He Became a Curse!
May 3, 2009
Dr. R.C. Sproul delivered this message at Together for the Gospel 2008. This powerful excerpt really captures the dymanic impact it had during his session. The first time I heard it, I broke down in tears.
It has been in my experience that when I am most sorrowful for the sinner, I love him the most, and I am moved to plead for him before the throne of the Most High Judge. We are often uncomfortable around the carnal man. His words offend our sensibilities. His ideas counter our convictions. As he converses, obliviously and ignorantly, we begin to see his heart. As a man speaks, so he is. Why do our hearts sometimes despise him? Do we hate him? Why does he anger us? It is here that we see our hearts. It is easy to see the sins of others; it is more difficult to see our own. Hatred, jealousy, bitterness, wrath, backbiting, slander, and gossip are carnal works. They proceed from an unloving, wicked, and impure heart. If one wishes to break this heart, he must know the love of God in the gospel. Consider the following passages of Scripture:
Elisha looks at the messenger Hazael and begins to weep. He experiences great sorrow for the sinner:
And he fixed his gaze and stared at him, until he was embarrassed. And the man of God wept. And Hazael said, “Why does my lord weep?” He answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the people of Israel. You will set on fire their fortresses, and you will kill their young men with the sword and dash in pieces their little ones and rip open their pregnant women.” And Hazael said, “What is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing?” Elisha answered, “The Lord has shown me that you are to be king over Syria.” Then he departed from Elisha and came to his master, who said to him, “What did Elisha say to you?” And he answered, “He told me that you would certainly recover.” But the next day he took the bed cloth and dipped it in water and spread it over his face, till he died. And Hazael became king in his place. (2 Kings 8:11-15)
Elisha wept because he knew the great sins that Hazael would committ. What sorrow the man of God will experience! He weeps because he loves.
Note, next, the way in which Jeremiah weeps for the wicked Israelites who recieved the just recompense for their unbelief:
Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! (Jeremiah 9:1)
Note next the way in which Paul spoke to the Philippians about the enemies of the cross:
For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. (Philippians 4:18-9)
He speaks of the enemies of the cross with tears! Do we?!
Note next the way Lot related to the sinners around him in 2 Peter 2:7-8:
and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard)
Lot was greatly distressed by the conduct of the wicked; his soul was tormented by what he saw and heard. Do our souls feel a tormenting weight and sorrow for a lost world?
Note next the language of the Pslamist in 119:136, 158:
“My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.”
“I look at the faithless with disgust, because they do not keep your commands.”
The Psalmist has a great zeal for the Lord’s law. Tears fill his eyes when it is broken. Do we share in his heart?
Indeed, there is a real hatred for sin in the Christian’s soul, even as his hatred is tempered by love for the sinner’s soul. It is not some fuzzy love stripped of all justice and righteousness. It is a perfect love, the kind of love that comes from God (1 John 4:7-8). No Christian can say he loves God if he does not love the wretched sinner. For so was the Christian in times past! (Ephesians 2:1-7; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
Application:
The key to loving the sinner and hating the sin is to know the heart of God. Do you know his heart? Perhaps, you just know his mind. Perhaps, you just know his truth but walk ignorantly of his person. The man who has not the heart of God will become a Pharisee with his doctrine. Meditate, therefore, heavily upon the love of God in the gospel. Love is from God, and thusly, he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10). You were not looking for God, but he was looking for you. You were not loving God, but he was loving you. He demonstrates his love for you in the gospel, even when you were still a sinner. You who have been enlightened by the gospel: Walk with grief-stricken joy, and love the heathen around you. He knows not what he does.
Whoever . . . has tasted of the love Christ, and has known, by his own experience, the need and the worth of redemption, is enabled, Yea, he is constrained, to love his fellow creatures. He loves them at first sight; and, if the providence of God commits a dispensation of the gospel, and care of souls to him, he will feel the warmest emotions of friendship and tenderness, while he beseeches them by the tender mercies of God, and even while he warns them by his terrors.
