A Picture of Mao in Hell

[Sunday February 6 we consider 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11, which says in part: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” Randy Alcorn’s book Safely Home attempts to describe what this destruction looks like. The book tells the story of Ben Fielding, a high-powered corporate executive in a multinational firm with factories in China, and Li Quan, Ben’s college roommate whom he locates after twenty years and visits. Expecting Li to be a successful university professor, Ben instead finds that his Harvard-educated friend is a strong believer in Jesus, a leader in a house church, and – because of persecution – a locksmith’s apprentice. Li Quan’s faith, the persecution that he encounters, and Ben’s reaction to that persecution form the structure of the novel. Alcorn is not trying to write great literature; instead, he is trying to communicate biblical truth in a way that is engaging, interesting, and accessible. By that standard, this book is excellent. Alcorn is a reliable interpreter of the Word, and uses the medium of the novel to teach:

  • the reality of persecution today;
  • how to fight the fight of faith in the midst of suffering;
  • the reality of the spiritual world around us;
  • the nature of heaven;
  • the nature of hell

After reading the first hundred pages, I found myself praying more regularly and more fervently for our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world. That alone makes reading Safely Home worthwhile. I strongly recommend it.

Below find Alcorn’s picture of Mao Zedong – the founder of the People’s Republic of China – in hell. Read it – and weep – and witness – Coty]

Where is my palace? Where are my servants? Does no one know who I am?

The vast, cold darkness cut into his face. It felt like intense frostbite, burning his skin.

I was the most powerful man in Zhongguo. I created the People’s Republic. I was the revered father of my country. They worshiped me. I was god! He waited, listening to the silence. Cannot anyone hear me?

His voice disappeared into the great dark void. It did not echo, for there was nothing for it to echo off. It was immediately absorbed into infinite nothingness. His words went no farther than his blistered lips.

A parade of untold millions marched inside his mind’s eye. His sentence was to relive the suffering of each of his victims. He had been here over twenty-five years. Every minute of those years he had relived the sufferings he inflicted on others. Every torture his regime inflicted he now received, one after the next after the next. Eventually, perhaps, they would start over, so the millions he had already endured were but the first installment. The pain was unbearable, yet he had no choice but to bear it. There was no escape into unconsciousness – no drug to take, no sleeping pill, no alcohol. That which he had laid upon others was now laid upon him – endlessly, relentlessly.

He longed to pluck out his eyes, to keep from seeing what he saw, to puncture his eardrums to keep from hearing the wailing misery, to pull out his tongue to keep from tasting the awfulness he had legislated. But he had no ability to destroy himself. He had no control now over his destiny, no power over himself or others. There was no one he could command to fix the situation, no one to prepare him an eight-course meal to assuage the eternal hunger, no one to do his work, no one to punish for their errors. No one to salute him, cower at his voice, or bow heads in his presence.

Where is everyone?

Misery loves company, and he had long sought the consolation of others. But all others were still on earth, secure in heaven, or confined to their own private hells at distances immeasurable.

The aloneness was stifling. He could hear nothing but his victims’ cries, feel nothing but their pain, see nothing but their blood, taste nothing but their vomit, sense nothing but their torture. He had only himself. He could not enjoy his own company, for he saw himself as he really was. It was an ugly sight, revolting beyond comprehension.

He felt a burning. A fury welled up inside him. Anger and bitterness, unfocused hostility, frustration leading him to lash out. But there was no one to lash out at. No incompetent aide, no dissident, no Christian pastor, no helpless peasant. No one to beat or shoot or hang or starve. No one to cower in fear at the power of the great chairman, architect of the Republic. No one to shine his shoes or rub lotion upon his burning feet.

Grief and rage warred within him. His hell was a growing cancer, gnawing at him, eating away at him, devouring him. He was like a bush that burned yet was not consumed, so the burning could never stop.

He had come to death entirely unprepared – and now it was too late to prepare. If the torture was not enough, a sickening feeling of foreboding had gripped him from his first moments here. He had hoped it would subside, that he would get used to it. He hadn’t. It only got worse.

He could see now through all his rationalizations. His arguments against belief in a Creator had never been intellectual ones, as he had claimed. By rejecting a Creator he thought he could rid himself of a Judge. But it had not worked. His atheism had been the opiate of his soul and the executioner of uncalculated millions. But now his comforting atheism could no longer exist, even for a fleeting moment, for he had been forever stripped of the power to deny reality.

