position as a means of personal gain.']"
Verse 15: "But the former governors that had been before me were chargeable unto the people, and had taken of them bread and wine, beside forty shekels of silver; yea, even their servants bare rule over the people: but so did not I, because of the fear of God." He says, "I didn't do what they did. They used their position as a stepping stone to personal advantage. But I refused to do so." And what was his reason? Was it that he thought, "This will give me a better reputation before the people?" No, no. Here's his reason: because of the fear of God. He said, "That which was the basis of my conduct was that the eye of God was upon me, and the recognition that in so doing I would forgo His smile. That was more constraint than was necessary to cause me to walk in a path in which I refused to take advantage of others for the sake of personal gain."
Now, isn't this one of the biggest problems in human relationships: people taking advantage of others for personal gain, insensitive to others' needs in the pursuit of fulfilling my own needs, selfishness in seeking to live to my own satisfaction while I trample over, as it were, the sensitive needs of others, tightfisted in business dealings, unreasonable in expectations as a parent? What's the great cure for all of this? To be able to say with Nehemiah, "Because of the fear of God." And so in the most practical area, again, we see the tremendous place that this principle holds in the life of God's people.
Now turn to two New Testament texts. These, of course, have all been Old Testament ones. Now very quickly, 2 Corinthians 7. The end of the 6th is concerned with laying out some very wonderful promises of God to those of His people who separate themselves from evil. And chapter 7 begins, "Having therefore these promises [of grace that God will identify Himself with His people], dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Now notice the connection you'll see between last week's message and this morning. He said, "That climate out of which our desire to be holy grows is a climate of grace." Having these great promises of the new covenant ("I will dwell in them, and I shall be their God and they shall be my people"), conscious of God's grace and His mercy, there is this desire to perfect holiness. And the atmosphere in which that holiness is perfected is one of the fear of God. Having these promises, let us cleanse ourselves in the climate of the fear of God. In other words, the process of sanctification will go on with no greater degree of intensity and earnestness than the measure in which the fear of God is maintained in the heart of the child of God.
The moment you in your Christian life cease to be governed in every relationship by the thought of your relationship to God's person in Christ, the sense of His presence, the reality of His smile, the terror of His frown--the moment those things begin to be distant and wane, the very nerve of pressing on to holiness is severed. Haven't you found it so? What can motivate you when the thought of your relationship to God ceases to hold you? What frown can turn you from evil when once the thought of God's frown has not turned you from evil? What smile can induce you to the path of right when God's smile can't induce you? Nothing. When you've gotten beyond the holding influence of the fear of God, you've gotten beyond the sphere in which holiness can be perfected. And so we see, then, the only soil out of which Godliness grows is the fear of God.
And then this last text in the New Testament: Colossians 3. Paul has been giving directions for a number of different segments for the church in Colosse. He's been talking to the church at large, and then he talks to wives in verse 18, husbands in verse 19, children in verse 20. And then in verse 21, he talks specifically to fathers. And now in verse 22, he talks to servants, not servants in the sense of people that are hired and have a contract. They are slaves, people whose job is chosen by another. And he says, "Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God." He says, "Granted, you have another master if you are believing slaves. You have a Master according to the spirit; that is, Christ. But your relationship to Christ as your Master in the spirit does not negate the reality of your relationship to masters in the flesh."
And it's so essential that new believers learn that. Any new relationship into which you come by virtue of faith in Christ does not cancel out the legitimate relationship of earthly existence, and suddenly you're exempt from speed laws and from obedience to kings. No, no, Paul never taught this whatsoever. So he says to these servants, "Though you've got a gracious Master in heaven, you still have earthly masters on earth. And you are to obey them in all things." You don't make your obedience just coextensive with your evaluation of whether or not what they've required is right or just. No, no, he says to obey them in all things, the only exception being if they command you to do something contrary to the law of God.
Now, he gives two different ways that they might obey. Negative: "not with eyeservice, as men pleasers." And it's interesting this word "eye service." It's made up of the two Greek words "eye" and "service." There's no other way you can translate it. And it literally means, "Don't do your work serving with reference to your master's eye." You hear his footsteps coming, and he turns the corner, and all of a sudden you really work up a sweat and polish those boots and scrub that floor. And you look over and see the master's eye, and he's got a nice look on his face. And he says, "Boy, you're really put out." Paul says, "Don't do your work with reference to the master's eye, because in three minutes time the master's going to be gone off on his business in town. His eye won't be there. Now what's going to motivate you? What's going to make you produce? What's going to make you work up a lather doing that very mundance task? You've lost all your motivation." Contrary to that, this should be the climate in which you do your work: "in singleness of heart, fearing God." In other words, you're to have a heart that's not divided between a man-pleaser and a God-pleaser but that's single in walking and working in the fear of God.
"You mean to tell me the only way a common house slave can do his work acceptably to God is to do it in the climate of the fear of God?" Absolutely! And so you have the tremendous spectrum all the way from a king reigning in righteousness because he reigns in the fear of God (2 Samuel 3:3) to a common house slave scrubbing dirt out of a hovel somewhere. And the only way the king and servant can do their duties acceptable unto God is to perform them in the climate of the fear of God so that the eye of a master is not the focus of concern, but the eye of the Master is the focus of concern. Now you see, then, why I dared to state at the outset that Scripture teaches that the only soil out of which a Godly life can grow is that soil of the fear of God.
Now very briefly let me draw out some of the most important implications of this teaching. First of all, consider the folly of seeking to solve the problems of human conduct without considering the necessity of the fear of God. God has rooted ethics (human conduct) in religion (man's relationship to God). Now follow closely. When you slay true religion, it's only a matter of time before any kind of semblance of ethical integrity will die.
Now, what happened three or four generations ago in our national life was that God was thrown out in terms of true religion. In its place was humanism (Man is God) and liberalism with a God made in the image of man. But we sill had some of the carryover of the ethics of true religion. And what's happened in the past 20 years? This has died. And so now, people who have no thought of God are concerned about the drug problem. I looked through the TV guide this past week, and it seemed like every other program that's a drama program was something dealing with the drug problem. Everybody's concerned about the drug problem. One who attends here said that in their own school, they have ex-addicts in to talk to the high school students. Then they have the cops come in to try to scare them. And the kids have turned them all off and said, "We don't want to hear them anymore." Why? Because they're attacking an ethical problem without facing this principle that the fear of God is the only soil out of which Godly living and some kind of semblance of stable ethics can grow. People are concerned about the problem of drugs, the problem of pornography, the problem of the lawlessness in labor (the labor-management mess), individual and corporate problems. But the underlying agreement is that God has nothing to do with all of this, "and let's make sure He doesn't."
Do you know what God is saying? "Alright, stew in your own mess. You'll be smart enough to have ethics without religion and right conduct without the fear of God. See if you can do it." And man reels and staggers and stumbles and wallows in his own moral vomit. That's the simple but basic and Biblical explanation of why our greatest sociologists and educators and all the rest are doing absolutely nothing to stem the tide of moral looseness. And they will not be able to do anything, because what God has joined together man cannot sever without bearing the consequences. If you don't believe that, just read Romans 1:18 to the end of the chapter. "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient." And you see what follows.
You say, "We don't want moral debauchery. We want a nice, good decent life, but without God." And God says, "Alright, you rule Me out and see how nice and decent your life will be." You read Romans 1, and it says men become like animals. And you see it happening before our very eyes. And that's the first implication of the teaching I've tried to lay out before you this morning: the absolute folly of seeking to solve human conduct without considering the necessity of the fear of God.
Secondly, consider, then, in the light of this, the relationship between true revival and ethical and social changes, which always follow. What is a revival but an extensive and powerful movement of the Spirit of God setting up true religion, the fear of God, in the hearts of many people in a given geographical area. And what happens? In a community of ten thousand people, if all of a sudden a thousand of those people begin to walk in the fear of God so much so that their conduct is not governed by the eye of policemen but by the eye of God; the students who go to school conduct themselves not with reference to the principle's eye or the teacher's eye but to the eye of God. What happens to that community? It becomes a little Eden. Why? Because the fear of God implanted in the hearts of a number of people begins to be the soil out of which grows ethical uprightness, and people begin to be kind to one another and thoughtful of one another.
Every revival in history has always been the womb out of which great social change has come. But now in our day, you see, the radicals come along and say, "We want social change but no God." Every effort at social change that ruled out God has been the worst form of tyranny. And we see it in our own day. From the wickedness of a substandard position and evaluation of our black population, we've moved to a black militancy that is as cruel as any white racism that's ever been known. The white racism was sin and stood under the curse of God. The black racism is sin and stands under the curse of God. All man can do is run from one extreme to another. The tyranny of men who rule without the fear of God is a terrible thing.
Senators and others in the so-called establishment who take their responsibility with no reference to the fear of God is a terrible thing. And so in reaction, you've got people saying, "Let's cut down the establishment and break the system if we can't work it." And so you have this tyranny of the New Left, which is just as great as the tyranny of the establishment. What is it telling us? It's telling us there's no answer but a mighty and powerful and extensive movement of the Spirit of God that will establish God's fear in enough hearts, in enough areas, and in enough places that out of that soil of the fear of God true Godliness will begin to grow.
Then the third thing I want to say by way of application (and I trust you parents will listen to me carefully) in the light of this principle, consider the basis upon which you and I should evaluate our influence with our children. There are three great strands of influence upon our children: the first and essential one is the home, the second is the school, and the third is the church. You say, "Didn't you get the order mixed up?" No, because you've got them for the most hours and have the most powerful influence. The school has them next, and the church has them the least.
Now do you want to evaluate whether your influence as a parent is an influence owned of God and being an instrument in the hands of God? Here's how you evaluate it. "To what extent are my children learning the fear of God by my example and by my precepts?" Psalm 34:11: "Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the LORD." Granted, only the Holy Spirit can plant the fear of God in the heart of the child. But it's our responsibility to surround him with a climate in which he knows what it is and what it will do. And that's done first of all by example.
Do your children see that in all of your conduct, in all of your living, that which is the most forceful and powerful influence is the eye of God? Or do they see you living two or three different kinds of lives, one in church, one with a certain class of friends, one with another circle of friends? By your example and by your precepts, are you teaching your children the fear of God? If not, my friend, don't you be surprised if they miss it morally and ethically. Don't come to the pastor and the elders someday surprised that your girl's run off and got herself pregnant, or your boy's got himself hooked on dope. Don't be surprised, dear one, if you have not provided a home in which the fear of God is taught. That alone will keep them. You say, "You mean kids in our church?" Yeah, it will come. I hold my breath--I hate the first day. But I'm sure one of these days I'll get a call from a parent saying, "The local police station just told us my child is on drugs." Do you think the devil is going to somehow exempt us from these pressures and your kids from these pressures? No, not at all.
What reason can you give us? This is what the high school teacher was telling me. The kids say, "Look, you've given me no reason not to take dope. You tell me not to ruin my body. Why can't I ruin it? If I want to ruin my body and put it in the grave at age 30, why not?" And if you can't give as a reason: because Almighty God made that body and Almighty God has a right to be glorified in that body and Almighty God demands that you regard that body as His temple, there is no reason not to destroy the body at age 30. They see their parents nursing their body along between coffee and cigarettes and pills to do what? To retire at age 65 and go down and bake it in the sun in Florida for the next ten years and then stick it in the ground. And the kids say, "What's the use? Why not ruin it when I'm 30 and put it in the ground?" Isn't this their thinking?
I'd like some of you high school students to stand and tell me. Am I thinking right? "Why should we? You tell us not to have premarital sex. Why shouldn't we? You tell us we might get it in trouble. So what if we do? Who says you've got to get married to have babies?" What reason can you give them? Unless you can say and have taught that child to think instinctively that all of your conduct with reference to your body, its use, its appetites, its capacities must be referenced to the eye of God who gave it. Unless the child, as it were, is taught reflexively to think that way, you have robbed him of life's greatest blessing in seeking to face and evaluate the whole matter of ethics and conduct. So evaluate the influence of your home along this line.
Evaluate the influence of the school. If God says the fear of God is the chief part of knowledge, then I think it's right to say the absence of the fear of God is the chief part of folly. And if that's true, most of your children are under calculated folly day in and day out in the public school system because they are taught that life can be lived without reference to the fear of God. You say, "There's no teacher that ever says that." By the very absence of trying to teach any standard of ethics and morality without the fear of God, they're saying the fear of God is not needed. And the kids are seeing through it. And that's why they're saying, "Don't send us any more ex-addicts. Don't send us any more police. Don't' send us any more doctors. Your reasons are full of holes. They don't hold water."
And this is how you evaluate the influence of a church: not how busy does it keep my kids, but does it teach them the fear of God? That's how you evaluate the work of a church. There are churches all over this county that keep their teenagers busy, busy, busy. And when they get together for a little hymn singing, and they start to sing their little ditties about God, you know they don't have a clue about who the God of the Bible is. Is it no wonder that when they go out on their dates Saturday night, they do the same things the kids do who go from the drive-in movie theater to go home? And they go from the youth meeting to go home, and you'd never know the difference in what they do from 11:00 to 1:00 in the morning. Why? There's no fear of God planted in their hearts. That's how you evaluate the influence of a church. Does it implant the fear of God? Does it set forth right concepts of the character of God? Does it seek, by the grace of God, to implant in young people, not only right views of God's character, but the sense of His presence and the requirements of His holy Law and the wonders of His grace? That's the measure, the standard by which to evaluate, not only when influencing young people but ourselves, the hymns sung, the climate of worship created.
One of our own members told me he was in a church recently, and when the man (a fundamental, Bible-believing evangelical) stood up to lead the meeting, he said, "Now I want all of you to lean over and say to the person next to you, 'I think you're sweet.'" And so for the next minute and a half or two minutes everybody leaned over giggling, laughing, and saying, "I think you're sweet," a church that was packed out on a Sunday night. And that's looked upon as a status symbol of success. "Ah, a full church on Sunday night." Yes, in the house of God--"I think you're sweet." This particular member had the grace to lean to the person next to him and say, "I think this is an abomination in the house of God." And what was the difference? I'll tell you what the difference was. Different views of God. Now that's a gross example, I know. But it simply brings into focus the principle I'm seeking to enunciate.
And so I leave you where I began this morning with this practical outworking of this teaching on the fear of God, namely that the fear of God is the soil out of which a Godly life grows. And it's only in that soil that true Godliness will ever be found. And so if you're here this morning, and you say, "I wouldn't have done what Nehemiah did. If I could have been where he was and had the opportunity to live off the wine and the money of the people, I would have done it." Or if you see yourself with that servant saying, "If the master wasn't around, I wouldn't put out any more than I have to. I wouldn't live that way." My friend, if you wouldn't live that way, it's because there's no fear of God in your heart. And if there's no fear of God in your heart, it's because you're a stranger to the blessings of the new covenant. And there's only one thing for you to do; that's to go to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant and ask Him to grant to you the blessings of that covenant that He purchased with His own blood. For as Bunyan so beautifully describes in relating the conversion of Faithful, he was admonished to go to a throne. And he would find there seated upon that throne one who lived to show mercy to all sinners who came unto God by Him. And that would be my exhortation to you this morning.
I say to you dear young people, you children, why do you cheat at school? Why can you lie as long as you're sure Mom and Dad won't find out? Why can you cuss when you're playing with those fellows when you wouldn't dare do it around Mom and Dad? It's because the fear of God is not in your hearts. And that's your need, that God would put His fear on your hearts.
And you who are God's people, why is it that we cut corners at times? Isn't it because we've moved out of the realm of the fear of God? That's why God says to be in His fear all the day long. It's unthinkable, isn't it, that you would cut corners on your income tax if you were living in the consciousness of the fear of God. As I fill out this form, the eye of God is upon me. Will He smile when I'm done? You see, when it becomes that real, and I'm driving down that highway, and there's no cars behind or in front of me--my God is here. You see it's so practical. And the closing message is going to be on the practical steps to cultivate the fear of God.
Let me urge you this morning to at least cry to God that He would increase His fear in your heart. For only to the extent that His fear is increased will the Godliness and the practical holiness be worked out in fuller measures than hither to we have known. So may the Lord help us to walk in His fear.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 15:12:58 GMT -5
The Fear of God: Relationship to Conduct, Part 2 by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached October 4, 1970
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The teaching of holy Scripture on the fear of God is so vital a thing that one author in writing on the subject was bold enough to say, "The fear of God is the soul of Godliness. The emphasis of Scripture in both the Old and New Testaments require no less significant a proposition." And just as the body does not function without the soul, for Scripture says, "as the body without the spirit is dead," so there can be no true Godliness without this living soul of the fear of God.
In order to acquaint ourselves at least in an introductory manner with this great theme of Scripture, we have spent the past two months each Lord's Day morning considering portions of Scripture which set before us this aspect of Biblical truth concerning God's fear. We've considered the predominance of this theme in both the Old and New Testaments. We've tried to grasp something of the meaning of the fear of God, the dominant thought, of course, not the fear of dread or terror but that fear of awe and reverence, that regard of God's character and the resulting attitude which causes a man or woman to count the smile of such a great being life's greatest favor and the frown of such a being life's greatest curse. And we looked at the ingredients of the fear of God. It involves at least some measure of right views of the character of God, some pervasive sense of His presence, and some constraining awareness of our obligation to Him. Then we looked at Scripture to see the origin of God's fear. And we saw that this fear is not an attitude that will ever grow upon unblessed Adamic stock. But it's a disposition implanted in the heart as a distinct blessing of the new covenant as we saw in Jeremiah 32:40.
Then last week we began to consider the relationship of the fear of God to our practical experience. What is the relationship of the fear of God to conduct? What are the practical effects of the fear of God? Having grasped, I trust, something of the Biblical teaching as to the fear of God in importance and its substance, then we asked the question, "So what?" What does the fear of God do in the life of an individual? And last week I gave a positive statement, namely that the fear of God is the holy soil out of which a Godly life grows. There can be no practical Godliness apart from the fear of God. And we looked at passages in both the Old and New Testaments where this teaching is so clearly set before us, that when people were walking in practical Godliness, it was because they feared the Lord.
Perhaps the best way we can summarize all that we considered last week is to just look briefly at a passage in 1 Peter, one which we did not consider. But I think it will be the best summary and review of the main threads of thought that we tried to lay out last Lord's Day morning. In 1 Peter 1, we have the admonition beginning with verse 13 to gird up the loins of our mind and to be sober and set our hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. In other words, we are to live in the constant awareness that the best is yet to come. And at the revelation of Christ, that is, at His second coming, measures of grace will be poured into us that will climax and complete all that the present measure of grace has begun. And if we have our hope set perfectly on the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Christ, what will be its practical effect upon us? Verses 14-16: "As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: now as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy." He says, "Don't be like you were. You are children of obedience. Don't fashion yourselves after the old pattern. But be holy after the very pattern of God Himself." And then he goes on to say in verses 17-19,
"And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."
Negative exhortation: don't be like you were. Positive exhortation: be holy. And he says the climate in which that Godly life is to be developed and expressed is the climate of the fear of God. And then he says the basis of it all is God's free redemption in Jesus Christ. Is it impossible for a man to be Godly if he's not a redeemed man? The answer is obvious: "They that are in the flesh cannot please God." So without faith in and experimental acquaintance with the cleansing of the blood of Christ, there can be no Godliness. But just as there can be no Godliness without its ground in the saving merit of Christ, so there can be no Godliness without the atmosphere of the fear of God. These two things are tied together around this exhortation to a Godly life. And so it's accurate to say concerning this matter of the practical effects of the fear of God, that the fear of God is the holy soil out of which a Godly life grows. To change the figure, it's the holy atmosphere in which a Godly life breathes. And if you cut off the oxygen of the fear of God, then the man will no longer breathe. As one has so beautifully said, "The Christian is a light everywhere because God is a light everywhere. And he that fears God needs no other theatre than his own conscience and no other spectators than God and the holy angels." When I walk in the fear of God, I walk in that consciousness that I need no theatre but my conscience to which to appeal, and I need no witnesses to my thoughts or my actions but God and the holy angels.
Now I want to couch this statement in the negative form this morning. What is the relationship of the fear of God to conduct? Well, if the fear of God is the soil out of which a Godly life grows, then by the shear pressure of logic (and logic has an amazing pressure), it would be right to say that the absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil out of which an ungodly life grows. But I would never think of building a message on logic. You know me too well for that. And so I want to demonstrate from Scripture that this negative statement is not just an inescapable statement of logic, but it is an accurate reflection of the teaching of Holy Scripture. The absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil which produces an ungodly life. Now to demonstrate this proposition, I want to, first of all, consider with you a key text in some depth that will set the framework of our study, then secondly, look at several specific passages in a little less depth which support the conclusion of the main text, and then, as time permits, draw out some practical conclusions and observations.
A key text to demonstrate this proposition that the absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil that produces an ungodly life. Turn to Romans 3. The text, of course, is verse 18: "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Now what is the context of this statement? Any of you who are familiar with the larger context of the argument of Romans, Paul's concern to set out in systematic form the Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation (verses 16 and 17 of chapter 1).
He, first of all, displays the universal need of the Gospel, beginning with verse 18 of the first chapter, coming all the way through to verse 20 of chapter 3. Now what he has been doing in great detail is rounding up one segment of humanity after another. He takes a certain group in chapter 1, and he corrals them and holds over them the sentence of judgment and death. Then he corrals another group in the early part of chapter 2, and another group in the latter part of chapter 2 and on into chapter 3. And then he comes to this summary statement of what he has been doing throughout that entire epistle in verse 9 of chapter 3: "What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin."
Now Paul says, "I've told you I've already proved that Jews and Gentiles are all under sin." Now someone comes along and says, "But Paul, is this some crazy idea you concocted?" He says, "No, everything I say is consistent with the law of Moses and the prophets." Therefore, he's going to buttress the whole argument of chapter 1 verse 18 through chapter 3 verse 8 with a number of quotations from the Psalms and the Prophets. Verse 10. Now notice what he does. Follow his argument. And remember he's writing to peasants and slaves, not scholars, not the PhDs, not the college graduates. He expects us to follow his train of thought and his argument. So recapitulating now, buttressing his whole argument with Scripture, he says in summary, "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one." There's the canopy of Scripture that hangs over all humanity. Not a one of them is righteous. The charge of unrighteousness is laid against them all.
Now someone says, "Well, Paul, isn't this matter of unrighteousness sort of just a philosophical concept?" He says, "No, sin is not a philosophical concept. Sin is not just a dirty religious word. Sin is a very practical reality, and I'm going to prove it to you from the Psalms and the Prophets." So he starts, then, in verse 11 with what we might call the effects of sin in the mind and in the heart: "There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one."
Then he goes on to enlarge in verses 13 and 14 of the sins of the mouth and the speech apparatus:
"Their throat is an open sepulchre [when you open up a sepulchre, take away the stone, all the rottenness within belches forth the stench of rotten flesh and the rest. He says when men open up their mouths, it's like rolling away a stone of a sepulchre. And when you hear their foul oaths, and when you hear belching forth the putrid lies and uncleanness, it's just what's within coming out]; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood [murder]: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known."
He shows what we might call the sins of their general character and their general living. And then he takes us in verse 18 to that which is the cause of this whole life pattern of ungodliness, and he says this is the reason for it all: "There is no fear of God before their eyes." As he contemplates the state he has described in verses 10-17 and he wants to find one phrase which is the cause of such a disordered ungodly life, he says it's this noxious plant in the heart of man: no fear of God before their eyes. That is, as they view life, as they live life, as they carry out their desires and ambitions, they do so void of the fear of God.
How many of you have ever had spots before your eyes? Maybe you got knocked in the head, or you bent over too long. What happens when you have spots before your eyes? Well, everything that you see has superimposed upon it those little spots. When you've got spots before your eyes, what's happened is there's been some disorder that's causing the eye to pick up and register some of the components of the blood and other things passing over. I don't know all the technical angles of it, but there aren't actually spots out there. But what happens is, you look at the curtains, and there are spots. Maybe you've had pictures taken at a wedding, and all the flashbulbs go off, and the next person you look at has a spot on the end of his nose. Then you looked out at the trees, and there was a spot on the end of a leaf. Or if you've gotten conked on the head, and you begin to see stars, everything you look at is superimposed with stars upon it. You can't look at your hand; you can't look at a tree; you can't look at the drape; you can't look at the preacher--everything you look at when you have spots before your eyes, those spots are superimposed upon the image. You cannot divorce the image from the spots.
Now Paul says of the wicked, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." That is, when they get up in the morning, they say, "What shall I do today?" They are able to look out upon life without superimposing upon it the being of God, the claims of God, the character of God, the salvation of God, the law of God, the judgment of God. And so they go out into that day with no fear of God superimposed upon life. That's the accusation. So Paul says, "When you see the life they live, this is the reason: no fear of God before their eyes."
You see, the Godly man is the man who has in everything those spots before his eyes. He can't think of the day before him without reflexively thinking this is the day the Lord has made. He says, "I am His servant; He is my God. So as I go out into this day into the car, into the shop, into the school, into the place of business, into conversation; as I'm exposed to objects of sight and sense, everything must have stamped upon it the reality of God's being, the reality of my relationship to Him, His claims upon me, His provisions for me." The fear of God is before his eyes and is that which covers every facet of his life pattern.
Conversely, the ungodly man is the man who does not have this fear of God before his eyes: no regard to God's authority, no consideration of God's law, no concern about His smile, no dread of His frown. He may be a nice guy or not too nice. He may be moral or immoral. He may be religious or irreligious. But this he has in common with every other unregenerate sinful son of Adam: there is no fear of God before his eyes. As one has accurately said, "Since the eyes do not see Him, their feet and hands and mouth act as though God were not." For as you read this list in Romans 3, when a man curses, what does he say? "There's no God to tell my tongue what to do. Whatever my spirit and my nature and my mind want to do by way of the tongue, my tongue will do. Who is God to control this member that sits there between my cheeks?" So their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. And when they see someone who is in the way of their ambition, someone who opposes their carnal desires, Paul says, "Their feet are swift to shed blood." Why? Because there's no God as far as they're concerned who says, "Thou shalt do no murder." "Who is God to tell me not to take out vengeance on the object of my hatred." There's no fear of God before their eyes. You go through that entire description of chapter 3, and as we'll see when we turn to the passage from which it was taken, I've not read that in. That's precisely the way the Holy Spirit has given it to us and the way the Apostle understood it. So we learn at the very outset (and even the youngest child here, I trust, will grasp it) that moral and ethical problems, that is, problems of life and conduct are rooted in religious principles. And you cannot separate ethics, morality, and conduct from true Biblical religion. You cannot do it, for God has joined them. And what God has joined together, man puts asunder only to his own peril. So it's clear, then, from this text in Romans 3 that the absence of the fear of God is that unholy soil out of which the ungodly life grows.
Now having looked at the key text as a sphere of reference, look with me at three other supporting and explanatory texts in the Old Testament. First of all, Psalm 10. Now, the context of this Psalm is set out very clearly in verse 1 and the first phrase of verse 2: "Why standest Thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest Thou Thyself in times of trouble? The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor." Here are the righteous being oppressed and pursued by the wicked, and it seems like God doesn't give a hoot. He says, "God, why do You stand far off? Can't you see? These are Your people that are being afflicted. These are Your people that are being trodden down by the wicked. Why do you stand far off?" This is a great problem; it comes up again and again in the Psalms. If you never have that problem as a Christian, you're simply not living with your eyes open. There are times you say, "God, this doesn't seem right." Psalm 73 is another one. So the context, then, is the active work of the wicked in oppressing the righteous and God's apparent silence and indifference to the whole thing.
What would you think of me as a father if I could look out the picture window there at 25 Meadowbrook Lane and see the neighborhood bully beating up my son, and I don't run out of the house and say, "You get your hands off him, fellow, or you'll have my hands on you." What would you think of me as a father if I could see my son kicked around and abused by a bully, and I had the power to do something and didn't? Would you have some questions about the depth of my love to my children? Sure you would.
God's people have this problem. Maybe you're not honest enough to admit it, but you have it. Why? Now, in that context, what the Psalmist does is, he gives us the psychology of what happens in the mind of the wicked when he observes this. He picks on the righteous, and no thunderbolts break out of heaven; no lightning strikes him; no divine visitations, and he has made bold to go on in his wickedness. And the Psalmist explains how the ungodly man thinks as he carries out his ungodly living. Notice very carefully now, in verses 5-10, he tells us what the wicked does:
"His ways are always grievous; Thy judgments are far above out of his sight: as for all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud: under his tongue is mischief and vanity. He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor. He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net. He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones."
Notice now, here is a description of what the wicked man does. But that section of the Psalm is bounded by verses 4 and 11, both of which tell us why he does what he does. Verses 5-10 tell us what the wicked does. He carries out all his schemes against the righteous, against the poor, against the helpless. Some of these phrases are quoted in Romans 3, but notice carefully the reason for all of this. Verse 4: "The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts." Verse 11: "He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: He hideth His face; He will never see it." In verse 4, you see the wicked man voids his mind of conscious thoughts of God. That doesn't mean he is an outspoken atheist. But in the thoughts that govern his life, God does not enter. All his thoughts are, "There is no God. I make my plans; I carry out my ambitions, but I don't do so with reference to God." Verse 11 shows the same wicked man seeking to rid himself of any constraining awareness of the character of God. Notice, he said in his heart, "God has forgotten." He tries to make God a little short on memory. "He hideth His face; He will never see it." He tries to limit God's omniscience.
Do you see what he is doing? In verse 4, he simply tries to put God out of his mind. But he can't totally do that, and because there are some remaining thoughts of God in his mind, he says, "But God is not the God I know Him to be. He's short on memory, and He's a little bit nearsighted." Now why does the wicked man need to push God out of his thoughts, and when he can't fully succeed in that, twists the God who remains in his thoughts? Because he cannot live an ungodly life unless he can take himself out of the orbit of the fear of God. So if he's to grow his plants of ungodly living, he must condition the soil to be soil over which there is written, "No fear of God." So it's not just the force of logic that leads me to make the proposition that the absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil out of which an ungodly life grows. It is precisely the analysis the Psalmist made when in this troubled state of mind, he analyzes the psychology of the wicked man. And he says this is how he thinks: "I'll push God out of my thoughts so I can sin with abandonment. And when my conscience begins to disturb me, I'll twist God into a shape and an image that will make me feel a little more comfortable with Him in my sin."
Psalm 36 is another illustration of this same basic principle. In this particular Psalm, the larger context of the thought pattern is the Psalmist contemplating and contrasting the wickedness of men and the character of God, particularly His mercy. So you have a contrast. The mercy of God beginning in verse 5: "Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." Verse 7: "How excellent is Thy loving kindness...." Verse 10: "O continue Thy loving kindness...." So the theme of the latter part of the Psalm from verse 5, with but one or two exceptions, is a celebration of the character of God as a God of mercy. But the first four verses are a contemplation of the man of wickedness. He describes what the wicked man does in verses 2-4:
"For he flattereth himself in his own eyes, until his iniquity be found to be hateful. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit: he hath left off to be wise, and to do good. He deviseth mischief upon his bed [as he's going off to sleep at night, he's not meditating on the law of God. He's conceiving new ways that he can carry out his sinful designs the next day]; he setteth himself in a way that is not good; he abhorreth not evil."
Now as he looks at such a man indifferent to God's law, constantly conceiving and giving birth to his wicked designs, verse 1 tells us what his conclusion was: "The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart [as I observe the wicked man and how he lives, there is within my heart this conviction], that there is no fear of God before his eyes." As he sees a man live in the way described particularly in verses 3 and 4, he says there is but one explanation of that life pattern: "There is no fear of God before his eyes." And so we have essentially what we found in Psalm 10, that this is the explanation for the conduct of the wicked man: full of self-flattery, a mouth full of evil, abandoning all true wisdom, abandoning all true righteousness, conceiving iniquity in his spare time.
Then one other passage in the Old Testament: Malachi 3. The chapter begins with the announcement of this one called the Messenger of the covenant, a reference, of course, to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And when He comes, the prophet says He will have a two-fold ministry. There will be ministry of purification. Verse 2: "But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appeareth? for He is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: and He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi...." This Messenger of the covenant will come and His first ministry will be one of purification. But then His second ministry is to be one of judgment. Verse 5:
"And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers [those who dabble in the occult/spiritism], and against the adulterers [those who give themselves to the violation of the 7th commandment in thought or in deed], and against false swearers [those who assert truth and even bring in the name of God, but do so dishonestly], and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages [those who take advantage of their position as employers and do not give just due to the employee], the widow, and the fatherless [those who oppress the helpless and those who cannot be defended by a father], and that turn aside the stranger from his right [in other words, He says, 'My judgment will come against all those in the whole spectrum of the life of evil: from those who are guilty of open, gross immorality to those who are indifferent to the needs of the sojourner.' And He says they have one thing in common], and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts."
What does the adulterer have in common with the person who is indifferent to a legitimate need which he sees and does not respond to it when he can? They have this in common: they do not walk in the fear of God. And so the prophet Malachi tells us that God's judgment will come forth with fury and vengeance upon all such.
But now there's another class that we've omitted this morning. These three passages deal primarily with those who are openly irreligious in their wickedness. But there is a second great class of persons who is very religious but is guilty of religious hypocrisy, who maintains the outward profession of true religion, many of the activities of true religion, but who is devoid of the power of true religion. And of course, the classic example of such a class of people was the Scribes and the Pharisees. Remember what our Lord said in Matthew 6 about the Scribes and the Pharisees. He said don't be like them, for when they pray, they pray to be seen of men; when they give, they give to be seen of men; when they fast, they fast to be seen of men. What is he saying? He says in all the maintenance of the form of orthodox religion and activities of religious practice, they're devoid of the fear of God. For what's the essence of the fear of God? That regard of His person which makes His smile my greatest delight and His frown my greatest dread. And having my own conscience for a theatre and God and the holy angels for witnesses, I need no other. And so our Lord describes their religious experience in great detail in Matthew 23. And in particular, in verses 25-28, He uses the picture of dirty dishes on the inside that are clean on the outside, and sepulchers that are bright and shiny on the outside but full of uncleanness within. And He says that's what this always produces when you have adherence to revealed religion in the head and adherence to the practices of revealed religion in the life but where a person is devoid of the power of revealed religion in the heart. And why do they live that way? Jesus said because they don't know the fear of God. What they do, they do to be accepted and seen of men. But what God sees never enters their hearts.
One of the things I ask again and again from this pulpit is, "Where is your heart?" I can see your body here, and I can see your eyeballs on me. But what does God see? Does He see that your presence here this morning is an expression of the fear of God in the heart; that you're here because your God has commanded you to forsake not the assembling of yourselves together; that you're here out of love to Him and desire to please Him, constrained by the awareness of your obligation to Him? Or is it simply a part of your life pattern? "Well, if I don't come once in a while, you and the other elders will be down my neck. So to keep you off it, I'll come." Why are you here? I can answer for only one person. Am I here simply because I get a check from this church, and it's part of my duty, and coming every Sunday morning is punching my clock? Or am I here because God's put His fear in my heart. Even if God were to rip my tongue out, I'd be here to worship Him, to gather with His people, to confess my sins with them, to rejoice with them. Why are you here this morning? Why do you do what you do? Why don't you do some of the things other people do? Is it simply to keep up the form and semblance of true religion before the eyes of men? Jesus said, "You Pharisees appear beautiful unto men, but within...."
You see, the person who maintains orthodox religion in the head and the form of it in the life but is a stranger to the fear of God in the heart knows nothing of the inwardness of true Biblical Christianity. Poverty of spirit, he knows nothing. Hungering and thirsting after righteousness, he knows nothing. Mourning over his sins in secret, he knows nothing. The sum and substance of his whole religious experience is what's packed into his head and what's done externally in life. And of the going's forth of a heart after God, he knows precious little. Whereas our Lord says, by contrast, when you pray, give alms, and fast, there should be one concern: your Father who sees in secret. Is that your concern that brought you here today? "My Father sees me." What does He see? He sees a cold heart if I brought it unto Him that He might warm it by His grace by giving to me a fresh sight of His Son. Does He see a heart that is running off in a thousand directions? If so, then He's found me praying, "Unite my heart to fear Thy name."
Has the Father's eye been your primary concern this morning as you sat here? If not, then somehow the fear of God is absent from your whole experience of worship. So then, the soil out of which overt wickedness grows or the subtle wickedness of religious hypocrisy is that soil of the absence of the fear of God.
Now very quickly (and I can only give you the headings), I want to make a general concluding application. There are two main ways to destroy a house. If I saw a structure I wanted to get rid of, I can arm myself with a pinch bar and a good claw hammer. And I could climb up on top of that thing, and in an hour's time, you would pretty well know what I was out to do. I could rip off a lot of shingles in an hour's time. And if I had a 16 pound sledge, I could knock down some bricks from the chimney, so anybody going by would say that fellow's out to destroy that house. But there's another way I could do it. I could take my sledge and start working on the foundation. After an hour's time, you might not be able to see what I was out to do. You might walk by, and the house looks very intact. (I might be working in the back.) And all I've been able to do in an hour's time is displace a few concrete blocks or put a hole in the foundation. And at the end of the day, the house might still stand intact if I'm taking the second approach to destroy it. Whereas, if I took the first approach, there could be a pretty big mess at the end of the day. I could probably have some of the sheathing torn off and some of the windows knocked out. But if I stuck with the second approach, at the end of a day or two, I'd do a lot better job. Because if I could at strategic points of stress where the foundation bore the weight of that whole structure undercut that foundation, I could bring the whole thing down upon itself. Whereas at the end of a couple of days just working piece by piece, there still might be 80 percent of the structure of the whole left.
Now, you see, the devil hates the structure of Biblical ethics and morality wherever he sees that structure raised. And there's two ways he can go about to destroy it. He can come by attacking every shingle of a Christian virtue and say, "There's no such thing as purity or honesty, and I'm out to destroy these concepts." But the devil is smarter than that. He says, "Keep your shingles for a while. I'm going to go around back where you can't see me, and I'm going to start dislodging foundation stones." So what's happened in our own Western culture? What's happened in our own America? For several generations, the devil was behind the back working at the foundation. O yes, the concept of general honesty rooted in the very Biblical concepts upon which our nation was founded, our whole system of jurisprudence, our whole concept of a shared responsibility between the three branches of government--all of that is rooted in the Puritan concept of the depravity of man and the fact that powers are not safe in the hands of any one depraved sinful authority. All of that has its roots in Biblical thinking. So the devil was working away at the foundation stones. And one of his greatest hammer blows was that of religious liberalism, which distorted the God of the Bible and turned Him from the glorious, fearful God of Israel into this formless mass of unprincipled sentiment. So everybody thinks God's just some formless mass of unprincipled sentiment called love. His holiness, His justice, His righteous anger are concepts that are gone. Then there was the humanism that came through in our American educational system: man's not a creature depraved and bad. The influence of evolutionary thought: He's not obligated to God. He never came from God in the first place. So what has happened? It seems almost overnight a house that looked beautiful is the next day a shambles.
We see the problem now. Everybody says, "Look, the house is coming upon us. Why?" Because the fear of God has well nigh vanished from the very fabric of our national life and experience. And the only way there's going to be any return in any widespread measure to any kind of true ethics and morality is to start from the beginning by implanting the fear of God in the hearts of men. That means we've got to go back to telling men who God is. And then when they begin to see who He is, they'll begin to see their obligation to Him, the terribleness of sinning and offending such a holy God until they're driven to despair. And then when they're told this God, transcendent, holy, majestic, and powerful, so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, they will see forgiveness in the perspective of Psalm 130:4: "There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared." And instead of the Gospel being some cheap panacea which seals them in their conduct reflecting no fear of God, it will be the instrument by which through the blessings of the new covenant applied with power to the heart, they will be brought to fear and reverence this God and walk strictly in His precepts and commandments.
The second brief application is to you who are strangers to the grace of God. Do you want an explanation of why you live the way you live? Here it is. Some of you young people and children, you know why you live the way you do? You get up in the morning, eat, go off to school, lie a little bit, cheat a little bit, fight with brother and sister, are a little dishonest to Mom and Dad. You say, "I'm just like the rest of the kids. I'm not real bad." Do you know what explains your life? There's no fear of God before your eyes. That's the explanation of your life. And that's the explanation of the lives of some of you adults. That's why you can live the way you do. That's why you can go home today, click on your TV this afternoon with no thought that this is God's day with any particular requirements. It won't enter your mind at all. You think that how you spend the day is your business, not God's. Why? There's no fear of God before your eyes. When you get that pay check, you don't say, "Now, Lord, what is your rightful due?" You think you can do what you want with it since you earned it. Why? There's no fear of God before your eyes. And I plead with you to recognize that until you come to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant and have Him implant this fear with your heart, this will be your life's pattern.
And my last word is to you who are the people of God. If this principle is true, that the only soil out of which ungodliness can grow is that of the absence of the fear of God, may God help you and I to resist with holy violence anything that would lesson the fear of God in our hearts, for we can only move into the realm of sin deliberately when we have moved out of the realm of the fear of God. And the first step to moving us into the realm of sin is to get us moved out of the atmosphere of the fear of God, either by putting God out of our thoughts or fashioning a God with whom we can be more comfortable in our sin. That's why God, when He accused David through Nathan, said, "Thou hast despised Me in that thou hast taken Bathseba." He said, "David, you could never take her in violation of My law till you pushed Me out of your mind." O, dear child of God, beware of any influence, no matter how innocent it may appear, if it lessons your regard to God's smile and your dread of His frown. May God help us to be in His fear all the day long.
God willing, next week I want to consider with you that text in Proverbs: "Let not thine heart envy sinners, but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long." And I want to speak very practically, giving five or six principles from Scripture as to how we may seek to keep ourselves in the fear of God all the day long. "But," you say, "I thought God put this in our hearts." Yes, the fruit of the Spirit is love, isn't it? Yet God says, "I beseech you as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on the bowels of mercy." God does it; we must put it on. That's His whole pattern of grace. And though God puts His fear in our hearts, He commands us to be in His fear all the day long. May the Lord be pleased to help us heed the word of exhortation and to dread this unholy soil of the absence of the fear of God which produces and ungodly life.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 15:13:54 GMT -5
The Fear of God: How to Maintain & Increase by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached October 11, 1970
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We come today to the 9th and last in a series of studies on one of the most basic themes of Holy Scripture, and yet sad to say, one of the most neglected themes of Scripture in our day, namely, the fear of God. One mature and very able student of the Word of God has been bold enough to make the statement, "The fear of God is the very soul of Godliness." In other words, there is no life of Godliness unless it is continually animated by the soul of the fear of God. We've spent some weeks examining many portions of Scripture which set forth the importance and centrality of the fear of God. We've tried to grasp something of the essence of the fear of God: what it is. We've looked at the essential ingredients of the fear of God and the source of the fear of God. And the last two Lord's Days we considered the practical effects of the fear of God. We made the statements in both of those studies that Scripture warrants the conclusion that the fear of God is the soil out of which a Godly life grows, and the absence of the fear of God is the soil out of which an ungodly life grows. Now since maintaining a profound sense of the majesty and goodness of God with that commensurate response of regarding His smile life's greatest blessing and His frown life's greatest dread is so essential, I want us to consider this morning in this our last study how to maintain and increase the fear of God in our hearts.