As to your opponent, I wish, that, before you set pen to paper against him, and during the whole time you are preparing your answer, you may commend him by earnest prayer to the Lord’s teaching and blessing. This practice will have a direct tendency to conciliate your heart to love and pity him; and such a disposition will have a good influence upon every page you write. . . . [If he is a believer,] in a little while you will meet in heaven; he will then be dearer to you than the nearest friend you have upon earth is to you now. Anticipate that period in your thoughts. . . . [If he is an unconverted person,] he is a more proper object of your compassion than your anger. Alas! “He knows not what he does.” But you know who has made you to differ.
Working with you for sorrowful love,
Vince R.
For the past week, I have been meditating on Psalm 73:1. It is my spiritual goal to meditate on one verse of this Psalm each week until I finish it. I want to share some of my meditations with you.
Psalm 73:1 “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.”
There is a longing in us that wants to believe in a benevolent God. We want to believe that God is good–all the time. Even when we hear the age old question: If God is so good, why does he let evil happen?, we still cling to the promise the Scripture gives of God’s omnibenevolence.
But why is it so hard to believe sometimes?
Asaph wrote Psalm 73. He doubted God’s goodness. This desperate poem and song to God truly meditates on the real experience of doubting God’s goodness. Verse one openly proclaims the truth that Asaph has come to doubt. It also answers the question I just proposed. Why is God’s goodness hard to believe? Because our hearts are not pure. I see two things that this verse communicates, both explicitly and implicitly.
1.) God is good, specifically in the person and work of Christ.
There is no doubt that the scriptures declare his goodness uniformly and specifically. Psalm 136 is the text of the congregational song of Israel. It repeats this phrase in its first verse: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” It is the phrase that the people of God sing to him when they meditate on his wonderous deeds. Psalm 118 describes this as well. The Psalmist who wrote the longest chapter in the Bible declared it completely: “You are good and do good; teach me your statutes” (119:68). When Moses pleaded to God to show him his glory, this is how the LORD answered him:
“I will make my all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.” And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19).
In the New Testament, Jesus chastizes one man for calling him “good teacher.”
“Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).
It is the apostle John, however, who ties the encouter that Moses had with God with Jesus. He makes it clear that Jesus was not denying his own deity in Mark 10:18, but he was rather pointing out the heart of the man who approached him, for this man cared little about the goodness of God. Though Moses couldn’t see God (Ex. 33:20), Jesus is described as the only one who seen God and can perfectly reflect him.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…And from his fulness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:14, 16-8).
John doesn’t so much emphasize the Mosaic law (condeming man) and Jesus (liberating man) as he is emphasizing God’s glory being made known perfectly in the person of Jesus Christ. “He has made him known.” It is here that we are given the undeniable truth that Jesus is the good God spoken of in the Old Testament.
Indeed, Christ’s miracles manifested his glory (Jn. 2:11), but most specifically, God’s glory in Christ is made known when evil men do not believe in him.
“Though he had done so may signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’ [Isa. 53:1] Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them’ [Isa. 6:10]. Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess, so they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (John 12:43).
It was that frightening vision of God’ s glory in Isaiah 6 that changed, justified, and atoned for Isaiah. It is here that John makes it clear: Isaiah saw Jesus Christ. “He is the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 4:3). “…the glory of Christ, who is the image of God…the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6). Every bit of God’s glorious nature is found in Christ. Most especially, God’s goodness is found in Christ. If we look at 2 Corinthians 4:1-6, we see that the glory of God is found in his gospel.
This is the way the writer of Hebrews describes God’s good for his people-
“But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:11-12).
It is because of God’s goodness in the giving of the Son that we have “an eternal redemption” paid for “by means of his own blood.” This is the ultimate way God is good to his people. He gives us his Son so he can bring us to himself. He wants his goodness to be known to his people, so he provides the way for them to experience it. Notice how Jeremiah prophecies of this giving of the Son as the means by which God will finally dwell with his people:
“And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and soul” (Jeremiah 32:38-41).
God is good to his people-with all his heart and soul. This is amazing! But notice this passage’s emphasis on the heart. “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good…” He even speaks of giving his people “one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever.” It is in this sense, then, that we see what God’s goodness does to our hearts.
2.) God’s goodness makes us pure in heart.