He had lived his short todays as if there were no long tomorrows. He had believed the lie that all were accountable to him and he was accountable to none. He had believed the lie that death would slip him into eternal unconsciousness. He knew now – how well he knew – the curse of always being awake, ever alert, unable to allay his suffering with a moment’s sleep or distraction.

The winds of hell blew upon him. On them floated sounds of laughter and joy from a place far distant. These voices were torture. Many he recognized as belonging to Christians he had persecuted, worshipers of the Carpenter he had murdered. He relived what he had done to them, this time on the other end of the cattle prod. By the time he had died, while he and all he stood for were in decline, they and all they embraced were in ascent. They had beaten him. Their King had dethroned him even in the other life – how much more in this one.

As they celebrated in their far-off realm, at first he had imagined they were cursing him, celebrating his demise. He thought of them as his eternal enemies who would forever speak of what a great foe he had been to them. But he had come to realize something far worse. They did not curse him. They did not relive his great campaigns against him. No. They simply did not think of him at all. He was unimportant. Insignificant. In the eternal scheme of things, he did not matter.

Not matter? How dare they ignore me! Don’t they know who I am?

He had said, “I want there to be no God; I want nothing to do with him.” His atheist’s prayer had been answered. The everywhere-present God had chosen to withdraw his presence from this single place, turning it into a cosmic desert. This was a ghetto of massive proportions, yet so small it could slip through a single crack in the tiles of heaven. It was located in some distant and empty place, never to be feared or even stumbled upon by the citizens of Charis. His life, with all his supposed accomplishments, was but a puff of smoke, dissipating into nothingness.

Stop what you’re doing and listen to me! Stop or I will… I will…

No power to give meaning to a threat. No reason to be listened to. And no one to hear him.

Thirst without water to quench it. Hunger without food to satisfy it. Loneliness without company to alleviate it. There was no God here. He’d gotten his wish. On earth he’d managed to reject God while still enjoying his blessings and provisions. But it was excruciatingly clear now that God was the author of good. Therefore the absence of God meant the absence of good. He could not have it both ways, not here. No God, no good. Forever.

He had wanted a world where no one else was in charge, where no order was forced upon him. He had finally gotten it. He had secretly wondered if there was something beyond death, but if he went to hell, he’d fully expected to rule there. Yet there was no king, for there were no subjects. Only one prisoner – himself – in eternal solitary confinement.

He missed the sound of laughter. There was no laughter here, nor could there be, for laughter cannot exist without joy or hope. An awful realization gripped him. There was no history here. No story line. No opening scene, no developing plot, no climax, no resolution. No character development. No travel, no movement. Only a setting of constant nothingness, going nowhere. Excruciating, eternal boredom. Nothing to distract him from the torment of the eternal now.

He had charmed his friends and cheated his enemies, but death he could not cheat, hell he could not charm. This nameless, ever-shriveling man writhed in terror. Faced with his own deeds, punished by them, he was receiving in himself the penalty for what he had done. He longed for a visit from a foreign dignitary, delivered by a courier, a request for an audience in his illustrious presence. But no. He knew now none would ever come, or even want to. He could not return to Beijing – and knew Beijing itself would soon be gone, a flower withered in a summer’s wind. Perhaps it was gone already.

No one to fear him. No one to revere him. No one to hear him. No one to think about him.

He who had claimed to be savior was forever without a Savior. Ignored and insignificant. Empty and embittered and regretful. Without a following. Without a heart. Without a hope.

Forever, time without end.

[From Safely Home by Randy Alcorn (Tyndale House, 2001), p. 327-330. The first chapter of the book is available online. Visit www.epm.org for more resources from the author, or to order the book. Note that all royalties from its sale are used to help persecuted Christians and to spread the Gospel in their countries.]

 

Delighting in the World Without Being an Idolator

An idol is any person, power, object, or spirit that you rely on instead of God for satisfaction, security, accomplishment, or honor. So how can we delight in the world around us – last night’s moonrise, friendships that last for decades, clear crisp days abounding in fall colors, and so many more – without their becoming idols: the source of our satisfaction, our joy?