A basic text to put into perspective that which we will be considering this morning is found in Proverbs 23:17-18. In this portion of Scripture, we have, first of all, this negative command: "Let not thine heart envy sinners." Don't allow your heart to begin to be jealous of the dainties of the ungodly. Don't allow your spirit to begin to be affected with any kind of a longing for what they call life's pleasures. But rather--and here's the positive command: "Be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long." In other words, the opposite of a heart that goes out with envy towards sinners and their sinful course of life is a heart that maintains a proper sense of the fear of God. Then in verse 18, the reason is given for this: "For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off." When we view the end of the wicked as compared with the end of the God-fearing man, there is no question as to who was the wise one. And it's the immediacy of sin's enticements as well as the immediacy of sin's delights that becomes the bait which sinners lay hold of. Whereas, the Godly man, fully conscious that there is pleasure in sin for a season even to the Godly. To the extent he feeds the remains of corrupt nature, there is pleasure for the moment of that indulgence. But the child of God is the one whose whole life is geared, not by the perspective of the "now generation," for every child of God is a member of the "then generation." For Paul says, "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
Now it's especially this positive command in the text that I would direct your attention to this morning: "Be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long." But the question that some of you have ask me is, "Now, Pastor, before you're done, you're going to bring us something, aren't you, on how to maintain the fear of God?" And I assured you that I would. And that's the issue to which we would address ourselves this morning. How do we maintain the fear of God in our hearts? That this is the will of God is beyond dispute in the light of this text. We have an explicit command. In the light of the fact that we're commanded to be holy and Godly, and the fear of God is the soil of Godliness or the soul of Godliness, why, then, it's clear for us that it's God's will for us to maintain and increase the fear of God in our hearts. Now in answer to that question, how do we do this, I want you to consider with me, first of all, a general principle which is the foundation of the answer. And then we shall look at some specific guidelines or rules for maintaining the fear of God.
First of all, a general principle which we must understand and walk in the light of it if we are to increase and maintain the fear of God in our hearts. Simply stated it is this: when it comes to the outworking of the Christian life, what God declares to be His own work in us is to be the concern of our conscious spiritual endeavors.
Let me illustrate. A familiar passage, Galatians 5:22-23 states that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. Whenever you see a person who manifests genuine selfless Christian love, you must attribute the presence of that love in the individual to a deep, inward, powerful work of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit, the manifestation of His presence and work, is love. Wherever you see genuine joy and peace and these other Christian graces (and I think it goes without dispute if we have any acquaintance with Scripture), we know that these graces are only brought into the life and flow out of the life by the work of the Spirit. However, the same God who tells us that these things are the fruit of His working, tells us through the same apostle in Colossians 3:12, "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering." Verse 14: "Above all these things put on [love]."
You say, "Now wait a minute, here you tell me it's the fruit of the Spirit, and it's God's work to produce it. Now you tell me to put it on, and putting on is a verb of action." You didn't lay in bed for your clothes to crawl on you this morning. You had to get up and go to them and get them on you. Putting on is activity. Now which is it? Is the presence of love and meekness in the life of a believer the work of God, or is it the work of the believer? Well, it's not either/or. It's both. The fruit of the Spirit is love. Put on love, and you find that with all of the other graces. The fruit of the Spirit is joy, and yet Philippians 4:4 says, "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice." Both aspects of this principle are most beautifully stated in Philippians 2:12-13 where the Apostle says,
"Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. [That is, apply yourself consciously and diligently to the outworking of God's saving purposes in your life with particular reference to the development of these graces of a blameless life.] For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure."
Here you have the command for our working based upon the fact of God's working. And God's working does not negate our working, and our working does not cancel out His working. They are co-extensive in the life of the believer. Now it's essential to understand this principle if we are to maintain and increase the fear of God in our hearts. For as we saw a few studies ago, the putting of the fear of God in the heart of a man is distinctly declared to be a sovereign work of God as a distinct blessing of the new covenant. In Jeremiah 32:40, God says, "I will put My fear in their hearts that they may not depart from Me."
So someone says, "If it's God's work to put His fear in our hearts, then the question of how to increase the fear of God is obvious. You've just got to pray and trust the Lord to do it. No, the principle is this: what God declares to be His work in us is to be the concern of the conscious labor and endeavor of the children of God. So then, in our efforts Scripturally directed, let us not allow ourselves the accusation of legalism and moralism to scare us aware from seeking to discover in Scripture the specific guidelines God has given us by which we may develop and increase the fear of God in our hearts.
Someone asked a Puritan one time why he lived such a precise life, a life in which he had constant regard to the principles of Scripture, a life in which he was not a stranger to vows and Biblically-oriented rules of living. He said, "Sir, you ask me why I live such a precise life. My answer is simple. I serve a precise God." Why should we be concerned with discovering specific rules and guidelines for maintaining the fear of God? Because the God who has made us and the God before whom we walk has given us these principles in order that we might know how better to increase His fear in our hearts. So I hope that takes away any sense that this is self-effort in the sense that we are negating the grace of God. No, God alone can put His fear in our hearts. He is working in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. But we must work out with fear and trembling the cultivation and development of that fear.
So then, that brings us to the second area of our consideration this morning. Having considered the general principle, what are the specific directives for maintaining the fear of God in our hearts?
Directive number one is this: be certain of an interest in the new covenant. Now by interest, I do not mean a passive inquisitiveness, such as someone saying, "I'm interested in so and so's house," or "I'm kind of interested in that girl." I'm using the term "interest" in its stricter meaning. It's meaning number two listed in Webster's Dictionary. It means to have a share or participation in something. If someone says, "I have part interest in that business," he doesn't mean that once and a while, he goes by and looks at the show window. He means he's invested money. If you have part interest in something, you've invested of your substance.
Now, the Scripture tells us that this matter of the fear of God in the heart is the result of God's working in the new covenant. I read to you from Jeremiah 32:40 where God says, "I will put My fear into their hearts." And as long as you are in a state divorced from the blessings of that covenant; as long as you are an unconverted person; as long as you are a man or woman, fellow or girl who has never come to God through Christ in repentance and faith, pleading no grounds of approach to God but the blood of the everlasting covenant shed for sinners, then Romans 3:18 will continue to be your experience until you die unless you repent. For in describing what man is by nature, Paul said, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." That's what you are by nature. You're one who does not fear God. O, you may have a dread of God that drives you from Him. But you don't have that Biblical fear we've been describing week after week, that regard of God's character in the glory of His majesty and goodness which draws your heart out to Him in love and devotion and desire to please Him. O no, you'll have a dread of God; you'll try to put thoughts of God out of your mind. You'll live with reference to the nitty gritty of life as though God did not exist. O, you may come into a building called the church once a week and go through the form of worship, but you do not live in the fear of God. What God says in His Word about your life, it has no real practical effect upon you in your home, your thoughts, what you read or don't read, what you watch or don't watch on TV, what you say or don't say, what you listen to or don't listen to. No, there's no fear of God before your eyes. The fact of who God is and His claims over you is not the dominant governing principle of your life. And that's true of everyone one of us by nature.
Many of us can think back with shame of years in which we lived that way. Just like the heathen wrings off the head of his chicken and sprinkles a little blood on his altar, we wrung the head off an hour or two a week and sprinkled it at the foot of a altar at some church and gave a little time and a little money, but we lived totally void of the fear of God until He arrested us by His grace and put His fear within our hearts. And so the first directive I would submit to you if you would know the increase of the fear of God, be certain that you have an interest in the new covenant. Be certain that you have come to Jesus Christ, the mediator of the new covenant. Hebrews 12:24 says you are come unto Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. It is only as we come to Him saying in the words of the hymn, "Nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling." As we cast ourselves upon Christ for forgiveness and mercy, He then will make good in us all the blessings of that covenant that He sealed with His own precious blood. And child of God, as you long for an increase of the fear of God, make your interest in the new covenant the solid ground upon which you stand when you plead for an increase of His fear.
When you say, "O God, increase Your fear in me," what should be the argument that you press before Him? It should be this: "Lord Jesus, You died as the mediator of the new covenant. And one of the blessings of that covenant is that You would put Your fear into my heart. Lord Jesus, on the basis of Your shed blood, I plead for an increase of Your fear. Give me as much of Your fear as Your blood of the covenant warrants." That's the thought of Romans 8:32: "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things." If He died to ratify that covenant, certainly in His life, He will give us freely all the benefits of that covenant. And so rule number one for the increase of the fear of God is: be certain of an interest in the new covenant.
Secondly, feed your minds upon the Scriptures in general. Turn to Psalm 19. This Psalm celebrates the greatness of the two great spheres of divine revelation. God has revealed Himself to His creatures. Verses 1-6 celebrate the revelation God has made in creation. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork." Verses 7-11 celebrate the revelation God has made in His Word. So you have the revelation in creation and in Scripture: general revelation, special revelation. Now notice what the Psalmist does as he's thanking God for special revelation beginning with verse 7. He says,
"The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether."
In the midst of all these terms describing special revelation, notice the first part of verse 9: "The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever." The Psalmist is saying there is such an inseparable relationship between the special revelation God has made in Scripture and the existence of the fear of God that the fear of God can for all intents and purposes be used as a synonym for the Word of God. So where he's using all these terms, he slips in this other one to show us that he who would increase in the fear of God must feed his mind upon the Scriptures in general. The Word of the Lord is so productive of the fear of the Lord that it may be used as a synonym.
But when a present, vital, extensive relationship to the Scriptures begins to wane, you are shriveling up the roots of the fear of God. And you will grow no more in the fear of God than you grow in your understanding of and assimilation of the Word of God written. So then, there's the daily necessity of as much exposure to the Scripture as possible both in private and in the family circle as we read the Scriptures with our children and our wives. And so there's the necessity of faithful, systematic attendance upon the public preaching and teaching of the Word of God. For though there are many portions of Scripture which, as far as we can analyze it, have no direct reference to creating and sustaining the fear of God, the overall effect of every truth of Scripture is to feed the fear of God. In one way or another, the man who absorbs the most of Scripture (spiritually assimilates it into his life's stream) is the man who will know most of the fear of God.
So then, when you're tempted to cut corners on those disciplines by which you are exposing your mind to Scripture, remember, that's the softening up tactics of the devil to move you out of the fear of God. And that always precedes moving you out of the realm of Godliness as we saw in our study last week. And if you and I are to be moved out of the realm of Godliness, we must, first of all, abandon our fear. And often the first step of abandoning our fear is cutting corners on either the private or the public exposure to the Word of God. Then don't be surprised if, in the pinch when the pressure's on, and the issue of God's smile or frown is the all-important issue, that somehow those things seem very distant. For there's not a Christian who has lived out a year as a true child of God that won't confess there are times when God and heaven and the Holy Spirit and Christ and Godliness--all of these things can seem so remote and distant and just a bunch of verbiage. Isn't it true? And you just sit and ask yourself, "What in the world am I? What in the world do I believe? How can these things really be a part of me and seem so distant from me?"
Many times, if we check into the reason for that state of soul, it's because there has been this erosion of systematic, consistent exposure to the Word of God. It's not as though you came up to a certain day and said, "Alright, from this day forward, the Bible and me will have nothing more to do with each other." No, it wasn't that at all. It was just a little extra pressure that made you cut corners on your stated time with God, just a few extra responsibilities the next day, and a few added distractions the next day until after a week or two of that pattern, you no longer felt your absence from the Scriptures. And you were no longer painfully aware of the erosion. And then there was the breakdown in the Christian life and experience, and you say, "Where did it all happen?" It happened here. And so I know no shortcut to maintaining the fear of God. And I set before you as the second guideline and principle that you and I must feed our minds upon Scripture in general.
Thirdly, we must feed our souls upon the forgiveness of God in particular. Do you remember our study of Psalm 130:4? The Psalmist asked the question in verse 3, "If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" The thought of a holy God who knows everything, calling me, the creature, to an account for every sin is enough to make one cry as they shall cry in the day of judgment, that the rocks and the mountains might fall upon him. You can only dread a God who marks your sins and will call you into judgment for them, and rightly so. You ought to dread such a God, for the Psalmist says, "If Thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" And if we can't stand the thought of standing before God, we won't like the thought of walking with God. But he says, "There is forgiveness with Thee, that thou mayest be feared." When I can discover a way of forgiveness in this great God so that all of His wisdom and justice and holiness and power raised to infinity--all of those glorious attributes are on my side to produce forgiveness, I cannot help but fear this God with deepest, tenderest fear and worship Him with trembling hope and penitential tears. And so, as the Psalmist's mind is filled with the wonder of forgiveness, his heart is filled with the reality of the fear of God. So I give to you as the third rule for maintaining the fear of God: you must feed your soul upon the forgiveness of God.
The measure to which the fact and the wonder of forgiving grace sinks into your soul will be the measure of your fear of God. Feed often upon the fact of forgiveness. God who is holy, God who is righteous, God who is called the high and lofty One actually forgives me the sinful creature. Steep your mind often in the way of forgiveness. Why was there the infleshment of the second Person of the Godhead? Why should deity be enclosed in a virgin's womb? Why should He be born in a cow barn? Why should He die that death upon the cross? Ah, that the sons of men might have forgiveness consistent with God's holiness, His justice, His righteousness, His inflexible law. And as we feed, not only upon the fact of forgiveness, but the way of forgiveness, so our fear of God will be deepened and increased. As Manton has so beautifully said, "The heart is shy of a condemning God, but it adheres to a pardoning God. And nothing breeds this fear of God to offend Him as a tender sense of God's goodness in Jesus Christ."
You remember Psalm 34:8, a well-known text, often used as a Gospel invitation. The Psalmist says, "O taste and see that the Lord is good. And in verse 9, he says, "O fear the LORD, ye His saints: for there is no want to them that fear Him." You cannot fear Him as He ought to be fear except it be in the context of His gracious goodness and His condescending mercy in Jesus Christ. And so I would entreat you if you would have the fear of God sustained in your heart, feed your soul upon God's forgiveness.
Don't allow yourself to come back under the terrors of the law. That will drive you from Him. But allow yourself to bask in the mystery of His forgiveness and stand amazed at such a display of grace that would not only lay hold of you when you were wallowing in your filth, but bear so patiently with you in all of your wanderings and your stumbling. Stand amazed before such a display of forgiveness.
Rule number four: we must learn to feed our souls not only upon the forgiveness of God, but upon the majestic greatness of God, that is, those aspects of His character which are lofty, particularly His holiness, His power, and His omnipotence. Notice this perspective in Hebrews 12, where the subject of reverence and Godly fear is before us. We have this exhortation in verse 28: "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." Receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken; confident that we are accepted in the beloved; confident, as was said earlier, that we've come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant (our sins have been covered in His blood); confident of His goodness, let us have grace to serve Him acceptably with fear. Why? Verse 29: "For our God is a consuming fire." So you have the thought of the fear of God bounded on the one hand, by the contemplation of all the good things His grace brings, and on the other hand, by the contemplation of the majesty and greatness of this God, particularly as a God of consuming fire: infinite holiness actively opposed to all that is evil. And the fear of God is maintained by the contemplation, then, of His goodness in forgiveness on the one hand, and His majestic greatness on the other.
See the same perspective in Revelation 15. In this particular vision, John sees this sea of glass, and he sees this multitude of those who have come off triumphant from the conflict with the beast. Verse 3 declares, "And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints. Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy...." Do you see the attributes of God which are in focus? Great, marvelous, holy, mighty, righteous King. And I know of no better way to describe these than to call them those aspects of God which set before us the majesty of His greatness. And they say, "As we contemplate this, it's unthinkable that any rational creature would not fear such a God. If they but know You as you are revealed, they cannot help but fear You."
So the principle for us as God's people is this: would you grow in the fear of God? Then you must feed your soul upon the majestic greatness of God. Specifically, by way of more detailed instruction, let me suggest that you be familiar with those portions of Scripture most calculated to set these concepts before you. The Christian who doesn't periodically read through Isaiah 40 on his knees with breathless wonder, I doubt will maintain much of the fear of God. That passage in which the prophet gives that lofty description of the majestic greatness of God, where he pulls together such imagery as is seldom to be found in any literature, where he speaks of the entire expanse of the heavens being but the span of God's hand, saying all the nations are like the drop on the side of a bucket (a little bit of condensation). He speaks of all the multitudes of the nations being like a little swarming mass of grasshoppers. He thinks of God as a great Shepard and all the galaxies and all the stars as being sheep. And He calls them by their names and leads forth the heavenly host--beautiful imagery! What's all this there for? To impress upon us the greatness of our God, for the chapter begins with the command to the messengers of Judah to get up unto a high mountain and say to the cities of Judah, "Behold, your God. Look upon Him; fix our gaze upon Him as He's revealed." And so be familiar with such portions of Scripture as Isaiah 40 and Revelation 1.
The second specific directive under this specific heading: attach yourself to a ministry which will assist you to maintain lofty views of God. Negatively stated, flee from a ministry that encourages you to snuggle up and make cheap love to the Deity. It's an abomination to God so much that goes on in His name. Attach yourself to a ministry which assists you to think of Him in His majestic greatness. The hymn writer captured it, didn't he? "Majestic sweetness sits enthroned upon the Savior's brow." All sweetness: unprincipled sentiment. All majesty: too awesome to draw near. But when you have majesty and sweetness, you have the God of the Bible. So attach yourself to a ministry which assists you to feed your soul upon His majestic greatness.
Read the literature which will assist you to think often upon His greatness. Most of the books turned out in our day are how-to books. Everything has to do with what we're doing, doing, doing; how to, how to, how to. You can scour the bookshelves in vain to find a book that will set before you who He is. So you've got to go back a few years for the most part. Some of us are not just antiquarians when we read old books. It's because we find there men whose souls were permeated with these concepts of the majestic greatness of God. And when we enter into those pages, we somehow sense we're breathing the rarified air of the Biblical thought of who God is.
Acquaint yourself with the hymnody which does this. We sing hymns on our way to church every Sunday, and the hymn we started learning two Sundays ago is one in our own hymnbook which is tremendous along these lines:
My God, how wonderful Thou art; Thy majesty how bright. How beautiful Thy mercy seat in depths of burning light, How dread are Thine eternal years [in other words, contemplating that God is a God of eternity. The hymn writer says this becomes a dreadful thing. It's something that baffles us] O, everlasting Lord; Thy holy angels, day and night, incessantly adore. O, how I fear Thee, living God, with deepest tenderest fears And worship Thee with trembling hope and penitential tears, Yet I may love Thee too, O Lord, almighty as Thou art, For Thou hast stooped to ask of me the love of my poor heart.
You see, that's a hymn which captures the Biblical concept of the goodness and the majesty of God. And it's that which feeds His fear in our hearts.
Rule number five: seek to cultivate an awareness of His presence. "Be thou in the fear of God all the day long." Since the day is made up of hours spent in the home, the car, the school, the playground, the ball field, the office, it's in those places we must cultivate the awareness of His presence. And the best passage I know of that sets out how this is done is Psalm 16, where the Psalmist says in verse 8, "I have set the LORD always before me." Do you see what he is saying? He says, "In every situation, as it were, I plant God before me so that I realize that in that situation, I am in that situation in the presence of God."
By contrast, in Psalm 54:3, when the Psalmist is describing the wicked, he says, "They have not set God before them." When they go into the office, they don't go in saying,
"God is here, this great God of goodness and forgiveness, this God of holiness and majesty in whose presence I live. He is here to be obeyed, to be loved, to be honored, to be glorified right in this office with unreasonable bosses and flirtatious secretaries and nasty companions I have to work with. Or He's right here is this schoolroom with all these kids that don't give a hoot about my God and my standards as I seek to obey Him. He's here to be loved, to be honored, to be confessed, to be obeyed at any cost. I have set the Lord always before me."
The wicked don't do this. The Psalmist says, "They have not set God before them." They set their own lusts before them. They set their own ambitions before them. They set their own flexible standards before them. But they don't set God before them.
To walk in God's fear is to cultivate this awareness of His presence, for you cannot fear a distant and forgotten God, but a near and remembered God. Practically speaking, this means we ought often to meditate on Psalm 139. Do you want to cultivate the awareness of His presence? Make it a practice to read often that Psalm. "Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there." To cultivate the sense of that pervasiveness of God's presence, seek to remind yourself in every situation that God is there. You've got to learn to do this. You just can't pray, "Now, Lord, do it for me." The Psalmist says, "I have set the Lord always before me." Well, God was there. The Psalmist's setting Him there didn't put Him there. He was there, but it's the recognition that He's there that becomes the transforming thing in the life. May God help us, then, to cultivate this awareness of His presence.
Rule number six: seek to cultivate the consciousness of your obligations to Him. As we saw in our description of the fear of God, one indispensable element of it is that in each situation, the Christian realizes that his relationship to God is the most important relationship.
So you're there in school, kids, and you know to past that test and get a passing grade you're going to have to cheat. But you say, "There's something more important than my relationship to my grades and to my mom and dad who look at my report card; that's my relationship to the God who told me, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and that means I shall not steal somebody else's answers." So if you're walking in the fear of God and before you've gone off to school, you've said, "Lord, help me today to walk in Your fear." That means when you're tempted to cheat, the recognition of your obligation to God is stronger than that recognition of your obligation to have a nice report card to show Mom and Dad. It means when my lusts and passions cry out and the remains of my corruption would dictate a course of action contrary to God, if necessary, I must stick my heel on the neck of my lusts in order that I may be able to look up unembarrassed into the face of my God.
Even if you've got to rupture deep ties, the Lord says, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." He said, "I came to so implant the blessings of the new covenant in the hearts of men that men will so fear Me that even if they must rupture the deepest earthly ties, they'll be willing to do it for My sake." He said, "That's what I came to do." And part of that outworking is the people of God cultivating that consciousness of their supreme obligations unto Him.
Rule number seven: associate yourselves intimately with those who walk in His fear.* We must have dealing with those who don't fear God in civil matters. Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 5:9-10: "I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world." You must have contact with those who don't fear God in civil things. You must have surface relationships with them to establish a bridgehead of witness. But Psalm 119:63 is the key text that I would set before you in this matter. The Psalmist says, "I am a companion of all them that fear Thee, and of them that keep Thy precepts." He said, "I have deliberately chosen as my intimate associates those who obviously fear God."
Now why did he do this? The Bible is full of sound psychology, and the Psalmist understood the psychology of personal relationships. There is a power of imitation, of absorption, of contagion, one individual to another so that, all things being equal, you will become like those with whom you most intimately associate. There's a built-in law. That's why Scripture says the companion of fools will become a fool. That's why God warns us about intimate associations with evil men, lest we become like them (Proverbs 22:24-25). It's part of the way God has made us. We are not encased in our own little individualism. God ordained that men should live in community, and part of the operation of that is this built-in power of imitation, absorption, and contagion. Now, it's in the light of this that David said, "I am a companion of all them that fear Thee, and of them that keep Thy precepts. [Lord, I would fear You. And I know one of the best ways to have Your fear increased in my heart is to become the intimate associate of others who obviously fear You.]" And so I give to your as rule number seven: associate yourselves intimately with those who walk in His fear.
There's a wonderful commentary on this principle in Malachi 3. The context of this passage is God's indictment towards the great majority in Israel who have turned away from Him, not giving Him His just due in terms of their offerings; bringing unfit sacrifices. It's a period of decadence when God is sounding forth the note of judgment. And yet in the midst of this, in verse 16, God says, "Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon His name." Here you have that remnant, that nucleus of true Israelites who are described as those who fear the Lord, who think upon His name. And because they're in a minority, they recognize the necessity of being sustained in their fear of God by seeking out others who fear Him and banding together in the midst of decadence. So with the judgments of God being pronounced and decadence on every side, those who feared God often got together and encouraged one another in their course of fearing God in the midst of decadence. So I submit to you that if you would grow in His fear, you and I must associate ourselves intimately with those who walk in His fear. There's no such thing as a freelance Christianity and a do-it-yourself holiness. And if you don't know and sense and feel how much you need your brethren, you're living in a fool's paradise. And you're probably guilty of a delusive pride. These people as they looked out and saw the decadence on every side and knew something of God's fear in their hearts said, "I'll go down under if I try to make it by myself. Let me find others who fear Him." And so they spoke often one to another.
What a cursed thing to be deluded into thinking, "I can make it on my own." My friend, God may humble you with some pretty serious falls to get you to see that the body of Christ is not a luxury for your spiritual development. The church is not a luxury; it's not an option if you would grow. It is God's necessary place of growth and development. The whole thought of 1 Corinthians 12 is that every man is given a manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal. The whole thought of Ephesians 4 is that growth comes in the corporate life of the people of God. So Paul says to Timothy, "Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart (2 Timothy 2:22)." "Timothy, don't think you'll roll up your sleeves and make it on your own. Find some others who have rolled up their sleeves and are going in the same direction and link arms."
There are times when your legs will get weak, and your knees will get feeble; you'll thank God you were linked to some strong-legged creatures going in the same direction. This is not a nominal relationship, but a linked arm relationship where you've bound yourself to your brethren. You're in a covenantal life, not only in covenant with God, but with the other members of His body, pledged to care one for another, to pray one for another, forbear one another, honoring one another--all of these phrases from Scripture, and we could quote many more. What is the thought? If we would develop and grow in His fear, we must associate ourselves intimately with those who walk in His fear.
A lot of people are, as Christians, like a lot of people in the world today. Common law marriages are becoming the in-thing. They've always been the thing, but it's sort of been an out-thing. But now it's the in-thing, particularly with the student generation who think marriage as an institution will be passe. And one of the terrible things about common-law relationships is the philosophy that undergirds them. Whether they'll admit it or not, here's the philosophy most people have: "I want all the privileges of marriage but none of its binding responsibilities and obligations. I want to share a bed with you, but the moment something develops where I may have to share myself with you and it will cost me something, I want out. And I don't want any trouble getting out." There are a lot of Christians that way. They want all the privileges of the fellowship with the people of God: a stable ministry in the Word, an atmosphere where God is exalted. But they don't want to be so bound but that they can slip out the moment the going gets rough.
Are you a common law Christian? Or are you married, not only to Christ, but to His people? If you're married to the people of God, you've entered into a covenantal life with them, committing yourself to care one for another, to pray one for another, to exhort one another. Then the first problem that comes, you don't go your separate ways. That's one of the great blessings of the institution of marriage. It's formalized civically and publicly. Many of us will confess we've faced snags in the working out of a marriage relationship, that if we hadn't been bound by some deeper ties than just sort of an unwritten agreement that we shared the same bed together, we would have gotten out of it.
The principle I always go over with couples when I counsel before they marry, I say, Are you convinced this is for keeps? When you say, "I do," that's it. You've had it. You've burned the bridges behind you no matter what difficulties you face. One way you never look is back for the way out of it. You're in it. The only direction you look is up and forward: up to God for grace and forward to resolve your problems. So that's the way it is when we bind ourselves to the people of God: for better or for worse. And we're in this together. Would you grow in the fear of God? Then intimately, not loosely, associate yourselves with those who walk in the fear of God.
Our time is gone. My last rule is obvious; I don't need to enlarge upon it. Fervently pray for the increase of His fear. But I trust these principles will be helpful. I've tried to be intensely pastoral this morning so that we might not just see this great concept of the fear of God out there as a beautiful necessary thing, but that day by day and week by week, it might be said of us as it was said of the churches in Acts 9:31, that they walked in the fear of God and in the consolation of the Holy Spirit and were multiplied. May God grant that we as a church shall grow and increase in His fear and in the consolations of the Spirit and see the multiplication of those that the Lord would add the church.
*Editor's note: Associating intimately with those who walk in God's fear is a general principle. There are exceptions. Some Christians have been forced into isolation because of circumstances beyond their control (e.g. imprisonment, health issues, etc.) and yet, by God's grace, have grown and developed the graces of the Spirit.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 15:21:56 GMT -5
Denying Self by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message
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Will you turn, please, tonight to the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. And I'll shall read verses 21 through 27. You'll remember now, our Lord Jesus has just received from Peter a statement concerning the fact that He was the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And He told Peter that flesh and blood had not revealed this truth unto him, but the Father who is in heaven. And having revealed His essential person (who He was), the very Christ, the Son of the Living God, we read in verse 21 that He begins to unfold the essential purpose for which He came. Having revealed who He is, He now begins to specifically reveal unto His disciples why He has come. He has given hints at it before. This concept that Jesus came to the Jewish nation and offered unto them an earthly kingdom, and because they rejected it, then He decided to die and become a Savior is utterly unfounded in Scripture. Jesus said, owning His ministry in John 2 with the first miracle performed in Cana of Galilee, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.... But He spake of the temple of His body." Our Lord Jesus came as the Lamb ordained from the foundation of the world. He came to die, but it was not until now that He began to unfold clearly and specifically and in detail the manner in which He would die. And so we have in verse 21 this clear statement. And I shall read now verses 21 through 27.
"From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples, that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up. And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall never be unto Thee. But He turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto Me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men. Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? [It should not be translated 'soul.' It's the same word in the original as is used up in the preceding verse.] or what shall a man give in exchange for his life? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every man according to his deeds."
In verse 21, we have announced to us that Jesus began to declare unto His disciples the imperative, the absolute necessity of His death. We read: "From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples, that He must...." And it's a strong word. It's a word of intense imperative. He began to show unto them how that He must go to Jerusalem and that He must suffer and that He must be killed and that He must be raised again from the dead on the third day. Now I want to ask you a very simple question tonight. Why did Jesus speak of the imperative of His death? What made the death of this One who was just confessed to be the Christ, the Son of the Living God--what made His suffering and His death and His resurrection imperative?
You say, "Because God loved us, and in our sin He planned to provide a way of escape. And so Jesus had to go to the cross." Yes, I know that, but I wonder if you've ever penetrated beyond the mere shell of those words and laid hold of the real root cause of why Jesus had to go and die. Because of man's sin? Yes, but what is sin? What is the essence of sin? Until I understand what the heart and the essence of sin is, I will never understand the heart and the essence and the real throbbing goal of God in sending a deliverer from sin. If my conception of sin is just some bad things that I do that sort of make God frown, then I can never understand the core of purpose of God's redemptive work in which He plans to deliver men from sin. What is the core, the essence, what is the oiled down characteristic of sin? Andrew Murray, in one of his books, says this--and I'm quoting freely, not verbatim: "Sin consisted in nothing but this, but that man refused to have God as his all in all. And redemption has at its goal nothing less but that God shall become to His creatures all in all once again."
When Adam and Eve sinned, what was their sin? In essence their sin was this: they would not have God be everything to them. They would not have His will be the limit of their desire. They would not have His wisdom be the limit of their wisdom. They would seek a wisdom outside the wisdom that God knew was best for them. They would be like God, knowing good from evil. They would have a desire that fell out of the sphere of God's desire. He had said, "My desire for you is do not touch that tree. Do not eat of it, for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." And when they reached out and took of the forbidden fruit, they were casting off God as their all in all.
Sin has as its greatest cry that the creature has done what we read in Jeremiah 2: "For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." Do you get this? The root, the essence of sin is this rebellion in the human heart which refuses let God have His rightful place as all in all. But in the viciousness of our sinful nature and the rebellion of our hearts that God says are desperately wicked, deceitful above all things, the greatest wickedness of the human heart is that it has cast off God and hewn out broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Now we read in this passage Jesus says, "I must die, I must suffer, I must be raised again from the dead." Now what was His goal? Will you get a hold this? Why the imperative of the death of Christ? Why the necessity of His suffering and that terrible baptism of agony and blood and tears? Why the groans of Gethsemane and the piercing cry of Golgotha, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" What's the divine purpose in all of this? Here it is: Jesus said, "I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." What kind of life? The very life for which the creature was made, life in which God is all in all to the creature, life in which the creature wants nothing beyond the sphere of the will of God, life which the creature desires no wisdom but that which falls within the sphere of the wisdom of God, life in which the creature desires nothing more than the fellowship of his God. And anything that mars that fellowship, he wants it not no matter how delightful a morsel it might be.
Jesus died that we might have life. What life? The very life for which the creature was made, life in which God's person is the central focal point of our existence. Let me repeat that. This is not poetic language. What I'm saying is the core of the purpose of that terrible scene that's recorded in detail in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that scene which interpreted in the Epistles is called the message of the cross, which is the very heart of the Gospel. What is the goal of all of this? That you, my dear friend, might be brought to the place, by the grace of God, where God's person becomes the all-absorbing focal point of your existence, where you might say with the psalmist, "All my springs are in Thee. And any spring that is not in God is polluted, and I don't want it", and where God's will becomes the one consuming desire of your life.
Jesus died that He might have people to whom the will of God is precious, who can say with the psalmist, "I delight to do Thy will O my God. Yea, Thy law is within my heart." And when Jesus sealed the new covenant in His blood, one of the blessings of that new covenant was not merely a changed record in heaven. God says, "Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more." But He says, "I will write My law upon their hearts." Whenever there's a changed record in heaven, there's a changed heart on earth. And God inscribes His law upon the heart so that He has a people who delight to do His will.
Jesus came that He might purchase and enable a people to enter into this life where God's person is the central focal point, where God's will is the one consuming desire, where God's glory is the incentive, the motive of all that I do even down to what? "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." Paul said that the purpose of redemption was to take the most common acts of eating and drinking and make them sacred by this motive: the glory of God. If that's to be true of eating and drinking, it goes without saying that this should be the only method, the only motive for which a man ever stands behind a pulpit. Dear preacher friends, don't ever make the pulpit a pedestal upon which to parade your flesh and your intellect and your abilities. Don't do it. It's wicked.
Jesus died that we might have life. What kind of life? A life in which God's person is all-absorbing, a life in which God's fellowship is our longing, a life in which God's will is our delight, a life in which God's glory is our motive that underlies all that we do and are, a life in which God's likeness is reflected in us. "For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son." Jesus said, "I must go and die." Why? "That I might have a people who reflect the very nature of My Father and of Myself." This is why He died. He died to purchase unto Himself a people to whom God Himself would be all-absorbing.
Now did He do this? Yes. He went to Gethsemane; He went to the cross, and He cried out upon that cross, "It is finished!" And in that death, what did He do? He satisfied the justice of a holy God that demanded that upon us should burn and break through all eternity eternal wrath. "Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." God's curse was upon us. And as long as the curse of God was upon us, the wrath of God burned toward us.
And may I say this, dear people, you've heard the little shibboleth, "God loves the sinner but hates the sin." That's not true. God hates the sinner. My Bible says in Psalm 5, "Thou hateth all workers of iniquity." "He that believeth not, the wrath of God abideth on him [not his sin--him]." I cannot disassociate myself from my sin, neither does God. Who does God send to hell? To whom does God say, "Depart from Me"? Not to sin, some abstract thing, but to sinners, men who have been rebels against Him. How can God love with perfect love and hate with perfect hate? I do not know, but it's not for me to know. Nor is it for me to adjust the Word of God to make it a little shibboleth that seems to answer the question.
Listen, you'll never know Holy Spirit conviction until you've seen yourself as an object of the pure wrath of a holy God, until you've taken the place of a condemned, guilty criminal. We're not to be pitied. We're to be blamed. Paul said after arraigning the whole human race before the bar of God in Romans 3, "that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God." It's a picture of the whole human race standing before the tribunal of God. And after the evidence of the law of God and the testimony of conscience and light rejected has been arraigned, everyone hangs his head as a guilty criminal and pleads guilty of the charge.
"Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." And so as long as the curse of God was upon us, God could not have a basis (I speak reverently) upon which He could enter the life and begin to work out His purpose. Here's this creature that has turned from Him, that has turned to his own way, to his own lust, to his own desires, to his own wisdom, to his own will, to his own passion. God wants to take that creature and make it a creature who will live to the praise of His grace, who will live in fellowship to Him and to His glory. But sin stands as a barrier because "Thou art of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity", the prophet tells us. John tells us: "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." And so in the death of Jesus, God has satisfied His own wrath, for we read in Galatians 3: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."
But now will you listen carefully. That cursing of Jesus Christ (you remember the secret of the cross) is found, not in what the Roman soldiers did and what the Pharisees did, but what God did. Isaiah 53 tells us: "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." "He [God] hath made Him [Jesus] to be an offering for sin." "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him." Listen, when you look at the cross, see beyond the soldiers and the Pharisees and the scribes and even beyond the physical wounds until you see that here in the person of the Son of God, God the Father found His wrath binding its object in Him. So the Son of God said, "All of Thy ways and Thy billows are gone over Me. Thine arrows stick fast in Me." I'm quoting from the Psalms. "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Why art Thou so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? Our fathers trusted in Thee: They trusted, and thou didst deliver them.... But I am a worm, and no man."
What's the meaning of all of this? God is telling you how He feels about your sin. For if ever God was to be lenient with sin, He would have been lenient with sin when that sin was being borne in the person of His Son. But He brought down wrath unmixed with mercy. "He hath made Him to be a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangeth upon a tree." And now the justice of God has been satisfied. Jesus Christ has gone back to the right hand of the Father, and there He sits. And according to the hymn,
"By bleeding wounds, He bears received on Calvary. They pour effectual prayers; they strongly plead for me. Forgive him, O forgive, they cry, Nor let that ransomed sinner die. This is familiar ground to many of us. I trust our hearts are warmed as we consider it again. But now will you listen carefully. Why did God satisfy His justice in the person of His Son? Why hast Thou dealt with sin? Why has He made Him to be sin who knew no sin to be sin for us? That we might become the righteousness of God in Him? Yes. That we might have a perfect standing in Christ. We read in 1 Corinthians that He is made to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. But that was not an end in itself. God has given to every repentant believer who has been born of the Spirit of God a perfect standing in Christ. Why? That now He might begin to work in him by the Spirit the goal of that redemptive work, which is what? That God might now in the experience of the redeemed be all in all, that His will might be their absorbing desire, that His glory might be their incessant, constant, and burning motive, that His fellowship might be their greatest delight, that His service might be that for which they're willing to sacrifice and to toil and to deny themselves. God has given to those who are in Christ a perfect standing in heaven that He might by His Spirit begin to work in them and through them the very goal of His redemptive purpose that God might be all in all.
Don't you stop with a perfect record in heaven. If you're a child of God, God won't let you stop there. The Holy Spirit has come for what purpose? To make valid and real in the experience of the redeemed what Jesus died to purchase. And all that Jesus prays for at the right hand of the Father, that His own might be sanctified to the truth that they might be one, that ultimately they might be with Him and behold His glory. Get the beauty of this: what Jesus purchased with His blood and His death, what He prays for at the right hand of the Father, the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of the redeemed here on earth unto the praise of God. What a marvelous plan, what a marvelous working of our God so great salvation. God's purpose is that you and I might know what it is to have God all in all. And when redemption is complete, we read in 1 Corinthians 15 that even the Son in His place as Redeemer, in His place as the God-man who's worked out redemption--it says then even the Son shall be subject unto the Father that God might be all in all. And redemption's goal is finally obtained when God is all in all.
You say, "Brother Martin, you've gone a long way from the text, haven't you?" No, Jesus must die to bring this to pass. He must suffer, He must be killed, He must be raised from the dead. And now all is in readiness that God might work this out. But how is it going to be true of you? Let me be practical now. How can you come to the place, by the grace of God, where God's person is loved for what He is, served for what He is, where God's person becomes all-absorbing to you, where God's will becomes the most precious delight of your heart, where God's glory becomes the incentive and motive under girding all that you do, where likeness to God begins to be a vital experience, where fellowship with God is a constant reality? How can you enter into this kind of life that Jesus died to purchase? Verses 24 through 27 tell us. Having spoken of His death, Jesus then turns to His disciples and says, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it." These verses are vitally, organically tied in with verses 21 through 23.
Will you lay hold of this tonight? Will you asked God right now, "O Lord, open my eyes that I might behold wondrous things out of Thy law." Listen, Jesus said, "I must die, I must be killed, I must be raised from the dead. I must die if the creatures of God are to know the purpose of God in their lives. Now He turns to the creature and He says, in essence, "You must die if you're to enter into the benefits of My death." Now get this. Listen to what He says. Let's look at the text. "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."
What will that mean practically speaking? Verse 25 tells us. "For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it." To deny myself, to take up my cross and follow Him in vital spiritual experience, practically speaking, means this: I will lose my life. Not my physical life--I'll explain what it is. Let's get a hold of the words and then we'll seek to get an understanding. Practically speaking, Jesus said, "If anyone will come after Me, deny himself, take up the cross and follow Me, it will be a losing of his life." Now when you lose your life, what's happened to you? You've died, right? Now Jesus said this: "If you save your life, you'll lose it. If you lose it, you'll keep it." How do I lose my life? By denying myself, taking up the cross, and following Him. Jesus said, "Just as surely as I have to die a literal, physical death and taste the wrath of the Father in order to purchase this life, you must die in vital, personal, spiritual experience (not physical death) if you're going to enter into the benefits of My death. That's what He's saying here That's His teaching boiled down in a nutshell.
You say, "I don't understand it." Well, I trust God will help us to see it as we move on. But get the principle--let's look at it now phrase by phrase. "If any man would come after me...." Now get this: everything that God purposes to do in redemption, He does through the person of His Son as applied by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." God does not dispense any spiritual blessing apart from attachment to Jesus Christ. Now let me explain this. Failure to lay hold of this has produced untold confusion. Ephesians 1 says, "[God] hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." The Lord Jesus Christ is God's reservoir of spiritual blessing: forgiveness, reconciliation, adoption. All of these blessings are stored in Christ.
Now when do they become mine? I trust I'm not trying to be irreverent, but I want you to see this principle. God does not reach into the reservoir and take out a little bit of forgiveness and give it to a sinner. And then if he wants a little bit of holiness, reach in and take it out of the reservoir and give him a little bit of holiness. No, no. "[God] hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." Colossians 2 says, "Ye are complete in Him." Now listen, the only way God dispenses spiritual blessing is to unite a man to Jesus Christ in faith. And when he's united to Christ, then he becomes heir to everything Jesus purchased in His blood and everything the Holy Spirit wants to apply in his experience. Now that's not playing with words.
Let me belabor this just a minute. Here's a prince who goes from a kingdom where there's a very upright, moral, just king, a kingdom in which there is righteousness and peace, and there is full provision for all of his subjects. And this prince goes out to another kingdom in which there is nothing but poverty, squalor, filth, death, decadence, and need. And in this kingdom, he finds a young woman who captures his fancy. And he begins to unfold to this young woman the glories of his father's kingdom. He speaks of the tremendous amount of wealth in his father's kingdom and compares it to her poverty. He speaks of that in his father's kingdom by way of health and blessing that is in such contrast to the squalor and the filth. And so he unfolds to this young woman all that is in his father's kingdom. Then he says this: "If you'll give me your hand in marriage and you'll become mine, all that I fall heir to as son of the king will be yours on one condition: that you give yourself to me." She says, "O, I would love to get out of this terrible mess and squalor and filth that I'm in. I sure would love some of the beautiful things (and she begins to talk about them) in that kingdom. The prince presses the issue: "Will you have me? Will you have me?" And if she says no to the prince. She'll have none of that to which he is the rightful heir. If she will not have him, she will not have his blessings.
