The Gospel of Jesus Christ Leads to a Perfect Delirium of Joy!
HT: Joseph Randall
Charles Spurgeon wrote:
Some years ago, I was deeply depressed. I knew whom I had believed, but I could not get comfort from the truth I preached. I even began to wonder if I was really saved.
While on vacation, I went to a Wesleyan chapel. The sermon was full of the gospel and tears flowed from my eyes. I was in a perfect delirium of joy. I said, “Oh yes, there is spiritual life within me; the gospel can still touch my heart and stir my soul.”
When I thanked the good man for his sermon, he looked at me and could hardly believe his eyes. He said, “Are you not Mr. Spurgeon?”
I replied, “Yes.”
“Dear, dear,” said he, “that was your sermon I preached this morning.”
I knew it was, and that was one reason why I was so comforted. I realized that I could take my own medicine. I asked the preacher to my inn for dinner. We rejoiced that he was led to give the people one of my sermons that day, that I could be fed from my own kitchen.
I do know this. Whatever I may be, there is nothing that moves me like the gospel of Christ.
“For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.” (2 Tim. 1:12).
Do you feel this way?
Charles Spurgeon, Beside Still Waters, Ed. Roy H. Clarke (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 299.
U2 – Window in the Skies
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The Message We Need
The Immanuel Theology Group begins this Saturday, and it’s going to start off with a bang as Dane Ortlund will be showing us how to see Christ in all of Scripture. For part of his recommended readings, we’ve read from Graeme Goldsworthy and I’ve been very encouraged. Here’s a quote from Goldsworthy’s Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture (p. 83-84).
Only the message that another true and obedient human being has come on our behalf, that he has lived for us the kind of life we should live but can’t, that he has paid fully the penalty we deserve for the life we do live but shouldn’t – only this message can give assurance that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Spiritual Authority
The following quote comes from J. I. Packer’s A Quest for Godliness (p. 77). It was brought to my attention by Ray Ortlund-
Spiritual authority is hard to pin down in words, but we recognise it when we meet it. It is a product compounded of conscientious faithfulness to the Bible; vivid perception of God’s reality and greatness; inflexible desire to honour and please him; deep self-searching and radical self-denial; adoring intimacy with Christ; generous compassion manward; and forthright simplicity, God-taught and God-wrought, adult in its knowingness while childlike in its directness. The man of God has authority as he bows to divine authority, and the pattern of God’s power in him is the baptismal pattern of being supernaturally raised from under burdens that feel like death.
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The Central Focus of Parenting
The following comes from Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp:
The central focus of child rearing is to bring children to a sober assessment of themselves as sinners. They must understand the mercy of God, who offered Christ as a sacrifice for sinners. How is that accomplished? You must address the heart as the fountain of behavior, and the conscience as the God-given judge of right and wrong. The cross of Christ must be the central focus of your child rearing.
You want to see your child live a life that is embedded in the rich soil of Christ’s gracious work. The focal point of your discipline and correction must be your children seeing their utter inability to do the things that God requires unless they know the help and strength of God. Your correction must hold the standard of righteousness as high as God holds it. God’s standard is correct behavior flowing from a heart that loves God and has God’s glory as the sole purpose of life. This is not native to your children (nor to their parents). Discipline exposes your child’s inability to love his sister from his heart, or genuinely to prefer others before himself. Discipline leads to the cross of Christ where sinful people are forgiven. Sinners who come to Jesus in repentance and faith find grace and mercy. Jesus’ redemptive work entails forgiveness, internal transformation, and empowerment to live new lives.
The alternative is to reduce the standard to what may be fairly expected of your children without the grace of God. The alternative is to give them a law they can keep. The alternative is a lesser standard that does not require grace and does not cast them on Christ, but rather on their own resources.
I have spoken to many parents who feared they were producing little hypocrites who were proud and self-righteous. Hypocrisy and self-righteousness is the result of giving children a keepable law and telling them to be good. To the extent they are successful, they become like the Pharisees, people whose exterior is clean, while inside they are full of dirt and filth. The genius of Pharisaism was that it reduced the law to a keepable standard of externals that any self-disciplined person could do. In their pride and self-righteousness, they rejected Christ.
Correction and shepherding must focus on Christ. It is only in Christ that the child who has strayed and has experienced conviction of sin may find hope, forgiveness, salvation, and power to live.
Why Do You Lack Peace?
My primary response to my own dysfunction is to blame other people, the world, circumstances and even God. Norman Grubb helped me see that my lack of peace is the direct result of my sin, and my unwillingness to expose my sin to the light. (Per Continuous Revival by Norman Grubb):
We all can recognize that as a beautiful description of the abiding presence of Jesus in the heart, His peace, joy and presence filling us to overflowing, with no shadow between. We can see the clear sparkling water of life welling up within and flowing over the thirsty souls around through look, and word, and deed. But here comes the point of it in this message of revival. We are to recognize that “cups running over” is the NORMAL daily experience of the believer walking with Jesus, not the abnormal or occasional, but the normal, continuous experience. But that just isn’t so in the lives of practically all of us. Those cups running over get pretty muddled up; other things besides the joy of the Lord flow out of us. We are often much more conscious of emptiness, or dryness, or hardness, or disturbance, or fear, or worry than we are of the fulness of His presence and overflowing joy and peace. And now comes the point. What stops that moment-by-moment flow? The answer is only one — Sin. But we by no means usually accept or recognize that. We have many other more convenient names for those disturbances of heart. We say it is nerves that cause us to speak impatiently — not sin. We say it is tiredness that causes us to speak the sharp word at home — not sin. We say it is the pressure of work which causes us to lose our peace, get worried, act or speak hastily — not sin. We say it is our difficult or hurtful neighbor who causes us resentment or dislike, or even hate — but not sin. Anything but sin. We go to psychiatrists or psychologists to get inner problems unravelled — tension, strain, disquiet, dispeace — but anything which causes the cups to cease running over is SIN.
Why Are You Angry With Your Kids?
As Meghan and I try to discipline our children in a God honoring way, we’re so often confused! The following principle from Shepherding a Child’s Heart may be helpful for you as it is for me:
Ephesians 6:4 commands you to bring your children up in the training and instruction of the Lord. This is a command to provide the training and instruction of the Lord; to function on God’s behalf. Understanding this simple principle enables you to think clearly about your task. If you are God’s agent in this task of providing essential training and instruction in the Lord, then you, too, are a person under authority. You and your child are in the same boat. You are both under God’s authority. You have differing roles, but the same Master.
If you allow unholy anger to muddy the correction process, you are wrong. You need to ask for forgiveness. Your right to discipline your children is tied to what God has called you to do, not to your own agenda.
Unholy anger-anger over the fact that you are not getting what you want from your child-will muddy the waters of discipline. Anger that your child is not doing what you want frames discipline as a problem between parent and child, not as a problem between the child and God. It is God who is not being obeyed when you are disobeyed. It is God who is not being honored when you are not honored. The issue is not an interpersonal contest, it is rather your insistence that your child obey God, because obeying God is good and right.
We know that there is such a thing as righteous indignation, but righteous indignation responds to an affront to God rather than an affront to us. It is easy for a parent to say, “I am right and I am angry, therefore my anger is righteous anger.” It may be that we are just angry because we are not getting what we want.
Biblical Vision for Parenting
Per Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp (p. xix):
Let me overview a biblical vision for the parenting task. The parenting task is multifaceted. It involves being a kind authority, shepherding your children to understand themselves in God’s world, and keeping the gospel in clear view so your children can internalize the good news and someday live in mutuality with you as people under God.