In “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C.S. Lewis provides us with an image that helps answer that question:

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

John Piper uses this image to understand the opening verses of Psalm 19, explaining how we can avoid making an idol of the beauty of the heavens:

We can say that when we ‘look along’ the heavens and not just ‘at’ the heavens, they succeed in their aim of ‘declaring the glory of God.’ That is, we see the glory of God, not just the glory of the heavens. We don’t just stand outside and analyze the natural world as a beam, but we let the beam fall on the eyes of our heart, so that we see the source of the beauty—the original Beauty, God himself.

This is the essential key to unlocking the proper use of the physical world of sensation for spiritual purposes. All of God’s creation becomes a beam to be ‘looked along’ or a sound to be ‘heard along’ or a fragrance to be ‘smelled along’ or a flavor to be ‘tasted along’ or a touch to be ‘felt along.” All our senses become partners with the eyes of the heart in perceiving the glory of God through the physical world.

Rather than an idol – with our adoration focused on the object – we look along the object and adore the source of its beauty.

C.S. Lewis elaborates on this idea at length in Letters to Malcolm. The author writes a letter to a friend who had influenced his view of the world around him. Anything in the world – including any pleasure in the world – is no idol if we look “along” it, up towards God Himself. This quotation helps us to do just that:

You first taught me the great principle, ‘Begin where you are.’ I had thought one had to start by summoning up what we believe about the goodness and greatness of God, by thinking about creation and redemption and’ all the blessings of this life’. You turned to the brook and once more splashed your burning face and hands in the little waterfall and said: ‘Why not begin with this?’

And it worked. Apparently you have never guessed how much. That cushiony moss, that coldness and sound and dancing light were no doubt very minor blessings compared with ‘the means of grace and the hope of glory’. But then they were manifest. So far as they were concerned, sight had replaced faith. They were not the hope of glory; they were an exposition of the glory itself.

Yet you were not – or so it seemed to me – telling me that ’Nature’, or ‘the beauties of Nature’, manifest the glory. No such abstraction as ‘Nature’ comes into it. I was learning the far more secret doctrine that pleasures are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility. As it impinges on our will or our understanding, we give it different names-goodness or truth or the like. But its flash upon our senses and mood is pleasure….

I have tried, since that moment, to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something different. How shall I put it?

We can’t – or I can’t – hear the song of a bird simply as a sound. Its meaning or message (‘That’s a bird ‘) comes with it inevitably-just as one can’t see a familiar word in print as a merely visual pattern. The reading is as involuntary as the seeing. When the wind roars I don’t just hear the roar; I ‘hear the wind’. In the same way it is possible to ‘read’ as well as to ‘have’ a pleasure. Or not even ’as well as’. The distinction ought to become, and sometimes is, impossible; to receive it and to recognise its divine source are a single experience. This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard where it grew. This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany [that is, ‘manifestation of God’] is itself to adore.

Gratitude exclaims, very properly: ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says: ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations [‘flashes of brilliance’] are like this!  One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.

If I could always be what I aim at being, no pleasure would be too ordinary or too usual for such reception; from the first taste of the air when I look out of the window–one’s whole cheek becomes a sort of palate – down to one’s soft slippers at bedtime….

One must learn to walk before one can run. So here. We-or at least I-shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have ’tasted and seen’. Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight‘ in the woods of our experience.

So I encourage you: Notice today something particular in the world around you – something pleasurable, beautiful, encouraging. By all means, thank God for it. But then look along the beam, up the beam, back to its source. And so adore the source. In doing so, you not only guard yourself against idolatry. You also fulfill the purpose of your creation.

[The Piper quote is from p. 185-186 of When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy (Crossway, 2004). In addition to the link provided, the first C.S. Lewis excerpt is published on p. 212-215 of God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Eerdmans, 1970). The second, longer C.S. Lewis quote is from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963-64), chapter 17, p. 88-93. For a longer exposition of this idea, see the April 6, 2014 sermon “Enjoying What God Richly Provides”  text audio.]

Grace Greater Than All Our Sins

[The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz (1905-1998) is a profound novel set in Sweden, describing how God brings to faith, sanctifies, and uses His servants. Written from a Lutheran perspective, the novel displays powerful insight into God’s work and His sovereign, loving care for His people.