Listen, the natural heart can long for forgiveness if all forgiveness means is getting fireproof from hell to get into a heaven which is sort of a glorified twentieth-century America without unions and with income tax and without burglars in the movie shows. But listen, God does not give forgiveness apart from His Son. God does not give peace apart from His Son. God does not give any spiritual blessing apart from His Son. And if you'll not have Him on His terms, you'll have none of the blessings of God. "If any man would come after Me," Jesus said, "after Me, after Me." You see this?
Now what are the conditions for coming after Him, coming after Him thereby entering in the very purpose for which He died and rose again and sits at the right hand of the Father? Jesus said, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." Jesus said the first requirement of losing your life in order to find it and entering into a life in which God Himself is central, His will is precious, His glory the driving motive, His fellowship the precious delight, this life that I've repeated again and again, trusting that somehow God will somehow filter it down through by the Spirit and begin to lay it into the beams and fibers of our hearts. How can I enter into this life? Only one way. I must lose my life.
What does that involve? It involves, number one, denying self. Now what is self? "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself." What is self? What I am because of my roots in Adam and the rebellion of my own heart. It puts me at the center instead of God. That's what self is basically. 2 Corinthians 5:15: "And He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again." Every man apart from the supernatural grace of God basically lives for one purpose. Whether he's a drunkard or whether he's a deceived religionist, whether she's a harlot or whether she sits and rocks in a reading chair and reads the Bible but has never known supernatural grace, everyone of us by nature has this in common: "they that live should no longer live unto themselves." By nature, you are the focal point of your own life, your will, your thoughts, your wisdom, your desires. What does Jesus come to do? He's come to replace that, not patch on something to it, not to merely change the direction of self from bad self to good self. He has come to replace the whole focal point and foundation of our living from self to God. That's what He came for.
Now how can I come to enter this? I've got to come to a place where I deny self. And the word "deny" is strong. It's the same word used of Peter when there in the court and a young woman came to him and said, "You must be one of them. Thy speech betrayest Thee." It said Peter cursed and denied saying, "I know not the man." What did he do? He pointed to Jesus Christ and says, "I bear no identification with Him. I have no allegiance to Him. I do not want to be identified or associated or considered as one of His. I disclaim all devotion and relationship, I disclaim all attachment, I deny Him, I repudiate Him." Now God says, "If any man would come after Me, [he must repudiate self]." He must come to the place from the bedrock of the heart and turning from this principle of loving myself, pleasing myself, glorifying myself, serving my own will, serving my own end, accepting my own motives, and thinking my own thoughts. There must be a repudiation that is basic and bedrock and thorough, a denying of self. The mere loping off of a few sins will not do. The mere turning away from a few manifestations of self and then replacing it with more subtle ones will not do. There must be a dealing with the root--denying self.
You say, "Brother Martin, on what basis can I? This thing is so vicious, so strong, so alive. How can I know that if I repudiate if it, God will bring deliverance from it? Halleluiah, listen, this is the second aspect of the cross. For when Jesus died, not only did God judge my sin, but He judged me. The book of Romans, chapter 6 was written to unfold the blessed truth that when Jesus died, God judged not only this thing that we call sin ("His own self bare our sins in His own body upon the tree." "The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all"), but Jesus Christ so identified Himself with His own, and they are identified with Him, that when He died, we died. So the book of Romans, chapter 6 opens up and says,
"What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk [here and now] in newness of life."
Jesus died not to just give us newness of record, but newness of life. Get it? Not only newness of standing, but newness of experience. What is that newness? We read down, and God tells us by the Holy Spirit. Listen as I continue reading from Romans, chapter 6. "For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away [better translated 'that the body might be rendered inoperative or ineffective], that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin." My Bible says, "Knowing this, that our old man [not just our sins, but our old man, this natural self which has itself as its goal and object] was crucified with Him that the body [which is alive unto sin might be rendered in operative], that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin."
And what is the root of sin? Listen, it's this disposition to please myself in opposition to pleasing God, the disposition to honor myself instead of honoring Him, the disposition of gratifying myself instead of gratifying Him, the disposition to seek my own goals and aims and wisdom instead of His goals and aims and wisdom. And in the cross, this was judged, this was put to death. For what purpose? That henceforth I should no longer be its servant. 2 Corinthians 5 again: "And He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again." This is why He died.
And there's deliverance from the power of self through the cross so I can come to the place where I with God can agree with Him about what He says about self. "Lord, Thou hast judged it and put it to death on the cross, and so I judge it and put it where Thou hast put it." This is verse 11: "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin...." I don't go about and crucify myself. God has already done it. This is a historical fact. Now I must enter in vital experience and reckon it to be so and repudiate myself.
Now I want to be specific tonight. I don't want to deal with just theory. If you would know the purpose for which Jesus died, you must repudiate self, self as manifested in rival affections. In Luke 14, when Jesus saw a great multitude coming after Him, it says, "He turned, and said unto them, If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother...[He named the closest human ties of affection, and then He went even deeper and said] and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple."
How different from modern evangelistic methods. When the multitudes began to press, Jesus knew that people are most liable to deception. There is a psychological pressure in masses. I sat a few years ago when I was in high school at an army football game in Yankee stadium in New York when I used to live near Connecticut (I don't remember exactly when it was now), and just seeing those cadets come out in that block of 14 square (whatever it was) and marching across there and sitting amidst thousands of people, there was an emotional stirring. It made me just want to do something. I didn't care what, just something. You know what I'm talking about. You get in a crowd of people, and there's something about the pressure of a mass movement. Jesus recognized that if there was to be deception, here was the place at which deception was most liable to enter the hearts of men. So what did He do? Encourage the deception by saying, "Thank you, thank you all for coming. You're all mine, and you're all in the kingdom"? No, He turned and said,
"Now wait a minute. You count the cost. Right now it's popular to follow Me, but in a little while I'm going to die. And I'm going to bring in My train of host of men and women who will be willing for My sake to seal their testimony in their blood. Listen, I'll not tolerate any rival affection. You come to me with a heart that is unwilling for Me to occupy a supreme place above father and mother and your own life also, you can't be My disciple. I will not tolerate rival affections."
Dear ones, human love can be a precious gift from God, but it can become a vicious idolatry. When the desire to please any creature goes beyond the desire to please the Creator, that person has become an idol. When the joy derived from the presence of any individual is deeper and more vital than the joy derived from the presence of God, that person has become an idol. When the desire to please any individual is more intense and more deep than the desire to please God, that person has become an idol. Listen, by nature, the human heart is full of idols. Jesus said you must repudiate self. Self--what aspect is this? The idolatry of human friendships must be repudiated. Jesus Christ must take the place of absolute sovereign and absolute and soul object of affection.
You say, "Boy, then it means I'm going to hate my wife." No, the man who knows Christ as the supreme object of affection is most tender and loving in the love of his wife, for he loves her with a pure love unmixed with selfish idolatry. And when he must exhort her concerning her own good because his love for his Lord is deeper than his love for his wife, then for her good, he loves her with a pure love that will exhort her lovingly and tenderly, will not overlook her faults. We're to love our wives as Christ loves the church. How? He nourishes and cherishes it. And part of His nourishing and cherishing is His chastising, "for whom the Lord loves He chastens." It's His comfort; it's His exhortation. Now you see, love that is not cleansed of self is spineless sentiment. It isn't love at all. And you'll never know how to love your wife (this is intensely practical) until you repudiate self (rival affection).
Secondly, any moral perverseness. We read in Colossians 3:5: "Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness...." And then Paul goes on to say, "Put off anger, wrath, malice." And the verb used here is a decisive verb: "Put to death." Don't dilly dally with this thing. Don't go around and just pick at them and try to tolerate them and have a little peaceful coexistence with them. God says come to a place of brutal dealing. "Put to death therefore...." And how do I do this? By a repudiation of self, recognizing that these moral perversions, whether they be anger, wrath, malice, uncleanness of thought or desire, whatever they be. Those things were judged at the cross. And God says put them to death, knowing that our old man and all of its manifestations was crucified with Christ. All moral perverseness must be put to death. No man or woman will ever know the life in which God is all in all who tolerates any known sin. I did not say whoever experiences sin. I said whoever tolerates sin.
I do not believe that there is such a thing as sinless perfection, a sate to be arrived in this life where it is no longer possible to sin and whereby temptation is no longer real. No, I don't believe any such a thing. I believe some folk who say they believe that, earnest, Godly people (and if there are any present, I'm not knocking you tonight. I love you), but you probably have a more limited definition of sin than what the Word of God has. If you mean by sin deliberate, overt, willful acts of rebellion, knowingly, deliberately, resolutely, premeditated, I believe with all of my heart God can bring us to a place where we do not deliberately, willfully, knowingly, premeditatedly persist in sin. In fact, if we do, we have good evidence to believe we are not His, for "Whosoever is born of God doth not [practice] sin [habitually, deliberately, willfully, premeditatedly]." But there is such a thing as having that heart attitude whereby the moment conscience has been made aware by the Word of God and by the Spirit of God that there's the presence of sin, and I do not tolerate it. The moment there is awareness, there is heart repentance and brokenness and confession and putting aside. "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself." Self manifested in rival affections, moral perverseness.
Thirdly, self manifested in carnal ambition: me, mine, and ours. God says you must repudiate that. Come to the place where there's that desire for nothing but the will of God to be accomplished.
Fourthly, there must be a repudiation of self as manifested in perverse motives. Let's be done with this idea that we can use God and make Him a servant boy. Be done with this idea that God is our servant. And when we need something, we an clap the hand and God serves us. No, we were made for His service, not He for ours. I venture to say there are some of you tonight whose only concept of God is sort of a divine conductor and a train that goes to glory. If that's your only concept, dear friend, you're not on the way to glory.
Deny self. And how does self manifest itself? By making God its servant, asking God to bless me for my sake and for my reputation and for my name. No, no. Be done with all of that and come to the place where you know from the depths of your deeps of your being your only motive is that God might be glorified in you and through you. And you're committed to that purpose. And anything you ask of Him, you ask for that purpose. You've got no grounds for believing your prayers will be answered under any other conditions. Listen, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do that the Father may be glorified." You can't just tack that on your prayer if that isn't woven into the warp and woof of your heart.
Unless you've repudiated self in the realm of these pernicious, evil motives of perverse desire to use God and make Him sort of your benefactor who blesses your family and helps your home--yes, God does all of these things, but He does them for those who come to the place where they long to be and to do all that they do for His praise. When they ask God to meet their needs, it is that He might be praised, When they ask God to touch the little child, it is that He might be praised. When they ask God to protect the family, it's not merely out of a carnal, animal fear of harm. The animal has this. The animal has no capacity to seek protection for the praise of his creator. He has no soul. God made us that in all that we ask of Him, the motive might be to His praise.
Some of you would have a real Gethsemane if you come to the place where you let God deal with your perverse motives. This perverse, selfish motive runs through the warp and woof of much of your experience. And if God begins to lay it bare to you, it isn't going to be pleasant. But this is the only condition upon which I can know how to enter into that right which He provided. Then there must be death.
There are other things I could mention. I want to mention one more: a repudiation of fleshly wisdom. What did Paul say? "The wisdom of God is foolishness with men, and the foolishness of God is wiser than men." Isaiah 55:8-9: "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth [they are a whole different plane], so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." God's thoughts are not just more of ours. We have a little wisdom; God has much. Just like at the beginning of a triangle moving out this way, God's wisdom is a lot more than ours. No, no, God's wisdom is on a whole different plane. And God takes the foolish things to confound the things that are mighty.
Listen, we're cursed in the church today with the wisdom of man seeking to do the work of God, and it can't be done. The reason there's so many carnal methods and unscriptural and ungodly practices in the church of Christ today is because self in its own wisdom has not been repudiated.
Let me illustrate it. If you tell men that they are rebels against God; if you tell men God hates them with holy hatred in their sin; if you tell men they can never become the children of God until they repent and turn from sin and submit to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you'd never get any converts. So what's happened? They have a positive approach to the Gospel. "The Bible says you're a sinner. Will you believe it? Now remember, you did some bad things as a child." "O yes, I remember that." "Alright, but don't get too upset. We want to comfort you. Jesus loves you." "That's wonderful. I did bad things and Jesus loves me." "Now all you've got to do is believe that Jesus died on the cross for you, and you'll be saved and go to heaven when you die." Then the line to that man once he's thought of heaven, I've said it before; I repeat it. It's a materialistic, heathen concept of heaven. Streets of gold, gates of pearl, no sickness, no unrest, no fear. He has no thoughts of heaven where God is all in all, and where there is righteousness and holiness and purity and worship. His only concept of heaven is a materialistic concept. And so that man is brought in, makes a profession, is called a child of God, and is incorporated into the work of the church on the basis of fleshly, uncrucified, carnal wisdom. And we're cursed with this. Some of you are the products of this. Beloved, I'm not being unkind. My heart bleeds.
What's God's way of saving souls? God's way is for His Word to be preached in its fullness, not just a few verses here and a few verses there wrenched out of context and formulated into a little formula and then presented again and again. Preaching the whole counsel of God is the job of His servants, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. And I've seen God bear witness to it when the terrors of God's holy law are held over the heads of men. And when men know that God hates them with holy hatred in their sin, they come trembling and cry out, "What must I do?" Then the Holy Spirit causes the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to dawn upon the smitten soul, and they're wonderfully transformed by the grace of God, and they become new creations in Christ, attached not to the personal worker or the preacher but to the Living God. And they rise from thence to love Him and to serve Him and to pant after Him and to glorify Him.
"If any man come after Me, he must [repudiate fleshly wisdom in the matter of saving souls, fleshy wisdom in what's good for the church]." People say, "Well, if we get too strong, we'll offend people." Ah, listen, fleshly wisdom, fleshly wisdom--we must repudiate it. Now I want to ask you tonight, dear people, are you at the place where you're ready to repudiate self, self as it shows its ugly characteristics in tolerating rival affections, tolerating moral perverseness, carnal wisdom opposed to the wisdom of God, carnal ambition?
"If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and [secondly] take up his cross." This is a beautiful picture. Here Jesus has told His disciples, "I'm going out to die. And in my train, I'll bring with Me a host of men and women who are going out with Me." Living dead men (that's the picture), dead to their own ambitions and carnal wisdom and carnal desires, but alive unto their Lord who has captured their affections. "Take up his cross." Luke tells us: "Take it up daily and follow Me."
When Jesus announced His death, Peter moved in to say, "Lord, You can get Your purpose accomplished some other way." Get it now. Peter said, "Lord, be it far from Thee. Don't die. You can accomplish Your purpose some other way." Jesus said, "Get thee behind Me, Satan. There's no way to the accomplishment of the Father's purpose but through death." The minute you begin to set your heart to seek God and say,
"O God, I don't understand all that preacher talked about tonight, but I know this: I've never come to the place where I've seen the wretchedness of self, self-wisdom, self-desire, self-ambition. Lord, I want to see it. I know, in the light of what Your Word says, if I don't lose this lower life, I'll never gain the higher life. If I don't die to the lower life, I'll never enter into the higher life that Jesus purchased."
And the minute you begin to say, "There's no way but death, denying self," there will be a thousand Peters to rise up and say, "Be it not so, be it not so, be it not so." There will be the Peter of your own heart, your own flesh that will do anything but die. The flesh could be educated, cultured, Bible taught, but one thing the flesh will not do is die. But that's the one thing God says it's got to do. Culture the old man, dress him up, teach him Bible verses, teach him Bible stories, teach him to preach, teach him to pray, teach him to teach, teach him to do everything else, and he's blighting the church. And he's an old dead carcass of uncrucified flesh. God wants there to be the freshness of His own life. There's the Peter of modern evangelism that gets people in on no repentance. There's no structure, no undergirding foundation upon which they can be taught how to live unto God.
I speak to you young people. There's the terrible Peter of unspiritual advisers. Young people's work is cursed with this. They say, "O boy, look at that fellow, broad-shouldered football hero. Let's get him saved, and my what a witness he'll be." Fallacy! God will reach down and take a little hooked-nose, pimple-faced fellow that weighs a hundred pounds, get him so in love with Himself, get him so emptied of self that he doesn't want anything but Jesus. And God moves him into the school and he begins to open his mouth in the demonstration in the Spirit and power, and God works.
This whole idea to take a person who's popular and push him and set him up and make him an example--no, no, God says He takes the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty and to bring to naught the things that are that no flesh should glory in His presence. Unspiritual advisors--young people, listen, don't let anyone tell you God needs your talents. He doesn't need them. Don't let anyone tell you that you'd be a great boon and a great help in the kingdom of God. Your flesh is telling you that already. You don't need someone else to tell you that. God doesn't need you.
Does that make you uncomfortable? Does that stick a pin in the old balloon of pride? Hallelujah! I don't mean to be irreverent, dear ones. For somehow God could this truth through to us. Don't listen to the Peters who say, "You can enter into what Jesus provided in the cross any other way but through death." Death to self, death to self-interest, death to the rival of affections, death to the petty sins, death to the carnal lusts, death to the carnal ambitions, death, death, death! Only then will you know what it is to walk in newness of life.
Well, I trust we'll pray and ask God to make this truth clear to us. I don't know how well His servants can help so the Lord can get it through. But Jesus still says as He said back then, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever would save his life...." Alright, you want to save that self life? You want to save it? Alright, you're going to spare that self life with its own wisdom and own abilities and own thoughts and own ends and its own glory and its own desires? You want to save it? You say, "No, no, I want to keep it." Jesus said, "Alright, you save your life; you'll lose it, the life that I purchased for you. But if you lose that life and consign it to death, then you'll find the higher life for which I died to make you experience."
And if you're tempted to just cast this off and say, "O well, so what if I don't?" Remember what Jesus said to close this passage? He said, "One day I'll come to reward every man according to His deeds." What you do with this truth is going to meet you in the day of judgment. Don't forget it. This is not optional. I dare not close without mentioning that verse. Jesus tied that verse at the end: "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then shall He render unto every man according to His deeds." You spare this self life, you lose the life that Jesus provided. But if you're willing to consign this to death and look to Him who bled and died and rose again not only that your sins might be blotted out and that you might have a perfect standing in Him and have Him as your righteousness that He might become through His grace the object of your life and the goal of your existence; if you're willing to lose the lower life to gain this, one day you'll hear Him say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 15:23:06 GMT -5
Be Ye Doers of the Word by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message from radio broadcast
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In the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, our Lord Jesus speaking to the inner circle of His own intimate associates said, "Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he thinketh he hath." Take heed how you hear. Pay close, careful, and serious attention to the manner in which you attend upon the preaching and teaching of the Word of God in the ordinance of preaching. It is this clear command of our Lord Jesus that has formed the basis and framework for a series of some 14 messages preached over the course of the past several months, all of them culminating in our study today and, God willing, next Lord's Day morning, concluding this series of studies.
In the opening up and application of this very basic duty, we have considered how we are to take heed to our hearing of the Word of God under three major categories. We are to take heed to how we hear with respect to our preparation for the hearing of the Word preached or what we do prior to preaching. We are to take heed how we hear during the actual hearing of the Word preached. And thirdly, we are to take heed how we hear with respect to our actions subsequent to the hearing of the preaching of the Word of God. And it is this third area of concern that I propose to address in our final two messages this morning and, God willing, next Lord's Day morning.
I have suggested that there are four key words which embody, at least, the major Biblical directives relative to how to take heed to our hearing subsequent to the preaching of the Word. And these four key words are, "repetition", "supplication", "meditation", and "implementation". Having taken up the first three with you in previous messages, we come this morning and, God willing, next Lord's Day morning to this fourth essential element of taking heed to how we hear as that command focuses on spiritual activity subsequent to our hearing of the Word of God. No amount of repetition, supplication, or meditation has come to its proper fruition unless we are found implementing, that is, putting into practice what we have heard in the preaching of the Word of God.
Is it your duty; is it my duty actually to implement, to reduce to personal, practical obedience the truth heard in the preaching of the Word? Well, the answer to this negative example is a resounding "Yes! It is my duty." And failure to do so meets with the frown of God as it did in the days in which Ezekiel preached. In Ezekiel 33, we have the account beginning in verse 30 of the experience of God's professing people under the ministry of Ezekiel:
"And as for thee, son of man, the children of thy people talk of thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from Jehovah. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words...."
What more could you ask? What more could any preacher ask for than to know that throughout the week amongst all the houses of all his people, the topic of conversation was going to hear the preacher the next Lord's Day? That would be heavy stuff for those preachers, wouldn't it? And then to find that when the Lord's Day came, the parking lot was full and the pews were full, and the people were sitting there riveted, listening to the Word of God. You'd say, "Surely, any preacher would go home and fall upon his knees and say, 'bless be Your name, O God, for creating such widespread interest in the Word, such widespread hunger and thirst for the Word, such widespread desire to attend upon the Word. Blessed be Your name, O God'"
But Ezekiel had no such grounds to go home and fall upon his face and thank God, for listen to what the Lord says: "Though they do all of this: they come before you, they sit before you, they hear your words but do them not." It does not matter how much enthusiasm has preceded our coming to the place where the Word is to be preached. It does not matter how diligently we find ourselves to the place where the Word is to be preached or how attentively we give ourselves to listening to what is preached. If the heart is not engaged to implement the Word of God, we stand under the patent condemnation of the living God.
The duty of implementation is established first by this negative example so clearly articulated in Ezekiel 33, and then the negative example articulated by our blessed Lord in Luke's Gospel. We're trying to establish the duty of implementation as part of what it means to take heed how we hear subsequent to our hearing the Word preached and taught to us. The first negative example from the Old Testament, the prophet Ezekiel. Now the second negative example from our Lord Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6. In a section that has many parallels to what we commonly identify as the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 5, 6, and 7, toward the close of our Lord preaching similar themes, we read in verses 46 to 49,
"And why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? Every one that cometh unto Me, and heareth My words, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who digged and went deep, and laid a foundation upon the rock: and when a flood arose, the stream brake against that house, and could not shake it: because it had been well builded. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that built a house upon the earth without a foundation; against which the stream brake, and straightway it fell in; and the ruin of that house was great."
Here in this passage, our Lord is addressing a people who seriously and solemnly profess a saving and submissive relationship to Him. Look at the language of verse 46: "Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord...?" Now the precise significance of the double address "Lord, Lord" is difficult to ascertain. And the commentators, responsible, Bible-believing students of the Word differ, but this much is clear: these who address Him address Him with the language that points to the uniqueness of the identity of His person. "Why to do you call Me Lord? Why do you address Me as sovereign? Why do you address Me as Jehovah Jesus? Why do you call Me, why do you take upon your lips language that confesses me to be the Lord?"
By the double usage, it probably is underscoring that that is not the language of mere, what we would say, doctrinal acknowledgement of the uniqueness of His person. "For many shall say unto Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied...." You see, "in that day", the parallel passage in Matthew 7, anyone addressing the enthroned Lord in the day of judgment is acknowledging Him as the sovereign God who is disposing their eternal destiny. But here is not merely the language that underscores the uniqueness and the identity of His person, but "Lord, Lord" probably points to the language of professed, hearty submission to His authority. "You are not only objectively in Yourself the sovereign Lord, but I address you as my sovereign Lord, the ruler and governor of my life and my will." And that that seems to be the clear significance is found in the very question of Jesus:
"Why do you call Me, why do you address Me with language that acknowledges the dignity of My person and professes submission to Me as your sovereign, and you are not doing the things which I say? Why do you use language that, if it were an expression of reality, would find you in a pattern of universal obedience to Me? Not perfect obedience, but universal, detailed, meticulous, conscientious obedience. Why do you use in your reference to Me language that bespeaks a recognition of the dignity of My person and the rights of My government when the pattern of your life negates the profession of your lips?"
He then goes on to demonstrate that it's only those who come to Him, hear His words and do them whose religious construction likened to a house is the real thing. And when the floods and the streams of the trials of this life and the great trial of death and the ultimate trial of judgment to come, only such a man will be found to have built wisely and built well. All others who may come and who may hear and who may even give assent to the authority and wisdom and grace, but they do not implement with conscientious, meticulous obedience, they will be manifested as fools who built a structure of religious appearance and profession upon the sand of no grace in the heart. And the trials of this life, if they don't reveal it, the ultimate trial of the day of judgment will unveil it.
So I say, from these two negative examples, there is clearly established a duty of implementation, that when the Word of God has been expounded to us (and every part of it is the word of Christ, for it was the Spirit of Christ speaking in all of the Biblical writers through the Old and the New Testament as Peter informs us), when those words come to us, it is not enough that we are there when they are read and expounded and preached and taught. It is not enough that we hear them--and listen, according to Ezekiel's passage, even hear them with pleasure. Crunch time comes when what we hear, must do something with your foot, with your hand, with your eyes, with your ears, with your tongue, and above all, with your heart. And crunch time comes every time the Word of God is read, the Word of God preached, expounded, and applied. And if the pattern of your life and mine is not a pattern described in these words, "We come unto Him, we hear Him, and we do His words", God says our profession is the house built upon the sand. So I say implementation, dear people, is a duty established from these two negative examples.
And here we turn to the book of James, chapter 1. We had occasion to look in this chapter with respect to our duties prior to the preaching of the Word. Verse 21: "Wherefore putting away all filthiness and overflowing [or excess] of wickedness [or malice], receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls." We had occasion to point out that in preparation for the preaching of the Word, there should be renewed acts of repentance dealing with anything and everything in the spiritual gut that would keep us from properly digesting and assimilating the Word of God. We are to put away the filthiness and the overflowing of wickedness before we can hope to receive with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save our souls.
But our responsibility before the Word does not end with that preparation to receive it as we ought. James goes on to say in verse 22: "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves." And then he goes on to illustrate and to enforce that directive in terms of a common illustration of a man looking into a mirror and beholding his countenance, etc. But I want us to focus upon verse 22 which comes in a form that unmistakably lays before us the positive command to be implementers of the word that we have received with meekness in a prepared heart. And the first thing we note in the text is that it is perfectly possible to be a hearer only and not a doer, and in so doing, to make myself a deluded person. I can engage in activities which put me in the path of self delusion so that my assessment of myself is not according to reality.
If I came before you this morning with a fifty point outline seeking to persuade you that I was a long lost, undiscovered heir to the throne of the United Kingdom and that I ought to be there in Buckingham Palace as King Albert. The kindest thing I think most of you would say is, "Well, that trigeminal neuralgia that was bothering him this past week, I think has crept up into his brain, and he is deluded." And if I were to gather you next week and the elders even permitted such nonsense and give you another fifty points to try to persuade you, you'd still say, "The poor man is deluded." You see, no matter how much I might believe it, and no matter how many arguments I might marshal to my own twisted brain that convince me that I am King Albert, you'd say, "The poor man is deluded." Now listen to what James says: "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves." Do you want to be as deluded about who and what you really are as I would be if I were to claim to be King Albert? Then just get in a pattern of being a hearer and not a doer.
I spent the greater part of the time attempting to establish the duty. Now more briefly, I want you to consider with me the activity of implementation illustrated. If these texts have not persuaded your conscience, I'm convinced it's because you will not be persuaded. And to bring five more would not persuade you. You are willfully ignorant and willfully rejecting the testimony of God. Well, let's look at the activity of implementation illustrated in Psalm 119. When I tried to set before you what meditation was, rather than clog your mind with technical descriptions and definitions, we looked at some illustrations in Psalm 39 and Luke chapter 2. Well, I want to do the same with you. The activity of implementation illustrated. Psalm 119, this wonderful passage dealing with various aspects of the believer's relationship to the Word and law of God. Look at verses 59 and 60: "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies. [Now notice very carefully verse 60.] I made haste, and delayed not, to observe Thy commandments." Once he saw the discrepancy between the ways of God and his ways, he said, "I made a B-line to get my feet into God's ways without delay." Why? Because he knew that every moment of delay gave opportunity for his remaining sin to pump smoke and fog up into his moral consciousness.
Take heed how you hear, not only prior to and during, but subsequent to the preaching of the Word. Let there repetition, supplication, meditation, and all of it issuing in implementation. The duty established from the two negative examples, from the two positive commands. May God grant that we shall be the unnamed illustrations constantly living out the blessed realities that we've trafficked in this morning.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 15:28:02 GMT -5
The Fruit of Saving Religion by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached June 20, 1971
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The text I want you to consider is one that I've preached on once or twice in my nine years of ministry, and yet I want to turn to it again with no apologies because the Word of God is fresh, and new light has come to me in this text, or I have seen new light in the text. And one of the advices an old sage gave to young preachers was, "Don't be afraid to stay with the familiar and with those texts that God has blessed in the history of the church." Now the text is found in 2 Corinthians 5:17.
The context of this well-known text is Paul's description of his own experience as a Christian. He is speaking on the one hand of his confidence and expectation that when he's ushered out of this life into the life to come, he shall be ushered into the very presence of God. He says in verse 6, when we're present here in the body, we're absent from the Lord; if we're absent from the body, we're present with the Lord (vv. 6-9). And he says in the light of that, "I have one ambition: to be well-pleasing to my God because I know I must stand before Him" (v. 10). Then taking the suggestion of the thought of judgment, he says, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord in the light of the day of judgment, we're involved in seeking to persuade men of the truth of the Gospel." And he says, "As we do so, there are times when, as far as men are concerned, we are beside ourselves. They think we're crazy." And he says, "That's alright. In the light of the facts, let them think that, because I'm crazy in their eyes because of these great spiritual realities which mold and shape my life." He then moves from describing his own experience into this great statement of verse 17 in which he makes his experience illustrative of a general principle that is true of everyone who is a true Christian. So he argues from his own experience as a believer to the general principle true of all believers, and he says, "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new."
You'll notice in your Bibles that the "he is" is in italics, indicating that those words are not in the original. You have a very, very unique structure of words. Most of the time the Apostle Paul hangs one thought to another with connecting words. But here you have three abrupt statements: "If any man is in Christ...a new creation...old things passed away...all things become new." And in giving us this statement, which is illustrated in his own experience, the Apostle then generalizes and gives to us a description of what I'm calling saving religion. And so I want to title the message tonight "Saving Religion: What It Is, and Do You Have It?"
As we think our way through the text, consider first of all the essence of saving religion. If you boil it down to its irreducible elements, what is the thing that makes true Christianity unique from everything else that's a substitute? It's this: "If any man is in Christ." Union with Christ is the essence of saving religion. What then is the effect of saving religion? "A new creation." Whenever anyone is found in Christ, the effect of that union will be a new creation. That's the effect of saving religion. What then will be the fruit of saving religion? Well, he tells us: "Old things are passed away; all things are become new." And then someone asks the question, "How in the world does all this come to pass?" And in verse 18 in the first phrase, Paul gives us the root of saving religion: "But all things are of God." So you have, then, in this brief statement of the Apostle a beautiful digest, a symmetrical description of the heart of saving religion. And I want to press upon your conscience tonight saving religion, what it is, and then the question, "Do you have it?"
First of all, then, the essence of saving religion. "If any man is in Christ." This phrase "in Christ", as we've pointed out in our studies in Ephesians, is a key phrase in the New Testament doctrine of salvation. It occurs no fewer than some 150 times in the New Testament ("in Christ", "in Him", "in whom"). There are various shades of difference in the actual phraseology, but all of them pointing to this one pivotal doctrine that the essence of saving religion is nothing more, nothing less than vital union with the Son of God as He has been manifested as the Christ.
Now it's not without significance that Paul says, "if any man is in Christ." He doesn't say, "if any man is in Jesus." In other words, our union has peculiar and distinct reference to the Son of God manifested as Christ, that is, God's anointed Messiah, for the Greek word for Christ is the New Testament counterpart of the Hebrew word for Messiah. He is Jesus the Christ, the anointed One, the One appointed Mediator who has been constituted as a mediator in the offices of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king. And therefore, the only Savior whom God sets before sinful men is not the man Jesus. The only Mediator is the man Christ Jesus. But as a mediator, God sets us before Him as His Christ, as His anointed One. And in that office of His anointed One, He is Prophet to teach us, Priest to forgive us and to intercede for us, and King to rule over us. And therefore, bound up in that very word "Christ" is all that God has revealed about His Son as the pre-extent Word. John 1:1-3: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Everything revealed about Him as the virgin conceived Son of God: sinless, crucified, exalted to the right hand of the Father, God's anointed One.
Now it is Christ who is constituted as a mediator, the reservoir of all spiritual blessings. Ephesians 1:3 is a classic statement of this: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." Now again, that's not without significance. For it is as God's anointed One, God's appointed Mediator, that all spiritual blessing is stored up in Christ Jesus. So then, God does not parcel out some forgiveness. God does not parcel out some peace. God does not parcel out some justification and parcel out some sanctification without distinct reference to His Son. Rather, having constituted Him the reservoir of all blessing, He takes sinners and places them into vital union with Him. And found in Him, they have all those blessings: peace, forgiveness, justification, sanctification.
A beautiful statement of it, of course, is 1 Corinthians 1:30: "But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption." So the essence of saving religion, then, is this union with Jesus as the Christ, not Jesus as the man of Galilee, Jesus as the healer, Jesus as the teacher. No, no, the essence of saving religion is union with Jesus as the Christ, God's Prophet, God's Priest, and God's King. Therefore, where there is ignorance of the truth of Christ as the pre-incarnate Word, where there is ignorance of the truth of Christ as God incarnate, sinless, substitutionary in His death, mighty in His resurrection, glorious in His exaltation; where there is just some vague, nebulous, sentimental, existential movement of the heart to some Jesus, there is no saving religion. Saving religion must have some essential content of Biblical revelation, for "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Saving faith has this content to it, and the content is the revelation of the Christ of God.
So much, then, for the fact of this union, which essence is the fruit of saving religion. I've used the term "union with Christ". What is the nature of that union? Are we absorbed into the deity in some pantheistic way? No. The Bible gives us analogies. Now an analogy is not to be like an equal sign. If you say something is like something, you don't mean it is equal to. It's not identity, but likeness. And union with Christ is set before us in various likenesses, various analogies. The lowest level of analogy is that which Peter gives us in 1 Peter 2 where he says, "You are living stones built together into Christ to become a living temple." It's the union of one stone cemented to another stone in a physical structure, which together comprise the whole edifice. Then the concept of that union moves to a higher level when you move into Ephesians 5. There you have the union of a husband and wife where the Scripture says, quoting from Genesis, "The two shall be one flesh." And the Apostle Paul says, "This is a great mystery." And the longer one is married, the more one feels the profound insight of the Apostle's statement "The two shall be one flesh." They are still two, but they are one. Are they one, or are they two? Well, they,re both. And there's a union, you see, that rises higher than the concept of mortar holding together two stones. And then it arises perhaps to its highest expression in a passage like John 15 where Jesus said, "I am the Vine, and ye are the branches." There is a common life flowing through the vine and all the parts of that vine, the branches. And He speaks of "I and you" and "ye and Me." And the whole concept of union, then, is set before us under the figure of a vine and a branch, husband and wife, stones cemented together in a temple.
Now what can we extract from these analogies without pressing them to the place where we do injustice to the truth of God? Well, obviously, certain elements are very, very much in the forefront. First of all, there is the matter of the permanence of this union, even as the union between stones and a building. This is no temporary thing. Once cemented together, they are together as long as the structure exists. And so our union with Christ is a union of permanence. When we rise to the concept of the vine and the branches, we come into this whole matter of a sharing of life. The same life which flows through the main part of the vine flows out into the branches. And so our union with Christ is union of life. When we think of the union of husband and wife, it is union of affection, union of purpose, union of goal, union in the total perspective of the outworking of life. And so by these various analogies, the Scripture leads us to believe that the essence of saving religion is union with Jesus Christ that brings together these various concepts of permanence, identity of purpose, common life sharing.
So as you sit here tonight thinking you're ready for the exodus because sometime in the past, whether three months, six months, six years, or twenty years ago, you came and did something with reference to Christ, you made some profession of faith in Him, you made a "decision" for Him, and that thing that you did or said you did or believed with reference to Christ has not brought you into vital life-union with Him so that in some measure you can say that from that point till now, "For to me to live is Christ", my friend, you don't have saving religion. Your religion may have much of Jesus. It may have much of Christ in it. It may have much of the Bible and much of church. But if it falls short of vital union with Christ, it is not saving religion. "If any man is in Christ"--that's the essence of saving religion. And that union is constituted from God's standpoint by the indwelling of the Holly Spirit. 1 Corinthians 6:17: "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with the Lord." And then from the human standpoint, faith is the bond that cements us unto Him. And so the essence of saving religion is nothing less, nothing more than union with Christ, the Christ of Biblical revelation.
Now secondly, the Apostle tells us what the effect of saving religion is. Whatever this union with Christ is constituted, what is the effect? And it's as though the Apostle Paul in writing the text (for this is the force when you look at it in the original), picked up his pen, started to write, generalizing his own experience and the experience of all believers, and he says, "If any man is in Christ." (That's the essence of saving religion). Now he begins to think, "How shall I describe it? What has occurred when someone is in Christ? What words shall I use to describe the effect of this vital life-union with the Son of God?" He lays his pen down. His mind runs over all of the various pictures and analogies of spiritual life in the Scripture. Then the Apostle Paul says, "Ah, but there's one concept that will express it, one that will bring into focus the essential effect of saving religion." He picks up his pen, and without any connecting words, the ink is dried: "If any man is in Christ." Then he puts a dash and he writes the words "a new [creation]!" That's the force of how this thing reads in the original. It's as though you catch something of the Apostle's spirit as he considers the mighty effect of this union with Christ.
Why does he use the term "creation"? Well, I believe he uses it for two reasons, one of which we'll underscore our last point, the roots of saving religion. He first of all is indicating something of the magnitude of the change wrought by saving religion, and secondly, something of the source of the change wrought in saving religion. How great is the change when a man receives true, saving religion by union with Christ? Why Paul says it's nothing less than a creative work of God. O, he's the same person as far as his physical being is concerned. He doesn't get a new glob of gray matter. He doesn't get new arms, new hands, new feet, new nose. He might like new everything in all of those departments, but he doesn't get it. He's still the same person.
Paul gets up in the morning after Damascus and looks in the mirror-- same nose, same eyes, same bald head and all the rest if what tradition tells us is true. And yet he says, as he contemplates what happened to him and looks himself in the mirror, "Paul, you're not Paul. You are but you aren't. You aren't but you are." In other words, he was conscience of this change that made him a man described in 2 Corinthians 5 whose ambition is to please God, whose ambition is to be with Him, to look upon His face, whose whole lifestyle is governed by compassion to souls of men, constrained by the love of Christ. And He says, "There's only one reason why I'm like this. And there's only one reason why anybody's like this. Almighty God has put forth creative power."
The significant thing about any work of creation is that something is introduced from the outside that isn't there before the creative act is performed. That's the significant part. When God creates something, He brings something into being that was not there before. And so the Apostle Paul says the effect of saving religion is a new creation. God doesn't come and take the old creation and merely refine it with a little bit of Jesus and God and the Bible. He doesn't come and take the old creation and simply redirect it into new channels. No, no, He makes a new creation.
According do Galatians 6:15, nothing else in true religious experience matters, for there the Apostle takes some of the most sacred religious rites of the old economy, and this is what he says about them: "For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new [creation]." Notice how different is the emphasis. He didn't say circumcision is nothing or uncircumcision is nothing, but the making of a decision. That's the way modern evangelicals would have written the thing. They would say the important thing is not whether you're baptized, but if you've made your decision for Christ. Paul isn't concerned about your decision for Christ. He said nothing matters--circumcision, uncircumcision, decision, no decision. What matters is this: has Almighty God made you a new creature? That's what matters, for "if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature." That's the essential element.
So often we hear quoted Ephesians 2:8-9. But you can't understand them if you wrench from verse 10. Certainly it is "by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." Now Paul says behind that salvation by grace through faith which has come to you Ephesians is this: "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works." There you have union with Christ and the new creation fused together as we have them in this text. And so as clearly as the text teaches that the essence of saving religion is union with Christ, so it teaches that the effect of saving religion is a new creation.
Ah, but someone says, "How can I tell if I have union with Christ and have been made a new creation? Well, you can tell from the fruit. And so the Apostle Paul answers that problem for us and says if there is union with Christ, the effect of which is a new creation, the fruit of that new creation and of that union with Christ will follow. And he describes it in this way: "The old things have passed away and [literally speaking] things have become new." It can't be the old becoming new. They passed away. If something passes away, you don't make it new. It's gone. And so he says, "The old has passed away; things have become new."
I usually don't introduce Greek lessons into our study of Scripture, but there is a beautiful subtlety of tenses here that really makes the backbone of this part the message. And so I do want to just introduce a little something if I may take that liberty. The tense he uses for "the old has passed away" is the tense that has the concept it's done once and for all. And he says, "The old has passed away." A beautiful statement of the radical transformation of the new creature in Christ Jesus. And then when he says things have become new, he uses a tense which means something started at a given point and it continues until now. The old has passed away once for all. The new has been introduced and abides. But you say, "What about the imperfections?" Listen, the imperfections are just some of the imperfections of the new. The old is passed, and as new men in Christ, we are not perfect new men. We are imperfect. But he says the fruit of saving religion is that there has been this radical transformation. The old things have passed--decisive breech and change. Things have become new.
Now looking in the general context, what are some of the old things that have passed away by virtue of union with Christ and by virtue of becoming a new creation? And remember, this is not some extra special thing for extra special advanced saints. I remember one time in a series of meetings years ago preaching for a whole week on this text in a church down in Pennsylvania, and there was a sweet little teenage girl sitting there listening to the messages. And it became obvious that she was beginning to get distressed. And her distress was such that she sought out the preacher after a service one night to ask a question. She couldn't assail the exegesis of the text; she couldn't fight the Bible, but her question was this: "Mr. Martin, is that kind of Christianity for everybody?" You see what her problem was? When she saw what the essence of true, saving Christianity was, she was hoping, "Well, that's fine and nice, and I can't argue with that (it's in the Bible), but maybe God will accept some kind of secondhand experience." My friend, there is no secondhand experience. "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new."
