This is quoted by Jonathan Edwards in Religious Affections:

“To profess to know much is easy; but to bring your affections into subjection, to wrestle with lusts, to cross your wills and yourselves, upon every occasion, this is hard. The Lord looketh, that in our lives we should be serviceable to him, and useful to men. That which is within, the Lord and our brethren are never better for it: but the outward obedience, flowing thence, glorifieth God and does good to men. The Lord will have this done. What else is the end of our planting and watering, but that the trees may be filled with sap? And what is the end of that sap, but that the trees may bring forth fruit? What careth the husbandman for leaves, and barren trees?” John Preston, The Church’s Carriage, The Golden Scepter with the Church’s Marriage and the Church’s Carriage in Three Treatises (London, 1638), pp.101-102

The exposing of hidden sin is a great thing for the life of the Christian. Something to even rejoice in! There are so many sins that lie dormant in our lives, but God in his work to sanctify us doesn’t allow them to remain. Praise God! In his love, many a times he brings us to our knees through trial or external pressure to reveal these hidden sins.

What are the benefits?

Repentance: We may go before the Lord humbly asking his forgiveness and rejoicing in the work of Christ on the cross and knowing peace with God.

Love: Our love for Christ grows as we realize more and more how undeserving we are of His love.

Humility: The exposure of our sin reminds us again that we are incapable of anything good outside of the work of Christ in us.

Dependence and Prayer: As we see our sin exposed and feel the pain of it, we find no strength over it other than going again to God, pleading for His continued work in us.

Love of Others: We are slower to judge harshly the sinfulness of others and more likely to love them and hurt for them.

The Word: Along with prayer, it drives us back to the promises in God’s Word. Seeking strength in knowing the truth. Seeking power over sin through the reading and meditation on it.

Pilgrim Perspective: Feeling the pain of sin and the weariness of the fight against it, we desire Christ’s return all the more and to be done with this world. We see that this is not our home nor do we want it to be. We move forward serving God more and ourselves less.

May we always be willing and regularly pray that God would expose our sin. May our hearts desire God and His glory more than our own. May we be willing to be weak, that his strength may be shown.

Paul Tripp’s answer to the question:

“A) Pray. Don’t just pray for outside the church; pray for the church. B) We need to teach, teach, teach, teach, teach. I think if you’re in a fairly good-sized evangelical Bible-believing church, there ought to be a marriage class every Sunday-School quarter. There ought to be marriage curriculums for folks in small groups. Pastors ought to be preaching on this issue. There ought to be counseling help available. Mature believers ought to be getting with young couples and talking about their experiences and sharing wisdom. We’ve just got to fight for this issue. It is a huge threat to the vitality of the church, and it needs to be a priority.”

Messy Marriages in the Hands of a Gracious God

How Mark Dever Led Me into “Sin”

I thought that might get your attention.

Capitol Hill Baptist Church Senior Pastor Mark Dever caused a stir in the blogosphere last week when he called infant baptism a sin. Here are two  responses from paedobaptist-believing professors. One wants to slap Mark in the face with a soggy fish so that he’ll come to his senses. The other is a bit more understanding and responds with his own credobaptism-is-sinful counter argument.

Pastor Dever responded to this mini-controversy cordially, saying that he has many
paedobaptist friends, that he reads their books, learns from them and invites them to preach at his church, but never equivicates on his position that it’s “wrong” to baptize infants.

I have an interesting story that relates to this conversation because Mark Dever guidance put me on a path that led directly to my conversion from credo to paedo-baptism.

A faithful brother in Christ led me to Mark’s church in 1997 shortly after I became a Christian. I was blessed by Mark’s faithful expositional preaching and grew in knowledge of Reformed doctrine. When I had to leave because of a job change, I asked Mark what I should look for when searching for a new church. He listed three things in order of priority:

1. Expositional Preaching
2. Reformed Theology
3. Believers Baptism

Now based on my church searching experience, there seems to be a lot more paedobaptists that are faithful to the first two than there are credobaptists. Meaning, if the weight is placed on expositional preaching and reformed theology, you’ll likely to end up a Presbyterian. Which is what happened to me.

I suppose one could congregate with Presbyterians and not become paedobaptist. But that covenant theology stuff is just so darn convincing.

So that’s my story of how Mark Dever led me into “sin.”

HT: Between Two Worlds

This is long and very good and very worth reading. Read it.

HT: Route 5:9

The Sinner’s Place
BY STANLEY VOKE

“Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy Cross I cling.”