In the first third of the novel, a young Lutheran curate, Savonius, serves as assistant to an elderly pastor and dean. This young man is much caught up with the world: he wants to impress the young women around him; he wants to dress well; he thinks he belongs in academia and not among the poor and unlearned. During a reception with prominent people – a reception that Savonius is much enjoying – the dean receives word that a dying man named Johannes needs a pastoral visit. Much to Savonius’ dismay, the dean tells him to leave the reception and minister to Johannes. In a powerful scene, Savonius is completely incapable of helping this man who is very conscious of his sinfulness and doubts his salvation. But a young woman comes, a strong believer, who speaks the Gospel to him. Savonius then administers the Lord’s Supper, and the dying man sees and accepts the grace of God. When Savonius departs, a peasant leaves a verse with him, Luke 22:32, Jesus’ words to Peter after prophesying his denials: “But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” The following excerpt contains Savonius’ response – Coty]

 

Two waves of feeling alternated within him. From one direction, came resentment. Did this peasant mean to imply that he was not converted? From the other came a mighty surge drowning every other feeling and filling his consciousness  to the brim. This was not the word of a man-it was the Word of God, a sternly clear statement about his condition.

Not converted, supported by the prayer of Another, and yet called to strengthen his brethren! He saw it with almost supernatural clarity, as from outside: he saw himself, slightly intoxicated, red garter rosettes at the knees, stepping into the carriage in the summer night with his head full of gavotte melodies and his heart of selfish concern for his own honor. He had not thought at all about the sick man; he had had no sympathy to spare for him, and much less, any thought for his salvation. He had completely forgotten him who had commissioned  him. But far beyond the pale sky of the summer night sat One enthroned who in limitless mercy had prayed for his unworthy servant, prayed that his wretched, bloodless faith might not die completely in the chill night air of raillery and jesting, but that it might be made to burn anew with a warm and living flame. He saw it all as a panorama: the forest road on which Henrik Samuel Savonius, God’s unworthy servant, was carried toward the abyss of humiliation, supported by the Savior’s intercession, himself forgetful of all that was holy, but remembered by the Holy One he had forgotten. And, in the same melancholy dimness, on another road that stretched before him like a white ribbon, he saw a lone woman, guided by that same great Mercy, rendering the service in which the incompetent servant of the Word had utterly failed. Unprofitable-but still not rejected. Had not God permitted  him to administer the Holy Sacrament with his unworthy hands? Had he not been allowed to turn the key that, by the authorization of the Savior, opened the gates of heaven? Had he not been privileged to be the celebrant at the heavenly joy feast at which Johannes on his death bed beheld the angels of God? And had not God now, to cap it all, sent him this message, so overwhelming in its undeserved and overflowing grace: “Strengthen thy brethren.” God wanted to use him after all!

He sank to his knees, rested his elbows on the rickety desk, and pressed his forehead against the knuckles of his folded hands.

“Lord, Lord, how canst Thou? Lord, is it thus Thou rewardest my transgressions? Dost Thou clothe me in grace because I have so deeply despised Thee? Lord, I am too insignificant. Lord, I am not fit. Thou knowest my pride. Thou knowest that I have wanted all the glory for myself. Thou knowest that I wanted to be seen and admired, but not to serve and bear Thy cross. Lord, have mercy upon me! If Thou still art not done with me, take me completely!”

He knelt in silence. He seemed to feel that his whole being flowed slowly into the hands of God, that he was lifted out of all the past and gradually poured into a new mold, a new life and a new will which took him in its strong grip. And when God took his soul in his hand, he felt the challenge, “Strengthen thy brethren,” as an all-constraining and dominating call.

“Dear Lord,” he murmured, “if Thou wilt use me, I will go at Thy bidding.”

Now he seemed to see before him the gray, malodorous crowd in homespun, these Swedish commoners, forsaken by their leaders, in danger of drinking themselves to death, and in their desperation being dished out a few miserable sermons, concocted of fine phrase…. It was to these he was now sent, and he would go forth in the power of God.

[From The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz (1941 in Swedish; English 1960, revised 2005. This edition © 2005 Augsberg Fortress. Link to Amazon page. By the way, God’s work is not done at this point: Savonius has several more failures ahead of him.]