If God has nothing but good for his people, and this is most specifically manifested in the gospel, we must consider what the gospel does to us. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God“ The way in which we draw near to God (and this is the climax of Psalm 73) is through the gospel. The gospel purifies our hearts and thusly allows us to see God the clearest. Matthew 5:8 says it this way: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” There is a direct tie between purity of heart and seeing God for who he is. Note how the apostle John puts it:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).
The very appearance of God (as he is) and the fervent meditation of God (as he is) inevitably leads to purity. Being near to God thus equals purity of heart. The apostle James says this:
“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded” (James 4:8).
Conclusion:
Thusly, I think we see from Scripture that God’s goodness both demands purity and supplies what it demands. This is grace so amazing! By being close to God and considering him for who he is, the heart is purified.
Application:
If in those times of doubt, when you speculate and intellectualize over the goodness of God with a heart of unbelief, you are committing grievous sin. God’s goodness is not subject to your belief. Your belief is subject to his goodness! God is good to his people. Though evil surrounds you and doubt fills your minds, the goodness of God is not compromised. Your purity is compromised! Hoping in him as he says he is will result in a pure heart.
This has tremendous implications for our holiness because anytime we sin we demonstrate that we are 1.) impure in heart, 2.) far from the true and revealed God, 3.) doubtful of whether or not God is good. Anytime we sin we demonstrate that we doubt if God’s way (of holiness, godliness, honor, integrity, blamelessness, pleasure) is good. It is a heart of unbelief.
God says he is good, and though you cannot now see every way in which his goodness is made known to you, you must hope in him as he says he is. But behold the manifold ways he has revealed his goodness! Have you forgotten the wonderous deeds of the Lord in your life? Have you spurned his blessing of life? Have you begrudged his blessing of family, friends, food, home, and other providences? There is always a reason to give thanks. But if, by some wise and gloriously good plan of God, you have nothing but loneliness, hunger, homelessness, persecutions, and sword, have you spurned God’s ultimate good blessing? Have you forgotten the gospel? He gave his Son! Is that not enough for you? If you, like Asaph, wonder if God is truly good to Israel, you must examine your heart, for it is not God who has ceased to be good, it is your heart that has ceased to be pure.
Fly to the gospel and thusly purify your hearts. What love the Father has made known to you in Him! His goodness and glory washes you from all uncleanliness and unbelief. Purify yourself, and wash your hands by drawing near to God, meditating on who he says he is.
I leave you with four truths from St. Augustine that have helped me:
1.) God always enables that which he commands.
“Lord command what you will, and will what you command.”
If he says to believe him, he will create that in your heart. Plead with him until he makes his goodness pass before you!
2.) Our hearts will never rest until they rest in God as he has reavealed himself to be.
“Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”
You will have a wayward, tossed, double-minded way about you until you rest finally in the truth of God’s goodness.
3.) Our love for God is compromised when we love anything apart from him.
“He loves thee too little who loves anything besides thee which he loves not for thee.”
God goodness wants you to enjoy his blessings. God’s goodness also wants you enjoy them for him. His goodness will thus take that from you which will result in your losing sight of his goodness. He gives! But he will take away, and this is his goodness, kindness, and mercy. Remember, however, that there is one thing God cannot take away: His promises in the gospel. Find your love for God in this love he has for you.
4.) To truly experience the goodness of God, we require one thing: Humility.
“If I should be asked what is the first thing in religion. I would say that the first, second and third thing therein is humility.”
Doubt and speculation are not admirable. Humble and contrite hearts that tremble at his word is what God looks to. Carnal speculation and fleshly intellectualism do not impress God. He does not command your theodicy; he commands your humility.
Working with you for purity,
Vince R.
How to Love One Another when there are Differences Among You
April 17, 2009
John Piper’s recent “Taste & See” article truly captures the kind of humility it takes to be around those who differ from you. I am greatly thankful for this helpful articulation; and I am very humbled by God’ s grace, even as he continues to rescue my sinful heart by teaching me these principles in application. This side of glory, I will never be finished learning them, and neither will you.