Well, what has passed away? What has become new? Well, let me suggest just three things tonight. We could work out many more from the context and then ranging far and wide in the rest of Scripture. But first of all, the old position has passed; a new has come. Secondly, the old purpose has passed; a new has come. And thirdly, the old pathway has passed away; a new has come. What is the old position? When we are in a state of nature (we have not yet been joined to Christ in true saving religion), what is our position before God? Well, the Apostle very clearly indicates what that position is later on in this very chapter. For notice, after stating in verse 17, "If any man is in Christ, he is a new [creation]," he then goes on to say, "But all things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ." In other words, before we are made a new creation in Christ, before we are joined to Christ, we are in a state of alienation from God, not reconciled face to face, but alienated in our state of sin. And in that condition of alienation, we are under the wrath and the judgment of Almighty God.
We do not have a righteousness that is acceptable before God. And so our position is that terrible position described in Scripture as under the wrath of God. In fact, Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we are by nature children of wrath. We come into this world in a position which finds us exposed and liable to the judgment of a holy God. And that position of judgment is unaltered by anything less than vital union with Jesus Christ. That's why the Apostle Paul uses the phrase in Ephesians 1:6 "We are accepted in the beloved One." And in this very passage, the latter part of chapter 5, he says, "Him who knew no sin, He made to be sin on our behalf that we may become the righteousness of God in Him."
May I ask you a very personal question tonight? What is your position before God? Are you reconciled to God through Christ? Is the righteousness of God in Christ your possession? If you say yes, then my question to you is, have you come to that possession as Paul did through union with Christ? And if you've been joined to Christ, you're a new creation. Therefore, if you claim to have the imputed righteousness of Christ and yet your life does not indicate that you are in vital union with Christ, there is no identity with His person in love and in devotion; there is no knowledge of Him as the Christ of God, dear friend, you're utterly deceived as to your position before God. If you are accepted in the beloved, you are accepted as a new creation, one who is in Christ Jesus. Blessed be God if we are in Christ, if we are a new creation, the fruit of that relationship is that old position of condemnation, alienation, wrath is past. All things have become new.
But then the old purpose has passed away. What was Paul's basic purpose in life before he was brought into union with Christ? What is your basic purpose if you're not in union with Christ? Well, look at verse 14: "He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves." There is no more profound description of the basic purpose of life in every person who is not joined to Christ than these three little words: "live unto themselves". What does it mean to be a sinner? It means that your purpose in life is basically it this: to live unto yourself. You've made yourself the goal of your existence. Your happiness, your pleasure are the things which you seek. Your idea of right and wrong are the rules by which you live. What pleases you becomes the bar of judgment between what you do and what you won't do. You live unto yourself. Self is the goal of your existence.
Now in some people that manifests itself in a life that even worldlings call a wicked life. Some man to please himself, if he's a business man, may run roughshod over all his competitors. He may be guilty of all kinds of dishonesty and chicanery. And his basic goal is he wants to accumulate money because that pleases him. And living unto himself, he openly flaunts any kind of sense of rightness and equity and sensitivity. And so we look at that man and we say, "He's a sinner." But you see, the person who is kind and gentle and sweet and loving and faithful to wife or husband, a good mother, a good father, there's no basic difference if they're not joined to Christ. For the reason they are loving and kind and gentle does not have reference to bringing glory to God. It does not have reference to living such a life out of regard for God's precepts unto His glory in the strength of His own Spirit. It's simply a matter of genes which determine the temperament, proper training and other influences in the realm of common grace. They just happen to be a nice person. But when you dig beneath the external differences between that crooked businessman, that harlot or that lecher and that nice, sweet person who has never been joined to Christ, the substructure of life is exactly the same--living unto themselves. And that's the height of human wickedness.
You were not made to live to yourself. You were made to live unto Him who made you. You were made to find great delight in acknowledging that He is God and that He made you, and that as God, He has a right to govern you, and that as God, all that you have should ultimately issue in the praise and the honor of His name. But Paul says the fruit of saving religion is this: that old purpose, living unto self, has passed away; a new purpose has been introduced. Look at it (the last part of the verse): "that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto [the church? but unto the standards of Mom and Dad? but unto an artificial code of conduct imposed by society? No, but unto] Him who for their sakes died and rose again."
That new purpose which is always the fruit of saving religion is nothing less, nothing more than living unto Christ. And what does that mean? Well, simply speaking, it means this: that the will of Christ as found in the word of Christ becomes the governing principle of my life. "Lord, what will Thou have me to do?" That's why Jesus said the mark of His sheep is they hear His voice. It means, in the second place, not only that you receive direction for life from Christ, but you carry out those directions with reference to pleasing Christ. Look at verse 9 of this very chapter, one of the very things that led Paul to write this. He said,
"Wherefore also we make it our aim [when people are aiming at something, there's concentration, whether it's a man aiming his bow, aiming his gun. I don't care what it is. Aiming at something is a focused, concentrated activity. Paul says we make it our aim. We're shooting at something in life. And what is he shooting at?], whether at home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto Him."
What are you shooting at? What are you aiming at? I don't mean what are you doing like the drunken cowboy going through town at 3 in the morning with his six guns blazing, not aiming at anything, just shooting, having a great time. No, no, he says, "We make it our aim to be pleasing unto Him." This is the purpose that dominates the new creature who is in union with Christ. There is that precise aim to please the heart of the One who died and rose again.
May I ask you again a very simple yet pointed question? Is that the conscious focus of your life? Is that the purpose which dominates and shapes and molds your life? Let me make the question a little more pointed. Is the purpose which dominated and molded your lifestyle from June 13th last Sunday to June 20th today in the home amidst all the pressures and responsibilities of being a mother and a wife, a husband and a father, earning the bread and all the rest? You kids, amidst all the things that you've done this week (some of you with school out), your playing, your interaction with brothers and sisters and your time at the table and in the playroom and in all the areas of life, has this purpose been the substructure of all that you've done? Have you been consciously aiming at pleasing Him? I don't ask if you hit a bull's-eye everyday, but is this what you were aiming at? You see, you don't aim at something unconsciously. If you're aiming at something, it is a conscious experience. I want to press that on your conscience almost relentlessly because I fear some of you will be tempted to slough it off as just another part of the sermon. My friend, the reality or the lack of reality of your professed Christianity may pivot on an honest answer to that question. "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away [not only the old position of condemnation and guilt giving way to the new position of acceptance and reconciliation, but an old purpose, living unto one's self, radically transformed to a new purpose, living unto Him]."
Mark first of all, as we've seen, by receiving directives from Him, by consciously seeking to be pleasing to Him, and thirdly, desiring that in all things He may be glorified. For whatever blessing comes to us or through us, whether you eat or drink (the most mundane activities), whatsoever you do, do all to the glory, to the praise of God. "He has saved us," Peter says, "called us out of darkness into light that we should show forth the virtue of the One who has thus called us out of darkness into His marvelous light." Is that the purpose of your life, not theoretically but practically? What's your answer? I plead with you to answer as honestly in the court of your own conscience as you'll be forced to answer in the day of judgment. Is that your purpose? If you're a new creature in Christ, it will be because Paul says, "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new." Now that purpose is not perfectly accomplished (I said you don't always hit a bull's-eye. Sometimes you may completely miss the target, and there may even be times when you lay your gun down), but the overriding drift and bent of your life has been radically transformed according to verse 15: no longer living unto yourself, but living unto Him who died and rose again.
So you see, on the one hand, this slays the idea that one can be in Christ by virtue of His profession of faith or by virtue of his Godly nurture and have no radical difference in his life (it's foolishness). And on the other hand, it slays the idea that you can trust in Christ and yet not be radically transformed by Christ. There will be the new purpose, and then that in turn will give birth to the new pathway: "If any man is in Christ, : the old things are passed away [not only the position and purpose, but the pathway that you walk, for your purpose determines your pathway]." If your purpose is to go up into New England as some of our people did this past week on vacation, then the path, the road you choose will be governed by your purpose. And so if your purpose is to live unto Him, the path you choose will be governed by that purpose.
Now what is the old pathway that we walk? Well, it's described in vivid detail in passages such as Ephesians 2. Listen to Paul's description of the pathway that all of us walk before we are new creatures in Christ:
"And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins, wherein ye once walked according to [this was your pathway] the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind...."
You know what Paul says our pathway was? It was a pathway laid by the accumulation of our natural desires, the lust of the flesh and of our mind, that is, the bodily appetites which craved for satisfaction. When they cried out, we listened to their cry, even though to heed their cry meant to trample under foot God's law, God's precepts. He says "That's alright." Whatever course the passions of our flesh dictated, we fulfilled them. And then he said there was a lust of our minds. When our minds dictated that we should think in certain directions, even though we had to, as it were, fly into the face of divine revelation, we fulfilled the desires of the mind. The mind has fallen along with the rest of man's being, and it's lusts and desires have become inordinate. And Paul said the path we walked was made up of the stuff of fleshly passion, of mental depravity. And then he says thrown into that was the overriding and the under girding influence of the very devil and evil spirits, "the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the sons of disobedience." Thrown in some of the other construction material, he says is the very course or the very spirit of this age--what John says is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. That was our pathway, and that's the pathway everyone of you walks by nature. That's the path I walk.
But "if any man is in Christ, : the old things are passed away." That pathway is gone, and there is a new pathway. And what is the new pathway? John contrasts it by saying, "The world passes away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." The new pathway is doing the will of God so that now I gratify my natural physical appetites in subordination to the revealed will of God. I discipline my mind to function within the revealed will of God. I refuse to think any thought that means I must contradict divine revelation just as much as I refuse to walk in paths that mean I must violate divine precepts. No longer is my pathway determined by the spirit of this world, which says, "Be this kind of a man. Be that kind of a woman. Let this be your goal." No, no, Paul says, "God forbid that I should glory save in the Lord Jesus Christ by which the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." He said, "The world doesn't dictate my pathway. The world and its standards and its goals have no more power over me than a crucified man upon a cross. I don't hear him, I don't submit myself to him, I have no attachment to him. The world is crucified unto me."
I would ask you as you sit here tonight, do you have this fruit of saving religion? Has the old pathway passed? Can you say with judgment day honesty,
"Thank God, my path is no longer framed by bodily appetites alone, by mental appetites, by the world, and by the devil. But the path that I walk by the grace of God is framed by the Word of God. And I walk in the power of the Spirit of God, not perfectly, sometimes more effectively than others, but thank God, that's the path I now walk."
Can you say that? If you can, you shouldn't have trouble with assurance, for you never have the fruit of saving religion without the root. And if you have a new pathway and the old is passed, and that pathway flows out of a new purpose, the old is passed. And that new purpose is the fruit of your new position ("accepted in the Beloved"), and the old is passed. The only reason you have the fruit of saving religion is because you have the root. Old things pass away only if men are new creatures, and men are only new creatures if they're in Christ. So you who have trouble with assurance can argue from the fruit back to the root. But there are others of you who ought to have trouble with assurance because you claim to have the root but you don't have the fruit. You've got no right to believe you're in Christ. Why? Because you're not a new creation. And what's the evidence you're not a new creation? The old things have not passed. It doesn't say they ought to pass, it's good if they pass, they will eventually pass. If you're in Christ, the very virtue of that mighty work of God has caused the old to pass, and the new has emerged.
Then we close with just a brief consideration of the first phrase of verse 18. It's as though someone says, "Yes, Paul, when saving religion comes to a man, when there is this new creation, when there is the effect and the fruit of this, where should we look in giving the praise? And if we don't have saving religion, where shall we look in order to get it?" And he points us in the right direction: "But all things [and in the context, the 'all things' are the things that he's been referring to in verse 17] are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ." And so Paul who gives us the essence of saving religion (union with Christ), the effect of saving religion (a new creation), the fruit of saving religion (this new position, new purpose, new pathway), now tells us the fruit of saving religion: all things are of God.
Someone has said, and I believe wisely said, there are only two kinds of religion in the world. There's the religion of free will in which what you do makes the difference and in which what you have done becomes the point of glory. The other religion is the religion of free grace in which what God has done makes the difference, and in which what God has done becomes the focus of our praise and our glory. And there's only two religions in the world: free will and free grace. Now you've got all kinds of different names for both, but there are only two. And this is not just oversimplification. If you check into the heathen religions all the way to some of the refined so-called expressions of Christianity that falls short of the perspective that we've looked at tonight, at the core you will find this error: the difference between those who have true religion and false religion, according to them, is what you have done. And therefore, the testimony focuses upon what I have done and what I have accomplished. If you want to know how tragically this has affected much of so-called evangelical Christianity, just read the so-called testimonies of people who have been converted under this type of Christianity. Listen to them talk; ask them, "Are you a Christian?" And if they say, "Yes", say, "How did you become a Christian?" And then be prepared to have your ears inundated with the word "I". "I did this. I decided. I made a decision. I, I, I, I, I, I."
That isn't the way Paul viewed his conversion or the conversion of any true child of God. His language is Theo centric (God-centered). We see it in this passage: "If any man is in Christ...a new creation...old things passed away...all things become new." And it's if someone would say, "Yes, Paul, but didn't...." He shuts them up before they can open their mouth, and he says, "All things are of God." They flow out from Him in sovereign grace and in sovereign mercy. That's why when Paul describes his own conversion, he uses these words: "But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me." Who is doing the acting? Paul or God? He's focusing on the activity of God.
Look back to chapter 4 in this very epistle. He's describing the conversion of himself and the Corinthians. How does he do it? Look at verse 6: "Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." "Why are you a Christian, Paul?" He says, "God turned a light on. I didn't turn it on. He made the light and He flipped the switch." The same God who spoke into the black darkness of that primeval order and said, "Light", and out of darkness, light shined. No light in there, but light shined. Why? God created it. And Paul said, "That same God did something akin to that. In my poor sin-darkened heart, God did something."
So, in the root of saving religion, all things are of God. It's what God has done; therefore, God gets the praise. Saving religion is marked by this principle. And though men may not be accurate in what they say with their lips--and we must be careful here. Some of you who are young and immature will take a principle like this and go out and use it like a baseball bat and clobber the head of everyone you meet who maybe doesn't phrase his testimony accurately. Now God help you if you do that. Don't you blame that on me if you go out and leave bloody heads and say, "I learned that at the Trinity Baptist Church." You didn't learn to go around bloodying up heads with theological baseball bats. You didn't learn that here. Just be careful--and I feel constrained to give that word of caution. But even in spite of that word of caution, if we view our salvation Biblically, then in spite of imperfect phraseology, it will break through that we are what we are because God put forth the arm of His power. All things are of God, that is, of the sovereign activity of the Father, and secondly, of the saving activity of the Son. "All things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself."
In closing, may I apply that principle to your conscience tonight? Does your professed religion have this perspective? In other words, is it the reflex response of your heart to say, "Whatever I know of true religion, whatever I know of Christ, whatever I know of being a new creation, whatever I know of my old position, my old purpose, my old pathway passing away and all things becoming knew, whatever I know experientially, this much I know: it is all of God." I'm not asking, "Have you learned to say those words?" That's easy. But have you be taught in your deep heart of hearts that this is true? Have you had sufficient acquaintance with your own native corruption and defilement, with your own blindness and love of sin that you know if God had not put forth His arm of power, it never would have been done. Have you been taught to say from the heart, "All things are of God"? When you look in the mirror like Paul did, ask yourself the question as he did, "How can I explain you, man?" He says, "There's only one way to explain me. God did something." When you look in the mirror, are you forced to say, "What I see and what I know of that person has no explanation but that all things are of God"? Or can you look in the mirror and say, "Well, whatever there is there can pretty well be explained in terms of genes, culture, self-helps, resolutions." Is that the explanation of your life? If so, my dear friend, you have something less than saving religion.
So I close where I began. Saving religion--what is it and do you have it? What is it? This text tells us. The essence of it is union with Christ ("If any man is in Christ"). The effect of it: a new creation. The fruit of it: old things pass away; all things become new. The root of it: all things are of God. Is that your religion? Children, moms, dads, visitors, friends, church members, is that your religion? If not, you better scrap it tonight and cry out to that great God who is still in the holy business of making new creatures. And cry unto Him that He would for Christ's sake have mercy upon you, that He would take out that heart of stone and give you a new heart, that He would be pleased to subdue your rebel will and bring you captive to His dear Son. O dear people, whom after a couple of weeks I'll not see for some six weeks. It's been the longest time in nine years that we've been away. I believe before God I have some genuine concerns that you have nothing less than saving religion. It may pass here, but it won't pass there. God help you to be content with nothing less.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 15:36:17 GMT -5
The Pearl of Great Price by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached November 19, 2000
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Now we turn again this morning to the Gospel of Matthew and chapter 13. And as I did two Lord's Days ago, I shall read selected portions from the 13th chapter of Matthew.
Verse 1-3: "On that day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side. And there were gathered unto Him great multitudes, so that He entered into a boat, and sat; and all the multitude stood on the beach. And He spoke to them many things in parables...[and then there follows the parable of the soils and the sower]."
Verses 10-13: "And the disciples came, and said unto Him, Why do You speak unto them in parables? And He answered and said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but whosoever has not, from him shall be taken away even that which he has. Therefore speak I to them in parables; because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."
Verse 34-36a: "All these things spoke Jesus in parables unto the multitudes; and without a parable spoke He nothing unto them: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world. Then he left the multitudes, and went into the house...."
Verses 44-46: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in the field; which a man found, and hid; and in his joy he goes and sells all that he hath, and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls: and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it."
Well, having been reminded from this very portion that if we are to understand the things of God, it must be given to us, let us come to the God who says ask and it shall be given unto you. Let us together ask.
Our Father, we would come acknowledging that apart from the present activity of the Holy Spirit illuminating our minds, we shall understand nothing aright from Your Word; we shall understand nothing in a way that profits our souls. We think of these multitudes who heard the very words of Truth incarnate, the One who said, "I speak not My own words, but I speak the words that My Father gives Me. The words that I speak are spirit and they are life." None ever spoke as that man spoke, and yet, our Father, we read that eyes were blind and ears were deaf. O God, have mercy upon us. Open our eyes that we may see wondrous things out of Your Word. Unstop our ears we pray, and come to preacher and people alike with illuminating life-giving, life-transforming grace and power in and through the preaching of Your Word. Hear us for Jesus' sake we plead. Amen.
Two Lord's Days ago we considered together the parable of the hidden treasure, the first of these twin parables found in Matthew 13:44-46. And these two parables are found in the midst of seven parables recorded here in Matthew 13. And they are often identified or described as the kingdom parables because the kingdom of God is the central theme of each of those parables, that kingdom which has come in the person and in the work and grace and power of the King Himself, even our Lord Jesus Christ. The passage read in your hearing, Matthew 13 and following, clearly teaches us that the parables were spoken by our Lord both to reveal in grace to some, but to conceal in judgment to others. They are both a revealing and a concealing tool of instruction in the hands of our blessed Lord. And while the other parables in this chapter convey some very vital lessons on such themes as how the message of the kingdom is received (the parable of the sower and the soil), the fact of the mixed character and the future perfecting of the kingdom (the growth and development of the kingdom is like leaven--it is like a mustard seed), it is in these two parables, the parable of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great worth, that we are taught something of the preciousness of the kingdom.
When the kingdom of grace draws near in the King of grace, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field and like unto a man seeking good or excellent pearls. Now because both parables teach essentially the same thing, some commentators and some preachers have expounded them in tandem. They did this because they felt it was either unnecessary or would be tedious to treat them separately as I am doing. Well, to those who have thought that way and think that way and act that way, I can do no better than read the words of a Scottish preacher and writer from the 19th century by the name of William Arnot. And he writes in his introduction to his separate treatment of "The Pearl of Great Price",
"So closely allied are these two parables that if we regard as repetition as a formidable blemish in our teaching, we would have not have proposed to expound them separately and successively. We would have at least put some time in between them lest people think we are guilty of absent-minded repetition. The two lines are coincidence or parallel throughout their whole link except at one point. But there the diversity is broadly marked amounting in one aspect to a specific contrast. In view of this difference on the one hand and the example of the Lord on the other, I think it right to open and apply the parable of the pearl as fully as if the parable of the hidden treasure had not gone before it.
"We need and get not only different pictures of the same objects, but also the same pictures repeated in different colors and on different grounds. One eye may be more touched and taken by this color and another by that, although the outline of the objects be in both cases essentially the same. Your eye may be attracted to red, and so the bird is outlined in red. And your eye turns to the red bird. Someone else is more natively and naturally attracted to yellow. And the same kind of bird and shape is depicted, but it's yellow. Your eye instinctively turns to the yellow. Here is a wise teacher recognizing that this is a fact of natural revelation. And in conveying the stuff of special revelation, God does not ignore what He has woven in the fabric of natural revelation. Thus the conception of a treasure found may convey the meaning of a more impressively to one mind. And the conception of a pearl purchased may convey it more impressively to another. And so, although the lesson of the second parable had been more nearly identical with that of the first than it is, it would not have been expedient to dismiss it with just a passing notice.
"By a full examination of the principle under the picture of a precious pearl, we shall obtain the advantage which in moral questions as in material operations is often unspeakably great, namely, that of a second blow upon the same spot. You're hammering on the rock at the same spot, and after the second or third blow, it begins to have a crack, and it's on it's way to being broken. The usefulness and even the necessity of this method is acknowledged by all teachers in whatever department they may be called to exercise their office. "The same reasons, moreover, which induced the Master to reduplicate His lesson, demands that we should also reduplicate ours. It is our part, both in the matter and in the method, to follow the steps of our Lord. He thought it good and necessary and wise to give us these twin parables, which in their essential lesson are identical. In one prominent difference, there is a very helpful lesson to be learned. But if the Lord Jesus did not scruple to say to His own disciples back to back the kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure; the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant seeking goodly pearls, we should submit to the wisdom and pattern and practice of our Lord."
Therefore, we take up the twin parable this morning, that older brother or sister of the parable of the treasure hid in the field. And we begin as we did with the previous parable with an explanation of the basic elements of the parable.
First of all, note the identity of the man. And when one reads the parables together, one is struck with a different focus right at the outset. Verse 44: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden...." The focus is immediately of a treasure hidden somewhere. This parable begins with the words "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant...." Like unto a treasure, an inanimate object; like unto a man that is a merchant. It is like unto a merchant, and this merchant is one who traffics in pearls. And the word used for merchant could be rendered "a wholesale dealer." It's the Greek word from which we get our English word "an emporium," the opposite of the emporus was a cupolas. He would be your common street vendor. He would be the retailer whose dickering in the bizarre or in the marketplace with pearls of various worth. But this man is a sure enough expert in pearls. He is a real gemologist who traffics not in cheap stuff, but he's a wholesaler who traffics in first-grade pearls. He is described as a merchant man seeking goodly pearls. That is, he's engaged in seeking to lay hold of pearls that are of unusually high quality.
This word for pearl or the word "pearl," used several times in the New Testament enables us to recognize that when our Lord spoke these words, the pearl was a gem of unusual worth. Because they did not yet know how to have cultured pearls (and there were all kinds of romantic and superstitious notions of how the pearl was formed in the oyster shell), the pearl is put right up there with gold and silver and precious stones. Two times in the book of Revelation, pearls are mentioned with gold and precious stones, one time included in the list of gold and silver and precious stones. When Jesus said, "Cast not your pearls before swine," He understood and knew that the average listener there on the hillside, when He spoke the Sermon on the Mount, would understand it to mean, do not cast that which is of extreme worth and precious (intrinsically worth much) before swine. So that's who the man in the parable is. He's a wholesale merchant who deals in first-class, first-rate precious pearls.
Now note the activity of the man. We're told three things about his activity. First of all, we are told that he was continually seeking these fine pearls. "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant [and there you have a present participle: continually in search of goodly pearls]." He didn't read one day in The Wall Street Journal that pearls were going to be the next hot ticket and say, "Well, I'll dabble awhile in being a pearl merchant and read a few books or go to a weekend seminar on how to distinguish pearls." No, this man had taken up pearls for his life. Here is a wholesale merchant that is constantly in a search for the highest grade pearls that are out there on the market. That's what our Lord says about his activity--continually seeking fine pearls, like a good diamond merchant who knows that there are diamonds and there are diamonds. Most of us with our untrained eye, we couldn't tell the difference. If it glistens and sparkles and looks nice, we would say that looks like a lovely diamond. But it takes a gemologist to take his eyepiece and look into that diamond and hold it in different lights. And he can grade it as to this, that, and the other. That's what this man was continually doing. Pearls were his business life. That's the first thing about his activity, continually seeking fine pearls.
The second thing is that in that activity, he comes upon one pearl of exceeding great value. Our text says, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant [continually] seeking goodly pearls [excellent pearls]: and having found one pearl of great price [of exceeding great worth]...." The only other use of this word in the New Testament is John 12:3 where it speaks of the ointment with which Mary anointed Jesus. And most of the translations describe it as ointment that is very precious. Now try to live out the seen. Your life is pearls, and you've become an expert in pearls of great worth. You're not dabbling in the stuff that is market ware junk. You're dealing with high class stuff, so your eye is trained to look at those characteristics. The moment you come up to a man's shelf where he has his pearls laid out, your eye can immediately distinguish those that are a cut above the others. And you discount the others and set your eye upon the excellent pearls. And one day in the course of doing that, someone with whom you are doing business spreads out his pearls, and before you is something that takes your breath away. And when the man's eye lights upon this, it's as though he's never seen another pearl. Its size, its shape, its luster--he comes close to it; he examines it and does everything with it that a pearl merchant who's an expert would do with his pearls. And he is so taken up with the exceeding great worth of this pearl that he strikes a deal with the merchant on the spot. And he says, "All that I possess for this pearl." And this merchant happens to know that back home this guy's got a 10-room house. He knows that he's got a vintage Corvette sitting out in his garage. He knows that in the display case in his family room (he was, when he was younger, a baseball nut), he's got one of the baseballs that Roger Maris hit out in Yankee stadium in the year when he had the record until Mark McGwire came along. And in there, he's got an original glove from Stan Musial. He's got all kinds of baseball memorabilia of tremendous worth. And this guy's been to his home, and he knows all that he's got. And he says, "Look, George, everything I have for this pearl." And George says, "Man, I know something of what he's got--that vintage Corvette, his 10-room house. It's a good deal for me." And this man who has found this pearl of exceeding great price is persuaded he's getting a bargain. So what does he do?
The next activity is described as selling all he possess and acquiring the pearl. Again, look at the text: "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking [excellent] pearls: and having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it." You see the verbs? He went, he sold, he bought. Here's a man who is a pearl merchant in first-grade, high-class pearls. Perhaps he had a safe deposit box in his local bank with the best of his good pearls. And people know at the bank when he comes in and asks for the safe deposit box, he's depositing one of those excellent pearls. His reputation is know throughout the community. And low and behold, he comes in on that Monday morning and says, "I want my safe deposit box. I'm closing up business with the bank. I'm going to put them all on auction this week." And they look at him and say, "What in the world has gotten a hold of you? Why, what's in that box is known by all in the community. Those are the best of the best pearls." He says, "Ah ha, no more. If you had seen what I've seen, what I'm determined to have, you'd know these high-class pearls are now second-rate pearls. I've found one pearl that's worth everything." And a notice goes up in his yard: "House sale next Saturday. All the contents must go." One day auction--everything liquidated. Look at the text, folks, "sold all that he had." Use your imagination. What would it mean to sell all that he had? He empties out his safe deposit box, sells his house, auctions off his vintage Corvette, and auctions off his baseball memorabilia. And he takes all the proceeds now converted into cash, and he goes to George the merchant and says, "Take my stuff, but give me the pearl." And maybe they write out a deed validating it was done. I don't know what the customs were. But the Scripture says, "Who having found it, he went, he sold, and he bought it."
Now these are the basic elements of the parable. The man is identified as a wholesale pearl merchant who was in the business of seeking only good, high-class, first-grade pearls finds this exceedingly rare and precious gem, and he goes, sells all that he has and buys it. Now that's an explanation of the basic facts of the parable.
Secondly, an identification of the central lesson of the parable. What is the central lesson? Well, here I have to do as I did with the other parable and state what it is not. Pastor Lamar has mentioned this on more than one occasion, and so have I. Reading commentaries is not only at times tremendously edifying and a humbling thing. At times it's a humorous thing. And you have to laugh at what sincere men think God put in His Word. And when we think of this parable; what is it's central lesson, let me state very simply and briefly what it is not. This parable is not intended to teach the kind of truth found in a passage such as Ephesians 5:25 and following: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it." There are some who say that in this parable, the merchant is Jesus and the pearl is the church. And Christ was willing to lay down His all that He might purchase us for Himself. Now that's a wonderful truth. That lies at the very heart of our hope. The Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. But dear friends, that's not in this parable. It's wonderful when people want to see Christ in every passage of Scripture. But when you put Christ where He didn't put Himself, you don't honor Christ. Alright. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls." The central truth of the passage is not a lesson on Christ seeking His people and giving His all for them.
Furthermore, it must never be used to teach that we can enter the kingdom by purchasing an entrance with money or by good deeds. Someone says, "Ah, but the text says, that having found, he went, he sold, he bought it. We can buy into the kingdom." Now there was a time when multitudes were duped by the horrible practice of the church of Rome and its sale of "indulgences". And basically, an indulgence was a provision whereby, for so much money, you could pay for the release of someone out of purgatory by neutralizing the temporary punishment for their sin. And this was one of the horrible abuses that brought that Augustinian monk to the fore. And in his debates with Tetzel, it is said that when Tetzel and others were at business, they would tell poor ignorant peasants that every time one of the coins fell on the top of the drum a soul was released from purgatory. And certainly, our Lord is not teaching that the kingdom of God can in any way be purchased by money or by the currency of our deeds that God would regard as payment in kind (our tears, our prayers, our repentance, our faith, our reformation of life). Whatever there is of real coinage in them, they have absolutely no worth in terms of purchasing a standing with God and an entrance into the kingdom.
And furthermore, it is certainly not intended to teach us the ways in which the growth of the pearl is a picture of the growth of the kingdom. You say surely no one would do that. I read from a commentator who is very helpful in some ways, but then he writes,
"If our suggestion regarding the cause and manner of the pearl's growth is correct [that an irritant goes into that bivalve or that oyster, and then it secretes things that envelop it, etc.], the kingdom of God in the Gospel of His Son was generated in the same way. The pearl and the pearl of great price have the same natural history. Some foreign, hurtful thing falls in the creature's life. Forthwith the irritation which that invader produces causes the creature to throw out and over it, the disturber, that which forms a covering around it, hiding, smothering, annihilating the originating evil, and constituting over it and in place of it a gem of the tenderest, gentlest beauty, impenetratable, imperishable, glorious. So sin, a corroding drop, a dark, deadly, vexing, torturing thing fell upon God's fair creation, threatening to inoculate it with a poison that should leaven the whole lump and change its beauty into corruption. But around the dark sin spot and because the sin spot was there, divine love showered down like the impalpable silver gathering on its object in the electro type embracing, surrounding...."
And he goes on to say that's a picture. Christ intended to give us a picture of how the kingdom grows. Now it's one thing that where the Bible teaches how the kingdom grows, we find an analogy or a simile in the activity of a mollusk, of an oyster, or a spider as John Bunyan does. He finds excellent analogies with spiders on the walls of kings and maidens brushing a dusty room. But to say that when Jesus said, "The kingdom is like unto....", that Jesus meant to teach in this parable how the kingdom develops--no, my friend, the parable was never given for that purpose.
If that's not what the parable was intended to teach, what is it intended to teach. Well, as I noted two weeks ago in our study of the parable of the hidden treasure, the common denominators in both parables are these: In both cases, a single object of supreme value is discovered. In the one a man discovers a treasure in a field. In the other, the seeking pearl merchant finds this pearl of exceeding great worth. In both cases, a single object of supreme value is discovered. And secondly, in both cases, the single object of supreme value is acquired at the cost of liquidating all other personal assets. In the case of the treasure, this man in his joy, goes and sells all that he has and buys the field. In the case of the pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. And the meaning of the parable is found essentially in that common denominator. And what is it? I give it to you as I did two weeks ago. The discovery of the great worth of Jesus Christ and the salvation that is in Him will always cause a sinner to dispense with anything and everything that would keep him from possessing Christ and the salvation offered in Him. That's the central teaching of this parable.
Go back over this parable and see if it fits. "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls." Here's the man, here's the woman, the boy or a girl diligently seeking that which is good, noble, virtuous, seeking meaning in life, passionately desiring to know the answer to the most elementary questions (Why am I here? What happens when I leave?). Here's someone not immersed in sensuality and merely living off the end of his or her nose for the next personal, sensuous, temporal pleasure. Their mind and spirit has risen above that, and they are seeking goodly pearls. They are seeking that which is of worth intrinsically. And in that search, a discovery of Christ is made by the Spirit through the Word. And then what happens? Well, what happens is exactly what happened with this man seeking excellent pearls. The acquisition of the one pearl becomes the all-absorbing passion. That's the first thing that happens. When he found it, he went, he sold, he purchased.
This is the Philippian jailor whose one obsession, when he had been brought face to face with the Gospel in the power of the Spirit, surrounded with a demonstration of God's power in the physical realm, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" That's the one passion, so he opens his home to the Apostle and his companion. And in the wee hours of the morning, he sits with his household hanging on the Word of God. Why? Because the discovery of the pearl has been made. And now only one thing matters.
It's the Ethiopian eunuch who's down there in Ethiopia, finds no satisfaction in the pagan gods with which he was reared that are all around him. And he sees in the Scriptures of the Old Testament and in Yahweh, the God of Israel, something that looks like excellent pearls. There is something here not to be had there. And he becomes in some way or another a loose proselyte to the revelation of God in the Old Testament; makes the long trip from Ethiopia all the way up to Jerusalem to be at one of the stated feasts and to show he was not a formalist just trying to do his thing to ease his conscience. In his spare time on the way back in the rough ride in a chariot, he's holding a scroll and reading. Phillip comes and says, "What are you reading?" He says, "I'm reading here in Isaiah 53, but I don't know of whom he is speaking." It says, "Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this scripture, preached unto him Jesus." What happened? He discovered the Pearl of great price. And at that point nothing mattered but having Christ and making it known that he had found the Pearl. He said, "Here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? " The kingdom has come.
It's Bunyan's Christian who has discovered from the book in his hands that the city he is in is doomed to destruction. And he's on his way to get rid of the burden on his back. And when people try to dissuade and discourage and distract him, the fingers go in his ears, and he cries out, "Life, life, eternal life!"--the grand obsession of the soul. The acquisition of the one Pearl became the all-absorbing passion with this man. And it's that way whenever God brings someone into the kingdom. He brings them in having persuaded them that what is there in the person and work and virtue and gifts and graces of the King Jesus is worthy of single-eyed pursuit, the all-absorbing passion.
Secondly, the acquisition of the one pearl at any cost is regarded as the only rational thing to do. You see, once this pearl merchant finds this one pearl of exceeding great price, there's something going on in the reckoning faculty of his mind. And he's come to this persuasion that the only rational thing to do is to get that pearl. And to get that pearl, he must liquidate all he's got at home, but that's the most reasonable thing in all the world. He obtains a bargain in that pearl. And when the Lord Jesus, by His Spirit, is drawing a sinner to Himself, the Spirit of God through the Word always works a marvelous work of radical devaluation within the soul of the sinner. Up until the discovery of that one pearl, had you gone to him back from one of his merchant trips and said, "Hey John, I'd like to buy your vintage Corvette in the garage." He would have said, "No way, I mean I've nursed that thing and polished that thing. No way." "What about your Roger Maris baseball?" "No way am I going to part with that." I mean you couldn't dicker with him. These things were precious to him. But now suddenly, he comes home and he's ready to auction them off and sell the whole shootin' match, not because something snapped in his brain, but because he came to the rational conclusion, "That pearl is of such worth that I'd be stupid and crazy if I didn't liquidate my house, my Corvette, my Roger Maris baseball in order to get the pearl." Look at the text: "Having found one pearl of exceeding worth, he went, he sold, and he bought it." The kingdom of heaven is like that.
The Holy Spirit never reveals Jesus in such a way that you sit and dicker and make calculations, "Well, if I commit myself here, I'll hedge my bets here; I'll diversify my portfolio there so that if this doesn't pan out, I've still got something left." No, no! If you say you know Christ and He's the commodity that can in any way share your portfolio, you are deluded, my friend, utterly deluded. For Jesus the King of grace says, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto a pearl merchant seeking excellent pearls, who when he found one pearl of exceeding great worth, he went and sold all."
The third thing we see is that the acquisition of the one pearl at the cost of all else is reckoned as an immeasurable gain. Not only did he come to the rational conviction that the pearl was worth all he possessed, but he's convinced he's gotten a good deal. No doubt, the merchant feels, "Man, I've got a windfall from this pearl." Why was he willing to part from it? Because he believed, as a merchant, it was in his best interest to part with the pearl to get this guy's stuff. Right? Isn't that what happens when you buy and sell and trade and barter. You go down to the local car place and look at a car, and it's got all the features. You believe it's in your best interest to part with so much money to get that hunk of tin. The man there believes that your money is worth parting with his hunk of tin; it will be in his best interest to relinquish the car. And you believe it's in your best interest to take it off his hands. Isn't that what we do in business exchange? This is a business deal. He went and found this one pearl of exceeding worth, and he said, "Look, it's my best interest to part with everything to have it." The merchant said, "It's in my best interest to take what you've got to part with it." They've both got the best of both worlds.
But now we realize the significance of it in the realm of the spiritual. When the Spirit of God has brought to the heart a discovery of Christ crucified, risen, standing in the plentitude of His grace and mercy, receiving sinners in that grace and in that mercy, the discovery of Christ is such that we never walk away talking about how much we gave up for Him, how much we sacrificed for Him. You couldn't come up to this fellow while he's admiring his pearl and say, "Aren't you shedding any tears? You don't have your Corvette in your garage anymore. What about your Micky Mantle memorabilia and your Stan Musial glove?" He would say,
"You don't understand, I've got this pearl. Do I miss my Corvette? Are you crazy? Don't come to sympathize with me that I've got no Corvette, that I've got to spend some time in the local boarding house for a while until I find a place where to live. Don't shed any tears for me because I've parted with my stuff. In parting with my stuff, I have this pearl of exceeding great worth."
William Taylor who expounds both of the parables together has captured this element so beautifully. He says,
"These parables teach us that the perception of the value of salvation in Christ makes a man happy to part with everything that is inconsistent with its possession. The merchant made a good investment when he bought the pearl. Even at such a price, he was getting more than he gave. And the finder of the treasure has no sadness in his heart when he sold all that he had to buy the field. The text says, 'For joy thereof....', of which multitudes lose sight, which perhaps the vast majority of readers and, I say, listeners never see is the gem of the parable of the hidden treasure. And if I might, I would take this gem and set it in the prominent place in the ring of my discourse."
And going back, then, to the treasure in the field, he says,
"The man did not regret the selling of all he had for the purchase of the field, nor the man who purchased the pearl of great price. He didn't go around whimpering about the sacrifice he was making, the self-denial he was practicing. He gave much, but he got far more. And the joy of getting the thing swallowed up in itself all the pain of his giving. Now it is in this that he truly resembles the true Christian convert."
Do you remember how the young ruler went away sorrowful, wedded to his possessions? Here we have the true explanation of his making that refusal. He had no adequate conception of the value of Christ and of His salvation. He says he had riches. No, the riches had him and he stood before Truth incarnate. He stood before Eternal Life incarnate and says, "What must I do to have eternal life?" And Christ says, "You must have Me as your treasure." He went away sorrowful because he had another treasure, and he had never seen the beauty and worth of the true treasure that was before him.
What's the central lesson of this parable? The central lesson is essentially what it is in the parable of the treasure hidden in the field. It is when the Spirit of God brings home to the heart of the sinner a saving discovery of Christ. Christ is reckoned to be of such exceeding worth that the whole of the heart goes out to him. Repentance is saying, "The stuff in my garage doesn't matter. The title to my 10-room house doesn't matter. I must have the pearl." Repentance is saying, "The approbation and approval and smiles of my peers don't matter. I'm ready to let the world know the Pearl is mine. And in that sense, I am the Pearl's. It has captured me. He has captured me."
Do we feel the lose of friends for Christ's sake? Of course we do, but not when we compare the gain of that loss to the joy of the discovery of Christ. We say no to every pleasure that must be had in the way of violating God's law, promoting the knowledge and communion with God and the advancement of the kingdom of God. With the Apostle Paul, we're ready to say, "I will eat no meat or drink no wine nor do anything whereby my brother is caused to stumble." The salvation of the souls of others: "My passion that others will come to discover this pearl of great price makes any pleasure of any kind in any way expendable. I found the Pearl, and I want others to possess the Pearl."
That's the teaching of the passage, and if it is, let me ask you as you sit here this morning, are you that wholesale pearl merchant? Have you seen in Christ what you are willing to embrace? Selling your own self-righteousness; saying with Paul, "All that I've ever done in law-keeping and religious rituals is as dung that I might gain Christ." Christ can only be purchased as the pearl when you repudiate all of the rot and stink of your own self-righteousness, your own arrogant notions about true religion and what is of value and what is right and wrong, the rotten stuff of your own depraved thoughts. Are you ready to trash it that you might have Him in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. Your sins that can only disappoint you and leave a bad taste in the mouth of your soul--are you prepared to sell them that you might have the pearl?
Could I but show you the beauty and the worth of Christ, you know what would happen to every single unconverted person here? You'd be saved before you left this place this morning. If you could see for a moment the true worth of Jesus and all that is in Jesus, you'd say, "What a wretched, stupid fool I've been thinking I could find life, true joy, peace, satisfaction anywhere but in Him." And if the Spirit of God is pleased to take the Word of God and shine in your heart upon the face of Christ, you'll become another one of these merchants who goes, who sells, and who buys.
This Christ who says, "Come unto Me; I'll give you rest. If you thirst, come to Me and drink and I'll give you an artesian well of spiritual life. You'll never thirst. The water I give shall be in you a well of water springing up into everlasting life. I'm the bread of life. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood shall never die." Christ is all of that and more. And the reason you sit in unbelief is because you don't see that. All you see is a lump inside an oyster, an ugly-looking oyster. Did you ever see someone get excited about the outside of an oyster shell? It's ugly--dark ridges, sand worked in. As you're cleaning oysters before you crack them open, there's nothing pretty about them. That's all some of you see. We stand up here preaching Christ, and all you see is an oyster shell of words and notions that have no attraction to your heart. O my friend, cry to God that He will help you see the Pearl and it's worth, and your heart will run out to Him.
Well, I've sought to give an explanation of the basic elements of the parable, the identification and the basic meaning of the parable; now in the time that remains, the basic contrast between the two parables. Some of you have been waiting for this, I know, because you hold me to my promises. And I said in the introduction of the other parable that before we were done, we would address that area of dissimilarity, the basic contrast between the two parables. And the contrast is clear and lies on the very surface. In the case of the treasure, the man finds it. There's no indication he's a treasure hunter. He's not going out there with one of those wands over the sand hoping to find a few nickels or dimes someone dropped when they were half-drunk at a beach party. How he was there, we don't know. He may have been a hired hand; he may have been a share-cropper. But when he's not thinking about treasures, he discovers the treasure. In the case of the pearl merchant, he is in the business of seeking pearls. There's the obvious contrast.