The hardest thing for anyone is to take the sinner’s place. So hard in fact that many never take it at all, while others, having once been brought there, do not care to come there again. None are by nature fond of the sinner’s place. Yet if we do not come there, we cannot really know Christ or taste the sweetness of God’s forgiving grace. If we avoid it, we might as well say “we have no sin” and so deceive ourselves.

TAKING THE SINNER’S PLACE

The sinner’s place is where we accept without excuse that we are sinners. We may admit only one sin such as jealousy or pride; we may be convicted of something that seems small, but in so doing we have come again to the sinner’s place-though we may have been Christians for many years. Behind each sin God may show us things more serious until not one but many things are admitted and we are brought to admit the whole radical evil of our nature. A man once confessed he had stolen a rope. He brought it back. The next day he returned, this time bringing a cow he had been unwilling to admit was on the end of the rope! When we take the sinner’s place, we admit the truth about ourselves-the whole truth.

The sinner’s place is where we take blame. We stop excusing ourselves and saying, “I was not really myself when I did that.” Instead we bow our head saying, “Yes, Lord, that was me; that is what I am really like.” We no longer blame our nerves, our circumstances, or other people. Should someone point out some fault or criticize us, even unkindly, we do not argue and justify ourselves or try to explain things away. We even admit to the critic that if he knew us as we really are he would find much else to criticize. We save endless time and breath when we come quickly to the sinner’s place. Indeed things would be different in many a church if the members met regularly there at the sinner’s place.

This is the place David took as, when Nathan challenged him, he bowed his head saying, “I have sinned.” Here Job stood and cried, “Behold, I am vile,” and Isaiah said, “Woe is me! For I am undone.” Here the publican prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner”; here Peter fell at the feet of Jesus saying, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man.” In this place, the prodigal son confessed “Father, I have sinned and am no more worthy.” Paul often knelt in the sinner’s place and many a saint has watered it with his tears. If we have not come here, we have not yet begun with God (2Sa 12:13, Ps 51:4, Job 40:4, Isa 6:5, Lk 18:13, Lk 5:8, Lk 15:18).

We do not like the sinner’s place for we are afraid it will hurt our pride. So we fight, argue, put others in the wrong, excuse ourselves, and in fact do anything rather than take the sinner’s place where God awaits to forgive and set us free.

AVOIDING THE SINNER’S PLACE

Often, we avoid this place because we will not call sin, sin. We talk of shortcomings, failures, weaknesses, frailties, faults, disabilities, propensities; anything but sin. A rose by any other name is just as sweet, and sin by any other name is just as evil-to God. The trouble is we make our own definitions instead of accepting God’s. In the Scripture, sin is anything short of the glory of God, anything that misses the mark of moral perfection or crosses the line of God’s will, anything that is twisted from the plumbline of Divine righteousness whether it be in motive, desire, intention, instinct, thought, habit, look, word, deed, reaction or relationship. If done heedlessly or in ignorance, it is still sin and to call it something else needing neither repentance nor forgiveness is to avoid the sinner’s place.

We can refuse to see sin as sin. Maybe we are active people who have no time to bother with such trivialities. We have our positions and programs to maintain. Like Naaman, we are busy winning our laurels while we cover our leprosy. We address meetings, chair committees, take on jobs, give money to this and that-in fact do anything-except confess ourselves spiritual lepers who need to wash and be clean. We are as those in Jeremiah’s day who rushed like horses into battle but never stopped to repent or say, “What have I done?” We are so very busy-too busy ever to stand in the sinner’s place (Jer 8:6).

We may avoid this place by assuming the role of correctors. With our doctrines neatly tied up, we are evangelical experts with a keen sense of theological smell. We love to correct but not to be corrected. Like the Pharisees of old we keep ourselves out of the sinner’s place by putting others in. We are so full of knowledge that we have no room for a broken and contrite heart. Yet even Henry Martyn, great saint as he was, recorded in his diary, “I have resolved never to reprove another except I experience at the same time a peculiar contrition of heart!” He found he needed to live in the sinner’s place.

We may avoid this place by making our security in Christ a pretext for non-repentance. We are assured of our salvation, yet somehow we are no longer convicted of sin. We are like the small boy who, when sent from the table to wash his hands, returned with a big smile and the astonishing remark, “Well, they’ve had such a wash this time they’ll never need to be washed again.”

We are by faith sons of God and citizens of heaven. But we are still sinners as well. We still need to wash at “the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness ” (Zec 13:1). Grace will never lead us into sin, but it will ever convict us of it, and sin thus revealed will always lead us back to grace. It is possible to avoid the sinner’s place by misapplying the blood of Christ, speaking of it as “covering” or “protecting” as did the blood of the Passover lamb. The sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, however, was for sin.