Working with you for Love,
Vince R.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon had me thinking just the other night. I was supposed to be reading the devotional for March 9, but somehow, I had been reading from March 10 that day. Well, it was exactly what I needed to read at that moment for God had ordained it. Read it here, but these words that stung hard.“Let us recollect the frail tenure upon which we hold our temporal mercies. If we would remember that all the trees of earth are marked for the woodman’s axe, we should not be so ready to build our nests in them. We should love, but we should love with the love which expects death, and which reckons upon separations. Our dear relations are but loaned to us, and the hour when we must return them to the lender’s hand may be even at the door.”
My heart began to melt for I sickened myself. So I turned to the text on which Spurgeon was writing.
“Man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.” Job 14:1-2
And so I began some meditations on the fleetingness of man, the finitude of life, and the fragility of plans. I was brought low in a moment. Everyone I know will go away in the end. What is the point? Why study so much? Why labor as I do? Why care? I turned to Ecclesiastes and read the simple phrases again:
“For in much wisdom is much vexation; and he who increases knowledge increases sorrows.” Ecclesiastes 1:18
I have turned sorrowful of late, vexed with much wisdom and increasings of knowledge. The closer I grow to the Lord, the more sorrow is mixed with the joy. The closer I get to God, the more I know my own sinfulness. The more I know my own sinfulness, the more I know the grace of God. The more I know the grace of God, the more joyful I am to know him. The more joyful I am to know him, the more sorrowful I am that others do not.
The sinfulness of sin has vexed me much of late. I see it in others, and no longer does it make me mad. It has truly rended my heart in two. What have we done?
“The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.” Ecclesiastes 4:5
Man destroys himself, smiling and indifferent to his own decadence. I am seeing it all around. We drink down iniquity like water. There is much bread and idleness. And we sink lower and lower, deeper and deeper into self-mutilation. I was particularly sorrowful as I thought of these things.
“All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.” Ecclesiastes 6:7
We cannot get enough. Our hearts are drawn to iniquity. Only recently I had been reading through the first three chapters of Romans. Paul’s main objective there: To crush man under the condemnation of sin. Even as I read it, my flesh ached and my heart hurt.
“Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” Ecclesiastes 7:20
My heart was engulfed with the exceeding sinfulness of sin. What is wrong with us? We supress the truth in unrighteousness and we destroy our own flesh with self-hatred. Though we love ourselves, we really hate ourselves if we love not God.
What hope is there for mankind? I was particularly distraught with hopelessnes. But then I knew…I looked to the cross and read.
“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Romans 5:6-9
“The cross has set me free,” I said. “All our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh” I recited Psalm 90:10-11. “The years of our life are seventy or even by reason of strength eighty, yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away,” I continued quoting.
But the cross has set us free to fear God in our passing days.
“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecclesiastes 12:13
And that is the end of it. What else are those saved from God’s wrath to do but fear him and obey him? We are free, counted righteous by the one who once stood in judgment over us. We were objects of wrath, but now we are objects of delight. We can now enjoy his pleasure. We can now enjoy him. We can now enjoy his blessings. There is nothing better under the sun in the few days that God has given us. This is the end of the matter.
Working with you in these few days,
Vince R.
A Feeble Attempt at Humility: A Loss of the Gospel
February 19, 2009
Christ humbly washing his disciples feet
“God honored His trust and did all for Him, and then exalted Him to His own right hand in glory. And because Christ humbled himself before God, and God was ever before Him, He found it possible to humble himself before men, too, and to be the Servant of all. His humility was simply the surrender of himself to God, to allow Him to do in Him what He pleased, regardless of what men might say of Him or do to Him.” -Andrew Murray, Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness, 33.
This morning I read out of Andrew Murray’s book, and I was particularly astounded at this section. I had a verbal “wow” as I read it. I find in today’s Christianity a tendency to make the gospel man-centered rather than God-centered. I find it in my heart so many times. We take the grace right out of salvation and treat the work of the gospel as exactly that–work.