And I believe what our Lord is pointing to in that contrast is giving the full spectrum of the different ways that God, by the Holy Spirit, brings people into the kingdom. For some people, the kingdom and all the blessings of that kingdom come to them as this treasure came to the man there in the field. It's not something they're thinking about; it's not something there agitated about. God, as it were, breaks down out of the clear blue sky and apprehends them by His grace. In them, Isaiah 65:1 is fulfilled where God says, "I was found of them that sought Me not." The woman at the well--she's coming out to the well for one thing: to carry back water for herself and any in her house. And before she leaves, she finds living water. Think of Zacchaeus. He's heard about the buzz and excitement about Jesus of Nazareth. The Scripture says he went up in a tree just to see. That's all he wanted. He wanted to be able to say the next day when people are all talking and saying, "I saw Him," "I saw Him too." All he's doing is wanting to get a look; he got something more. Jesus said, "Today is salvation come to your house." Their like the treasure. Their life is not in any way focused on seeking the things of God, yearning after something more noble and elevated and satisfying. Think of the dying thief. At the beginning of his time on the cross, the Bible says the thieves (both of them) cast the same reproaches into Jesus' face. In a couple of hours, he's ready to go to heaven: "Today, you shall be with Me in paradise." He found the Treasure hanging on a cross.
Now at the other end of the spectrum, you have those in whom the Spirit of God creates a yearning and a desire for something above and beyond the temporal. And they hardly know what it is for which they seek. And as the Spirit of God draws them out and elevates their desires, and they seek and search, and they go down a hundred different rabbit trails, eventually God brings them to discover the Pearl. Isn't that Nicodemus? He comes to Jesus by night; he probably didn't want to be known that he was interested. He talks; Jesus exposes his real need. But by the time we come to the end of John's Gospel, he's one of the two men that takes down the body of our Lord Jesus and shows his love for the pearl by washing it and wrapping it in clean cloths with spices. Think also of the Bereans who searched the Scriptures daily. They were merchants seeking goodly pearls, and they found the pearl of great price. Think of Lydia, the seller of purple, who is part of a ladies prayer meeting. She has yearning, a reaching out for far more than what she could find in her pagan environment back in her home town. And it says when Paul came and preached, "whose heart the Lord opened" like a flower opens to the sun.
And I believe our Lord has given us those two ends of the spectrum to cover everything in between. The kingdom comes to some like the treasure came to that man--unsought, unexpected. But it comes on the same terms as it came to the pearl merchant seeking goodly pearls, who finds one pearl of exceeding worth. Like the man with his treasure, so the pearl merchant with his pearl, he sold all to have it. So whatever the diversity of God's saving work may be in its details, one thing is the common denominator: if you're in the kingdom, Christ is your treasure; Christ is your unparalleled pearl of exceeding great worth.
Now in application, let me say these things. Number one: this contrast between the treasure and the pearl should be a source of encouragement to those who are like the pearl merchant. Some of you are like that pearl merchant. You've not been able to believe that all there is to life is all you can see with your eyeballs, what you can feel with your five senses, what people around you say is the meaning of life. You've not been able to buy into that. And sitting here this morning, you're very conscious of a yearning for something higher, more noble. And perhaps you've read in this philosophy or tried this religion and that. My friend, this passage should be of encouragement to you. God says, "You shall seek Me and you shall find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." That's the text illustrated in the pearl merchant. "You shall go and pray unto Me, and You shall seek Me and you shall find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." God says in Isaiah, "I was found of them that sought Me not." He says in Jeremiah, "I will be found of those that seek Me." Are you seeking? My friend, make sure you let no one pass off as a goodly pearl the great pearl of exceeding worth a cheap imitation. Go to your Bible and ask God, by the Holy Spirit, to show you the exceeding worth of Jesus and all that He offers to sinners in Him.
The contrast should be an encouragement to those of you who are like the treasure finder. As I was praying over this in the earlier hours of this morning, I said, "Lord, could it be that sitting here there are faces I've never seen before? Could some of them be like that man who found the treasure?" Maybe you've come here just to satisfy some relative, some friend--curiosity. But while you sat here, in the hymns, in the reading of the Scripture, in the preaching, the mist is beginning to go away, and you're beginning to see, "Why, this man is saying, and the Bible says, and these people are saying in their prayers and praises, 'Christ is the answer, Christ is life, Christ is salvation, Christ is all in all.'" Is that what's happening? My friend, you can have the Pearl sitting there today. You can have the Treasure, the Treasure discovered, unsought for. But here you are, and, as it were, the dirt is beginning to be pulled back and you say, "The treasure is Christ. How could I have missed it so long?" He's yours if you will have Him; have in on His terms. If any man come after Jesus, say no to self, get out of the God business, take up your cross, and be willing to be identified with a despised and rejected Jesus and give yourself to Him in unqualified surrender, He will be yours. He will be yours here and now if you will but have Him.
Neither class, the one like the treasure finder, the other like the pearl merchant or any in between can take comfort until you have the Treasure and you have the Pearl. Notice, he sold all that he had, and he bought the field. Acquisition was everything. One commentator used a vivid analogy. If you were in a ship in the midst of a heaving, tossing, turbulent sea; all the powers of the wind seem to have broken loose, and you fear the boat is going to capsize unless you can find some sure anchor, the writer said, "If the anchor chain stops one foot from the bottom, it may as well never have been cast. It's when the times the anchor sinks into the ocean floor that the sea can batter the ship, but it remains stable." My friend, don't stop a foot short of being anchored to Christ. Being anchored to Christ is everything. The drowning man who cries for help and the life preserver is sent to him, and his hand falls six inches short of grasping that donut, which is his way of escape from death, he drowns as much as if none ever heard his plaintiff cry for help. My dear friend, acquisition is everything in the Gospel. "As many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name."
And then none should be comforted who think they've discovered and acquired the Treasure or the costly Pearl who've not sold all that they have to acquire it. If you've not been willing to part with anything and everything that is an impediment to having Christ, you are none of Christ's. Do you hear that? Am I saying you must relinquish your title to every piece of clothing, every piece of property, every commodity, every stock, every bond, every insurance policy? Of course not, the Bible doesn't teach that. What the Bible teaches and what I'm seeking to articulate is that you must be prepared to part with anything and everything that keeps you from having Christ on His terms. In the case of the young ruler, it was his stocks and his bonds and his cash in his pockets. His money was his idol, and Jesus said, "Smash you your idol; then you'll have me as your God and your Savior." For some of you, it could be you won't get saved untill you're ready to relinquish your--what comes to your mind? Unless your ready to--what comes to your mind? Then for you, that may be the hinge on which your eternal destiny turns. You know what it is. You know who it is. You know who she is. Whatever it is, don't you comfort yourself that you have Christ as the treasure and Christ as the pearl unless you have Him on His terms.
And child of God, you who have by grace acquired the Treasure and found the Pearl, you know the only way to maintain a proper relationship to everything else in your world is to constantly grow in your estimation of the Treasure and the worth of the Pearl. Now you think about that. When do you hang most loosely to the things of this life and enjoy the most warm, intimate, soul-refreshing communion with God in Jesus Christ? When do you enjoy it the most? Is it not when Christ has no rival in any area of your life. When you can say with Paul, "For to me to live is Christ. Life means Christ to me." Then and only then will death be gain because you've already let loose of any idolatrous attachment to anything that will be taken from you in death. You see, death can't be gain to you if all you count worthy is here. That will be loss to you. "For to me to life is Christ; to die is gain." Why? Because I've got nothing to lose when I go to be with Him. To depart and be with Christ is gain. Why? Because there's nothing of any idolatrous worth to which I cling that would be otherwise loss to me. If there's any secret to the flourishing Christian life, surely it's here. When the Treasure grows in our estimation each time we look at it, each time we open it and finger its content, when the Pearl grows in our estimation each time we look at it, each time we hold it up in different lights, as Christ becomes increasingly precious, so we understand more and more of what it is to live with joy in the acquisition of the Treasure at any cost and the Pearl at any cost. May God make us a congregation of people who are like that.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 16:33:52 GMT -5
Psalm 90 by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached December 28, 1980
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Now will you turn, please, to the 90th Psalm. And follow as I read this Psalm that I trust will become for you an instrument of profitable New Year's meditation. You will notice that at the top of the Psalm, it is called a prayer of Moses the man of God.
"Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men. For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth. For we are consumed in Thine anger, and in Thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. For all our days are passed away in Thy wrath: we bring our years to an end as a sigh. The days of our years are threescore years and ten [that is, 70], or even by reason of strength fourscore [or 80] years; yet is their pride but labor and sorrow; for it is soon gone, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of Thine anger, and Thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto Thee? So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom. Return, O Jehovah; how long? And let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants. Oh satisfy us in the morning with Thy lovingkindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory upon their children. And let the favor [or beauty] of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish [or confirm] Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it."
Now as I have already suggested, it is my purpose in directing your attention to this Psalm not to give a detailed exposition of the Psalm, which would be impossible in the light of two realities, my own surface acquaintance with the Psalm and the limitations of the time allotted to one period of exposition, but I do have a very intensely pastoral concern in directing your attention to the Psalm in setting before you something of the structure of the Psalm and an outline of its contents. And that pastoral concern is simply this: in the first Psalm, the blessed man or woman is described as the one who meditates in the Law of God day and night. And one of the problems that the true people of God face is that with their desire to meditate on the Word of God, they often find themselves at a loss as to how to meditate or precisely where they should meditate on the Word of God in terms of their present circumstances. And believing that each one of you who is in Christ and is in any kind of a healthy state of soul desires to have your perspectives regarding the passing of this calendar year and the coming of another year, to have your perspectives regulated by the Scriptures, I desire to give you at least enough acquaintance or an appetizer in the 90th Psalm that will whet your appetite for further reflection and meditation.
Now let's notice by way of introduction just something concerning the author of this Psalm. We have every reason to believe that Moses was indeed the one who penned this Psalm. There is no reason to doubt the validity of ascribing this Psalm to Moses who is here called the man of God. And surely among the Old Testament figures, perhaps none except Abraham stands higher in stature than does Moses, this great man of God who walked with God, who spoke with God face to face as God spoke with few men, the man who was the administrator of the old economy, who was, according to Hebrews, faithful in all his house. And Moses in all likelihood penned this Psalm towards the close of his own earthly life and ministry. He penned this Psalm as one who could look back over the history of his own life, over the history of the life of the people of God both in Egypt and then as God brought them out of Egypt, and then perhaps throughout the great majority of those forty years of wondering at the end of which you'll remember that the Lord was pleased to take the life of Moses and then personally bury him in a place that was never revealed to the people of God.
Someone has estimated that during those wilderness wanderings, Moses witnessed approximately fifteen thousand deaths per year. When we take the record of those who came out of Egypt and try to calculate the general figures of how many came out of Egypt, what the normal birth rate would be, and then the fact that in those forty years God says that entire generation that came out of Egypt died off. Their carcasses rotted in the wilderness. And only Joshua and Caleb of that generation were privileged to go into the land of Canaan. Here was a man who had seen something of the ravaging effects of death upon the nation he loved, to which he had given himself as God's appointed leader. Approximately fifteen thousand times a year he had heard some of the wail of those who had lost loved ones and had witnessed the burial of different members of the nation of the children of Israel. And it's out of that very realistic perspective of an old man who has constantly lived in the midst of death as the leader of God's people that he writes this Psalm in which, as we have the title in the 1901 edition, sets forth God's eternity and man's transitoriness.
Now as you seek, I trust, to use the Psalm as a basis of meditation in your own reflections upon life as you stand on the threshold of a new year, let me suggest that you view the Psalm first of all in terms of the first two verses as constituting the initial unit of the Psalm. And in verses 1 and 2, we have what I am calling Moses' fundamental confession of faith. The first element of that confession is that God has been the habitation of His people in all periods of their pilgrimage. "Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." Now imagine what this meant to a man like Moses. He knows the history of His people. From the time Abraham was 75 years old, he was a sojourner, he was a pilgrim, he was a wanderer, he was a nomad with no certain dwelling place. Following Abraham was Isaac and Jacob and then the sons of Jacob and the four hundred years down in Egypt, and now the majority of the years of the wandering in the wilderness. And during that entire span of time covering hundreds of years, the people of God have had no piece of real estate that they could call their own. There was no sense of the permanence and settledness and security that comes with being able to point to a place and say, "That's my house. That's my home. That's my dwelling place." But Moses makes this wonderful confession of his own experience and the experience of all the people of God that the Lord Himself has been the dwelling place of His people in all generations. From one generation to another, God has come in covenant faithfulness and pledged Himself in that crowning promise and blessing of the covenant that He would be the God of His people. He would be theirs, and they would be His. And so he begins the Psalm with this fundamental confession of faith that focuses upon God Himself in covenant faithfulness as the habitation of His people. And then the second aspect of his confession of faith is that which pertains to God as the eternal and the unchangeable one (v. 2). This God who is the dwelling place of His people is a predictable God because He is the eternal, unchangeable God. "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." The moment we try to use human language to express eternity, we feel both the impoverished nature of language and the limitations of a creature of time trying to think in terms of timelessness. And perhaps there is no more eloquent and simple expression of this great reality than is found in verse 2 of Psalm 90: "Before the mountains were brought forth...." Mountains in Scripture always represent that which is permanent and unchangeable. You remember in the 46th Psalm: "though mountains [the very symbol of permanence] be shaken in the heart of the seas, [we will not be afraid]." So Moses is asserting,
"Before the mountains were brought forth [those constant reminders of that which from the standpoint of creation is permanent and stable], or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting [from eternity past, if we may use the term, to eternity future], Thou art God."
And you see, if there were any change whatsoever in God, what had been from eternity would not be the same as what now is or what shall be. And in this very simple but eloquent way, we have testimony to what theologians call the immutability, the changelessness of God. And because He is changeless, He is predictable in terms of His covenant commitments. And that God who, of course, has been supremely and finally revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ--of that very Christ it can be said, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever." And the writer to Hebrews ascribes to our Lord the very qualities that are here attributed to God. So then, Moses, as he comes to the end of his days, having been forced by the realism of constant interaction with death, constant manifestations of the tragedies of life, begins on this very positive confession of his faith: God has been the habitation of His people, and this God is eternal and unchangeable.
May I say by way of application that here Moses sets a wonderful example for us as the people of God. As we would seek to meditate to our profit as we stand at the close of this present year and on the threshold of a new year, upon what should we focus our meditation as a starting point? Well, you do not focus it on man in all of his changeableness, upon yourself in all of your changeableness, upon your failures, upon the failures of your fellow creatures. But you must begin where Moses began. Begin not with God in abstraction, but God in the wonder and the glory of His covenant commitments to His people. He is the dwelling place of His people. From one generation to another, He has manifested Himself to His people as He did to Abraham as the God of grace, the God who says, "I will be their God, and they shall be My people." And because this God is from everlasting to everlasting, we can count on His unchangeable faithfulness. And it is there we must begin our mediations. It is upon this reality that we must ground every other consideration.
Then the second unit of the Psalm--and this is not an absolute division, but it is one I hope you will find workable--begins with verse 3 and concludes with verse 11. And it is what I'm calling Moses' accurate assessment of man's experience. From his confession of faith in God as the dwelling of His people and the unchangeableness of God, he now takes up the subject of man and God's dealings with him: "Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men." And even though men should live a very lengthy life as they did, you remember, in those days early in the history of the world when it was not uncommon for men to live seven, eight hundred, and then some even into nine hundred years. Yet before God, this is nothing: "For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." The Hebrew has divided up the night into three watch periods. And he says a thousand years are but as one segment of the night, one watch in the night. "Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth. For we are consumed in Thine anger...." He brings together a number of lines of imagery, various analogies in which he accurately assesses man's experience. And we can perhaps summarize what he says under three simple statements.
First of all, under the sovereign will of God, man is a transitory creature: "Thou turnest man to destruction. [Thou turnest man back to the dust from which he came.]" Now here Moses gives an accurate assessment of man's experience. He had seen again and again and again people who in the flush of their youth were vigorous and full of all of the vision and energy of youth. He had seen them mellow with the passing of the years. He had seen their faces become lined with age and their bodies weakened. And he had seen them die. And he says behind this process is the activity of this God who is the dwelling place of His people, this God who is the changeless, eternal God: "Thou turnest man to destruction." He sees in operation the sovereign will of God in constituting man in his present condition a transitory creature.
Secondly, one of the motifs that runs through verses 3 to 11 is that Moses sees man as existing under the wrath of God. And there are several references to this: "For we are consumed in Thine anger, and in Thy wrath are we troubled" (v. 7). Verses 10 and 11: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore years; yet is their pride but labor and sorrow; for it is soon gone, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of Thine anger, and Thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto Thee?" The obvious cause of that anger and wrath is the sin of man: "Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance." Moses was not a humanist. He did not believe in the ultimate goodness of man. He had lived too long with himself, and he had lived too long with the people of God to have any dreamy notions that every day in every way we're getting better and better. No, no, Moses himself knew to the bitterness of his own soul how that in a moment of weakness, though he had talked face to face with God, and though he had been commended for his meekness and his forbearance, he disobeyed God and struck the rock and spoke abusively of the people of God. And God said, "For this cause, you will see the land, but you will never enter it." And before he died, he was given the privilege of going to a place where he could view the land from afar, but he never entered it. And so Moses, as he assesses the realities of life, comes to the conclusion not only that in the sovereign will of God man is a transitory creature, but man is a creature under the wrath of God.
Then he concludes with a question which brings these two things together: "Who knoweth the power of Thine anger, and Thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto Thee?" He says, "In light of these realities, who among the sons of men has a due appreciation of this reality?" The question, of course, is not answered in the passage. But surely the answer is implied in the very way he asks the question: that one of the tragedies of our sin is that our sin has blinded us to the very realities that our sin has brought upon us. It's unthinkable that men living in this generation could have high, lofty, confident views of man's ability to sort himself out. Surely the history of the past fifty years and the conditions of our own nation in the past twenty years would convince any man who had half an eye one-third open that any notion that man is either getting better or has the ability to make himself better is sheer folly. Yet Moses must have felt something of that even in his own day. And in the light of these realities, he says, ""Who knoweth the power of Thine anger, and Thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto Thee?"
May I urge you as you meditate upon this Psalm as you find occasion not only to begin where Moses began, but go where Moses went from that beginning. Beginning with the great reality that God is the dwelling place of His people--He is the changeless, eternal, immutable God--then look out from that perspective upon man, man as he is, turned again and again to destruction; man as he is, obviously under the wrath of God as Paul so clearly articulates in Romans 1:18: "The wrath of God is [already being] revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." And then he describes the manifestations of the wrath of God. And you see the tragedy in our own society. The very things that are an indication of the wrath of God are being spoken up as indications that man is finally coming to his own. What a tragedy! The wrath of God is revealed when God gives men up to perversions in terms of human relationships, when there are covenant breakers at every level of human relationships, when there is a reversal of the sexual roles and there is homosexuality, when there is covenant breaking of all sacred ties that bind men together. Paul says this is an indication that God has given men up. Because they have so set their hearts upon sin, God says, "If that's what you want, I'll give it to you." Moses had witnessed that in his own day. He had seen them turn to idolatry. He had seen them turn to all forms of perversion. He had seen them in their rebellion against the law of God and against the leadership that God had instituted. Moses had observed these realities. And I urge you to take a long, hard, sober, realistic view of man's experience and come to grips with the fact that God is turning man back to destruction, that man is living out his life now in a situation conditioned by the wrath of God. God grant that as you reflect upon this, you will come to the question of verse 11. If you're looking at things as they really are, the test will be that you will cry out with Moses, "Who knoweth the power of Thine anger, and Thy wrath according to the fear that is due unto Thee?"
Well then, from his confession of faith and his accurate assessment of man's experience, the Psalm concludes with Moses' petitions appropriate to these facts. In the light of what God is to His people (their dwelling place), what He is in Himself (the unchangeable, eternal God); in the light of what man is (a transitory creature existing in a condition in which the wrath of God is manifested), Moses frames some petitions that are most appropriate to those realities.
The first is a simple plea for a sane reaction to those realities. Look at verse 12: "So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom." Facing those realities, he prays for himself and the people of God who yet live: "O God, gives us a heart of wisdom that we may number our days." Now think of it, no one can dispute the fact that the allotted time span for the average man or woman is 70 or 80 years. And yet most men live as though they were going to live forever. They do not number their days. They can calculate the distances between galaxies in terms of numbers that blow our minds. When people start talking about expanses that involve a number and then 25 or 30 zeros after it, I find I'm staggered when they start quoting these figures. Men can calculate in every realm but in the realm that counts the most. Moses had lived to see people squandering away their days as though they had an unlimited supply of them. And he says we don't have an unlimited supply. Even if we are given our full allotment of 70 or 80 years, there is a fixed number to our days. "So teach us to number our days," that is, to realistically come to grips with the fact that man is transitory. He is like the grass that is growing up and shall be cut down. He is like the watch in the night that passes so quickly. Moses says in the light of that, "that we me get a heart of wisdom." And what is a heart of wisdom in the context? It is a heart that dictates a pattern of life commensurate with the brevity of life. And anything else is folly because it is living out of touch with reality. "Be not unwise," Paul says, "but understand what the will of the Lord is, redeeming the time [buying up the opportunities], for the days are evil." There's a New Testament parallel to this very prayer.
Now for you children, it's hard for you to think that your days are numbered, but they are. If you're 10 years old, you've already used up one-seventh of your allotted time if God gives you your full 70. Think of it, one-seventh. And before long it will be one-sixth. And then before long it will be one-fifth and one-fourth and one-third and one-half and two-thirds and three-quarters.
I shall never forget to my dying day as long as God gives me my memory the trauma of my 40th birthday some six and three-quarter years ago. Because I had thought in terms of the history of longevity in my bloodlines, and without presuming upon the goodness of God, assuming that by heredity, if God is pleased to use the genes that went into what made me me and these other factors, that perhaps I would be given my 80 years, the thought that on the first day after my 40th birthday I was starting down the other side of the hill to go through that door that only swings one way, I tell you, I was struck and sobered like I've never been sobered. As long as I was in my 20s and 30s, though I trust I lived in the light of the fact that God could take me at anytime, it was always thought, I'm still climbing up that hill. You see, I hadn't reached the halfway point. But suddenly you're there, and you've reached it. And I had heard others tell me this, and now I know it by experience: once you reach that, you don't go down the same rate you came up. You go down the hill a lot faster than you went up. And time seems to crawl when you are 10, 11, and 12. You wonder if you'll ever be a teenager. And then you remember that 13th birthday. Then for a girl, there's something special about her 16th, and for a boy, his 18th. Now he's supposed to be a man. He's got six whiskers on his chin, and he has to shave twice a month. And then he can't wait till he's 21. And it seems like time drags. And then as you begin to take on life's responsibilities, time begins to gather momentum, and no longer does it drag. It begins to walk, and then it begins to briskly walk, and then it begins to run. There's something about that 40th birthday. It begins to take wings and fly. And I'm told that after the 50th or 60th, it kicks in the afterburner and breaks the sound barrier.
Now when Moses prayed, "So teach us to number our days," he's saying, "Lord, apart from your grace working in our hearts, we'll be fools; we'll act as though our days have no number. "Teach us to number our days that we may get us a heart of wisdom." And so Moses' petition is appropriate to the facts that he's laid out in the previous part of the Psalm. First of all, there is the simple plea for a sane reaction to these realities. And then there is a series of petitions appropriate to those concerns. And some have suggested that you have six specific petitions. Some may be parallelisms in which you have one petition enlarged from a little differing perspective. But try to catch something of the overall thrust and burden of those petitions.
"Return, O Jehovah; how long? And let it repent Thee concerning Thy servants." Now that plea for God to return is not as though God has forsaken His people and He's asking them to come back. He began in verse 1: "Lord, You've been the dwelling place of Your people." No, but it has to do with God being propitious to His people, God returning in the sense of looking upon them again with favor by pardoning their sins and thereby repenting, once again manifesting His favor and His smile upon His people.
"Oh satisfy us in the morning with Thy lovingkindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days." He asks that he may know the presence of God in favor. And then as one of the wonderful fruits of that presence, there will be rejoicing and gladness all the days that yet remain.
"Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil." "Lord, as You have shown Your wrath and displeasure upon our sins, now come with singular tokens that are just as evident with respect to Your mercy and Your goodness."
"Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory upon their children." You see the plea? Moses' heart now enlarges, and he longs that God would come forth to the baring of His arm not only to Himself, but there is this broader concern. He prays for the servants of God. And then he thinks of the upcoming generation, that the glory of God seen in the mighty works of God would be manifested to the children of the people of God.
"And let the favor [or beauty] of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it." And so we see the great concerns of these specific petitions. Having prayed that he would have that wisdom that takes due account of the brevity of life, of the allotment of days given by God, and does not go on in the madness of thinking life will exist forever, what kind of life does he want? You see, almost anyone would request a lengthening of his life simply on the basis of that innate desire to preserve life. But now the question I press upon you is this: what kind of life do you want in the extension of that life? Is it that you might have more days upon which to squander God's gifts, more days in which to carry out a life of rebellion and indifference to the claims of God in His law and in the Gospel? Not so with Moses. He asked for wisdom to number his days. And then he asked that those days be filled with a sense of the presence of God, the favor of God, the blessing of God, the manifestation of the glory of God in the works of God, and that he might be useful in the work which he performs until his task is done. You see, again in Scripture, there is no warrant for the thought that serious reflection upon the issues of life and death produce a kind of detached and impractical mysticism. No, no, Moses draws aside long enough to meditate and reflect in order that when he goes back to his tasks with his sleeves rolled up and sweat upon his brow, he may attack those tasks with all the vigor of a man who knows his days are numbered. And he longs that in those tasks, he may know the presence and the blessing of the God who is his dwelling place.
Well, I suggest to you who are the people of God, surely this Psalm provides a wonderful framework for prayer and meditation as we stand on the threshold of a new year. But I would be foolish to think that all of you here tonight can be rightly addressed as the people of God. There are some of you who perhaps can parrot the words of verse 1, but you cannot say them in truth: "Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place." God is not your dwelling place until you know that God as He's revealed in His covenant promises and in His saving activity in the Lord Jesus Christ. God is not your dwelling place until you have fled for refuge to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And all that is said in verses 3 through 11 is eminently true of you.
You are in the process of being turned back to destruction. Each indication of the seeds of death in your body, whether it is in the appearance of another crow's foot at the eyes or a wrinkle in the folds of the chin or in the falling of a hair from the temples, whatever is an index of the passing of time and the advancement of age and the seeds of death, these are constant and eloquent preachers to you, my friend, saying God is turning you back to destruction. And that physical death which will overtake you is just a frightening preview of that death of deaths which is separation of soul and body from the presence of God in that place that the Bible calls Gehenna, hell, the lake of fire, outer darkness.
And O my friend, that God has been merciful to you and brought you through another year. Don't you realize what a burden you've been to God and His Word? Taking the gift of life and squandering it upon the pursuit of your own carnal passions. The earth itself groans beneath your feet while you live on God's earth in defiance of His Law and indifferent to His glory, and above all, indifferent to the Gospel of His Son. O, do you not know that the goodness of God is intended to lead you to repentance? Don't despise that goodness. Pray with Moses, "O God, teach me to number my days. Help me to bring near that hour when I must be summoned out of this life, when I like the grass shall be cut down and wither. And having died, I must go to judgment. O God, help me to number my days."
You see, this is no attempt to try to scare people into getting serious about the Gospel. These are facts, my friend. You can't argue with them. You're on your way to death. You may have some kind of carnal hope when you hear a talk show that some brash physician says we are now unlocking the mystery of aging, and in another 50 years we may be able to obliterate death. I simply laugh at the poor fools--poor, educated, brilliant fools. My friend, all those secret hopes you may cherish--there is no substance to them. God is turning man to destruction because man is a sinner, and the wages of sin is death. And it's appointed unto man once to die.
May God grant that if you stand on the threshold of this new year out of Christ; the living God is not your dwelling place, my friend, God offers Himself to be the dwelling place of every poor, helpless sinner no matter what your sin has been if you will come through the Door that He has appointed, and that Door is His Son. No sinner has ever been turned away because he sinned too much or sinned too greatly. He invites every sinner to come. O, that this new year would find you saying for the first time in truth, "Lord, You are my dwelling place." And then in the confidence that He is your God, you then can begin to live with the great passion that Moses expressed in his prayer, that it might be life lived in communion with God, life lived under the blessing of God, in the joy of God, with the presence and power of God upon your labors.
I realize I'm speaking to many young mothers and parents of little ones who seem to be absolutely hemmed in with the pressures of just meeting the bills from week to week and responding to the cries for help: "Mommy this, Mommy that, Daddy this, Daddy that." You wonder at times, is there ever going to be an end to it, any meaning to it? My friend, the end will come very, very quickly. You'll sit there at family worship a few years from now and say, "How in the world did all three of my kids become teenagers? How did that happen?" I love that song from Fiddler on the Roof: "I don't remember growing old, dear. Sunrise, sunset, time passing so swiftly." O dear young mother, young father, take this 90th Psalm; make this your prayer:
"Lord, as I face a new day [you may not even have time to go away and kneel and pray; your hands may be busy while you're praying], establish the work of my hands upon me. Establish the work of my hands upon us. The work of our hands, establish Thou it, Lord. May every service performed in the care of these little ones be an offering unto you as I fulfill my God-appointed role as a mother, as a father and provider and organizer and administrator of the household. Lord, in the midst of all of this, may Your glory be manifested in your works, not only to us, my wife, my husband, and me, but O Lord, upon our children."
You see how much fuel there is here for fruitful prayer. I trust that God by the Holy Spirit will take this very simple and cursory overview of this Psalm that has been my companion for many years and be pleased to make it profitable for each one of us as we seek to do what the Scripture says the blessed man or woman does. He meditates on the law of God day and night. Take the prayer of Moses the man of God and make it yours. Be sure to begin where he began with that great confession of faith. Then look out and view life realistically as he viewed it in verses 3 to 11, and then make that earnest prayer your prayer, that you would number your days and have a heart of wisdom. And then those specific petitions which he prayed, make them yours. Flesh them out with the particulars that apply to your situation as they apply to no one else's. God delights when we do that as His children. And I believe if we do, under the blessing of the Spirit of God, we will find that we have not entered the new year in vain. Amidst all of the time that you legitimately spend with loved ones feasting and laughing, and some of you no doubt watching football games and all of the rest, may God grant that you'll make time to sneak away and sit down with Moses the man of God and meditate upon his prayer to the profit of your own soul.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 16:35:45 GMT -5
A Paradox of Abounding Joy and Crushing Grief by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached March 8, 1998
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Now let us turn together to the first letter of Peter, to those scattered saints of Asia Minor, 1 Peter 1. And I shall read in your hearing verses 3 through 7:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
Now let us again look to God in prayer that the Spirit who moved the Apostle to pen these words will be present to give us both understanding to rightly receive them and then grace to believe and to obey them. Let us pray.
Our Father, we again give you praise for Your holy Word. When we think that at this moment while we have opened our Bibles and read them in our own language, that there are yet multitudes who have never seen one verse of holy Scripture, O God, we thank You, we thank You, that in Your sovereign purpose, You caused us either to be born or brought into this land where Bibles are abundantly available. O Lord, knowing that to whom much s given, of him shall much be required, help us, we pray, that as we take Your Word in our hands and set it before our eyes, we may be given understanding by the Spirit and grace to believe and obey all that the Spirit will say through the written Word. Hear us and meet with us we plead. In Jesus name, amen.
Now in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta entitled "The Pirates of Penzance," the subtitle "A Child of Duty", there is a choral number in which the words are repeated again and again: "A paradox, a paradox, a most amazing paradox." Now you children, do you know what paradox is? When the chorus is singing, "A paradox, a paradox, a most amazing paradox", why are they singing that? Well, they were confronting a paradox. A paradox is a statement that seems to be self-contradictory. This is said to be true and that's said to be true, but the pieces don't fit. But in a paradox, the contradiction is only apparent. And the thing that makes the chorus sing, "A paradox, a paradox, a most amazing paradox," is that Frederick, one of the central personages in "The Pirates of Penzance", is 21 years old, but he's only had 5 birthdays. Now how in the world, kids, can a man be 21 years old and have only 5 birthdays? So when they're talking about Frederick being 21 years old but only having 5 birthdays, they sing, "A paradox, a paradox, a most amazing paradox." It seems contradictory. How can you be 21 years old and only have had 5 birthdays? Well, it's only a seeming contradiction because poor Frederick was born on February 29 in leap year. So his first birthday was when he was 4 years old, his second when he was 8, his third when he was 12, his fourth when he was 16, and his fifth when he was 20. So though he's 21 years old, he's only had 5 birthdays.
You say, "Pastor, I wonder, if with your 64th birthday coming, you've lost a screw or two. Why do you begin a sermon with a little reference to the paradox in 'The Pirates of Penzance'?" Well, I want you to think about what a paradox is because here in our passage this morning, 1 Peter 1:6-7, we encounter one of the most fundamental paradoxes of the Christian life, a paradox, not of innocent fantasy spun out of the mind of Gilbert and Sullivan to spoof Elizabethan morality and society. But here is a paradox that is wrung out of the inescapable and observable reality of the experience of the people of God in all ages, including those elect sojourners who lived there in Asia Minor around 65 AD.
Having drawn the attention of his readers to the great salvation that is in the Lord Jesus, beginning in verse 6, Peter now begins to focus on the experience of these Christians in relationship to that great salvation. And the first thing he highlights is that that salvation is going to be lived out in the real world of trials and afflictions in the lives of the people of God. And he does so in this paradox of abounding joy and of crushing grief. He no sooner finishes this marvelous statement of this great and glorious salvation but that he writes, "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief." Well, are they grieving or are they rejoicing? How, if they are greatly rejoicing can they be grieving? Are not great joy and crushing grief mutually exclusive? This is a paradox, an apparent contradiction, but only an apparent contradiction, for there is a marvelous synthesis of reality when Peter says, "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief." The Apostle Paul brings these two things together in the well-known statement of 2 Corinthians 6:10, where he has a whole string of paradoxes. And he says, "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." Well, is he rejoicing or is he sorrowful. He says it's not either, or; it's both, and. And so with our Bibles opened this morning, I want you to consider the truths of this passage under two very evident headings. First of all, their experience of abounding joy, and secondly, their experience of crushing grief.
First of all, as Peter writes to these believers in Asia Minor, having set before them this glorious salvation which drew from his heart and his pen this eulogy, this speaking well of God for His great salvation, he sets out their experience of abounding joy in these words: "Wherein ye greatly rejoice." Two things under this heading of abounding joy: the nature of their joy and the source of their joy. What's the nature of their joy. Most of our versions read: "Wherein ye greatly rejoice." And the two English words are an attempt to translate one word from the original, which is not the standard word for rejoice. There is a word used frequently in the New Testament, and Peter could have used that word with a modifier to show it was standard joy intensified with a modifier. But he uses a word that is not found at all in the secular writers of the first century. The standard word for joy is, but not this word. It is only found here in the New Testament. It is also found in that Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew Scripture called the Septuagint. But it is a word that focuses upon a unique kind of joy. It refers without exception in all of its usages in the New Testament to a deep, intense spiritual joy, a heightened rejoicing either in God Himself or in what God has done.
For example, in the well-known words of the beatitudes, Matthew 5:11-12, the final beatitude, Jesus said, "Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice [there's our standard word], and be exceeding glad [and here's our word translated with two English words]." It is not enough, the Lord says, simply to rejoice. But let your rejoicing be escalated to exceeding gladness.
It's the word used in Luke 10:21, one of the few passages in which our Lord is described in what we might call a sanctified paroxysm of holy joy. In Luke 10:21, we read of our Lord's inner experience: "In that same hour He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; or so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight." As we look into the context and realize that our Lord has just spoken to the 70 who have returned, having gone out at His commission. And His authority conferred upon them has been operative in the casting out of demons and in doing mighty works. And they come back exuberant and full of thanksgiving and praise and spiritual exhilaration. And He says, "Nevertheless in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. In that same hour He rejoiced...." As the Lord Jesus sees the fruit of the work He Himself will accomplish as He makes His way steadfastly to the cross, who can measure the exuberant joy in the holy heart of the Son of God when He knows that before Him are some whose names are written in heaven, whose redemption will be secured by His almighty and unique work as the only One who fully knows the Father and is fully known by the Father. As you read on in the context, it is that kind of exuberant, exhilarating, heightened rejoicing that our Lord experiences in this context.
Then it's used in Revelation 19:7 in that marvelous picture of the consummation of redemption at what is called the marriage supper of the Lamb. And there in that passage when all of the redeemed of all the ages are together brought into the full realization of their salvation in Christ. And there under the imagery of a wedding feast, the bridegroom takes His bride to Himself in the consummate intimacy of the eternal state. We read: "Let us rejoice and [here's our word] be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come." Who can begin even to measure the joy that will be ours when the summons goes forth: "The marriage has come. Let us be exceeding glad." One writer has tried to define it with these words: "It is a jubilant and a thankful exaltation." That's the nature of this joy. So when Peter writes to these elect sojourners of the dispersion, having opened up this marvelous panorama of God's salvation, he says, "wherein ye greatly rejoice," underscoring the nature of that joy is an abundant joy, a jubilant and an exalting joy.
And what is the cause and the source of this joy? Look at the text again. It begins with the words, "Wherein ye greatly rejoice." And the word "wherein" of the 1901 translation is an attempt to translate two words from the original. We might render it, "in which" or "in which thing", or some would suggest, "in whom". Rightly interpreting the Bible is sometimes is not a simple thing. When you open up your Greek text and say, "Now Lord, give me light; give me wisdom as I try to understand what You said", you face a pronoun, and a pronoun has gender. And you say, "Now what noun does it match in gender?" And you say, "Well, it can't be the word "salvation", which is in the immediate context, because the gender doesn't match. Well then, to what does it refer? If it's a neuter or masculine gender, does it go all the way back, as some suggest, to God Himself? ("Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.") And after opening up that salvation, is Peter assuming that the hearts of his readers will be so taken up with fresh devotion to God the Father that he now writes, "In whom ye greatly rejoice"? That's a possibility, but it's not very convincing. Most likely, and most who study the Word of God with reverent and with submissive hearts have come to the conclusion that what Peter is doing is saying, "wherein", that is, in that whole glorious description of this amazing salvation that Peter has laid out, "In which ye greatly rejoice." In other words, Peter writes and says,
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [He is the author of this great salvation. His great mercy is its source. The new birth is our initiation into it ('He has begotten us again'). A living hope rooted in the resurrection is one of its great benefits; an inheritance secured for us, undefiled, imperishable, unfading reserved in heaven. And we, the heirs, are preserved for it. 'Wherein', that is, as you contemplate and believingly appropriate to yourself afresh all of the wonders of this great salvation, this is the basis, the cause, the source of your exuberant joy.]"
Peter asserts that these elect sojourners were continually exulting with abounding joy, a joy derived from an intelligent, believing appreciation of their great salvation in Jesus Christ.
Now by application, what does this tell us about these Christians? There we are in Asia Minor surrounded by pagans in 65 AD living under Roman rule in the midst of people that are pressuring them from every side, some mocking them out because they've left their former lifestyle, others oppressing them. As you read through the epistle, it's evident that they were not sailing to the clouds without opposition. And yet Peter can say to them, "Wherein ye greatly rejoice." He uses a present tense: "You are greatly and constantly and continually filled with exuberant joy." And he says, "Wherein in the intelligent believing comprehension and laying hold of this great salvation." Well, it tells us that these believers had been instructed in the great foundational doctrines of the Christian faith.
Peter does not write what he writes in verses 3 to 5 and then give an imperative, though the word in the original had the same form as an imperative. There are no imperatives until verse 13. Peter is assuming that when he writes about the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, laying bare the fact that there was an understanding of the basic doctrine of the Trinity. And when he writes, "According to His great mercy begat us again [the new birth]", when he speaks of living hope, the resurrection of Jesus, an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, fades not away, reserved in heaven, kept by the power of God (all of these rich, fundamental, theological concepts), he does not say, "Now that I've introduced these concepts, you ought to begin to rejoice in them." He can say, "Wherein you are already rejoicing", indicating that he was confident that in the minds and hearts of these believers, there was an intelligent, believing apprehension of these realities. He was not the first one to use such terms as he uses in his greeting.
Imagine what it would be like in many a professing Christian congregation to stand up and begin to use words like these: foreknowledge of God, sanctification of the Spirit, obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ. You would be talking in tongues. And then to go on and speak of God's divine begetting, of God's great mercy, living hope, resurrection of Jesus, inheritance incorruptible, undefiled. You see, in many an evangelical church today, the whole ministry is relational. If you're going to have a hearing, you've got to talk about people's felt hurts and felt needs. You can't do anything that makes them strain their brains. They're a visually oriented society. You can't make them think on such issues as sanctification. I mean that's as musty as a Puritan's wig. You can't make them think about blood of sprinkling. That's an antiquated concept. You've got to have a ministry that is relational and makes no demands on their minds.
Not so with Peter. He can assume that these first century Christians have been nourished on these vigorous, blessed, central truths of the Christian faith, that meat and potatoes of the ministry which had brought them into the faith as he describes it in verse 12 of this very chapter and later on in verse 22 through verse 25. They had not been brought into the Christian faith by a frothy, shallow, relational, humorous, antidotal pattern of sermonizing. They had had the Gospel preached unto them with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, a Gospel that trafficked stuff of these great and saving realities. And as they had been brought into the Christian faith by such a ministry, they had been nourished upon it so that when Peter writes unto them, he is fully cognizant of their struggles.
As the letter unfolds, we shall see that he is not insensitive of their struggles. He knows the struggling wife with an unconverted husband. He knows the struggling slave with an unreasonable master. He knows the struggling saints with unreasonable colleagues who are beating upon them with their words. He's not insensitive to that. But he knows that what saints need in their pilgrimage is not the froth of anecdotal, touchy, feely, man-centered ministry. He knows they need to have the tap roots of their Christian life sunk into the subsoil of the great doctrines of the Christian faith. That's what makes strong, mature, good soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that alone will produce solid, substantial, exuberant joy. "Wherein ye greatly rejoice." In what? In this glorious salvation, which when laid out in words which the Holy Spirit teaches, is not talking in tongues to this congregation of ordinary make up of the full spectrum of diversity of ethnic and religious and sociological and intellectual backgrounds. Peter can assume that their abounding joy is a joy that has its source their intelligent, believing apprehension of the great realities of the Christian faith as laid out in verses 3 to 5.
But now we come to the other side of the picture which fills in the dimensions of the paradox. He no sooner speaks of their abounding joy but that he focuses upon their experience of crushing grief. "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Now again, notice the nature of their grief and then the cause of their grief.