 

What God Tells Us About Himself 6,800 Times

[From Providence by John Piper (Crossway, 2020), p.90-92. Piper is speaking of the goal of God’s providence in the history of the exodus. Join us for our study of providence Thursday evenings, 7:30-8:30 via Zoom. The preparation guide is available here (a pdf file) – Coty]

God’s name is a message. And the message is about how he intends to be known. Every time his name appears—all 6,800 times—he means to remind us of his utterly unique being. As I have pondered the meaning of the name Yahweh, built on the phrase “I am who I am” and pointing to God’s absolute being, I see at least ten dimensions to its meaning: (more…)

The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson

[John Finney recommended this book during a discussion of the April 4 sermon on Peter’s call to repentance at Pentecost (the sermon begins 33:45 into the video of the service). This excerpt contains almost all of Watson’s outline and selected paragraphs – about one-sixth of the book. The entire text is available online; you can order the Banner of Truth paperback edition here – Coty]

[Preface]…

Christians, do you have a sad resentment of other things and not of sin? Worldly tears fall to the earth, but godly tears are kept in a bottle (Ps. 56.8). Judge not holy weeping superfluous…. Either sin must drown or the soul burn. Let it not be said that repentance is difficult. Things that are excellent deserve labour. Will not a man dig for gold in the ore though it makes him sweat? It is better to go with difficulty to heaven, than with ease to hell….

The well-wisher of your soul’s happiness,

THOMAS WATSON
25 May 1668

  1. A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE…

the first sermon that Christ preached, indeed, the first word of his sermon, was ‘Repent’ (Matt. 4:17). And his farewell that he left when he was going to ascend was that ‘repentance should be preached in his name’ (Luke 24:47)….

How is repentance wrought?…

  1. Partly by the word…
  2. By the Spirit…

Ministers are but the pipes and organs. It is the Holy Ghost breathing in them that makes their words effectual…

  1. COUNTERFEIT REPENTANCE…

To discover what true repentance is, I shall first show what it is not….

  1. The first deceit of repentance is legal terror…

(more…)

Disagreements? In Church?

Disagreements? In Church? By Coty Pinckney

[This devotion is based on a talk given October 14 at the Treasuring Christ Together 2020 retreat. An earlier version of the paraphrase of Romans 14 is in this blog post. These two sermons from 2018 (first, second) provide more of the biblical foundation for the principles discussed here.]

Christians are one in Christ. God makes us one.

But although we are one, we differ. We disagree on trivial matters – should the Dodgers or the Rays win the World Series? But we also disagree about deeply held convictions: On political matters – should Christians vote Republican, Democrat, or neither? On education – should Christians send their children to public school, private school, or home school? On Christian behavior – how should we dress? What should we consume? On LGBT issues – how should we interact with family members who come out?

Furthermore, we not only disagree about such issues. We even disagree on whether such disagreements are important!

What does Scripture tell us about such disagreements?

The most helpful passage is Romans 14:1-15:7. Let’s draw five principles for how we handle disagreements from this great text. (more…)

Enter God’s Rest

“If we have been swayed from the place of resting in your grace today – swayed by shame, by error, by vanity, by pride, or by love of the praise of people, act, O Holy Spirit!

“Reveal our error, convict conscience, and bring us to quick repentance. Rekindle our affections, restoring them again to their one worthy object, who is Christ, and who alone holds the words of eternal life.”

Douglas McKelvey, Every Moment Holy (Rabbit Room Press, 2017), p. 7.

Thanks to Beth who read this to our small group as we were discussing the command to strive to enter God’s rest (Hebrews 4:11).

God the Father’s Love for You

God’s love was revealed among us in this way:
God sent His One and Only Son into the world
so that we might live through Him.
Love consists in this:
not that we loved God, but that He loved us
and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
(1 John 4:9-10 Holman Christian Standard Bible)

Do you believe in God’s love? Not just in love as an attribute of God, an essential part of His character – but, do you believe in God’s love for you?

Back in December, we celebrated the incarnation: God taking on our form in Mary’s womb; the little baby laid in a stable’s feeding trough being God-in-the-flesh.

We sang this truth back then and rejoiced – but do we understand its implications?

In 1 John 4:9-10, the apostle John helps us to understand one key implication: The incarnation and sacrifice of the Son display the love of God like nothing else.