Here’s what I mean. Let’s take a passage of Scripture that is often thrown around in evangelicalism to promote service and humility before men. Philippians 2:3-11 says this:
“Do nothing from rivalry and conceit, but in humility count other more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not account equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
We often focus on one aspect of this verse. We focus on Christus Exemplar, that is, “Christ the Example.” We focus on how Jesus is the perfect example on how to act toward our fellow man. Look again at this part here that says, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not account equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”
What we do here is we automatically turn this into an order for service and humility apart from the gospel message itself. This is a result of man-centered Christianity that says the gospel is all about us. The misinterpretation comes when we see Jesus Christ’s first advent as that which is specifically about us. We have been taught that Jesus Christ died for me because of me. This is not the biblical teaching. Rather, the gospel is primarily and wholly about the confession of Jesus Christ the Son in mind, heart, and will to “the glory of God the Father.”
When any man confesses (and a true confession must come from the heart or it is false, see Romans 10:8-11), “Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God,” we must note that Jesus himself attributes it to the grace and glory of God. After Simon Peter makes this same foundational confession on which the Church of God is built, Jesus answers him with that very understanding: “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father who is heaven.” (See Matthew 16:15-18)
Jesus completely attributes the gospel-changed believer to the will and work of his Father in heaven. So let us ask: why are we saved at all?
“In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in [Christ], were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14).
This passage attributes our salvation’s end to the glory of Christ, but we also see something else is true when we read this passage in 1 Corinthians 15:27-28:
“For ‘God has put all things in subjection under [the Son's] feet.’ But when it says, ‘all things are put in subjection,’ it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under [the Son]. When all things are subjected to [the Son], then the Son himself will also be subjected to [the Father] who put all things in subjection under [the Son], that God may be all in all.”
We see that God the Father is working to place all things under the feet of Christ. But this does not mean that God the Son will have God the Father under him, too. “It is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him.” Rather, the Son himself will also be subjected to the Father in that day. For what reason? “That God may be all in all.”
Clearly, we see that God the Father is given the glory for all that he does for the Son, and we see also that God the Son submits to God the Father. Look at the way Jesus spoke when we was on the earth:
“The Son can do nothing of his own accord…” John 5:19
“I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” John 5:30
“For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” John 6:38
“My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” John 7:16
“But I have not come of my own accord.” John 7:28
“I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.” John 8:28
“I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.” John 8:42
“Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. ” John 8:50
“Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.” John 14:10
In all of these passages, we see that in the life and teaching of Christ, he was in total submission to God the Father. But I do not have to go outside of Philippians 2 to show you that. Look at what it says:
“And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:6-11
To whom was the Son “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross”? The answer is obviously God the Father. Why did God the Father highly exalt him? Was it because Jesus was being humble before men? The answer is obviously no because we have seen that Jesus was humble before God the Father! Who gets the glory for Jesus’ perfect humble work? It is done to the “the glory of God the Father.”
Now, if we view Philippians 2:3-11 as a call to just be humble toward man for the sake of man’s good we have placed obedience to the gospel at the center. We have said that our highest focus is not what God has done in Christ. We have said that our highest focus is what we do! How shamefully man-centered!
A proper reading of this text must be read with gospel-lenses. Christ was completely humble to his Father in heaven. As a result, he could say that he practiced what he preached, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14). If we look at the context of that verse we that it speaks of a justified sinner, whose conscious and panging shame over his sin caused him to beat his breast and look to God for mercy. The man who is justified humbles himself before God because a man who humbles himself before God knows that God is his only way for salvation. Jesus Christ’s perfect humility fell in line with his own teaching (a proper understanding of Christus Exemplar), but it also enabled him to pray with confidence to his Father, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:4-5).
Obedience to God comes from humility before God. Disobedience to God comes from pride before God. I have said it many times: Pride is the root of all evil.
Jesus was highly exalted because he was humble on earth, not before men but before his Father in heaven. “Are you saying that we shouldn’t be humble before men?” asks one. If you have to ask then perhaps you don’t understand the gospel yet. Paul said in Philippians 2:3-4 “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”
Paul’s call for humility finds its root directly in the humility of Christ before his Father. Our obedience is both humbled and exalted because of the perfect obedience of Christ.