It is an atoning, not simply a protecting agent. If therefore we need it, we do so as sinners coming for cleansing, not as sinless ones needing only to be secured from evil outside ourselves. When we speak only of the blood protecting us, we are avoiding the sinner’s place. A student of Spurgeon (a well known English preacher) once preached before him on “The Whole Armor of God.” A conceited young man, he dramatized his message, putting on the armor piece by piece, until, having fortified the whole, he waved the sword of the Spirit and cried triumphantly, “And where is the devil now?” Mr. Spurgeon leaned forward and said, “Young man, he’s inside that armor!”

We must watch that we do not let Satan in by forsaking the sinner’s place. Our hearts are deceitful above all things and, like the mythological Proteus, will adopt any guise to hide their true nature. Beneath our spiritual phraseology and church reputation we are but poor sinners, who need to be cleansed every day in the blood of Jesus.

FINDING GRACE IN THE SINNER’S PLACE

Is it not strange that the place we sinners avoid is the very one the sinless Savior took? Surely if He were the Son of God He would have come down from the Cross! Miracles, mighty sermons, even resurrection itself we could expect of such a One, but not a baptism in Jordan with publicans and harlots, or a criminal execution with murderers and thieves! Yet this is where He came, for His face was set towards this place from all eternity.

There on the same level a sinner met Him that day. Unlike his comrade who died blaming others and cursing God, this dying thief admitted guilt and found forgiveness. Peace and paradise came to him as he took the sinner’s place and found Jesus there. This is the paradox of grace. He who insists he is right will be pronounced wrong, while he who admits he is wrong will be declared right. The righteousness of God is only given to those who stand in the sinner’s place.Here and here alone is the place of true peace, for here we cease our strivings and find our God. Here is rest of heart and heaven’s door. Here we cast away our pretense, and admit what we really are. Here we come to Jesus to be cleansed by His precious blood. Here the Holy Spirit fills and holiness is found. Here are the springs of revival. This is where the whole church needs to come again and again. It is the place of truth and grace and freedom-the sinner’s place. When were you last there? In fact, are you there now?

O, Lord, awaken your people. We have become lazy and soft, easily distracted by the machinations of the world, made impotent by our own desires. The pleasures here are fleeting and yet we grasp them so tightly. We have forgotten our heritage. We have forgotten that we are children of light intended to point others to you. Instead we take measures to hide the light, to make it look like the world that we might not lose the world. In doing so we have made the light dim, barely to be seen.

You chose us out in love before the foundation of the world. Instead of returning love to you, we have turned it to ourselves. Lord forgives us. Lord change us, please change us! For the sake of your glory, don’t allow your church to remain this way! Give us such a desire for your glory that we are truly willing to “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also” not just sing it on Sunday mornings. Lord, break our grip on the earthly pleasures so that we may find greater joy in being called by you, serving you alone and not the ways of the world. Awake us from our sleep Lord!

David Mathis at Desiring God wrote about caring for our wives in a way that “our prayers may not be hindered.” Great post.. Let’s be thankful for our wives this week AND give them a little honor, help and time.

Read the post here.

No one will dispute this statement, for it would be unseemly for the servant to be exalted above his Master. When our Lord was on earth, what was the treatment he received? Were his claims acknowledged, his instructions followed, his perfections worshipped, by those whom he came to bless? No; “He was despised and rejected of men.” Outside the camp was his place: cross-bearing was his occupation. Did the world yield him solace and rest? “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” This inhospitable country afforded him no shelter: it cast him out and crucified him. Such-if you are a follower of Jesus, and maintain a consistent, Christ-like walk and conversation-you must expect to be the lot of that part of your spiritual life which, in its outward development, comes under the observation of men. They will treat it as they treated the Saviour-they will despise it. Dream not that worldlings will admire you, or that the more holy and the more Christ-like you are, the more peaceably people will act towards you. They prized not the polished gem, how should they value the jewel in the rough? “If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?” If we were more like Christ, we should be more hated by his enemies. It were a sad dishonour to a child of God to be the world’s favourite. It is a very ill omen to hear a wicked world clap its hands and shout “Well done” to the Christian man. He may begin to look to his character, and wonder whether he has not been doing wrong, when the unrighteous give him their approbation. Let us be true to our Master, and have no friendship with a blind and base world which scorns and rejects him. Far be it from us to seek a crown of honour where our Lord found a coronet of thorn.

I like this post. I love this post. But does a contraction count as one word or two?