In His great plan of redemption, God determined to create for Himself a people for His own possession, children in His family, a Bride for His Son, those over whom He will rejoice with loud singing (Zephaniah 3:17). The Son left His glorious throne, came to life as an apparently illegitimate son to a poor couple in a Roman backwater, lived a perfect life, yet died penniless, exposed, and naked on a cross – the most shameful death of his day. He did this – for you – if you will only believe in Him, trust Him, and treasure Him. He did this so that you might be His treasure, His joy.

So the seventeenth century scholar John Owen comments on John 16:26b-27a (“I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you”), saying the disciples, while assured of Jesus’ love for them, doubted the Father’s love:

Saith our Savior, “Take no care of that, nay, impose not that upon me, of procuring the Father’s love for you; but know that this is his peculiar respect towards you, and which you are in him: ‘He himself loves you.’ It is true, indeed (and as I told you), that I will pray the Father to send you the Spirit, the Comforter, and with him all the gracious fruits of his love; but yet in the point of love itself, free love, eternal love, there is no need of any intercession for that: for eminently the Father himself loves you. Resolve of that, that you may hold communion with him in it, and be no more troubled about it. Yea, as your great trouble is about the Father’s love, so you can no way more trouble or burden him, than by your unkindness in not believing of it.” So it must needs be where sincere love is questioned.

Or, as R.J.K. Law renders the end of that paragraph:

The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to Him, is not to believe that He loves you.

God has demonstrated His love for us unmistakably in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of His Son. So do not grieve God the Father through disbelief in His love! Reflect on the incarnation, contemplate Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection – and believe that God the Father Himself loves you.

(The John Owen quote is from Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (1657), Part 1, Chapter 3; the entire work is available online for free at this link. R.J.K. Law’s excellent paraphrase and condensation of this work is published as Communion With God (Banner of Truth, 1991). Another paraphrase and condensation by William Gross (2003) is available online for free via this link).

How To Make Your Heart Content

[From The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs (1600-1646). Justin Perry of Covenant Life Church in Tampa quoted the third consideration in his talk this week at the Treasuring Christ Together Network’s pastors and wives retreat.]

CONSIDERATIONS TO CONTENT THE HEART IN ANY AFFLICTED CONDITION.

1) We should consider, in all our wants and inclinations to discontent, the greatness of the mercies that we have, and the meanness of the things we lack. The things we lack, if we are godly, are things of very small moment in comparison to the things we have, and the things we have are things of very great moment. … I will give you the example of a couple of godly men, meeting together, Anthony and Didymus: Didymus was blind, and yet a man of very excellent gifts and graces: Anthony asked him if he was not troubled at his want of sight. He confessed he was, ‘But’, he said, ‘should you be troubled at the want of what flies and dogs have, and not rather rejoice and be thankful that you have what angels have?’ God has given you those good things that make angels glorious; is not that enough for you, though you lack what a fly has? And so a Christian should reason the case with himself: what am I discontented for? I am discontented for want of what a dog may have, what a devil may have, what a reprobate may have; shall I be discontented for not having that, when God has given me what makes angels glorious? ‘Blessed be God,’ says the Apostle in Ephesians 1:3, ‘who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.’ It may be you have not such great blessings in earthly places as some others have, but if the Lord has blessed you in heavenly places, that should content you. There are blessings in heaven, and he has set you here for the present, as it were in heaven, in a heavenly place. The consideration of the greatness of the mercies that we have, and the littleness of the things that God has denied us, is a very powerful consideration to work this grace of contentment. …

3) The consideration of the abundance of mercies that God bestows and we enjoy. It is a saying of Luther: ‘The sea of God’s mercies should swallow up all our particular afflictions.’ Name any affliction that is upon you: there is a sea of mercy to swallow it up. If you pour a pailful of water on the floor of your house, it makes a great show, but if you throw it into the sea, there is no sign of it. So, afflictions considered in themselves, we think are very great, but let them be considered with the sea of God’s mercies we enjoy, and then they are not so much, they are nothing in comparison. …

8) Before your conversion, before God wrought upon your souls, you were contented with the world without grace, though you had no interest in God nor Christ; why cannot you now be contented with grace and spiritual things without the world? If you yourselves were content with the world without grace, there is reason you should be content with grace without the world. Certainly there is infinitely more reason. You see that many men of the world have a kind of contentment; they do not murmur or repine with the world, though they have no interest in God and Christ. Then cannot you have as much contentment with God and Christ, without the world, as they can, with the world, without God and Christ? It is an infinite shame that this should be so.