The nature of this grief: the word used refers not to the pain or anguish that one feels in the nerve endings. You kids catch your finger in the door and you feel real pain, but it is physical pain. It is registered in your brain by the nerve endings in your finger and the pressure of the door on your finger as it's caught between the door and the door jam. But the word used here always refers not to bodily pain, but to the distress of the mind and of the soul.
For example, it's used in Matthew 19:22. When Jesus finishes dealing with the rich young ruler, and he doesn't want to come to Christ on Christ's terms, it says that he went away sorrowful. That was a sorrow of the spirit, that sorrow that comes when there was this desire for something more than his money and position could give him. But there was no willingness to part with that which was his god and his idol. And so he went away internally grieved, agitated, disturbed. That's the word used.
It's used of our Lord when He goes into Gethsemane (Matthew 26:37). He began to be sorrowful and sore amazed. He had said in John 12, "Now is My soul troubled." Long before anyone bound Him, dragged Him to Caiaphas and then off to Pilate and up to Herod and back to Pilate; long before any crowns of thorns were pressed upon His brow, any rods were used to beat Him, any lashes tore the flesh of His back, it says He began to be sorrowful--an internal pain of the soul.
And very interesting, this is the word used in Ephesians 4:30: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit." He has no nerve endings. He is pure spirit, and He can be grieved internally with pain by the actions of the people of God. So that's the nature of the grief. When the text says, "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief", Peter is focusing not upon any external, physical afflictions that they may have endured at the hands of their enemies or even within the providence of God. The focus is not upon anything external, but upon the internal anguish and distress of the mind and the soul. While in the midst of abounding joy, they are experiencing this grief. They are experiencing this internal distress of mind and soul. And the structure in the original is such that most likely it is pointing to a concurrent experience. You have the main verb and then an aorist participle of their grief, which in many instances shows that what is asserted in the main verb and then described in the participial phrase shows concurrent reality. So Peter is not saying, "Though you experience joy most of the time, once in a while sorrow's intermixed." Most likely he is underscoring that concurrent with that abounding joy is a continual experience of heaviness and grief.
And what's the occasion of their grief? Look at the text: "...though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold [here's the key word] trials." Trials are the occasion of our grief. Now this word translated "trials" is that broadly used word in the New Testament. Sometimes it's used to describe temptation, that is, an inducement to sin. Other times it means trials: stressful, pressured situations. It can be persecution, affliction, physical suffering, anything that grinds and grates against our love of comfort and ease, any dark clouds that break in on the blue sky of favorable providence, any thorn that pricks the finger when we're admiring a rose of some manifestation of God's goodness. And in this instance, obviously, Peter is referring to this word in that sense. This is the way it used in James 1:2: "Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations [trials, situations of testing]." That's what Peter is referring to. And he says the occasion of their grief are these trials. Notice, he does not focus on any specific manifestation. He just groups them altogether and says trials. And he tells us four things about those trials.
The first thing he tells us about them is that they are temporal. Look at the text: "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials. [You have these trials, but remember, they are for a little while. They are real, and they are with you, but bless God, they won't always be with you.]" What is a little while? Well, it could mean that there is some present pressured situation, and Peter wants his readers to know that each trial will only last so long. But that wouldn't be accurate. Some are entrusted with trials and crucibles of testing that will mark them till they breathe their last and are placed in the cold, dark, damp earth. And Peter would have no way of knowing whether this or that trial was allotted for this or that child of God, and so when he says "for a little while". He is contrasting the temporal nature of the trial with the glorious inheritance of which he had just finished speaking: "that inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, the already and continuing to be reserved inheritance for which you will be preserved as the heirs of the inheritance in which glorious salvation you rejoice, though for a little while you are put to grief because of these trials." But "remember," Peter says, "They are temporal." Think of Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4:17: "For our light affliction, which is for the moment...." A moment, a moment! Year after year, Paul underwent tremendous opposition, underwent tremendous suffering, had to reckon with that stake in his flesh that God allowed the devil to place upon him to keep him a humble and dependant man. And he writes over all of that, "light affliction for a moment." So Peter writes and says, "Yes, you've been put to grief, and the cause of the grief is your trials, but I want you to remember, dear struggling sojourners of the dispersion, they are temporal."
Secondly, he said these trials are divinely ordered. The text says, "...though now for a little while, if need be [literally from the original, 'if it is necessary']...." Now who determines whether trials are necessary. Does God send down a telegram, a blank sheet of paper with blank lines saying, "Would you like some trials this next week? Tick here. Would you like some lighter trials the following week? Tick here. Would you like no trials for three weeks? Tick here." Anyone get such a slip from heaven generated out of God's computer bank? I never have. "If need be"--who determines whether there is a need? Well, there's only one, the God who is described in Romans 8:28 as the One who is working all things together for the good of His people. So Peter, in writing to these saints whom he describes as constantly experiencing exuberant joy as they intelligently, believingly apprehend their glorious salvation (here's the paradox), he says in the midst of that they have been put to grief. The occasion of that grief is their trials. Though they are temporal, he says, "I want you to understand they are divinely ordered trials." Listen to John Calvin, the pastor preaching to his people in Geneva on this very phrase. He writes,
"His purpose was to show that God does not thus try His people without reason. For if God afflicted us without a cause, it would be grievous to bear. Hence, Peter takes an argument for consolation from the design of God, not because the purpose always appears to us, but because we ought to be fully persuaded that it ought to be because it is God's will."
What is God's will? In terms of the will of His plan and decree, God's will is what is. I'm not talking about His perceptive will. If I'm guilty of a certain sin and God says stop it, God's will is that I stop it. But if I stand here this morning and I feel something of the signal of the nerves from my left shoulder that I've either developed either arthritis or bursitis in my working arm, it is the will of God that I feel that. Now does that mean I shouldn't go to a orthopedic and see if we can help it and take a regimen of some pain relief? No, that's the proper use of means. But what is, is the revelation of God's will. So as Peter writes to them, he says, "Yes, you who exalt and rejoice in your glorious inheritance in Christ and your amazing salvation, you have been put to grief by means of trials. But though they are temporal, you must remember and never forget they are divinely ordered." And to put it bluntly, fighting God is loosing business. And being irritated with God will cut off all your ability to hold communion with God. You can't fellowship with a God with whom you are irked and peeved. How can you come with tears streaming down your face and say,
"O my Father, I don't have a clue of why You're doing what you're doing, but I know you're God, and I know You're wise. And I know Your purposes are all for my good because I read Your heart, not in my present afflictions that cause me grief, but in the great affliction You put upon Your Son when You sent Him to die for the likes of me. And You bore the agony of hearing the cry come into Your own ears from the lips of Your own beloved Son, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!' O God, I don't know why what has come upon me is upon me, but one thing I know when I read Your heart through the lines of the cross is that Your love is eternal, unchangeable, and fixed."
Thirdly, Peter says, "Your trials are manifold." Look at the text again: "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief [not just in trials but] in manifold trials." This is a fascinating word. It doesn't point to the number of the trials but to the different colors of the trials. Peter says, "You're getting the full spectrum of the trials." If you were describing a leopard back in the first century and you wanted to say its skin had several or many colors, this is the word you would use. This is the word you would use, not only to describe a leopard in its many colors, but if you had a piece of marble and you saw the different veins of the colors in the stones of that marble, this is the word you would use. You would say it had manifold shades and hues of color imbedded in it. That's the word you would use. So Peter says, "Your trials are manifold." This is the same word he uses in 4:10 of the grace of God: "...the manifold [the full spectrum of the] grace of God." He says, "Yes, your trials are temporal, divinely ordered, but they are manifold."
But then he really parks on the fourth thing he says about these trials: that they are purposeful. And here Peter parks. He doesn't just want to use a word or two, but we have a whole verse. Notice what he says: "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Here Peter states that the purpose has two focal points. I think you Latin students would tell me, "Pastor Martin, that's two fosi." And do you see what the two focal points are? Peter says, "I want you elect sojourners of the dispersion to understand that these trials are purposeful." They don't come willy nilly. They don't come because of some insensitivity of God in the heart or indifference to you. They have a distinctive purpose. One is immediate, and one is remote. One points to the now in this life, and one to the then at the second coming of our Lord Jesus.
Let's unpack those for a few minutes. What's the immediate purpose of these trials? The text says, "that the proof of your faith [literally, the genuineness of your faith]...." The word used here is in that general family of words that means to put something to the test, to prove or disprove its genuineness. But it's a little bit of a different wrinkle on this particular word. And the most respected lexicographers state that it should be rendered "the genuineness of your faith." So what's Peter saying? He's saying, "The immediate purpose of these trials is that your faith may be put to the test and be validated that it's real." And that's why he can use the imagery of gold and fire. You see how he immediately goes into it. He says, "Now look, you know what gold is, this most precious metal. It will ultimately perish at the second coming of Christ." (The world and all the elements will be dissolved in that conflagration at the return of our Lord [2 Peter 3:10]). He says, "Nonetheless, when you have a lump of something that looks like gold, what do you do? You will put it into the fire, not to destroy it but to see what in it is real gold and what is dross. Now he says, "These trials are calculated by God to be a furnace in which to validate the reality of your faith in the now." The immediate purpose of the trials is that your faith may be put to the test and validated that it is real. Faith, that queen of all graces, is worthless until it is tested.
According to verse 12 in the latter part of the chapter, these people were brought to the Christian faith through the preaching of the Gospel. We don't know who the preachers were. We went into that in the background of the book. We don't know under what circumstances, but Peter does tell us these things have been announced to them by those that preached the Gospel to them with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. And so they come to faith, and they say yes.
"A proclamation of free and full pardon, acceptance before the God of the universe based upon the doing and the dying of another--that's good news. I venture upon Christ. I lay the full weight of my soul upon Christ alone as He's offered in the Gospel. I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I turn away from my worldly companions and my worldly standards and all of the pressure of this present world. I cast in my lot with pilgrims. I'm here to declare that no longer is this world my commonwealth. There is the Jerusalem above. And on my way to that great city, I believe in the Lord Jesus."
Now Peter says, "You've been made heavy. In the midst of that joy in the possession of your salvation, you've been put to grief through trials, and you must understand there's a divine purpose in those trials. And here is purpose number one: to test and prove the genuineness of your faith." When clinging to Christ brings you something more than joy of sins forgiven, the exhilaration of knowing I need no longer fear death and the grave and judgment; my hell has been born by another. But clinging to Christ now means that you may loose your job. Clinging to Christ now means that you may be verbally and even physically abused by your colleagues. Clinging to Christ now means that you've got to stay on in the place of God's appointment and demonstrate submission to God's institutions when there's unrighteous rulers, and He says you've got to honor the king. You've got to be submissive to every divinely instituted authority.
What happens? The faith by which I profess my attachment to Christ begins to gather to it implications that are very unpleasant to the flesh. Now faith is tested. Is it real faith? If it is, it will lose nothing in the crucible of the fire. It will be proven to be real gold. Throw a lump of something in the fire that looks like gold and in a half an hour, if nothing's there, it was fools gold. Remember the parable of the sower? They believed for a while, but when the sun of persecution and tribulation arises because of the Word, what happens? They whither, and they die. My professing Christian friend, untried faith is worthless faith. And God, in His mercy, is so committed that we not stumble through self-delusion, that He will bring upon every one of His true children a crucible of fire in order to validate the genuineness of faith, validate it to their own consciousness, validate it to an on-looking world so that in the midst of the fire, they see us yet walking with one like unto the Son of man. And they say, "There ain't no explanation for that character, but he knows Jesus. And Jesus is identified with him." Peter wants them to know that. He says, "Yes, you've been put to grief through your manifold trials, but you must understand the purpose is that the proof, the genuineness of your faith like gold that is purified in the fire, so it too is validated.
But then there's an ultimate purpose of trials. Look at it. And what is the ultimate purpose? "That the [genuineness] of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." What's the ultimate purpose of the trial? That your faith may be purified and vindicated in the last day. The immediate purpose: that your faith may be put to the test and validated now that it is real. But Peter says there's even an ultimate purpose: that your faith may be purified and vindicated in the last day, that that faith tested and proved now "may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
This is one of the most amazing statements. My faith will be found unto praise, unto glory, unto honor at the second coming of the Lord Jesus. And at face value, it seems to say that my faith will result in my receiving praise and glory and honor. But that seems so antithetical to the Biblical truth that all that God does in nature and grace has His glory as its ultimate end. But there's no compelling reason to take any other position on this text. At the return of the Lord Jesus, the faith of the true people of God validated in the crucible of the fires now and continually purified, at that day will be found unto praise and glory and honor. Unto praise: commendation. ("Well done thou good and faithful servant.") Glory: Romans 8:21 speaks of Christ who at His second coming will be glorified in His people. He comes to be glorified in His saints. And honor: that's to be given a place of influence, a place of distinction. ("I will make him ruler over five cities...over ten cities.") Look at all the promises in Revelation 2 and 3: "To him that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God...I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne." Dear people, it's an amazing thing that he wants the elect sojourners of the dispersion to understand that in the midst of the trials that caused them grief, they must be assured that that tried and tested and purified faith will in the last day receive the commendation and share in the glory of and share in the distinctions of the very Savior who imparted and nurtured that faith in them. And what will we do with any honor we get? We'll throw it all back at His feet. But you see, God is so sure that in heaven there will be no selfish desire to take any glory that belongs to Him. He can give all the glory He wants to His people knowing they'll give it back to Him. That's the amazing thing.
Now what will that do for people whose tears are flowing under the real relationship to real trials? Well, you see, that will cause the tears to glisten with the gleam of hope and expectation. God is purifying my faith. To what end? That at the revelation of the Lord Jesus, at the coming of my Savior, I will receive from Him these three things Peter speaks about. I will receive from my very Savior in that context praise and glory and honor that I might then say, "But O Lord Jesus, it was all of Your doing and all of Your grace." One commentator has beautifully summarized it this way:
"He thus reminds Christians that God's purposes in present grief may not be fully known in a week, in a year, or even in this lifetime. Indeed, some of God's purposes may not be known when believers die and go to be with the Lord. Some will only be discovered at the day of final judgment when the Lord reveals the secrets of all hearts and commends with special honor those who trusted Him in hardship, even though they could not see the reason for it. They trusted in Him simply because He was their God, and they knew Him to be worthy of trust. It is in times when the reason for hardship cannot be seen that trust in God alone seems to become most pure and precious in His sight."
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." Those were the words of Job. Imagine, stand before a God and say, "Kill me. If You do what seems to be the ultimate expression of Your will, I'll still trust You." Mr. Grudom says, "This is the highest expression of faith. Such faith He will not forget, but will store up as a jewel of great value and beauty to be displayed and delighted in in the day of judgment."
Well, I sought to open up those texts under those two heads: their abounding joy, their crushing grief; the nature, the source, the cause of both. Now what does all of this say to us? I was tempted with the thought of just preaching a separate message on the many principles, but I reduced them to just several this morning.
Number one--and I pray, dear children of God, you'll grasp this: joy mingled with grief and grief tempered by joy will be the concurrent experience of every true Christian in this life. The Christian's joy is derived from the believing contemplation of what he now possesses in Christ and what he shall possess when he comes to that inviolable inheritance for which he is infallibly kept and preserved. His joy with its taproots in these realities cannot be taken from him no matter what his external circumstances may be. But the Christian's grief is derived from the many colored trials to which all of the people of God are subject in varying degrees without any power to control them. That's why Paul could say to the young churches in Acts 14:22--his follow-up message was this: "confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God." He knew one thing was for sure no matter what providences would unfold: if you're on your way to heaven, you're going to go through the crucible of fire.
Not only is the gate narrow and always will be narrow, but the way is always compressed that leads to life. And no one can widen it and strip it of its hazards and extinguish its fires. It cannot be done. And a Christianity that has no fire to test the reality of faith and to purify faith, awaiting the reward of faith, is no Christianity. It's a heretical aberration. As under the old covenant, the great promise was prosperity, under the new, it's adversity. If You have a new covenant Savior, a new covenant privilege, you'll have new covenant affliction to test and to purify your faith. Listen to old Matthew Poole:
"If their heaviness did in any way abate their joy, yet it did not wholly hinder it. And though their joy did overcome their heaviness, yet it did not wholly exclude it. So you have joy that, though it may be tempered with grief, is never swallowed up by grief. And you have a grief that is tempered by the joy. 'We sorrow not as those who have no hope.'"
The same word is used there for sorrow in 1 Thessalonians 4:13. You see, God doesn't tell us to be stoics. "There is no hurt; there is no pain. I'm only happy, happy, happy all the time, time, time." That's not Biblical. I can know a joy that enables me to feel and to be assured of certain purposes of God amidst the bitter tears of grief and of pain. That was true of our Lord Jesus. He's called a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, yet He says, "My joy I give unto you." Well, is He a man of sorrows or a man of joy. He is both. And we're called to follow is His steps.
The Second great principle: true saving faith will always become a tried and tested faith in order that it may be a praise-worthy faith in the day of Jesus Christ. That faith that is the result of the new birth, John says, is a faith that overcomes the world. Paul describes it in Galatians 2:20 as the very principle of life: "That life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me." 2 Corinthians 5: "We walk by faith and not by sight." Now who would want to be deluded with an untested, untried faith and wonder when I come to the last day, will it be exposed as spurious? I don't want that. I want to know that my professed faith is real. And God says "Yes. And anyone in their right mind would want to know it." It's too late to do something when He comes. He'll then say to those who are quite confident in their faith, "Lord, Lord, did we not, did we not...?" And He says, "Depart!" I don't want that, do you? Don't you want to have certain well-grounded confidence that your professed faith is the real thing now? Then expect God to throw you in the fire. Gold loses nothing but its dross and shows itself to be gold in the fire. So count on it.
And you young people wrestling with the whole question, "Shall Mom and Dad's God become my God? And is He my God?" Why don't you pray, "Lord, as best I know, I'm trusting in Your Son. I'm resting only in Him. But I don't know what has come from Mom and Dad's head into my head, and what's come by the Spirit of God into my heart. O Lord, put me in circumstances that will test the reality of my faith." True saving faith will always become a tried and tested faith in order that it may be a praise-worthy faith.
Remember, David speaks of the Word of God being like precious metal purified in the fire seven times. I was thinking about this and asking the question, Why does the fire get hotter the closer you get to the end of the journey? That's a question I've wrestled with in the last couple of years--I've had to. I'd have to be in la la land not to wrestle with that question. I've known a concentration of physical, emotional, psychological, ministerial fires the likes of which I've never known in 45 years as a Christian and 40 as a preacher. It's just like God said, "You dummy, isn't it plain?" When you take that original lump of what seems to be gold (and maybe there's twenty percent dross),throw it in the fire, and in half an hour most of the dross comes to the surface. Now if you want to get the remaining bit out of it (maybe there's another five percent left), you've got to throw it in the fire again. David said God's Word's been thrown in the fire seven times. Why? The more heat, the more pressure, the more the last bit of dross is going to be burned away. Some of us wonder why the fire gets hotter the closer we get to the end of the journey. Because God's burning away dross. And hopefully, there isn't quite as much dross left. So God says, "I've got to turn up the heat to get the rest out." To what end? That there might be more praise and more glory and more honor when I stand before Him. He loves me enough to turn up the heat that He might increase the praise. Who would not want to serve God like that? Who would not want love and follow a Savior like that?
Then my third application--and I close with this: if you're not a child of God, whatever joys or grief you now experience, you'll know nothing but grief in the day of Christ. Peter can say to these afflicted, tried, and tested saints, "Look forward to the revelation of Jesus Christ. Then all the grief and all the testing is over and past, and there will be nothing but the honor and the glory and the praise." Are you sitting here as an unconverted man, woman, boy, or girl? You may be like the person in Psalm 73. Your life may be a witness to the fact that God insulates some unconverted people from the ordinary trials of life. Life is nothing but one piece of cake for you. You have no physical afflictions, no economic pressures. The kids are well; the wife is well. You've got no debilitating disease taking one of you down to an early grave. Read Psalm 73--and my friend, whatever present joys you presently have created by these favorable circumstances of a patient and loving God, in the day of Christ, they're over, and over for good. There will be the weeping and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, and that forever. You may be an unconverted person, and in you the text is fulfilled: "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward." And your life has been marked by grief and disappointment and trials. O my friend, don't say, "My life's a living hell." You take your worst day and multiply it by ten thousand and that will not equal one moment in hell. You see, God sets before us the choice: sanctifying grief now that prepares us for heaven to come or grief unsupported by God or a mesmerizing life of ease without God, both of which go to the lake of fire.
O my friend, I hope we've made you jealous to become a Christian. Tell me dear children and young people, when did you ever find and old man, an old woman who's been in the fire; who's faith has been tested and tried and proven that ever put his hand upon your shoulder and said to you, "You know, upon reflection, I really wish I could go back and do it all over again and never live a life for Christ. It's really been a bummer." Find that person. He or she doesn't exist. Our only regret is we haven't adhered to Him more faithfully, loved Him more fervently, borne witness more aggressively to His wonderful grace.
Well, the chorus sings, "A paradox, a paradox, a most amazing paradox." Frederick's paradox of age is nothing compared to the paradox of the true child of God in which thing you rejoice, though for a while if need be, you are in grief.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 16:36:44 GMT -5
Looking unto Jesus by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached February 5, 1995
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Will you turn with me now to Hebrews 12, and I shall read in your hearing the opening two verses, which to many of us are very familiar words:
"Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."
Now let us pray and ask God by the Holy Spirit to give us a fresh sight of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Father, we thank you for the words of our Lord Jesus, who speaking concerning the person and ministry of the Spirit said, "He shall take of Mine, and He shall reveal it to you." And we pray that the Holy Spirit this night will do that work which He delights to do in testifying to Christ. Take, we pray, His own inscripturated Word and make it a living Word to each of our hearts. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
For our brief communion meditation tonight, I want to direct your attention to one simple, fundamental, but all-important word found in the two verses read in your hearing. And that is the word embodied in the phrase in verse 2 at its beginning, "looking unto Jesus". Those words are the kind of words that naturally lend themselves to plaques that are found in Christian bookstores and in various forms of calligraphy or other forms of visual art because there is a bit of catchy ring to them: "Looking unto Jesus". But so often the words are used in a relatively sentimental way, in a way that has very little intelligible content. And yet the way in which they are set before us surely is just the opposite of that.
Let me say just a word about the general setting of these verses from which that phrase is taken. Those of you familiar with the epistle to the Hebrews will know that in this epistle the writer is calling his readers to persevering faith based upon the better things of the new covenant. Here were people tempted to go back to the types and shadows of the old covenant because their confession of attachment to Christ as the mediator of the new covenant and to all of the privileges of that better covenant with its better priesthood, better sacrifices, and all of its better things was bringing upon them bitter and sometimes even life-threatening opposition and persecution. And so the writer to Hebrews is concerned by drawing on the believers, by holding out before them the better things and, as it were, getting behind them and driving them on with some of the most sober threatenings and warnings to be found anywhere in the Word of God. So he is enticing them to persevering faith by opening up the better things of the new covenant. And he is seeking to drive them on in the way of the better things of the new covenant by sober warnings. And in the course of doing that, he came to chapter 11 in which he set forth this marvelous display, this honor role of men and women who manifested such persevering faith. And starting with the patriarchs and moving right on to some of their own contemporaries who were being martyred for the sake of Christ, he sets forth this display, this honor roll of the men and women who manifested this persevering faith and thereby attained the reward of the eternal inheritance.
In the light of all of this, he now is going to give this very focused exhortation of verses 1 and 2 of chapter 12: "Therefore let us also...." And he begins with this encouragement to enter and remain in the race. He says, "...seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, [let us do something because there is a great cloud of witnesses.]" And the witnesses could either be those who have gone before and are now in the stadium beholding us, or I rather believe that the meaning is, they are the ones who bear witness that persevering faith does indeed bring a glorious reward. The idea that the saints who've gone before us are actually beholding us in our race is something that, to my knowledge, cannot be established exegetically from the Word of God. I believe it would cause great sadness to the spirits of just men made perfect if they saw the way in which we often run the race. And I don't believe God's going to make them our encouragement at the expense of their joy in the presence of God. But they are witnesses by their presence in the very immediate presence of God that to run the race of persevering faith is not to be engaged in a fool's endeavor. So there is the encouragement to enter and remain in the race that comes from this cloud of witnesses to tell us that to run the race in persevering faith is indeed to attain unto a blessed reward.
Then there comes, in the second place, the call to make the necessary preparation to run well in the race. Compassed with these witnesses, we are to lay aside every weight, everything that would encumber us, and the sin which does so easily beset us. This is not referring to a besetting sin, but sin of any kind, sin of any nature, sin in its totality. We must lay aside all encumbrances. We must lay aside the very body of sin like a cloak that would encumber us. I had the privilege of watching the Millrose Games on Friday night. I was invited by one of our church members to see them in Madison Square Gardens. And it was interesting to watch, that before every race, no matter what kind of clothes the athletes had, they stripped down to the bare minimum of their racing gear that they might not be encumbered in seeking to win the prize. So we move from the encouragement to enter and remain in the race that comes from those who have gone before and witness that to do so is not to be a fool. Then there is the call to make the necessary preparations to run well in the race (lay aside all encumbrances and the body of sin).
Then thirdly, there is the summons to run the race with endurance determined to finish. "Let us run with patience [or endurance] the race that is set before us." And the language here is very similar to the language of 1 Corinthians 9. We have been dealing with the subject of Christian liberty and the necessity of having our liberty regulated by the determination to keep our own souls in a healthy state, by the determination not only to enter the Christian race and run for a while, but to complete the race and to seize the prize. And some of the technical language from those athletic games is found in this passage. And so we are summoned to run this race with endurance determined to complete it.
Then we come in the fourth place to our phrase, the directive for the fixation of our eyes throughout the entire race. Everything leads up to this. We have responded by grace to enter the race. We have and continue to seek to lay aside all encumbrances and the sin which besets us. Our hearts are set upon running and completing the race. And in all of that, there is to be this directive understood by us that touches the fixation of the eyes of our souls throughout the entire race: "looking unto Jesus". Now the word "looking" is a rare word in the New Testament. This particular word is found only twice. There is a standard word for looking, but that's not the word that is used here. This word literally means to take your eyes away from one thing and to concentrate them upon another. It is a looking away off unto Jesus, so that in the entirety of the Christian race, there is to be a fixation of the spiritual eyes upon Jesus Himself. And because in the very nature of being true to the text in 1 Corinthians 10, we have had some very deep, long, searching, sobering looks at our own hearts. We have had some very deep, long, searching, sobering looks at the sins that lurk within our own hearts and are constantly there to threaten us in our Christian race. And in the midst of all of this, I believe this text is the most appropriate meditation for our coming to the table tonight. In our determination to regulate all of our liberties, by the determination to complete the race and seize the prize, we are to turn our eyes away from every other object, including ourselves, the sins into which we might possibly fall, the many who are strewn as wreckage along the race course, and we are to fix our eyes upon Jesus Himself.
But this looking off unto Jesus is not some mystical, sentimental notion. We are to look off unto Jesus basically in a two-fold light. Look at the text: "looking [away, off] unto Jesus the author [or captain] and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." The two-fold light in which we are to gaze by faith upon our Lord Jesus with a faith that is constantly instructed and enlightened and shaped by the Scriptures, so that it is not a Jesus of our own imagination, our own fantasy. But it is the Jesus of Biblical revelation. We are to look off unto to Him first of all as the originator and completer of faith. Now I'm not going to weary you with the possible meanings of the various words and the different opinions of the commentators. But this much is clear: with respect to our faith, whether we consider it as our faith, the subjective exercise of trust in Christ, or our faith, the body of truth revealed concerning Christ (for the term "the faith" or "faith" is used in both ways in the New Testament), one thing is clear, Jesus stands paramount at the beginning of it and the end of it. And He is everything significant in between. So to look off unto to Jesus, if it is as captain, originator, and perfecter of our faith, then it is looking unto Jesus who began the work of saving grace in us and who will certainly complete that work. And whatever heaviness and leadiness us we feel in our legs in the midst of the race, whatever burning of lungs and oxygen starvation we may feel as we're coming into our last laps, Jesus puts no one into this race of faith but what He is both originator and perfecter of their faith. "Yea, I to the end shall endure as sure as the earnest is given, but not more secure the glorified spirits in heaven."
And if it is referring more to the objective truth about Christ of which He is both author, captain, and perfecter, then it is saying fix the gaze of your soul upon Jesus as the One in whom all the provisions of God in the Gospel find their expression. This has been the great theme of this epistle to the Hebrews. Do I need a priest to represent me before God by sacrifice? He is the priest greater than any Aaronic priest. He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Do I need a sympathetic priest who has been tempted in all points like as I have been tempted yet never stained with sin? Well, He is just such a priest. Do I need a sacrifice that having been once offered never needs to be repeated? He is the One who by one sacrifice has perfected forever those that are sanctified. So whatever my need as a sinner is, in Christ and in the truth concerning Christ, there is a faith of which He is both the author and the perfecter. He is the beginning and the end. Hence, the Scripture says, "the truth as it is in Jesus". And Paul could say, though he ranged over the widest field of Christian doctrine, in Colossians 1, "whom we preach" with reference to the Lord Jesus. And so the direction for the fixation of our spiritual eyes throughout the entire race is to be a fixation upon Jesus.
It is to be a looking unto Jesus not as a lovely little spiritual catchword, but with spiritual intelligence contemplating the fact that I'm in the race because it was first of all His idea, not mine. Left to myself, I wouldn't be in this race. I would still be with those drifting down into perdition on my way to everlasting darkness and the wrath of God. He is the One who laid hold of me and brought me into the race. If the sense here is the captain, He's the One who conscripted me. And He waits at the finish line to reward me. Look away unto Jesus. He knew all the difficulties I would face. He knew all the impediments. He knew the times I would stumble. He knows the times when I would wonder, "Will I make another step in that race?" Looking off unto Jesus, the author, the originator and completer of faith.
But He is not only the One whom we're to fix our eyes as originator and completer of faith, but as the great pattern and example of faith. Look at the latter part of verse 2: "...who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame and has set down at the right hand on the throne of God." There is no clearer example of the pattern of persevering faith than is to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He lived the life of faith without a tinge of unbelief. And notice the pattern and example of His faith. It was one in which He fixed the end in His eye: "...who for the joy that was set before Him...." What was the joy that was set before Him? Well, according to this passage, we could say it was the joy of the personal reward for His own humiliation and suffering, namely being brought to the place of Messianic exaltation, described in this verse as being set down at the right hand of the throne of God. And that certainly is a Biblical truth. It seems to be alluded to here. It's the truth of Philippians 2:8-11:
"[Christ] emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Or Acts 2, where Peter speaks of Christ's exaltation as Messianic Lord being the fruit of His willingness to be crucified at the hands of wicked men.
But I rather believe that the allusion here, "...who for the joy that was set before Him....", is the joy spoken of in Isaiah 53: "He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied." The joy of spoken of in Hebrews 2, where it speaks of the captain of our salvation, the same word in the original translated there "captain" is translated here "author". "Make the captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings." And in that setting, we are called His brethren, a wonderful allusion to Psalm 22, where Messiah says, "In the midst of the brethren, I will sing praises unto Thee." So could it be that in our Lord being the pattern and example of faith, He fixes the end in His eye. And the end for Him, the joy set before Him, was presenting all whom He puts into the race and sustains throughout the race and brings to the end of the race, and upon whom He confers the prize, the joy of presenting them totally conformed to His likeness in the presence of angels, and to present them unto the Father.
But whether that is the precise nuance of the passage, the thing that is clear is that the pattern and example of our Lord's faith is that future joy became the motivation and the strength to endure present difficulty. Look at the passage: "...who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame...." As a man of faith, the cross lay before Him. Shame--what a simplistic way to describe all He bore. And He didn't go through it stoically by some kind of internal floating upon the great weight and strength of His divine nature. His experience in Gethsemane shows, as the perfect God-man, the thought of His human soul being the receptacle of the unleashed fury of the wrath of God caused Him such an agony that it pressed, as it were, great drops of sweat mingled with blood from His brow and other parts of His body. Fill in some of the nuances of the account in Mark. It could well be some of His very garments had the appearance of being blood-soaked as a result of that agony. Everything in Him--there was an aversion: "O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." What enabled Him to endure that cross, to embrace it, to march out of that garden and on to the high priest's place of judgment and on before Pilate and Herod and all that followed. "...who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, [thinking lightly of it's] shame...." Now that's relatively speaking. In itself, the account of our Lord's trauma and agony prior to and upon the cross was real: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!" But relatively speaking, in the terms of the joy set before Him, and holding to His course, knowing that He would receive the full reward of His sufferings, He ran with endurance the race that was set before Him.
And on this communion evening, as we come to the table, with many of us having been duly and properly sobered in recent days regarding this matter of the race, and though we are free men and women in Jesus Christ, free from the curse of the law, free from the galling pressure of the law, with no internal delight in its standards or motivation to obedience, and though we are free from all the trappings and ceremonies of the Mosaic system, and free from men lording it over our consciences, we have seen that that freedom is not unto a liberty that tempts God and leaves us vulnerable to a dull conscience and to a shoddy life, but freedom to be the willing, joyful, meticulously obedient bondslaves of Jesus Christ.
Where will we derive both motivation and strength to run with endurance the race that it set before us? It will come as we look off and away unto Jesus. Look at yourself and you'll see weakness, accumulated, massive weakness. Look to others and you will see that which often will disappoint you. Look out into the world and you'll despair. But looking unto Jesus, what will you see? You will see Him who is originator and completer of faith; you will see Him as the pattern and example of faith, "...who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and has set down at the right hand of the throne of God." And it is He who says in the book of the Revelation, "To him that overcometh, I will give to sit down with Me in My throne as I overcame and sat down in My Father's throne."
Dear people, what better place to look off from ourselves, to look off from one another, to look off from all the dangers in a seductive and bewitching world, to look off from the prince of darkness, who with all of his power and machinations goes about, Peter says, as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, and look off unto Jesus, not in some mystical, sentimental way, but with the faith content--He is originator and perfecter of faith. In the objective faith, Christ is all and in all and everything I need to be a perfect Savior to take me all the way to glory. Look off unto Jesus as the One who has put me into the race, who by His grace has granted repentance and faith to me, and having begun that work will complete it. And then look to Him as the pattern and example of faith in which we seize the prize with our eyes, who for the joy set before us, the joy of knowing a few more breaths--to use the imagery of the race, a few more yards, a few more meters, a few more breaths, even with burning lungs and lead in legs, a few more strides, and we'll break the tape and seize the prize. Then it will be unmixed, undiluted joy forever and forever in His presence.
"Looking unto Jesus." We do not see Him now. The Scripture says, "...whom having not seen, ye love." And He has left behind us no human artist whom He inspired and to whom He revealed what His face looked like. We don't know whether He was five foot six, five foot eight, or six foot seven. We don't know whether He was of medium build or stocky. We don't know whether He had big bones or small bones. He left us no record, but what He did leave us is bread and the fruit of the vine. He said these are the only physical tokens of My having been amongst you that I warrant to be brought into My church to serve the interest of nurturing the devotion of My people. That's why there's no Sallman Head of Christ, no crucifix, no cross--none. But there is bread, and there is a cup. That bread signifies and symbolizes the body in which carried out the very thing our text talks about: enduring the cross, despising its shame. And the fruit of the vine in the cup signifies His violent death, His blood poured forth as a sacrifice for sin, all to ratify a covenant that would be sure and certain in all of its provisions for all of those for whom that covenant was made.
"Looking unto Jesus." Make God help us to look at Him afresh and keep the eyes of our souls fixed upon Him. And for such people, in a very real sense, the transition from this life into heaven will really not be such a shocking thing. For having looked upon Him by faith and been sustained by His grace through life, they will be raised to entirely new levels of the same blessed realities when faith shall be turned to sight, but it will not be a different Christ, but the same Christ. In that sense, it will not be a great shock if we've lived looking off unto Jesus, to wake up when we die looking upon the face of Jesus. May we so live, and may we so die.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 16:38:03 GMT -5
The Marvelous Privileges of Adoption, Part 1 by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached November 18, 2007
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Now let us turn to that passage of God's Word that we have just sung, 1 John 3, and I shall read the first three verses.
"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is. And every one that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure."
Let us again pray and ask the Spirit of God to come upon our study of the Scriptures.
Our Father, how we long that You will so instruct us and so kindle holy emotions in us based upon that instruction, that we may be able to enter in wholeheartedly into John's explanation of wonder and amazement, that we natively lost, spiritually dead, hell-deserving sinners should be called Your children, because that's what You have made us. O Father, drive away our spiritual dullness, that we may enter in with all of our hearts to John's exclamation of wonder and praise. To this end instruct us this morning; draw near by the ministry of Your Spirit to preacher and hearer alike, we pray. In Jesus name, amen.
You and I as believers must never allow ourselves to be led into what I would call the never-never land of false and disappointing expectations by the promise that there is one master key to living the Christian life. No, as I have demonstrated in my little booklet entitled Living the Christian Life, you and I need the whole Bible to make us whole men and women in Christ. However, there are some foundational principles, some core issues that form what I like to call the structural framework of what I like to call the entire edifice of the Bible's teaching on how we are to live the Christian life. And one such structural principle is this: you and I as believers must increasingly understand (that has to do with our noggins) and believingly embrace (that has to do with our hearts) who we are and what we are in Christ if we are to live as we ought for Christ. It was for this reason I preached 25 sermons on the Biblical doctrine of justification, that you and I might understand that in Christ we have standing before God in the light of the law in which we have nothing to fear; that by the life and death of Christ, a perfect righteousness has been wrought for every sinner who flees to Christ, becomes united to Christ by faith and is declared justified. In the same way, I'm now preaching the series on adoption. Why? Well, basically it's my privilege as one of your pastors that you as the people of God understand more clearly and believe more firmly who and what you are in Christ as adopted sons and daughters. For in that understanding and in the believing response to that understanding, will be your growth and stability as a child of God.
We come this morning to our fourth study in this amazing privilege of God's redemptive grace called adoption. In our first study of this provision of God's grace in Christ, I sat before you three crucial distinctions which must be understood if we are to rightly understand and spiritually to profit from the Biblical teaching on adoption. Adoption is different but never separate from justification; adoption is different but never separate from regeneration. And the fatherhood of God in new covenant adoption in Christ is different from all the other fatherhoods of God revealed in the Scriptures. Having identified those three crucial distinction, I then made an earnest pastoral plea. And I repeat it this morning, and it is this: don't allow what you are learning and embracing and, I trust, are enjoying of a deeper understanding of your adoption to dilute, to distort, or to replace the other realities of your relationship to God in Jesus Christ. God is still your Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge even though He is now your loving Father. Jesus is still your Master, Lord, and High Priest even though, as I trust you will learn and be persuaded this morning, He is nothing less than your elder Brother.
Then in message two, we put our mind on the wide-angle setting and we viewed the central place of adoption in the scheme of redemption, beginning with an examination of Ephesians 1:4-6 and ending with a consideration of the teaching in Romans 8:18-25. We saw that from eternity to eternity, God's purpose to save hell-deserving sinners is nothing less than bestowing upon them through Jesus Christ the marvelous status of sons of God. And not only bestowing upon them the status of sons, but so working in them by His regenerating and sanctifying grace the very likeness of His own Son the Lord Jesus.
Then lastly, in our third message, I sought to open up in your hearing what I described as the basic meaning and significance of adoption. And I did so along three lines. We first of all looked at the means of adoption in the special word used by the Apostle Paul, that word "huiothesia" which means to place as a son. It defines a legal transaction by which an adult male (ordinarily) might be brought into a family and endowed with the status and privileges of a son--one who was not by nature that son or the kindred of the father who adopts him. So in the light of Scripture, when God uses this word, we must regard adoption as an act of transfer from an alien family into the family of God.
Then we considered the meaning of adoption in the attendant realities of adoption within Roman law. And here I was indebted to Sinclair Ferguson. The old family ties are radically and permanently severed. New family ties are legally and permanently established. And new mutual commitments are made, commitments by the adopted to the one adopting him, and commitments by the father to the one thus adopted.
Then thirdly, I said we can be helped by the meaning of adoption given to us in the helpful, Biblically-based definition of adoption in the shorter catechism, the Baptist version: "Adoption is an act of God's free grace whereby all those who are justified are received into the number and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God," to which I added this phrase: "and the solemn duty to obey the duties of."
So what is adoption? How are we to think of it? It's an act of God's free grace whereby all those who are justified are received into the number, have a right to all the privileges, and are given a solemn duty to obey the duties of the sons of God.
Now this morning we begin to take up the next major category in our study of this marvelous provision of salvation in Jesus Christ. Are you tracking with me? We looked at the three crucial distinctions with an earnest pastoral plea; secondly, the central place of adoption in the plan of salvation; thirdly, the fundamental meaning of adoption. Now we come to the good stuff. We come to consider in our fourth major category the privileges of adoption, or, if you will, why the Apostle John is carried away in holy wonder at the kind of love that would make us children of God. That's what we're going to look at in the next couple of studies. And as we begin to consider these privileges, there are two things I want to say before taking up this morning the first two of those privileges. First of all, I want to say a word about the way I'll address them. Some years ago I preached a series on adoption at a family conference, and when I came to open up the privileges of adoption, I divided them into what I called the legal privileges, the objective privileges, and then secondly, the personal subjective or experiential privileges. I was attempting to do that in my preparation for this series. But the more I labored over that distinction, the more I became convinced that these categories of the privileges of adoption really overlap and interpenetrate one another so that that division, though it was neat and had three heads under each, was artificial, so I junked it. Then the second thing I want to say is about the use of the word "sons" or "sons and daughters." The Bible is very clear that spiritual privileges in Christ know no differing levels because of sexual identity. Paul could say in Galatians 3:27-29 these very explicit words that should leave no one in any question regarding this issue:
"For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus. And if ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise."
With respect to spiritual privileges, when God brings anyone into union with Christ, male or female, young or old, bond or free, cultured or uncultured, all those distinctions are leveled. We come in on equal footing in Jesus Christ in terms of our spiritual privilege. However, the language used in connection with adoption in the Bible is often masculine language and refers to sons of God. And God is not overly fastidious to constantly pause and say, "By that, I mean sons and daughters of God." Now in 2 Corinthians 6:18, God does say, "And ye shall be to Me sons and daughters." However, in the major passages in Romans 8 and Galatians 4, where the term "sons of God" is used, God does not constantly say, "But I also mean daughters." Why do I say that by way of introduction? Because I don't want to be put in bondage constantly to be saying "sons and daughters." Nor do I want to be accused of being sexist or a misogynist, a woman hater, if I don't say "sons and daughters" anymore than I want to be called sexist or a misogynist if I still use the masculine indefinite pronoun him/he in ordinary writing or speaking. It is wicked to charge a man as being sexist or misogynist if he simply speaks as God speaks. And so I make no apology for the fact that, though I will say from time to time "sons and daughter," I'm in the lids of my Bible in which God is not at all fastidious about speaking that language.
