Also in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David, volume 1, pg 203 (on Psalm 16:6): “The sense of our Father’s love is like honey at the end of every rod; it turns stones into bread, and water into wine, and the valley of trouble into a door of hope; it makes the biggest evils seem as if they were none, or better than none; for it makes our deserts like the garden of the Lord, and when we are upon the cross for Christ, as if we were in paradise with Christ.”
Quotation of Charles Bradbury
October 2, 2006 at 7:30 pm (Quotes)
This is found in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David, volume 1, pg 201 (on Psalm 16:3): “Although you see the starts sometimes by their reflections in a puddle, in the bottom of a well, or in a stinking ditch, yet the stars have their situation in heaven. So, although you see a godly man in a poor, miserable, low, despised condition, for the things of this world, yet he is fixed in heaven.”
Holiness for Pleasant Places
October 2, 2006 at 5:43 pm (OT-Psalms, Sermons)
I am conducting my ninth funeral service tomorrow. Here is the sermon which I will preach.
Eugene Peterson once said this, “In out kind of culture, anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sin up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.” The great theologian Jonathan Edwards said it this way, “Resolved, never to do anything which I would be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.”
Our Psalm has a great deal to say about pleasant things. There is rejoicing, having the Lord be our right hand, not being shaken, pleasant places, a beautiful inheritance, pleasures forevermore, and fullness of joy. All of these beautiful things are in this Psalm. However, there is also holiness. Verse 2 says “I have no good thing apart from you.” Verse 3 says that the saints of the land are those in whom is all the writer’s delight. Of course, the reason why the writer takes delight in God’s people is because he takes delight in God. You cannot have the one without having the other. Verse 4 describes the writer’s avoidance of idolatry. The Lord is his chosen portion, not anything else. So, just as much as there is good to which we can look forward, there is the corresponding warning: we don’t get there without holiness.
There is this absolutely hideous notion out there that it is possible to believe God and believe in Jesus Christ, and yet live whatever life you want to live. There are very few people who see personal holiness as a necessity in life. They think that, since they are free from the law’s demands, that they can therefore do what they want. This is one of the world’s great delusions. It is one of Satan’s favorite tricks. There are going to be an enormous number of people who come the judgment seat of Christ, and Jesus will say to them, “Why should I let you into heaven? You said that you were a Christian. But your surely didn’t act like it. Instead, you did whatever you wanted. You hated my church, and hated my people. You cut yourself off from the church. The church is my bride,” says Jesus Christ. How can you love God in Jesus Christ without loving the church, who is the bride of Christ? See, in verse 2, David says that he loves his Lord. In verse 3, David says that he loves the Lord’s people.
There is a great contrast between those who love God and love God’s people, on the one hand; and those who run after other gods, on the other hand. David describes these people as being very religious: they even make offerings to their gods. However, though they think they will find happiness in those gods, they will only find sorrows multiplied. They will multiply and multiply, those sorrows, until hell itself multiplies them beyond reckoning. What gods are you running after? There are any number of gods. Most of today’s idols don’t look like gods. That is, they don’t have a physical shape. They aren’t like a statue or something like that. Most idols today are not something you could touch. Consider money, pleasure, and power. Most of the today’s idols fall into those three categories. Money idols include greed, envy, jealousy, theft, and even neglecting to take care of the property of your neighbor. Pleasure idols include pornography, drugs, and alcoholism. Power idols include gossip, violence of any kind, deceit, and verbal abuse. So just in case any of us here think that we are exempt from sin, and that we are pretty good people, think again. No one is. We are all sinners, justly deserving the wrath of God in the punishment of hell. The result of sin is death. Sin is the great world problem, not hunger, or lack of world peace, or anything like that. Sin is the root problem. Sin is the reason that Cat Dornbush lies before us in a casket. Sin is the reason why we will all die. Consider your own mortality. Do not try to escape thinking about it. Face it right now! Face the fact that you are going to die. The question them becomes this: is there any hope at all?
The world has no answer to the problem of sin. In fact, the world usually denies that there is such a problem. That goes to show you just how blind the world is. The world will try to redefine sin as a chemical imbalance in the brain. Or it will say that our behavior is determined by our circumstances. Or it will say that how we were treated as children by our parents is the reason for our behavior. All of these things can be factors. But none of them are the real explanation for our behavior. The real explanation is pure and simple: we sin against the law of God. We have a sin nature in us, and we actually sin. This is the deep problem of human existence. None are exempt from this problem, or the result of this problem, death.