When we make the gospel a message expressing our worth and a message all about us, we can sing with many fuzzy feelings words that say Christ was crucified thinking ”of me above all.” We should be uncomfortable with such words because in singing them we imply that God is not concerned with his glory. In becoming comfortable with such an ide, we will begin to manifest our own glory because of our obedience rather than Christ’s. Our obedience to Philippians 2:3-4, then, becomes our feeble attempts to conjure some kind of humble demeanor toward our fellow men. Friends, our humble demeanor is a false one if we are not humble first and foremost before God. A humble and contrite heart, God will not despise this.
Working with you to be humble before God,
Vince R.
Why Revival Tarries by Leonard Ravenhill: Book Review
February 18, 2009
"No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying."
Pride, Truth and Humble Pursuits
July 10, 2008
Many elements of biblical truth perplex the human mind. Many of them exist which do seem to contradict one another. However, to react by attempting to reconcile those two truths and so change or edit them is to place yourself in the role of God. Such has been the constant endeavor of the wicked human heart. “Ye shall be as gods…” It is a pride found in Satan himself. My plea, friends, is that you lean not on your own understanding but embrace God’s revealed word as the only source of truth as we may know it.
I think of Christ’s priestly prayer when he prayed, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” John 17:16-19
Our God is not of this world; he is above and over it. He is not bound to our finite minds. His sovereign word is truth, and only by grace are we able to grasp it, if at all. If we don’t understand truth, our reaction as his people must never be to modify it. It should always be to embrace it, however confusing. In the midst of our confusion, our enlightened eyes should prayerfully and diligently pursue even more enlightment in the Scriptures. This is a humble pursuit. God is not the problem or the conflict. We are. We have no other course but a humble pursuit of God’s own will. We will find no truth in ourselves or in our minds because we are not its source. Humble pursuits are found under the mighty hand of God, where he reveals himself to those who ask him.
“The various elements of truth stand in perpetual antithesis, sometimes requiring us to believe apparent opposites while we wait for the moment when we shall know as we are known. Then truth which now appears to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and it will be seen that the conflict has not been in truth but in our sin-damaged minds.” -A.W. Tozer, “The Knowledge of the Holy.”
Pride will not find truth; it will only suppress and twist truth until it fits its need for understanding. Humility, though confused and bewildered, says simply with the Psalmist in Psalm 86:8-11
“There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.” (emphasis mine)
Working with you to humbly pursue truth in its only revealed source,
Vince R.
My Sin Cannot Imply it!
June 15, 2008
My Sin Cannot Imply it!
By Vince Robles
Micah 7:8 “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; When I fall, I shall rise”
Oh, the sin of God’s own chosen!
Who of Jesus Christ do claim,
They who wander from their savior,
Find their joy is gone away.
Fruit the Master does not gather,
Thistles rather from this tree.
Oh my God! Your burning anger!
See your Son and turn from me.
Godliness and Christ-like loving,
Traded for deceit of sin.
Oh, this wretched mortal body!
Wicked heart that dwells within!
Hatred for the Father’s glory,
Spurning life to treasure death.
Moments thought I walked so closely,
Now the law has stol’n my breath.
“Woe to you!” the devil taunts me
“Favored one now gone astray.”
“Jesus once did find you lovely.”
“Now He sees your wicked ways.”
Rejoice not over me my en’my.
When I fall, again I’ll rise.
When I sit in darkness lowly,
Holy truth shall be my light!
Rebuked I stand with loving ang’r,
Rightly bearing scolding face.
I rebelled and sought to wander,
But my Christ will plead my case.
He pleads his blood and brok’n body,
Naming me as His own kin.
Though my sin is black and ugly,
All it’s judgment’s poured on Him.
Enemy I soon will see you,
Covered under shame and scorn.
I am washed in blood and made new.
Sin’s dominion is no more!
So when my heart has gone astray,
His word provides assurance.
His grace sufficient leads the way,
And calls me to endurance.
His grace abounds to even me.
My Sin cannot imply it!
That Christ’s blood’s not set me free to
Enjoy and glorify Him.
Working with you to cling to the Cross when the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,
Vince R.