Alright, so much of that introduction material. Now then, what are some of the privileges of the adopted children of God? Well, I hope to open up just two of them this morning.
Number one: we are given an irreversible legal status as sons and daughters of the living God. In fact, I went back over my notes after I had fully written them, and I said, "No, I ought to change the heading so that we put it in the first person." What are my privileges as an adopted son of God? What are my privileges as an adopted daughter of God? And to say, "I am given an irreversible legal status as son or daughter of the living God." I want to look at two texts with you and have you open your Bibles to them and consider them with me. First of all, John 1. By the way, I use the phrase "sons and daughters of the living God." That terminology is used in Romans 9:26. John having established that the Christ of whom he will be writing is none other than the eternal Word, the One who was with God in the beginning, through whom all things were made. John then tells us in verses 11 to 13,
"He came unto His own, and they that were His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."
Now I want you to think back through these verses starting with verse 13, because those whom He describes as having received Him (that is, Christ), who are given the right to become the children of God, that is, those who believe on His name are those who were born. (They have experienced a divine begetting.) And so we learn from this passage a spiritual birth by the gracious sovereign will and act of God issues in receiving Jesus by faith. Whenever someone from the mass of humanity embraces Jesus by faith, that is, believes upon His name, entrusts himself or herself to the Jesus of Scripture on the terms of Scripture, it is because God has done something in them that issues in their receiving of Him.
And what has God done? God has birthed them. God has begotten them by spiritual operation: "...who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The spiritual birth by the gracious sovereign will and act of God issues in receiving Jesus by faith. Secondly, receiving Jesus by faith results in the conferral of a right to adoption into the family of God. "But as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name." Receiving Jesus by faith, which is the evidence of the operation of God in new birth; new birth leads to receiving Jesus by faith, thereby giving a right to adoption into the family of God. Thirdly, the right of adoption confers upon us the status and designation, children of God. "To them gave He right to become the children of God."
So this passage highlights the first and foundational privilege of adoption, namely, we are given an irreversible status as children of the living God. I must say to myself, having embraced the Lord Jesus as He is offered in the Gospel, in that embrace, I am given right (this is legal terminology) to be considered part of the family of God, to call myself a child of God by divine adoption, not only a child by divine birth, the regenerating work of God, the first evidence of which is an embracing of the offered Christ in the Gospel. But embracing that Christ, I am given the right to be called a child of God.
Now then, turn to our passage in 1 John 3:
"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is. And every one that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure."
What do we learn from this passage? Number one: because of God's amazing love and its appropriate acts towards us, we who are born of God and adopted are called children of God. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God." What was that manner of love? Well, John tells us in chapter 4, verses 8b through 10: "God is love.... Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
So when John says, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God," it was not a love that just gushed out of His heart and says, "O, there's some children of the devil, I love them; I'm going to make them My children; hug them to My bosom." No, no, God's love cut a swath, cut a channel through Mary's womb, through the bloody cross of Golgotha to the open tomb and the glorious resurrection of His only begotten Son. John says in chapter 4,
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins [to the be the one who would receive in Himself the outpouring of divine wrath for our sins, and in light of that, turn away that wrath so that God might righteously and justly embrace us as His children]."
"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God." Because of God's amazing love and its appropriate acts towards us, we who are born of God and adopted are called children of God. Secondly, we are called children of God because that's what John says we really are. We are called children of God, but that's not just a name God has given us. He says, "And we are." You see what he is doing? He's standing amazed, and he figures a few of us will be amazed. And he wants us to be certain that this is not just some nice poetic notion that we're God's children. He says that's what we are. We have been taken into this relationship in reality. And then he gives a little parenthetical statement: "For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not." But then he comes back to the amazing subject. Notice now, he says, "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is."
What is he telling us? What we are as the children of God is what we will always be. And the best of what we shall be as children is yet to come. John does not envision any who are now the children of God would cease to be His children, would somehow be cast out of the family. No, he envisions that all who have been constituted the children of God will remain children of God. The best of what it means to be a child of God is yet to come. Why? Because in our adoption, you and I are given an irreversible legal status as the sons and the daughters of the living God.
Now by way of application, let me say this: I trust that we are all learning more and more what it means to define ourselves as justified sinners. I hope as a result of those 25 messages on justification, that more and more of us, when we wake up in the morning, can say in the language of Romans 5:1, "Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." I awake and face this day as a justified man, a justified woman. All of the claims of God's law in terms of the demand to punish my sins have been met by my Savior. All of the demands of the law for perfect righteousness in order to be accepted by God have been met in my substitute and my head, the Lord Jesus. I am a having-been-justified man. There are no claims of the law unmet with respect to me. It's authority, it's governing principles and power and direction I gladly embrace. But its sanctions, its condemnation, its promise of reward for obedience has nothing to do with me. I am a having-been-justified-by-faith man, for Romans 8:1 says, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." Regardless of how I feel, regardless of how oppressed or depressed I might be in the light of a recent fall before a besetting sin, if I'm a justified man, woman, boy, or girl--no condemnation! For me the day of judgment has come and past.
I hope you are regulating your life more and more by those realities. Well, in the same way, on any given day you wake up, you may feel like a disowned soaking brat who no one in the universe would want to own as a child. But if you have embraced Christ as He is offered in the Gospel, according to John 1, if you have received Him, God has given you the right to be called His child. And according to 1 John 3, having been given that name and title because that's what you are, that's what you ever will be, and the best is yet to come. And you and I need to learn to regulate life by that reality. My Savior says to me, "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven...." And even when you are confessing your sins, which you must do, you are confessing them to your Father. When you say, "Forgive us our trespasses, forgive us our debts," it is speaking to your Father. Even though you feel ashamed to come into His presence because of that sin, it does not alter your status. Having embraced His Son, you are His child by an irreversible, inviolable declaration of the family court of heaven. Each day say to yourself if necessary many times throughout the day,
"I am a having-been-justified-by-faith man or woman. All the claims of the criminal court of heaven have been silenced by my Savior. I am a having-been-adopted-by-faith man or woman, boy or girl on the basis of my Savior's work. An edict has been issued in the family court. Legally and irreversibly such I am: child of God."
You say that's some kind of mind over matter. No, it isn't. It is speaking truth to myself rather than listening to the lies the father of lies would have me speak to myself.
Trying to illustrate this, I spoke to someone who has legally adopted some children in our framework, and I said, "This is what I want to say. Is that accurate? And he said, "Yes." Then he recounted that in the family court in Morris County, when all the legal paperwork had been done, the day came when this man and his wife stood before the judge. The judge ask the question, "Do you understand that for good or for ill, you are now parents of this child fully responsible for all that the child is and does and all that may happen to him. You are entering into an irreversible relationship of parenthood."
That has echoes of what God does. God fully understands all the headaches and the heartaches you were to give Him when by sovereign grace He regenerated you and brought you to repent and believe the Gospel. There's nothing you've done or failed to become that has surprised God. He's seen the whole spectrum of the life you've lived with all of its folly, stupidity, areas of stubbornness and blindness, times when you've not acted like a child of the King. And yet He says, "I take him to be My child with all the liabilities and all the responsibilities, and I'm committed when I'm done with him to bring him home to heaven fully conformed to the elder Brother in the family, even Jesus. That's who you are. Now do you look at yourself that way? If you're a Christian, that's who you are.
You say, "That sounds too good." I don't care if it sounds too good or too bad, let God be true and every man a liar. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." Now such we are. Why did He use that language? Because John understood that it's difficult for the true child of God, sensitive to his unworthiness, sensitive to his sin, sensitive to his failures. At times it's difficult, and that's when we need to take hold and lay hold in our minds and spirits of what God has said. This is who I am. As a justified and adopted sinner in Christ, I have been given an irreversible, legal status as a son, as a daughter of the living God.
But then secondly, as justified and adopted sinners in Christ, we are given the profound and precious privilege of becoming brothers and sisters of our elder Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me give it to you in the first person now. As a justified and an adopted sinner in Christ, I have been given the profound and precious privilege of becoming a brother/sister of my elder Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. God's work in redemptive grace is set before us in a number of ways in Scripture, a number of images or metaphor, almost all of them corporate in nature. For example, God establishing a kingdom with Christ as the King. Luke 1:32-33: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end." And when God's all done, "The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ." (Revelation 11:15). Another metaphor is God building a holy temple with Christ as the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 2:3-5). God is constituting a people to be a bride to His Son (Ephesians 5:25-32). These are some of the metaphors. God gives all these different pictures to show us what we are as God's redeemed people. However, among those, He tells us He is gathering a family, a household of faith. Jesus gave a strong intimation of this in the days of His flesh. Do you remember that incident recorded in Mark 3? It's also recorded in the other synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Luke. But Mark 3:31-34 says,
"And there come His mother and His brethren; and, standing without, they sent unto Him, calling Him. And a multitude was sitting about Him; and they say unto Him, Behold, Thy mother and Thy brethren [the woman whose womb bore You, and the people that shared that womb subsequent to Your time there] without seek for thee. [Let me say by way of an aside, the Roman Catholic doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary is sheer, unfounded nonsense. In the language of Professor Murray, 'For Mary to have remained a virgin after the birth of Jesus turns her from a noble woman into a witch.' Enough said.] And He answereth them, and saith, Who is My mother and My brethren? [Who do I recognize as having a familial intimacy with Me?] And looking round on them that sat round about Him, He saith, Behold, My mother and My brethren! [By My presence among the sons of men, I'm gathering My family. And My family are not those who shared the same womb with Me, but those who have been brought into an attachment to Me in which My Word regulates their thinking, regulates their conduct. My family are those in whom My Word has effectually worked, binding them to Me and to My Word.]"
And therefore, when we turn to the Epistles, we find the terminology "the household of God." Ephesians 2:19: "So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." And in Galatians 6:10, Paul uses the same terminology about doing good to those who are of the household of God. Now in that household, the Lord Jesus is the elder Brother. He holds the position of the firstborn. He is the One who has the preeminence. And in the household of God, Jesus gladly owns His place as the elder Brother, but takes us into that brotherhood without shame. Look at two verses. Romans 8:29: "For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren." In God's scheme of redemption, Christ is the firstborn. All of His people redeemed by His precious blood and renewed by His Spirit are regarded as His brothers. And in Hebrews 2:11-17, there is a wonderful addition to all of this in terms of how Christ looks upon this assignment:
"For both He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one: for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare Thy name unto My brethren, In the midst of the congregation will I sing Thy praise. And again, I will put My trust in Him. And again, Behold, I and the children whom God hath given Me. Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same; that through death He might bring to nought Him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily not to angels doth He give help, but He giveth help to the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people."
He's not ashamed to call us His brothers, His family. And what is the basis for this profound and precious privilege? Well, let me ask a question. What makes people brothers? You say when they have the same father. You've got it. That's it. When they have the same father, they're brothers. And this is precisely what Jesus made plain to His disciples subsequent to His death and resurrection. Turn with me, please, to John 20. That One whom He knew from eternity as Father in the inner Trinitarian relationship; that One whom He addressed on earth as Father, the obedient servant Son. Listen to what He says in John 20. You remember, He is risen from the dead; He is disclosing Himself now to Mary. Verse 17:
"Jesus saith to her, Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto My brethren [He didn't say, 'Go to My servants. Go to My apostles. Of all the things He could have called them, this bunch that had split and forsaken Him in the hour of His trial, He said, 'Go to My brethren'], and say to them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God."
In those words, our Lord is underscoring two very vital truths. He is saying "He is My Father" in a way distinct from any way in which He is your Father. So He doesn't say, "I ascend to our Father." There is a distinctive uniqueness in Christ's relationship to God as Father. That's an inner Trinitarian fatherhood. No one encroaches upon that. It is unique to the Lord Jesus. But in the same breath, He says, "I ascend unto My Father, and your Father. [Not a different being, not a different God, but One who is My Father is also your Father. And because we share the same Father, we are brethren. 'Tell My brethren.']" And it is that to which God through Christ brings us in His amazing redemptive grace. That the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same with our Father, our Father by adoption, His Father by the mystery of inner Trinitarian relationship in which the Father has always been Father to the Son, in which the Son has always been Son to the Father. And you will never hear me using the terms via eternal generation or other things that would simply confuse you. There was never a time in all of eternity when the Father was not the Father to the Son and the Son was not the Son to the Father. And here's a bunch of Adamic rebels who were made in Adam children of God, for Adam is called son of God. He becomes a disinherited, alienated son through sin, and we in him. And our spiritual father is the devil. And now this God, this Father through the work of this His eternal Son who becomes true man while remaining all that He ever was as God, and through His work on our behalf, He brings us into a relationship that goes beyond that of the Judge who says in the criminal court, "I have no further claims against that hell-deserving rebel. I pardon him for Jesus' sake. I exempt him as righteous for Jesus' sake. He goes beyond that, and in the family court, He says,
"I now take him as My son. I take him and all of the liabilities of what it will mean to be his Father, and all of the responsibilities of what it will mean to be his Father. I take him into My heart. I take him into My Fatherly affections, My Fatherly care, My Fatherly discipline. I take him into the family in which My eternal and beloved Son is now their elder Brother."
Now notice, He doesn't cease to be our Lord and our Master, our good Shepherd, and all of the other things. But He does become firstborn among His brethren. And think of it, by the Spirit, Christ is present and smiles this morning and says, "I'm not ashamed to call this bunch my brothers." That's what Hebrews 2:11 says. "...for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren." And He knows you. He stands in the church, eyes as a flame of fire. He knows the stupid, silly, carnal things you thought last week, the unkind words that came out of your mouth, the unclean things that came into your eyes. And you've been ashamed of them, and you've confessed them. But He stands among us this morning and says, "This is My family, the fruit of the travail of My soul, and I'm not ashamed to call them My brothers." That's who you are.
Now, does that make any difference how you live? Well, if you internalize that and believe that and begin to live each day in the light of that, it will make all kinds of difference in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of relationships. When we come to the matter of responsibilities of adoption, we'll look at some of those: seeking to be like the Father, seeking to live and pray before the eye of the Father, seeking in all things to please the Father. But for this morning all I want you to seek to grasp is that here are the two basic privileges of being an adopted son or daughter of God. You, as adopted, have an irreversible legal status as a son or daughter of the living God. And you are given the profound and precious privilege of becoming a brother or sister of your elder Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. He stands at my elbow as an elder Brother. He's gone before me. He took my flesh upon Him; He took my human existence. The writer to Hebrews says, "Wherefore it behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." And then the writer to Hebrews goes on to say we have One who feels with us in our struggles, One who can empathize with us in our temptations. We can commune with Him and rely upon Him and call out to Him not only as our High Priest at the right hand of the Father, our good Shepherd to lead us and protect us. He's all that, but He's something more. He's also my elder Brother. And He wants me to live my life in the light of that reality and to shape the contours of how I make my way through this wilderness of this world on my way to the celestial city in the confidence and consciousness that He is my elder Brother.
Now remember, this is for those who have embraced Christ as He's offered in the Gospel. And you here who have not embraced Him, this is children's bread. But as I said last week, I hope what we have in Christ as I seek to expound it will make you jealous. That can be yours. It's in Christ, and embracing Christ, you too will have that status irreversibly given by Almighty God who cannot lie. He will constitute you His child, and once constituted His child, forever His child. "It is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is." The utter certainty that once in the family of God, always in the family of God, kept by the power of God through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
God willing, in our next study, we'll take up what is a precious corollary of having Christ as our elder Brother. Because the Bible teaches us, that as our elder Brother, He is an heir. In the Hebrew family structure, the firstborn was the legitimate heir and much more. Christ, as firstborn and elder Brother, is heir of the world the Scripture tells us. The Scripture tells us that God has made us joint heirs with Christ. Our elder Brother is going to gladly share all that is His by right of inheritance.
May God grant that as we seek to internalize what we've mediated upon this morning, God will fill our hearts with gratitude, with fresh degrees of love that will cause us to say with John, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are."
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 16:39:01 GMT -5
The Marvelous Privileges of Adoption, Part 2 by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached December 9, 2007
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In Psalm 111:2, the psalmist exclaimed with a praised-filled heart that the works of the Lord are great, sought out or pondered by all those that take pleasure or delight in them. And surely, among all of the great works of God worthy of the worshipful reflection of the true child of God, none are greater than those works which comprise what the writer to the Hebrews describes as our so great salvation. Having considered God's great work in providing a salvation in Jesus Christ that results in the justification of hell-deserving sinners, we are now searching out an even greater blessing of God's saving grace, the blessing of adoption into the family of God. We come this morning to our fifth message concerning this provision of redemptive grace, the contemplation of which caused the Apostle John to exclaim, "Behold [stand back and wonder], what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God." And we are.
As we come to the fifth message this morning, what have we discovered thus far in our consideration of this amazing aspect of God's saving grace called adoption? Well, after identifying three crucial distinctions and giving an earnest pastoral warning and entreaty in the opening message, we then focused on the central place of adoption in the eternal plan, the actual procurement and the personal application of the salvation of sinners. And we saw from the many passages that we studied together that adoption is central in the saving purpose of the living God of heaven. We then examined together, secondly, the basic meaning and significance of adoption. And I said in concluding that study that I could do no better than to quote the Shorter Catechism, the Baptist version. In answer to the question, "What is adoption?", "Adoption is an act of God's free grace, whereby all those who are justified are received into the number and have a right to all the privileges of the sons of God." And then several weeks ago we moved on to this third major category from the central place of adoption in the plan of salvation to the basic meaning and significance of adoption to begin to consider the privileges of adoption. What was it that made the Apostle John break out in holy ecstasy when contemplating his adoption and cry, "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God."?
What are the distinct blessings and privileges that come to those who are adopted? Well, I answered that question along two lines as we began to consider the many blessings and privileges of adoption. Number one: as justified and adopted sinners, we are given an irreversible legal status as sons and daughters of the living God. John 1:12 was our key text: "As many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name." And when we come to faith in Christ, we are given this legal status as the sons and daughters of the living God. And a note that I did not sound sufficiently that I want to add as a little appendix to that brief review is that that legal status is never an end in itself. But it is a means to the end that God might have with us and we with Him real, felt, intimate familial communion, son to Father and Father to son.
Just as surely as a couple desire to adopt a son or daughter goes through all of the legal process, all of the legal forms, all of the examination of their home and of their persons, all of the outlay of money, and then the day comes when all of the paperwork is done. And in the family court, the judge declares that that child is theirs. They don't just then walk away and say, "Now we have a legal status of the child. That's taken care of. That's it." No, that is all to the end that that mother might hold the little one in her arms, or that not so little one sit at her table; that that father might embrace that child that's been adopted. And so it is with our heavenly Father. On the basis on what Christ has done to resolve all of the legal barriers to a holy God entering into communion with sinful men and women, God takes care of all of those things and gives us the legal status of sons and daughters. To what end? Not simply that we might say we have a heavenly Father, and God might say He has a bunch of adopted kids, but that the living God who made us for Himself might enter into true living communion with us and we with Him.
There are two little phrases in two pivotal passages on adoption (or one grows out of that) that underscore this. In Ephesians 1:5, a text that we looked at when considering together the place of adoption in the scheme of redemption, showing that God purposed before the foundation of the world that those whom He would save would be adopted. Notice this little phrase: "Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself." That's it. Foreordaining us to adoption through Christ unto Himself. The heavenly Father desiring that He should have people who were His sons and His daughters. And then in chapter 2 of Ephesians, the other direction is set before us in verse 18. For through Him, that is, through Christ we, both Jew and Gentile, have access in one Spirit unto the Father. On the basis of the work of Christ, we have access to the Father. We have a way into living, vital communion and fellowship with Him. And so the first great blessing of adoption is that we are given the status, this irreversible status of sons and daughters, to the end that there might be this relationship of intimate, realized, precious communion between us and our heavenly Father, and our heavenly Father and us.
And then we saw, secondly, as justified and adopted sinners in Christ, we are given the privilege of becoming the brothers and sisters of our elder Brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. For in His saving activity, God is not only building a spiritual temple, establishing a church, constituting a bride for His Son, creating a kingdom, but He's also creating a family. And according to Romans 8:29 and Hebrews 2:11-12, Jesus is the firstborn in that family, that is, the preeminent One. And all of His true disciples are constituted His siblings. The writer to Hebrews says He is not ashamed to call us brethren. Paul says that He is the firstborn among many brethren. And what constitutes us siblings in that sense is that we both have the same Father. That's what makes us brothers and sisters, when we have the same Father. And though He is Christ's Father in a way that He is not ours, it is not a different God who is our Father. Hence, Jesus could say in John 21, "I ascend unto My God and your God and My Father and your Father." Christ is our elder Brother who has come into our condition, lived where we lived, experienced temptation and disappointment and grief and even death itself. And we can commune and fellowship and relate to Him as our elder Brother, our elder Brother in all the strength and power and wisdom of His divine nature, and yet our elder Brother in all the sympathy and empathy of true human nature. He is one of our kind.
Well then, we come to consider this morning the third great blessing or privilege of adoption. Not only do we have the privilege of being given this legal status with its open door into vital communion with God as our Father, not only Christ as our elder Brother, but thirdly, as justified and adopted sinners in Christ, we are made heirs of a rich inheritance. And I'm going to attempt to open up this astounding reality under three headings.
The first is: the fact of our status as heirs established. Turn with me, please, to the book of Galatians. In chapter 3 and verse 26, we have this simple statement of the Apostle: "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus." What does this verse tell us? Well, it tells us that faith in Jesus Christ without exception brings the status of sons, simple and straightforward. If you are not a believer in Christ Jesus, you are not a son or daughter of God. But if you have come to what the Bible means by faith in Jesus Christ, not a mere nod of the head to the facts of the Gospel, not a mere tipping of the hat to Jesus, not a mere little emotional experience that somehow was connected with Jesus. But you have been brought by Spirit-wrought faith into attachment to Jesus Christ in all the glory of His person, in all the perfection of His work. He's conquered your heart; He's conquered your mind; He's conquered your will. He is yours; you are His. That's the Bible's description of what's involved in saving faith. Verse 26: "For you are all sons of God through faith." If you have come to faith in Jesus Christ, you have the status of a son or a daughter.
Now look at chapter 4 and verse 7: "So that you are no longer a bondservant, but a son." In the context, Paul is talking about matters that have to do with being under the Mosaic economy, and that even God's people under that economy did not know the liberty that we now know, so that you are no longer a bondservant but a son. Now notice, "And if a son, then an heir through God." 3:26 says if you are a believer, you are a son of God, you are a daughter of God. And if you are a son, then an heir through God. According to verse 26 of chapter 3, faith in Jesus Christ without exception brings the status of sons. According to 4:7, the status of sons without exception constitutes us heirs by the appointment of God Himself. The reading that some of you have in the New King James Version and the old Authorized Version, "heir of God through Christ" is not what Paul wrote. The best manuscript evidence points to the fact that what Paul wrote are these words: "but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God," that is, you are given this status of sonship, and with it, you become an heir on the basis of God's decision and God's activity.
Notice in this section the things that God the Father does. Verse 4 of chapter 4: "When the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son." God sent His Son. And when the Son is embraced, verse 6: "Because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, Abba, Father." God the Father sends the Son, and when people embrace the Son by faith, then become His children, God sends the Spirit into their hearts enabling them to experience and express that new relationship of adoption by crying to Him, Abba, not Daddy. That's a popular way of trying to express it. No, it's a word of intimacy, but it's not a word of a babbling little child (Papa or Daddy). It's difficult to bring it over into the English. And men who are much more astute in their understanding of the original languages than I just waffle about just trying to give the proper nuance. But this much is clear: the same God who sent His Son to redeem us sends the Spirit into the hearts of the redeemed. But He does more than that. This same God who constitutes a Son is the God who makes us heirs. He sent the Son; He sent the Spirit. And we who have embraced the Lord Jesus are His sons and daughters. God has no son, no daughter by adoption who is not an heir through God, that is, by God's determination, by God's decision, by God's activity. And it's interesting that even in the text, the language that is used: "and if a Son...." Notice the singular. "You are no longer a bondservant [he's not thinking collectively now. He's using the second person singular], but a son [not sons], and if a son, then an heir through God." He's getting away from all the collective, and he's saying to every single believer among the Galatian churches, "You must understand individually and personally if you've embraced the Lord Jesus by faith, you are a son. And if you are a son, then you, even you individually, personally, you are an heir through God.
Dear believer in Jesus Christ, God has said that upon believing, you're made His child; having been made His child, you've been constituted an heir, one with a God-given, God-secured right to a God-provided inheritance. And what an insult to God to be indifferent to what this means. What a grief to God to see us unbelieving in the face of being told its meaning.
So we move, then, from the fact of our status as heirs established to consider, secondly, the meaning of our status as heirs explained. We must both ask and answer the question, "What is an heir?" Well, ordinarily, we think of an heir as someone who has a legal or an assumed right to take possession of a promised inheritance either of possessions or position at an appointed time. In our society, the appointed time is generally the death of the one who appoints the heir, but not in Biblical times and not in the general use of the word. So we can think of an heir as someone who has a legal or an assumed right to take possession of a promised inheritance, either a possession or position at an appointed time. It may be at the death of the one who is the possessor of the position or the possession. It may be when someone comes to years of maturity as we have in the analogy that Paul is using in Galatians 4.
But let's look at a couple of Biblical passages where the term appears, and we'll get a feeling for its significance in the Biblical literature. Its first appearance is in Genesis 15. Now I turn there not because I believe that this so-called law of first mention is an accurate way to study the Bible. But often when something is first introduced, it gives us a very helpful clue to its significance throughout the Scriptures. The Lord who has appeared to Abraham and told him to get out from his land and go to a place the Lord would show him--we read:
"After these things the word of Jehovah came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. "
Then we see the matter of position in a passage such as 2 Chronicles 21:1-3:
"And Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers, and was buried with his fathers in the city of David: and Jehoram his son reigned in his stead. And he had brethren, the sons of Jehoshaphat: Azariah, and Jehiel, and Zechariah, and Azariah, and Michael, and Shephatiah; all these were the sons of Jehoshaphat king of Israel. And their father gave them great gifts, of silver, and of gold, and of precious things, with fortified cities in Judah: but the kingdom gave he to Jehoram, because he was the first-born."
Jehoram inherits the position of king because he was the firstborn. There was an inheritance given to the other sons, but to the firstborn was the right of receiving the throne. And then in Matthew 21, one of the parables of our Lord, we have the use of the term heir in a way that would be common, part of the general understanding of His hearers. Verses 33-38:
"Hear another parable: There was a man that was a householder, who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into another country. And when the season of the fruits drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, to receive his fruits. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them in like manner. But afterward he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But the husbandmen, when they saw the son, said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and take his inheritance."
They recognized that this son was the rightful heir of that vineyard. And they recognized that by getting him out of the way, they would then be in some position to seek to take wrongfully his inheritance.
I've only turned to these passages to try to give you a sense of the flavor of the use of the word. And then I remind you that when Paul deals with the doctrine of adoption and uses that peculiarly nuanced word (?) "the placing of a son," in the Greco-Roman world, adoption was often a means by which a couple with no son would secure a legitimate and desired heir by adopting an adult male, one they judged to be worthy of that position and of those possessions, who would be a good steward of both position and possessions. So when the Scripture says that if we are sons, then we are heirs, what is it doing? It is underscoring that God's adopted children are put in the position where they become the legal possessors of promised inheritance either of possessions or of position. And they are to come into their inheritance in God's appointed time. So then, brothers and sisters in Christ, children of God, as adopted children of the living God, filled with gratitude for our privilege of our legal status, filled with wonder that the Lord of glory does not have any reservation about calling us His brethren, come even a step higher and recognize that not only do you have legal right and a spirit-wrought disposition to relate to the living God as your Father, Jesus Christ as your elder Brother, but you have every right and even a responsibility to recognize that you are an heir by God's appointment.
Having established the fact of our status as heirs, and having spent a few minutes explaining what it means to be an heir, now we come, thirdly, to the specifics of our inheritances as heirs expounded. And under this heading, we'll seek to answer the question, "Of what possessions or positions are we heirs as a result of our adoption into the family of God?" And we're going to look at a couple of pivotal texts, the first of which is Romans 8, verses 16 and 17. Of what am I made an heir as one who has been made a son or a daughter? For if I am a son, I am an heir. And surely I would like to know what is my inheritance.
"The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God [we will come back, hopefully, to expound that verse when we come to one of the other blessings of adoption, which is the gift of the spirit of adoption. It's not my purpose to do that this morning, just to get the flow of thought]: and if children, then heirs [same certainty as Paul in Galatians 4:7. God has no children by adoption who are excluded from the role of an heir, no children who do not have an inheritance]; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him."
"If children, then heirs." Heirs of what? Look at the text: "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." What in the world do those words mean? Well, we are heirs of two things: we are heirs of God, and we are co-heirs or joint-heirs with Christ. Now what does the little phrase "heirs of God" mean? There are two possible meanings. And here you come into the so-called objective/subjective genitive. It's a linguistic thing, but it could mean this: we are heirs of God, that is, we are heirs by God's activity, by God's decision under God's provision in the same way we might say of an unusually wealthy man, "Who is that man that has such wealth?" And someone says, "He is an heir of Bill Gates. Bill Gates made him an heir; his possessions reflect the wealth of Bill Gates." It could be that this is what the Apostle is saying, that we are heirs of God. And it would simply be another way of expressing what he expressed in Galatians 4:7: "heirs of [through] God." There would be no appreciable difference. It would simply point to the fact that our being heirs is not something we conjured up, something we conferred upon one another, something the church or the ministry conferred upon us. Almighty God conferred upon us the status of heirs, and that's a wonderful truth.
It's taught in Galatians 4, and so in the analogy of Scripture, if someone were to assert that's what it means, that and no more, I'd say, "Well, it means that, but are you sure, no more?" For responsible commentators say (and I find myself moving more and more in that direction in my own thinking) linguistically and by the analogy of Scripture, it could be Paul is saying, "If children, then heirs [and it's as though the children say, 'Yes, yes, Paul, and what's my possession? What's my position? What's the heart of my inheritance? And he wants to blow them away], heirs of God. [God Himself is your inheritance.]" And if he did that, he would show that his mind was steeped in a number of Old Testament passages in which that is precisely what God says and what His people recognize in response to God.
What did God say to Abraham? "I am your shield and your exceeding great reward." "Abraham, what is your greatest anticipation among all the promises God has given to you?" He would say, "It is the covenant promise, 'I shall be your God, and you shall be My people.' My inheritance looks far beyond the land of Canaan which has a city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God. But without God there, it would be no inheritance for me." "Heirs of God" would fit with the promise of God to Abraham.
You remember the Levites, when they divvied up the land, the Levites got no permanent possession of real estate in Palestine. But God says to the Levites, "Don't feel cheated. You've got something better than a hunk of real estate. In Deuteronomy 18, verses 1 and 2, this is what God says concerning the Levites:
"The priests the Levites, even all the tribe of Levi, shall have no portion nor inheritance with Israel: they shall eat the offerings of Jehovah made by fire, and His inheritance. And they shall have no inheritance among their brethren: Jehovah [the eternal God, God of the covenant] is their inheritance, as He hath spoken unto them."
Can you imagine a little Levite boy beginning to understand the significance of his tribal identity. And as he interacts with his daddy and begins to understand more fully the peculiar function that was assigned to the Levites in the worship of God, one day he says, "You mean, Daddy, my friend down the other row of tents says this is the portion of land that he and others in his tribe are going to have, and we've got no piece of land we can call our own?" The spiritually-minded, true Israelite would say with a smile upon his face, "Son, God's promised us something far better than a hunk of real estate, something far more glorious than a pile of dirt in Palestine. He has said, "I am your inheritance." That's what the text says, that Jehovah Himself is their inheritance. And true Israelites, those who are not Israelites in word only could say as we find the psalmist saying,
"Jehovah is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: Thou maintainest my lot [my apportionment, my inheritance]. The lines [that's language from setting up the boundaries of an inheritance] are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. [My inheritance is God Himself.]" (Psalm 16:5-6).
He understood this; so did Asaph in spite of the struggles he was having as he saw the prosperity of the wicked and the trials of the righteous. He breaks through in communion with God, and this is what he says in Psalm 73:23-26:
"Nevertheless I am continually with Thee: Thou hast holden my right hand. Thou wilt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart [what did He say to Abraham? "I am your shield your protector, your rock, your strength] and my portion [my inheritance] for ever."
And so the Godly Israelites understood this concept, that God Himself, seeing Him face to face, communing with Him in the glorified state, the great inheritance of the people of God is God Himself. And if I've not persuaded you from those passages, turn all the way to the end to the book of the Revelation, chapter 21. And in the marvelous description of the new heaven and the new earth, what does God say? Verse 3:
"And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God: and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away. And He that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true. And He said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and [without this, these things could bring them no satisfaction. Here is the crowning promise of heaven:] I will be his God, and he shall be My son."
Adoption will come to its fullest, most glorious, indescribable glory when God is able to give Himself to us, as it were, without reservation, because we will be in a condition that can contain the undimmed vision of God. Anyone, God says, who would see Him now, he would be slain. It would kill us if our minds were to be given the contemplation of the magnitude and the glory and the complexity of God that we shall know in that state. It would blow our brains out of our heads. It will take a glorified body and a perfected spirit in a glorified heaven and a glorified earth for God to give Himself to us without reservation as our Father, and for us to relate to Him uninhibited as His sons and as His daughters. That's what He says. This is the culmination. The new heavens, the new earth, and the voice says God's dwelling is with men. He will be with them and be their God.
"I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward."
"Who have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none on earth that I desire beside Thee."
Yes, if we are children of God, God is our Father. Jesus said, "I ascend to My Father and to your Father." But John says in 1 John 3:2, "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is."
Paul says in Romans 8, "Heirs of God." Yes, our heirship is by God's design and God's appointment, and therefore, it is certain; it is sure; it is true. But it is God Himself who is the inheritance. Let me ask you, does that give you any goose bumps on your soul if not on your flesh? What's that do to you? Do you sit there and say, "O, that's a bummer--just God? That name that's spoken about in church that bores me to death?" That's the surest indication you're as lost as the devil. If the thought of having God as your inheritance doesn't thrill you and fill you with a longing: "O God, hasten the day when I come into my inheritance."
But that's not all. Look at the text back in Romans 8: "heirs of God, and joint-heirs [or co-heirs] with Christ." Now, what's that mean? This means that the inheritance promised to Jesus as the reward of the accomplishment of His work of redemption as the firstborn to whom it all belongs, He looks around at His vast family of adopted sons and daughters and says, "Father, I want to share it all with them. My joy I want to see mirrored in their joy as I share it all with them." Co-heirs, joint-heirs with Christ.
Well, what is His inheritance? Now here you want your mind to be blown? Turn to Hebrews 1. What is the inheritance of Christ that He desires and is committed to share with us? "God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things." Now how would you like to sit at your desk, knowing you've got to preach to God's people, and you want to be honest with the Scriptures, and you come across a phrase like this? He has been appointed as the mediator in Himself as the One through whom all things are created. Everything is His by right of creation. But the writer to Hebrews here is speaking of an appointment that comes to Him in reward for His faithfulness as the Redeemer of His people. And he says He's been appointed heir of all things. And then my Bible says, "heir of God and joint-heir with Christ." What's His inheritance? All things. What's my inheritance? I can't say the words. It seems bordering on gross presumption if not blasphemy. But what says the Scripture? He's heir of all things, and I am constituted as His son, a co-heir, a joint-heir with Christ.
Can we break down any of the "all things" that are His inheritance? Do we have to leave it hanging there as something that our mental fingers try to reach up and grasp, but they cannot seem to grasp it? Well, let's just look at a passage that will break it down just a little bit. Psalm 2. In the first stanza, you have the picture of the kings of the earth conspiring to break away the cords of Messiah's reign; God's going to laugh. Then He'll speak unto them in His wrath: "I have set My king upon My holy hill of Zion." Now verse 7: "I will tell of the decree: Jehovah said unto Me, Thou art My son; this day have I begotten Thee."
We won't take the time to look into it, but in Acts 13, the Apostle Paul says this passage finds unique fulfillment in the resurrection of Christ. When a Jehovah's witness comes to you and says, "You see what it says? There was a day when He was begotten." No, no, no, the terminology "I have begotten Thee" does not mean "brought Thee into being." According to the inspired interpretation of the passage in Acts 13, when Jesus is exalted and seated as the Messianic King, as the reward of His humiliation and suffering and death, when He is installed and officially in His place, He is begotten unto that position as Messianic King. And when God says, "I have begotten You unto that position," from that position the Father says to the Son,
"Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession. [And in the accomplishment of coming into that inheritance, all within the nations that oppose You, I give you the right to break them with a rod of iron, to dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel until in the new heavens and the new earth, there will be nothing but righteousness. This is Your rightful inheritance. The ends of the earth renewed and transformed and purged and expunged of all evil and all rebellion. It's all Yours My Son. Ask for it, and I will give it to You.]"
Heir of all things. Come on now, can you say it? Joint-heir with Christ.
Now go to Revelation where we read this morning. You say, "No, no, no, that's too much." Well, look what Jesus says. He says in verses 25 and 26 of Revelation 2, "Nevertheless that which ye have, hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh, and he that keepeth My works unto the end, to Him will I give authority over the nations." The overcomer, that's you, child of God. To you, He says these words:
"He shall rule them with a rod of iron. As the vessels of the potter are broken to shivers, as I also have received of My Father. My Father said to Me, 'This day I have begotten You into Messianic kingship and rule and government. Ask of Me My Son, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, the uttermost parts the earth for Your possession. And in coming into that possession, I give You the right to crush all Your enemies.'"
Jesus said, "Thank You, Father, now I want to share it with all of my true brothers and sisters. To him that overcomes. That's My brothers and sisters, who [as Paul says], though they suffer with Me, they shall be glorified with Me. I give to them the inheritance of sharing with Me in My conquest of the nations." That's what the text says. My Bible says it, and I've been struggling all week to try to really believe it. I said today, "Lord, if this things really gets in my gut and I believe it, Dorothy is going to wonder what that noise is upstairs. Because I'm going to have a glory fit, and I'm going to run around this study dancing for joy saying, "Lord, it's too good to be true, but I believe Your Word." Listen to one commentator whose written a helpful little book on adoption. He writes,
"As heirs of God, we await a glorious inheritance. Just as inquisitive children cannot wait for their father to tell them a delicious secret, so we yearn to ask our Father, 'What will our inheritance be like? Romans 8:17 is the key. When Paul calls believers heirs of God, he means not merely believers are heirs of what God has promised but of God Himself. That we are heirs of God means we inherit God. Remarkably, this is similar to what God already told Abraham in Genesis 15:1: 'Do not be afraid, I am your very great reward.' And there is more. Romans 8:17 teaches not only that we are heirs of the Father but co-heirs with Christ. We have the same Father as Jesus. We belong to the same family. And by virtue of our union with the Son of God, His inheritance is ours. Because everything belongs to Christ, His inheritance is the whole world. All believers, therefore, will inherit God and the world, the Trinity and the new heavens and the new earth."
I can't read you, folks. I think you're experiencing what I've experienced sitting at my desk, saying, "O God, give me faith to lay hold of what is clearly revealed." This is our inheritance. If we are sons and daughters, we are heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. This is why when we open up our Bibles in other places, we find language like this. In Matthew 25:34, Jesus will say to the righteous on His right hand, "Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Or Peter in 1 Peter 1:1-5:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible [it can't be touched by death], and undefiled [it can't be touched by sin], and that fadeth not away [it can't be eroded with time], reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."
We have a death proof (incorruptible), sin proof (undefiled), time proof (unfading), burglar proof (it's reserved in heaven); it's fail proof (we are kept for that inheritance. Time is gone. Children of God, this is the truth that will keep you cheerful in suffering. That's why Paul goes right on in Romans 8:17 to say this will be true of us if we are real sons of God. And if we are, then we'll suffer with him that we may be glorified together. And then he says, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward." Do you want to be cheerful in suffering? Meditate upon your inheritance. Do you want to be free from an inordinate attachment to the stuff of this world? It's all going up in smoke. I'm going to have the world in its glorified state. Why cling to it in this present decaying, sin-marred condition? If God's my inheritance, why try to stuff my heart with stuff when I can stuff it with God Himself.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Whatever a pure heart is, it's a heart kept free from an inordinate attachment to stuff. What kept the patriarchs? Read Hebrews 11. It wasn't that they were yearning and drooling over a piece of real estate to come. It says they looked for a city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God. They saw beyond Palestine. And that's what enabled them to remain true to Him.
But to you who are not believers, it's amazing to me as I've studied these passages that used the word "inheritance," how God makes it plain again and again, the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians 6:9: "Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" In Galatians 5:21, Paul lists the works of the flesh and says, "They who practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God" (cf. Ephesians 5:5-6). And no sooner does John give us that culminating description in Revelation 21:7-8:
"He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son. But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death."
Dear people, as glorious as the inheritance of the people of God is, what awaits you out of Christ is horrific beyond description. I plead with you, go to Christ, because in Christ all of these wonderful promises are yes and amen.
Well, may God help us as His children to appreciate in new ways the blessed privilege of being a son or daughter of the living God.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 16:39:56 GMT -5
The Marvelous Privileges of Adoption, Part 3 by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached February 10, 2008
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Now you may wish to follow as I read that portion of the Word of God which we have just sung back to God, 1 John 3:1-3. John writes,
"Behold [stand back, consider], what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God, and such we are. For this cause the world does not know us, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him, even as He is. And everyone that has this hope set on Him continually purifies himself, even as He is pure."
Now let us again seek the face of God, that God by the Holy spirit will bless our study of the Word.
Our Father, we are thankful for all of the truths we have been able to reflect upon and sing back to You, and by which we have shaped our prayers. But now we come to this pinnacle part of our worship when You, the living God, condescend to speak to the likes of us. We would have hearts ready to hear Your voice speaking through the Scriptures, speaking by means of the human voice of your servant. O Lord, send Your Holy Spirit upon us, that that Word will come to us not in word only, but in power and in the Holy Spirit and in much conviction. We wait upon You in the expectation of faith in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Last Lord's Day evening I was very conscious of one of the younger members of the church kind of lingering a few feet off my right shoulder at the conclusion of our evening service. And when I was disengaged from the conversation that I was envolved in, I asked if this individual wanted to speak to me, and she said, "Yes." So we sat down and she said, "I just have a very simple question, and the question is this: are we done with the doctrine of adoption, or is there more?", and to which I answered, "No, we're not done. And there is more to come." Then I proceeded to give her a little synopsis of where I hope to go in bringing this study on this wonderful privilege of redemptive grace called adoption to a conclusion. And so after an eight week parenthesis, we return this morning to our consideration of this highest privilege of all the blessings of God's redemptive grace, that of being constituted the sons and daughters of God. We have seen that as His adopted children, we have an inviolable status. Christ is our elder Brother, and we are joint-heirs with Him.