9) Yea, consider, when God has given you such contentments you have not given him the glory. When God has let you have your heart’s desire, what have you done with your heart’s desire? You have not been any the better for it; it may be you have been worse many times. Therefore let that satisfy you-I meet with crosses, but when I had contentment and all things coming in, God got but little or no glory from me, and therefore let that be a means now to quiet me in my discontented thoughts.

10) Finally, consider all the experience that you have had of God’s doing good to you in the want of many comforts. When God crosses you, have you never had experience of abundance of good in afflictions? It is true, when ministers only tell men that God will work good out of their afflictions, they hear them speak, and think they speak like good men, but they feel little or no good; they feel nothing but pain. But when we cannot only say to you that God has said he will work good out of your afflictions, but we can say to you, that you yourselves have found it so by experience, that God has made former afflictions to be great benefits to you, and that you would not have been without them, or without the good that came by them for a world, such experiences will exceedingly quiet the heart and bring it to contentment. Therefore think thus with yourself: Lord, why may not this affliction work as great a good upon me as afflictions have done before?

Does God Reward Your Works?

[From a sermon preached by Edward Veal in 1675 on Psalm 62:12. You can read the entire sermon at this link.]

Learn to admire the grace of God in rewarding your works, It is much that he accepts them and what is it then, that he rewards them? It is much that he doth not damn you for them, seeing they are all defiled, and have something of sin cleaving to them; and what is it, then, that he crowns them? You would admire the bounty and munificence of a man that should give you a kingdom for taking up a straw at his toot, or give you a hundred thousand pounds for paying him a penny rent you owed him: how, then, should you adore the rich grace and transcendent bounty of God in so largely recompensing such mean services, in setting a crown of glory upon your heads, as the reward of those works which you can scarcely find in your hearts to call good ones! You will even blush one day to see yourselves so much honoured for what you are ashamed of, and are conscious to yourselves that you have deserved nothing by. You will wonder then to see God recompensing you for doing what was your duty to do, and what was his work in you; giving you grace, and crowning that grace; enabling you to do things acceptable to him, and then rewarding you as having done them.

Take heed therefore now of rivalling God’s grace, or Christ’s merits; of inverting his praises, and ascribing anything to yourselves which belongs only to him. Set the crown upon the right head; let him have the honour of the work that hath done it, the glory of your reward that hath purchased it. Say with yourselves, “What am I, and what are my services, that ever God should thus plentifully reward them? I never prayed but I sinned; never confessed sin, never begged pardon of it, [strove] against it, but I did at the same time commit it. I never heard a sermon, received a sacrament, did any good duty, but with some mixture of coldness, deadness, distractedness. I never had any grace but what God gave me, nor acted any but what he stirred up in me. All the good I ever had or did I received from him; and therefore I owe all to him. I am a thousand ways his debtor: — for my life and being, for the good things of this life, for the means and offer of eternal life, for the knowledge of his will, conviction of sin, restraint from sin, the change of my heart, the reformation of my ways, the graces of his Spirit, the privileges of his children conferred upon me. I am his debtor for all the evils he hath delivered me from, all the good he hath offered me, wrought in me, done by me. And doth God take so much notice of such poor things? Will he indeed reward such weak endeavours, such lame performances? Must I live in heaven, that never deserved to live on earth? Must I wear the crown of righteousness, who never deserved anything but the punishment of mine iniquities? Must eternal glory and honour be my portion, who have deserved nothing better than ‘shame’ and ‘everlasting contempt?’ (Dan. xii. 2.) I have nothing to boast of, nothing to glory in. I must cry, ‘ Grace, grace.’ (Zech. iv. 7.) All I have, and to eternity am to have, is grace. The foundation of my salvation was laid in grace; and so will the top-stone too. It was grace [that] sent Christ to redeem me and grace will send him at last fully to save me. I have received all from God; and therefore desire to return the praise of all to him: it is but just that all should be ascribed to him from whom all came.”