Humility and what Some Call “Calvinism”
May 3, 2008
Recently, a friend asked me to sit next to him during class. Prior to the introductory statements from the professor, he said something to the effect of, “I want to know about Calvinism and I hear you’re the guy to see.” I laugh now even thinking about that. Why do I laugh? Because I appreciate anyone’s desire to learn; it gives me joy. But I tell you what I did. I got so joyful that I began to mention some books that helped me, the titles waning as the professor began to speak. I said I would make him a list of books to which he can refer.
Then, mildly attentive to the professor, I was convicted. “Does this friend really care for truth?” Well, I have no idea about that because I don’t know his heart, but I do know this: Why would I care to share this truth with him? Do I really care for orthodoxy transforming someone’s walk with God and transforming their ministry or do I care more about showing how much I know?
Well, frankly, I’m a fallen man. I am prideful and horribly arrogant, so I won’t say that I wasn’t exulting in myself at times during that short conversation. But within momemts, the Holy Spirit was correcting me. That’s good.
For the moment, I have not made the list of books like he asked me to do for him. In fact, I won’t until he asks me about them again. But right now, I think that encounter served as a reminder to my often wandering heart that God, himself, is above all things. Not Vince, not his doctrinal understanding, and certainly not John Calvin.
I will boldly exclaim first that in my minor page-flipping through his institutes, I see a man not concerned for his name but for God and his truth. HE DID NOT INVENT THE DOCTRINES!!! He was a fallen man just like all of us. The doctrines come from Scripture; not his mind.
In fact, on many points, I don’t agree with him. I am not a Calvinist, if you define it the way it is rightly defined. I don’t avow to infant baptism; I don’ t avow to some points of Amillenial eschatology. I am not a follower of Calvin, I’m a follower of Christ. The Bible doesn’t say that I am not to humble myself under the hand of Calvin; it says that I am to humble myself under the mighty hand of God.
Who, seeking to understand what they call “Calvinism” is remotely interested in that? I hope all, but if not, I won’t waste my time.
Before I teach the doctrines SYSTEMATICALLY (because it will pepper my teachings anytime I teach because it’s only natural that it does), I must know in my heart that this person knows the Lord. Does he have fruit suggesting that he walks closely with the most high God? If not, he must as Spurgeon once said, “graduate from the prep school of the gospel before he can attend the university of the Doctrines of grace.”
Next, I must ask myself does this person care about God and his truth or does he care about knowledge and its degrees?
I declare boldly that I would take one John Wesley, passionately sharing the gospel and preaching God’s word, over five dead calvinists who would rather drive across the state to defend those doctrines than walk across the street to share the gospel.
The gospel of God is the main thing. Keep it there!!!
But now you must understand that before any man can go to the unversity of the doctrines of grace he must be prepared to come to the end of himself and cherish God’s power far above his own. He must bow his knees down lowly before God’s revealed word before he would ever bow his head mildly to his own reasoning.
That’s the fruit of a passionate man who holds to these doctrines. He must be humble.
“If you carry your orthodoxy in pride and arrogance, you haven’t truly understood it because an accurate understanding of God and his grace humbles the soul.” -Joshua Harris
And so as a prerequisite to any further teaching on the Doctrines of Grace, a phrase to which I prefer to refer to them, (In fact, I don’t like the Dortian terms coined in TULIP), I want to propose that humility is required before God’s revealed word.
In this study, o seeker of deeper truth, “know thyself,” as Shakespeare once wrote.
Why do you need to take the time to know? Do you want to grow closer to the heart of the most High or do you just want more knowledge which will further puff you up?
First, is the gospel even precious to you? If not, go back and learn it anew. I certainly wish I had. It would saved me a lot humiliating experiences when I forgot to keep the main thing the main thing.
And so I post a five part video of Pastor John Piper in which he exposits the humility required to believe the Doctrine of Election. Don’t waste your time if you don’t even care about God, period.
Proceed further ONLY if you want to understand something that will transform your walk to a whole new level of humility, holiness, and godliness. I, myself, have so much to learn, and I’ve held to these doctrines for the past three years. Every new glimpse into God’s grace humbles me to the dust as it rightly should.
Working with you to cherish orthodoxy with humility and conviction,
Vince R.
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That’s the Amazement of Grace, AMEN.