Now we come to the fourth great blessing of adoption, the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption. And as we take up our subject, there are two pivotal, two crucial passages that set fourth this truth with unmistakable clarity. And I want you to put on your thinking cap and tighten the seat belt of your mental faculties and turn with me to the first of these two passages in the book of Galatians and chapter 4. I want to demonstrate from the Scriptures that every single penitent sinner who embraces Christ as He is offered in the Gospel is not only justified, forgiven, accepted as righteous, but adopted into God's family. And with that adoption, without exception, is the reception of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption. That's what I want to demonstrate from the Scriptures. Two crucial passages which detail this with unmistakable clarity. Passage number one is in Galatians 4.
Now let me remind you of the overall burden to the Galatian churches. Why did Paul write to the Galatians? Well, he wrote to the Galatians because the Apostle became aware that there in the Galatian region, there were these people that were called the Judiazers. And the Judiazers had come along and said,
"Now wait a minute, Paul's messages was not quite right. Paul taught you that to be a full-blown Christian, that is, to be a child of God, all you need to do is repent of your sins, abandon any hope in confidence in yourself, in rituals, in religious performance; entrust yourself to Jesus Christ, and by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, you are a full-blown Christian."
That was Paul's message. You want to be a full-blown Christian? Christ alone, grace alone, Christ alone, faith alone. Along came the Judiazers and said,
"No, no, Paul had not gotten it quite right. If you want to be a full-blown Christian, yes, grace, then Christ and faith, but put a comma leading to circumcision and keeping the entire Mosaic law with dietary rules and regulations, special days and feast days. If you want to be a full-blown Christian with capital C, capital H, capital R, then it's Christ plus the Mosaic economy."
And Paul is determined to demonstrate that this is not the truth, and so he argues in various ways in the book of Galatians. And when we come to chapter 4, what we find is Paul in seeking to uproot this message of the Judiazers is demonstrating this simple fact: the Mosaic framework, the Mosaic covenant was given in the history of redemption as God works out His saving purposes in space-time history. The Mosaic covenant was bound by a specific time frame. God brought it long after He made the promise of salvation to Abraham. It was added to but did not replace the Abrahamic covenant. It was overlaid for a period of time. And during that period of time, God's people who truly trusted in the living God, looked to Him alone for salvation by faith. They were, under that covenant, treated like children, who though they are heirs of a great inheritance are really no better than slaves. They've got to keep all of the rules and regulations of their governors and their teachers and their masters. Now what Paul is concerned to show is, we don't go back to something that had a purpose of God bounded by time, for when Christ came, everything to which the Mosaic economy pointed is now fulfilled. The Mosaic covenant is now behind us. No longer are people under the Mosaic covenant.
Now Chapter 4: "But I say that so long as the heir is a child, he differs nothing from a bondservant though he is lord of all; but is under guardians and stewards until the day appointed of the Father. So also we, when we were children, were held in bondage under the rudiments of the world."
In other words, he says those of us who were part of that economy, as long as that economy was enforced, we were treated like under-aged children. The Mosaic economy was teaching us by types and shadows and rules and regulations and this kind of sacrifice and that kind of sacrifice. It was keeping us in that framework until what? Verses 4-7:
"But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So then thou art no longer a bondservant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God."
Now what is he saying in these verses? In verses 4 and 5, we have the great goal of God in sending Jesus when and how He sent Him. Look at your Bibles. When did He send Him? "In the fullness of the time." And how did He send Him? "[He] sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law...." And what was God's great goal in sending Jesus when and how He sent Him? It tells us He did so that He might redeem them that are under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. In other words, Christ was sent when He was sent and how He was sent that He might effect a redemption that when it is applied, would bring the redeemed into the experience of being sons of God, full-grown sons, come-of-age sons, not those who were like sons who were minors and still under tutors and under teachers and under guides, but full-grown sons. That was His purpose.
And then verse 6. Here is the great reality in all who embrace Christ by faith and are constituted God's sons ("and because you are sons"). Now how did they become sons? Well, he told them in chapter 3 and in verse 26: "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of us as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ." He says, "You became Christians when you embraced the Lord Jesus in such a way that you became clothed with Christ, with His righteousness and with His grace." That's what faith does. It embraces; it receives Christ. And Paul says in verse 26 of chapter 3, "You are sons of God through faith in Christ." Well, verse 6 of chapter 4 says, "And because ye are sons [God's done something in the case of every single one who by faith has embraced Christ], God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father."
The great reality that comes to every single person adopted as a son or daughter of God is that the God who sent forth His Son to redeem (and you have the same verb) sends forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. And He sends Him into our hearts for many purposes. And the rest of the New Testament expounds those purposes. But in this context, He sends Him into our hearts enabling us to cry, "Abba, Father." What is he doing? Well, the word Abba is Aramaic for Father. And of course, the Greek word for Father is translated Father. And so Paul is underscoring the fact that when the Spirit of God is sent into the heart of the child of God, it is with a distinct end in view that that child of God may be able not just to whisper, not just to say, but he uses a very forceful verb, the very word used for demons shrieking in the Gospels or Jesus crying out in the temple. It has the element of an intensely emotional outburst. And He says that He has sent forth the Spirit of His Son, enabling us to cry, that is, to have a felt internal awareness of who we are, and in the wonder and glory of it, to give vent to it in the cry, "Abba, Father." Let me read some comments from Sinclair Ferguson's very helpful book on adoption with regard to the significance of this "Abba, Father."
"The late New Testament scholar, Joachim Jeremias, gave considerable attention to the phenomenon in Judaism: men rarely if ever prayed to God as Father. Now remember, "Abba" (Aramaic) was the prostituted language that was the ordinary conversational language of Palestinian Jews. But they did not speak to God with the word "Abba." If ever they prayed to God as Father, they certainly did not normally talk to Him using the intimate, affectionate term "Abba." Jeremias concluded that in this word, we have the reputation by the church of the way in which Jesus Himself addressed God."
In Mark 14 and verse 36, in the Garden of Gethsemane, it is recorded of our Lord, "And He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee." So Jesus addressed His Father with this term of intimate endearment. It's not cheeky. It's not sentimental and sloshy. That's why some people say Abba means Daddy. No, no, it's more than Daddy, but it's less than "O Father." Now Jesus had no problem addressing His God and Father as Father. In John 17, the opening verse says, "Father, glorify Your Son." Later on it's "O holy Father." And later on in John 17, it's "O righteous Father." So don't get the notion that somehow unless we address God with all the lovely little intimate terms we can conjure up, we're beneath our dignity. No, when the Scripture says the Spirit is sent into our hearts crying, "Abba, Father," we know that He is giving us the ability to address God in the very language with which the Son of God Himself addressed His Father. Dr. Ferguson goes on to write,
"The unique, intimate relationship between the Father and the Son was now being shared by the Son with all His people. And this privilege Jesus Himself described when He said, 'All things have been committed to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father. No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.' And when through Christ, coming to faith in Christ, the Father is revealed to us as our Father, He then sends His Spirit into our hearts, enabling us internally to feel the reality of the new relationship established objectively and external to us. Remember, adoption is a legal status. But He sends His Spirit into our hearts, enabling us to enjoy that status and to address the one true and living God as 'Abba, Father.'"
Dr. Ferguson goes on to say,
"It's always a moving thing when someone whom you admire takes you aside and says, 'I'd appreciate it if you would no longer call me Mr. so and so or Dr. so and so, but call me John." It's a wonderful honor when you've been relating to someone who is above you and over you in knowledge, experience, gifts, station, and you show it by the way in which you address them. And that's proper, but when they take you aside, put an arm on a shoulder and say, 'Al, look, no longer call me Mr. or Mrs. or whatever, but call me John, call me Mary.' But that privilege pales into insignificance by comparison with what we have here. Christ is giving us access to the presence of His Father and saying to us, 'You may now speak to Him as I speak to Him with the same right of access, with the same sense of intimacy, with the same knowledge that this God loves you.'"
Now you say, "What's the big deal with that?" Well, think with me for a moment. Everyone who is a real Christian, a true child of God, has in one way or another, through one means or another, made some very shattering discoveries about God and about himself. If you're a Christian, if I'm a Christian, I've come to some degree of awareness that the God who is is infinitely holy, inflexibly just, who will "by no means clear the guilty."
"He is angry with the wicked everyday."
"The wages of sin is death."
"The soul that sins, it shall die."
And when I come to the discovery that God is infinitely holy, inflexibly just and righteous and must punish sin, and I come to some degree of awareness of what I am as a guilty, vile, polluted, defiled sinner--to some degree I must come to that awareness, or I'm no Christian, for Jesus said, "I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." "Faithful is the saying, worthy of all acceptance, Christ Jesus came into the world sinners to save [sinners who have been brought to see and own their sinnerhood]." So here I am in the presence of this holy God in my sin and defilement and pollution, and I hear the Gospel, that if indeed I will entrust myself to Jesus Christ because of the perfect life that He lived before God under the law, the death that He died upon the cross, I can be accepted with this holy, inflexibly just and righteous God. It's an amazing thing. And I lay hold of Christ, and I seek to internalize the wonder of His grace. I'm a forgiven sinner. He has blotted out my sins like a thick cloud. He has put them behind His back. In the language of Scripture, "Their sins and iniquities I'll remember no more." Then I say,
"How will I deal with this God? He's still inflexibly just. He's still infinitely holy. The fact that He sent His Son to die does not mean cherubim no longer vale their face and feet and cry one to another, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty.' He is still burning in His holiness. He is still inflexibly just. How can I approach this God? I do believe the promise of forgiveness. I do believe my sins are pardoned for Jesus' sake."
What does God do? Look at text. "Because you are sons...." Through faith in Jesus, God sends forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts in His secret but real and powerful working, creating in us a filial disposition. And we're able to look up to this God and say, "Abba, Father." It takes the Holy Spirit's internal ministry to bring us to embrace from the heart the status into which Christ has brought us by His saving work. I need a Savior on a cross to save me. I need the Spirit in my heart to enable me to embrace the wonder and the privilege of that salvation. The God who sent forth His Son to redeem us sends forth His Spirit of His Son into our hearts to enable us to cry, "Abba, Father."
Now then, turn with me to Romans 8, the second passage. I'll hold off application till we're done with the second passage. Now, again, just a word about the context. In Romans 8, Paul is addressing the reality and nature of life in the Spirit as the inevitable accompaniment of justification by faith. Paul has established in the opening chapters man's need to be justified, God's provision of justification. And in that justifying grace and salvation, God also secures the sanctification of His people. And now when He comes to chapter 8, he's demonstrating that life in the Spirit is an inevitable accompaniment of justification by faith. And in the course of addressing this subject, he asserts (verse 12) our obligation. "So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live." In this life in the Spirit, he says we are debtors. And we are debtors not to live after the flesh, after our base sinful appetites and desires. We are debtors not to live after the flesh, but to live according to the Spirit, and in particular, the Spirit enabling us to continually put to death the deeds of the body, what the old writers would call mortification.
Then he says in verse 14, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." And who are God's true sons? Those led by the Spirit. And what is led by the Spirit in the context? It doesn't mean I have subjective impulses and I say, "The Lord led me to do this. The Lord led me to do that." No, it means you are in the way of progressive holiness. You are putting to death the deeds of the body. You are in an ongoing exercise of Biblical mortification of sin. In the context, that's what being led by the Spirit means. And he says if that is true of you, that you are being led by the Spirit out of the realm of the flesh into the realm of the Spirit, into a life of growing likeness to Jesus Christ, you, and you only, are the sons of God. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God."
Now then, we come to verses 15 and 16. And those are the two verses I want us to unpack. "For you received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but you received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are children of God." Now notice how the thing is bracketed. He says, "For as many are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." To put it bluntly, if the Holy Spirit is not superintending your life, leading it more and more into a life of conformity to Jesus Christ, putting to death the deeds of the body, the deeds of the flesh, you have no grounds to say you are a child of God. "For as many are led by the Spirit of God, [these, and these alone are the sons of God." And if you are a son of God, a daughter of God, then you have the negative statement (verse 15): "You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear."
What's he talking about? Well, I could go on for 20 minutes giving you all the differing interpretations. But fundamentally, I believe this is what Paul is saying: the Spirit you received (since all believers have received the Spirit) does not engender bondage resulting in legal fears. The Holy Spirit has not been given to you as a son, as a daughter of God, taking you back where your life is crippled with fear and with bondage. That was your state when the Spirit of God began to deal with you and show you your sin, and show you the depth of your depravity. And you had no power to break your own chains; you had no power to renew your own heart. And there was that sense of "What shall I do to be saved? There's an angry God in heaven, and I'm a vile sinner chained to my sin, helpless, unable to do anything about it. And there is bondage and fear." Paul says, "You've not received the spirit bondage again to fear. [That's the negative.] But [15b] you have received...." Notice, he's assuming every true child of God has received the Spirit. And how has He come to them? He calls Him the Spirit of adoption. Now I thought it was the Father who adopted us. That's right, the Spirit of adoption is not the Spirit of adoption in that the Holy Spirit is the author of our adoption. But His ministry in connection with attesting in our hearts the validity of our sonship is such He is called the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, "Abba, Father." We've not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have received the Spirit of adoption by whom we are enabled to say, "Abba, Father."
Now verse 16: "The Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are children of God." In acting this way directly upon our hearts, enabling us to cry, "Abba, Father," the Holy Spirit is bearing witness with our spirits that we are indeed God's adopted children. With our spirits, we assess our lives. We put ourselves out here. When you put yourself out there (and you must do that) and say, "What's out there? Is it a man, a woman, a boy, a girl that truly loves Christ supremely before father, mother, brother, sister, yes, and my own life also?" When I put myself out there and ask myself, "Is that man a man who loves Christ supremely? Is he a man who hates sin, all sin, every sin, sins of thought, sins of attitude, sins of desire, sins of words? Does he hate all sin? Put yourself out there and ask, "Do I love Christ supremely? Do I hate sin universally? Am I being led by the Holy Spirit in a life of ongoing putting to death my sins? Am I, in the language of 1 John, one who is walking in the light as He is in the light? Am I loving the brethren?" "Hereby do we know we passed from death unto life because we love the brethren." "He that does righteousness is righteous." In other words, when I put myself outside of myself and look at myself with an open Bible, not my self-deceiving prejudices, but an open Bible. "Not every one who says, Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom, but he that does the will of My Father." Am I doing the will of the Father? Am I pursuing a life of holiness? Do I truly love the brethren? Are the marks of a true Christian in me when I take myself out of me, put myself out there and assess myself? Does my spirit affirm I'm a child of God? I must do that. That's my responsibility. "Examine yourself, whether you be in the faith." Put yourself out there; evaluate yourself by the Bible.
But now Paul says in this passage, "The Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirits, that we are children of God." Along with the witness of our own spirit about ourselves, when the Spirit of God is sent into our hearts as the Spirit of adoption, by working in the secret subterranean depths of our souls, an ability to come before God with filial delight and liberty and joy, the witness of the Holy Spirit with our spirit comes to expression in our ability to cry from the heart, "Abba, Father." That's the witness of the Spirit. And books have been written about "Does the Holy Spirit say to the believer, 'Thou art a child of God.'?" And once the Holy Spirit has whispered that to me, I can never again doubt I'm a Christian. Well, in what voice does the Holy Spirit whisper? Treble voice? Mid-range voice? Base voice? How does the Holy Spirit whisper and say, "Thou art a child of God?" No, no, the Holy Spirit's witnesses, and there's a lovely construction here. You have the preposition "with" and then the verb "witness". The Holy Spirit bears with witness. It is a simultaneous, inseparable witness: the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirits that we are the children of God. B.B. Warfield writes, "The Spirit Himself bears this witness?" When? How? He answers,
"Why, of course, in this very cry formed by Him in our souls, 'Abba, Father,' not a separate witness, but just this witness and no other. The witness of the Spirit, then, is to be found in His hidden ministrations by which the filial spirit, the spirit and disposition of coming to God as our Father, is created in our hearts and comes to birth in this joyful cry. No longer are our prayers formal in likeness to a God who is somehow out there. They become the cries of the son or the daughter, 'Abba, Father.'"
"The Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God." So bring those two passages together now and what do we have? We have Paul saying that now that Christ has come, He has abolished the Mosaic system. All who embrace His salvation come forth full-grown sons. They're no longer sons under the tutelage of the Mosaic covenant. No, no, that is all past. They are now full-grown sons indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And because they are sons, God sends forth the Spirit of His Son into their hearts crying, "Abba, Father." Not that the Spirit Himself cries, but He so works in us that, according to the Romans 8 passage, we cry. He does this for all of His sons. And then the Romans 8 passage confirming, amplifying several subtle nuances of difference but the same essential truth, that if we are indeed the children of the living God through faith in Christ, God has given the Spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry, "Abba, Father."
Now by way of application, let me say several very important things. The first is this (I've already alluded to it, but now I want to flesh it out more fully): the Spirit bears a joint witness with our spirit. An old Scottish writer three centuries ago speaking to this matter wrote as follows: "If the witness of our conscience be blank and can testify nothing of sincerity, hatred of sin, love to the brethren or the light, then the Spirit of God witnesses no peace nor comfort to that soul." Paul says the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit (never apart from it), so that if you sit here this morning and say, "O well, I have such a sense of the witness of the Holy Spirit that I am a child of God. Nothing could in any way disturb me." I'd say, "That's wonderful. Now let me ask you a few questions. Do you hate sin, all sin, your own peculiar sins, your pride, your envy, your carnal ambition, your sins of omission and commission, your lust for stuff and things and men's praise?" You say, "Well, no, but I've got a wonderful witness of the Holy Spirit." I'd ask another question: "Do you truly love Christ above all else? Do you seek to know the mind of Christ about what you should think about life and money and things, possessions, entertainment, ambitions? Do you seek in all things to have Jesus Christ touch every area of your life with the scepter of His Word." You say, "O no, but I've got confidence I'm a Christian." No, no, the Spirit bears witness with our spirit. And if our spirit does not bear witness according to the objective standard of the Word of God (of the marks and fruit and grace), then we are under a spirit of delusion. It is a horrible spirit of delusion to name the name of Christ while there is no witness of our own spirit based on the facts of what God has made us and done in us and for us by His grace.
On the other hand, there are many of you that have many indications that your spirit should bear witness to you that you are a child of God. And what is it that's going to give you the full liberty and joy of that measure of assurance? It is God's Holy Spirit given as the Spirit of adoption, enabling you to cry, "Abba, Father." That is God's witness to the fact that you are not deluded, you are not deceived--the Holy Spirit bearing witness with your spirit that you are a child of God. Now do you see why it's so crucial that we take seriously what Paul says in Ephesians 4, when he urges the Ephesians believers, "Do not grieve the Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption." And in the context, what's Paul addressing?
"Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for building up as the need may be. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and railing be put away from you with all malice. Be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, even as God in Christ forgave you."
How is the Holy Spirit grieved? He's grieved when we have controversies with God at the ethical level. Here in the context, it is corrupt speech, speech that is not perfectly true, that is not kind, that is not gracious, that is not gentile, speech that does not build up but tears down. These are the things that grieve and quench the Holy Spirit. And where the Holy Spirit is grieved by ethical controversies, His ministry is restrained within us. You cannot have a bright, powerful, present witnessing of the Spirit of God with your spirit to your sonship, giving you liberty in prayer, enabling you to cry, "Abba, Father" if you're grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit by ethical controversies with God. It doesn't work that way.
And so you've got to go to the point of your controversy and stop rationalizing and own the sin for what it is. Ask God's forgiveness; go to the fountain open for sin and uncleanness. Ask God to grant you a fresh infilling and empowering of His Spirit, not only as the Spirit of empowerment to a holy life, but the Spirit of adoption. Say, "Lord, I want to know that liberty and freedom in prayer that I knew in other periods in my life. Lord, grant it to me again. May Your Spirit bear a bright and powerful witness with my spirit that I am indeed Your child, your son, your daughter."
So what have we learned this morning? I trust we have learned this: that if you've repented of your sin, believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, you've not only been justified and adopted into the family of God, not only been given the status of a son or daughter with Christ as your elder Brother, an heir of God and a joint-heir with Christ, but you have been given the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption. If you are sons, then as sons, Paul says, you have received the Spirit of adoption. And with that wonderful gift of God given to us, we, as the people of God, need to jealously guard our own hearts, lest in any way we grieve or quench the Spirit and, as it were, cut the living nerve of liberty and freedom of access to God as our Father.
And for you who do not have the testimony, the witness of your own spirit, that you are a child of God, if you take the Bible seriously, there's no way you have grounds to call yourself a Christian. What is my word to you? My word is very simple. All of these blessings are stored up in Christ: justification, adoption, sanctification. All of God's blessings, according to Ephesians 1, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus." They are all in Him. And if you get to Him and get into Him, they are yours. Full pardon of all of your sins, acceptance with a holy God. He Himself will have no controversy with you in the day of judgment. "There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus." And in Christ, you will also be adopted. "For as many as have received Him, to them gave He the right to become the children of God." And as a child of God, you will then be given the Spirit of adoption, enabling you to cry, "Abba, Father," enabling you to have not only the status of a son or daughter, but the disposition of a son or daughter imparted by the person of the Holy Spirit sent into your heart, enabling you to cry, "Abba, Father." O what privileges are afforded the people of God in Christ. The very language with which the Son of God addressed His Father--He says, "My children have grounds to address Him in the same way."
May God grant that our hearts will bow in loving worship and in unreserved reception of so great and so gracious a Savior.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 16:40:41 GMT -5
The Marvelous Privileges of Adoption, Part 4 by Albert N. Martin
Edited transcript of message preached February 17, 2008
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I read in your hearing from the 8th chapter of the book of Romans, verses 31 through 34. Paul, looking back on the very things he has written concerning life in the Spirit that always accompanies justification by faith, life in the Spirit that will find us eventually glorified at the end of verse 30, he now writes,
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies; who is he that condemns? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us."
Well, let us again pray and ask God that by the help of the Holy Spirit, we may understand and receive His Word this morning.
Holy Father, once again, we come conscious of our need. And we thank You for the many promises of Your Word that encourage us to believe that when we come owning our need, lay it before you and seek your help, You delight to answer the cries of Your people. Have You not said that you delight to give good gifts to Your children who ask? We come as Your children asking, "Give us the good gifts of the Holy Spirit's presence and power, attending the teaching and preaching of the Scriptures. Grant us this gift we pray in Jesus' name. Amen."
According to the clear teaching of the New Testament, the path to spiritual maturity is the path of knowing who we are and what we possess in Christ, and then living in the light of those realities by faith and by obedience. It is for this very reason that the main thrust of my preaching in the past year has been one in which I sought to open up the wonder and the glory of who and what we are as justified sinners. I did that in some two dozen messages, and I'm continuing to do it as we come to message number 7 this morning on the Biblical doctrine of adoption. I'm seeking under God to lay out before you as the people of God who and what you are in Christ; that understanding that and responding in faith and obedience, you might grow up into Christ in all things. Having opened up the Scriptures which teach us what adoption is, namely, an act of God's free grace whereby we are received into the number and have a right to all the privileges of sons of God, I'm now seeking to articulate what those privileges are. And we have seen from the Scriptures that those privileges are, 1) We have an irrevocable, inviolable state given to us as sons and daughters of the living God. Once God adopts us into His family, He will never disown us. "As many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name." 2) Christ is constituted our elder Brother in this family. He is the Son from eternity. He is the Son by incarnation. He is the Son by accomplishment of His redemptive activity. And we are made His brethren. 3) We are made heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ according to Romans 8:17. And then we saw last Lord's Day the fourth of the great privileges of the adopted children of God is that they receive the gift of the Spirit of adoption. Because we are sons, He has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, enabling us to cry, "Abba, Father."
Now we continue to consider the privileges of the blessings of adoption, focusing our attention this morning on what I have chosen to identify this way: the promise of our Father's provision. And in terms of how it unfolds in the actual preaching, I will address the substance of the promise of our Father's provision, the context of the promise of our Father's provision, and the conditions of the promise of our Father's provision.
First of all, then, the substance of the promise of our Father's provision. Among the many promises of our heavenly Father by which He has committed Himself to supply all the needs of His children, there are two I want to examine together with you this morning. One of them focuses upon the spiritual needs of the children of God, and the other, primarily though not exclusively, upon their material or their temporal needs. And what I want to do this morning is to open up these two promises of our Father's provision and to persuade you as the people of God to believe them, to plead them continually before the throne of grace, and then to live in the expectation of their fulfillment in your life.
Now the first of those promises is imbedded in the passage that I read in your hearing, Romans 8:32, a verse in which the Apostle is arguing from the greater to the lesser: "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?" Now consider with me, first of all, the greatness of the Father's gift (that's the first half of the verse), and secondly, the guarantee of the Father's provision (that's the last half of the verse). Look now with me at the greatness of the Father's gift. Note, first of all, the person with whom the Father is dealing. Our text says, "He that spared not His own Son." It does not say, "He that spared not the Son." If it said that, we would know exactly to whom Paul is referring. He would be referring to the Son of the Father, even our Lord Jesus Christ. But He doesn't say that. He writes, "He that spared not His own Son," the Son whom the Father loved from all eternity, the Son concerning whom the Father spoke when He was incarnate, had grown into manhood, stands in the waters of Jordan and says, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased." In the Gospel John, chapter 3, verse 25 and again in 5:20, we read, "The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand." And there was this growing love with every act of the Son's obedience in His incarnate life. The Father's love for the Son deepens, so that we read in John 10:17: "Therefore, does the Father love Me because I lay down My life that I may take it again." So when the Lord Jesus culminates His obedience to His death upon the cross, and He is abandoned by the Father, handed over--as we'll see in our text--He was never more loved by the Father. The greatness of the Father's gift is founded upon the reality of the depth of the Father's love for the Son. ("He that spared not His own Son....")
It is with His own Son that the Father is dealing with the procurement of our redemption. And notice the two things that are said about His dealings with His Son. Negative: He spared Him not. Positive: He delivered Him up for us all.
He spared Him not. To spare is to withhold what is due. We have the little saying, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." What do we mean when we use that terminology? Withhold proper punishment to a child, to spare a child. If a judge spares a criminal, he does not hand him over to the just desert of that criminal's crime. And here we are told that the Father did not spare His own Son. All that justice demanded was completely, unreservedly poured out upon Jesus that we might not only be justified, but that we might be adopted. For remember, we have seen it is on the basis of the redemptive work of Christ that God is able to adopt us as His children. He spared Him not. All that justice demanded was vented upon the Son.
But positively, He delivered Him up for us all. The Father delivered up the Son. It's the standard word for betrayal. (To hand Him over--"Judas who betrayed Him. Judas who delivered Him up.") And here Paul is underscoring that it was the Father in the context of the depth of His love for His Son who did not spare Him, but He delivered Him up for us all. Delivered Him up to what? Delivered him up, first of all, to the hands of wicked men. In Acts 2:23, Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost said, "Him being delivered up by the foreknowledge of God, you by wicked hands have crucified and have slain Him." He delivered Him over to the hands of wicked men. He delivered Him up to the powers of darkness. In Luke 22:53, Jesus said, "This is your hour and the power of darkness." And it was the Father who handed over the Son to the malevolent disposition and activity of demonic powers and all the powers of hell, so that the Scripture tells us Christ was grappling with those powers and conquered those powers in His death upon the cross. And above all, He delivered Him up to the fury of His own wrath. As one servant of God stated it, "It was damnation and abandonment which sin deserved." A man of God from another generation wrote, "Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas for money, not Pilate for fear, not the Jews for envy, but the Father for love. 'He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.'" And one has written,
"It is only as the ordeal of Gethsemane and Calvary is viewed in this perspective of damnation vicariously borne, damnation executed with the sanctions of unrelenting justice, damnation endured when the hosts of darkness were released to wreak the utmost their vengeance, only then will we be able to apprehend the wonder and taste the sweetness of love that passes knowledge, love eternally to be explored, but eternally inexhaustible--explored for all eternity. Text such as these, we will never reach the bottom of them: 'He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.' That's the greatness of the Father's gift."
And what was the intention in all of this? To what end did the Father spare Him not, but deliver Him up for us all, for the people of God? What was God's intention? Well, it was that they might eventually be glorified. He had just said in verse 30, "Whom He foreordained, them He also called, whom He called, He justified, whom He justified, them He also glorified." Hebrews chapter 2 says that the Captain of our salvation in bringing many sons to glory had to suffer. He suffered to bring many sons to glory. Or in the language of John 6:38-40, "I came down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. This is the will of Him that sent me, that of all He has given Me, I should lose nothing, but raise it at the last day." He came to actually save His people, not just to provide salvation for everyone indiscriminately and hope that they would accept it. He came down from heaven to save His people. "Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." So when the Father delivers Him up for us all, He delivers Him up that by His death on our behalf, we might actually possess a salvation that would bring us into the presence of God. Glorified, sinless souls inhabiting deathless bodies, and that forever. "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." That's the greatness of the Father's gift.
But now notice, secondly, the guarantee of the Father's provision. Look at the text: "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?" Here's the guarantee of the Father's provision. All things are to be given with Christ. Christ has been given to us, the people of God, in the beauty of His person, in the perfection of His work. But with Him, God is committed in His promised provision to give us all things with Christ.
And what are the all things? Cadillacs, 5 bedroom homes, 3 or 4 bathrooms? No, no, in the context, everything necessary to bring me home to glory. If He gave Him up and did not spare Him that He might have a righteous basis to justify us and adopt us, "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" With the gift of His Son, He is committed to give us everything necessary to bring us at last home to glory, and to give it to us as a gift of grace. Look at the text: "how shall He not with Him also freely give us...?" That's an attempt to translate that Greek word (?) to give as an expression of grace, of unmerited favor and kindness, to give us every single thing needed that we might be brought home to glory.
What's needed? Well, my Bible tells me he that endures to the end, the same shall be saved. If I'm to be glorified, I must persevere in the way of holiness and obedience. With Him, He will freely give to me this thing called persevering grace. If I'm to be brought home to glory, I must overcome the world. He that overcomes the world, the Scripture says, is a child of God. "This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith." How will I overcome a seductive world constantly seeking to draw me down and to encase me in its perspectives and its goals? "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"
A wily devil prowling about, seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith. Where will the grace be found to resist the devil, to resist the seductive world, to resist the power of my own indwelling sin and maintain a course of personal holiness and growing conformity to Christ? Here's our text. Here's the promise of the Father's provision: "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"
Child of God, as surely as you have been given an irreversible and inviolable status as a son or daughter of the living God, you have been given the privilege of being brought into the family of God with Christ as your elder Brother, an heir of God and a joint-heir with Christ. And you've received the Spirit of adoption, giving you the disposition that enables you to call God "Abba, Father." You and I are to take hold of this promise of the Father's provision.
He gave His Son, a person. Everything else is a thing. Your perseverance in holiness, your perseverance in overcoming the world, your perseverance in resisting the devil, meeting all those conditions that God says are absolutely necessary if you're going to get to heaven. They're not optional. Holiness is not optional. "Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord." Overcoming the world is not optional. Resisting the devil is not optional. They are necessary, but those are things. He gave His Son. How shall He not with Him also give us all of the things that are necessary? With Christ, He has given us all things in the word of His promise.
If there were a wealthy man who for no reason that you could ever discover set his affection upon you and said, "I want to give you $10,000, no strings attached." And he sits down with you at a table, and he marks out the money in 50 dollar bills; there all stacked there. And you say, "What's the catch?" He says, "No catch. It's yours. Out of the goodness and grace of my heart, it's all yours." Would you be reluctant and think you were imposing upon his generosity to ask him for a paper bag to put the money in? "I'm not sure I can ask him. I mean, you know, a paper bag is a paper bag. And I don't want to presume upon his kindness and his generosity." Come off it, he's given you the $10,000, no strings attached. Ask him for ten bags.
He that spared not His own Son, the beloved of His heart. Think what it meant to the Father to hear His Son cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!" What did that mean to the Father? That's His well-beloved Son, the one of whom He spoke and said, "This is My Son, My beloved, in whom I am well-pleased." But He spared Him not. When it was time for the Son to bare in His soul the punishment against our sin, and to be plunged into the abyss and the darkness of abandonment by His Father. He spared Him not. He delivered Him up. How shall this God not with His Son freely give us all things, everything necessary to bring us through this life and into glory? That's the promise of our Father's provision.
Child of God, He argues from the greater to the lesser. And He wants you, and He wants me in the struggles and in the defeats and in the discouragements and in the perplexities of the Christian life to come before Him and say,
"O my Father, Abba, Father, You did not spare Your own Son. You delivered Him up to the hands of wicked men, to the powers of darkness, to Your own wrath unleased in fury upon Your Son. O my Father, will You not with Him, in addition to Him, give me the grace I need to conquer this sin, this sin that is an impediment to my growth in grace, this sin that is a barrier to my ongoing conformity to Christ. O my Father, give me the grace in union with Your Son to conquer this sin, to mortify this sin."
When there is pressure from the world in this or that area to conform in your thinking and in your ambitions and in your desires to say, "O God, help me to see this world for what it is. And with Your Son, give me the all things of grace to be an overcomer. Have You not said, 'This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.'? And I would trust You, my Father, to give me the grace to overcome." This is the promise of our Father's provision of everything needful to bring us through this world and safely home to glory. And God delights when as the people of God, we hold the promise up before Him and say, "Father, this is Your commitment to me as Your child. I hold You to it. Fulfill it in me by Your grace."
Now then, turn with me to the second promise of our Father's provision. And that's found in Philippians 4. This first one we looked at relates primarily to the Father's provision of every spiritual need that we have as the people of God. Now we come to Philippians 4:17-20. You remember the circumstances. Paul is in prison at Rome. The church at Philippi that has had a special place in his heart for years has sent a gift by the hand of a man named Epaphroditus. And Paul is basically writing a thank you letter. This letter of the Philippians is Paul's extended thank you letter to that church. And he says,
"[In reminding me of your kindness to me, I'm not just throwing out hints that you'll send some more money and stuff.] Not that I seek for the gift; but I seek for the fruit that increases to your account. But I have all things, and abound: I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the things that came from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. And my God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now unto our God and Father be the glory for ever and ever. Amen."
This gift has come from the church at Philippi by the hands of Epaphroditus. Paul likens the gift in Old Testament terminology to a sacrifice that had a sweet order in the nostrils of God. It's very interesting. He uses the same terminology of the sacrifice of Christ in Ephesians 5, verses 1 and 2: "Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell." Did you ever think that burnt flesh was a sweet smell? It's acrid. It's terrible. But the burnt flesh of an offering given to God is a sweet smell in the nostrils of God. And Paul says that this gift that came out of the poverty of the people of God at Philippi (for they were a part of those churches that Paul makes reference to in 2 Corinthians 8) who were generous of their giving and gave out of their poverty. It was an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. And then to encourage them, he gives them this wonderful promise. And here we have in the language of this text another commitment of our God and Father with respect to meeting the needs of His people. And I want you to notice three things: the certainty of the Father's provision, the measure of the Father's provision, and the end or goal of the Father's provision.
First of all, the certainty of the Father's provision. Thinking now of those Philippians who had given generously that Paul's need might be met, Paul says, "And my God [it's very interesting that he speaks of God in this personal way. This is not an ordinary way of Paul's speaking] shall supply every need of yours." Here is the certainty of the Father's provision. Now when he says, "My God shall supply every need of yours," is he thinking primarily of material things or of spiritual or of both? Well, look up to verse 16: "for even in Thessalonica ye sent once and again unto my need." It's the same word in the original: "You sent to my need, my material need. I needed things to carry on my ministry. You sent and supplied my need" So in terms of the context, I believe it is right for us to say the primary emphasis of this passage is our heavenly Father's word to the Philippians, that with respect to their material needs, there is a certainty of the Father's provision. "My God shall supply every need of yours."
Now, secondly, I believe it's spiritual because the Apostle himself did not have his God at all times supplying his needs. Earlier in the chapter, look at verses 10-12:
"But I rejoice in the Lord greatly, that now at length you have revived your thought for me; wherein ye did indeed take thought, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in everything and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want. I can do all things in Him that strengthens me."
There are times when Paul's God did not put food on His table. He went to bed hungry. That's what he's saying, plain as day: "There are times when my table was empty. What did I do? I didn't grouse against God. I didn't doubt His promises of provision. I found in that secret." Notice he said, "I learned the secret." He came to grips with that reality of God's providential dealings, and he said, "I learned how to find contentment in both want and in plenty, and I found it in Him that strengthens me. I can do all things in Him that strengthens me." So when he now turns to the Philippians and says, "My God shall supply every need of yours," though the context puts the pressure upon a promise of the certainty of the Father's provision on material needs, it goes beyond that into circumstances where their material needs may not be met for a while. And Paul's God will provide for every need they have, even for the grace to learn the secret Paul learned: both to abound and to be in want. There's the certainty of the Father's provision.
You say, "Well, Pastor, that's God kind of covering His bases, isn't it?" Yes, it is because He's God. And there are lessons He has to teach His children in want that they cannot learn in plenty. And because God is concerned to teach us the sufficiency of His grace, there are times when He will press us so that with Paul, we will have to say,
"I've learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want. I can do all things in Him that strengthens me. My Savior gives me strength to praise Him when I go to bed hungry. My Savior gives me grace to praise Him when I have want as well as to thank Him and to be grateful when I have plenty. But there is the certainty of the Father's provision."
The child of God will never lack grace from God to embrace the will of God.
But then notice the measure of the Father's provision. Look at the text. The certainty: "My God shall supply every need of yours." Here's the measure: "according to [the little Greek preposition kata, the measuring rod of God's supply] His riches in glory in Christ Jesus." There's the measure of the Father's provision. "God gave to me out of your relative poverty. But God will give to you out of His riches. You Philippians, you gave to me out of your poverty. God will give to you out of His riches."
And then the words "in glory" and "in Christ Jesus." I scoured every book in my library that had anything to say about Philippians 4:19, and I confess, I'm not sure what those two little prepositional phrases mean. "In glory in Christ Jesus" is a literal rendering of the Greek structure. But the measure of the Father's provision, I find myself this morning leaning toward considering the term "in glory" adverbally. So we could say, "My God shall supply all of your need gloriously." He's a great God. He's the God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He's the God who can make provision in ways we could never, never imagine. And so He'll supply your need gloriously. He'll do it in a way that manifests His glory, His wisdom, His power, His control over all people and all things.
Who would have ever thought that much of the generosity for the offering at Jerusalem would come from the crushing poverty of the saints in Macedonia? God was glorified. So Paul begins those two chapters I preached on last year by saying, "I want you to know the grace of God that was given to the churches at Macedonia, that out of their deep poverty, there was a richness of generosity." God was glorified by doing that. And it could be that this is what Paul is saying: the measure of the Father's provision will come out of who He is in Himself, a glorious God who can work gloriously in a way that manifests His glory. Trust Him, He's your heavenly Father. And He has given a promise of His provision. And the measure of that provision is that He will do so gloriously.
But then He says, "in Christ Jesus". He's going to do it because of your connection to Jesus, because you're the real deal. That little phrase "in Christ Jesus" is one of the most significant phrases in all Scripture. It's a description of what a Christian is. Look at the opening verse of this letter: "Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi." Paul's description of a real Christian is that it's someone in union with Christ Himself, not someone who's made a decision about Christ, someone who believes a string of things concerning Christ, but someone who is in Christ, in vital union with the Son of God, a union that from the human standpoint is effected by the embrace of faith, faith that takes a whole Christ with a whole heart, and from the divine standpoint, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who unites us vitally and truly to Jesus Christ. Romans 8 makes that abundantly clear: "And if Christ is in you [speaking of the Holy Spirit's indwelling]...." So Paul says to the Philippians, "Here's the measure of the Father's provision. He will supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Because of your connection with Christ, because you are united to Christ, because you belong to Christ Jesus, this promise is yours."
Then Paul points to the end or goal of the Father's provision. Look at it in verse 20: "Now unto our God [and he doesn't stop there] and Father be the glory for ever and ever." In the light of the promise He as made, what's the great end of all of it, that God our Father who is committed to provide for his children, that this God would be glorified in the midst of His children and by the praise of His children. He is contemplating this promise. He says, "My God--this is what He will do. And He does it as a faithful, loving heavenly Father." And so he says the great end of this provision is that God will be glorified. "Unto our God and Father be the glory forever and ever."
And then he adds a word, and he says, "Amen." He doesn't put it on as just something that is a little bit of filler. His heart is so taken up with this prospect, that as God fulfills His promise as a faithful Father to the Philippians, supplying their every need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus, this God will be glorified, He will be praised, He will be honored. Then Paul says, "So be it." And he adds his own amen as an affirmation of his heart, that this is the great longing of His own inner being, that in fulfilling this promise, God will be glorified and praised among the Philippians, by the Philippians, by the Apostle when he hears of God fulfilling that promise. And this is the great passion of his heart. "Amen [so be it, let it be]."
So child of God, this is your Father's promise of provision to you if.... I'm going to pause for just a few moments and deal with this "if." Remember who the Philippians were. They were not a bunch of fat cats sitting back indulging themselves, indifferent to the work of the Gospel, unconcerned about God's servants and the progress of the Gospel. No, when you read this letter, Paul can say as he does in this first chapter, that his heart was particularly bound up with these people. And he was thankful for this fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now. He tells them later on in the letter that "you're the only church that stood with me when I went forth." Maybe it was a case where Paul made an exception to be supported by them, when ordinarily he did not take support from the people. But be that as it may, this church had a peculiar concern and interest in the spread of the Gospel, in the servant of God. They did not have their noses stuck in their own navels. They were Gospel-oriented; they were missionary-oriented. And now once again they send to the Apostle's needs, and he says, "You Philippians, living in that way, with that outward-looking, Gospel-obsessed passion and desire, God will not be your debtor. God will supply all of your need."
And in great measure, I believe it is right to say that disposition marks the vast majority of you sitting here this morning. And as it does, and you continue in your commitment to give principally, deliberately, sacrificially to the work of God, you have every right to plant your feet on this promise and say, "God, this is what You said. You have said You would supply every need of mine according to Your riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Now Father, bring it to pass. This is Your promise." As surely as you plant your feet for the meeting of your spiritual needs upon Romans 8:32, argue with God and say, "God You did not spare Your Son. You gave the greatest gift. You gave Him. Anything else is a thing. Now Lord, I need this thing. And You have said if You spared not Your Son, how shall You not with Him freely give us all things, everything necessary to get me safely to heaven. Lord, this is Your promise. I stand upon it."
And then with regard to your temporal and physical needs, take this promise of Philippians 4:19 and stand upon it. Stand upon it in the presence of God and plead it before Him. And trust Him to fulfill it, and to fulfill it in such a way that glory and honor and praise will be brought to this great God and Father who is committed for the provision of all the needs of His dear children.
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