Is there a solution? Yes, there is! The solution is in verse 10: “Because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see corruption.” We are to understand Jesus Christ as the ultimate singer of this Psalm, you see. David sung it many centuries before Christ. But he was talking about Jesus. Jesus Himself tells us that the entire Old Testament is about Himself. So the solution goes like this: God the Father sent God the Son to earth in order that He might become a human being. That Son, who was Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, experienced everything human except sin. Jesus is the solution to sin largely because He Himself was not subject to it. It is a bit like a person in quicksand. The person in quicksand cannot rescue himself, nor can anyone who is also in the quicksand rescue him. The only person who can rescue the person in the quicksand is someone who is standing on firm ground. All humanity is caught in the quicksand of sin and death. Only Jesus Christ stands on the firm ground of His own perfect holiness, His own perfect keeping of the law. This is firm ground indeed. Verse 5 then comes into play: The Lord is my chosen portion. If the Lord is your portion, then you have the righteousness of Christ. His law-keeping becomes yours by faith. Take refuge in Christ. In Him alone can you find the answer to the world’s problem as it is manifest in you. The Lord will then be at your right hand, standing before God the Father and saying, “This person is innocent, because my blood covers him.”
But Jesus, in dying on the cross would have been defeated if He had stayed there. That is why verse 10 provides our hope. Jesus was not allowed to see decay. The sacrifice was enough. His body did not need to see decay. Since Jesus had never sinned, and yet was the perfect sacrifice, then death itself would start working backwards. C.S. Lewis, in his book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, said it this way: “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in the traitor’s stead, then the table would crack, and death itself would start working backwards.” “Working backwards” is another way of describing resurrection. Peter, in Acts 2, uses this text to describe what happened to Jesus Christ: “For David says concerning him (Jesus)…’You will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption’… Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and o that we all are witnesses.” After Peter’s speech had ended, the people were cut to the heart. Is your heart cut open? Have you seen that your end is death, and that your only hope for anything good beyond the grave is in Jesus Christ? That your hope must be in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead? Paul says that if Christ is not risen, then you are still in your sins, there is no hope. You must take refuge in the Lord, you must find your portion in the Lord, and you must trust in Christ.
But trusting in Christ is not the end of the story at all. For it says in verse 10, “or let your HOLY one see decay.” It is only the holy ones who can expect resurrection, you see. Now, it is vital to point out that our holiness is not the solution to the problem of sin, but the RESULT of the solution to the problem. Our holiness is part of the ongoing application of the solution. The solution to the problem of sin is Jesus Christ, and nothing and no one else. But, if you have the solution by the grace of God, then you will be holy. You will become more and more holy. Death is the seal of your holiness, then. If you are thinking to yourself that you can believe in Jesus, and have the world as well, then you simply delude yourself. You cannot have God and your own sin. That is not possible. You have to give it up. But you cannot give it up, can you? How many times have you tried? I mean, really tried? The fact is that only God can work in you to give it up. But the call is still there: give up your sin. Holiness means that you are different from the world. It means that you don’t follow the world’s way of doing things, but you follow Christ.
Does that mean that you must always look gloomy, and never enjoy anything in life? That is many people’s perception of holiness. Holiness does mean that we should take pleasure in anything that is sinful, nor should we indulge in sin at all. But look at this Psalm. Is David sad because he is holy? On the contrary, the boundaries have fallen for him in pleasant places. He has a beautiful inheritance. He has the promise of fullness of joy in the presence of the Lord. Only holiness can bring happiness. Everyone on earth has a hole in their heart. That hole can only be filled by one thing, and isn’t what %99 of the world thinks it is. It isn’t money, pleasure, or power. Those things cannot and will not ever satisfy the true longings of the human heart. The only thing that will fill that hole is God Himself. Idols are empty, and they have no power. God can save, and God alone, and God will fill your life with godly happiness. There is a deep and abiding pleasure in the things of God. To study God’s Word is a treasure beyond price. To be with the people of God is a treasure beyond price. To be in prayer to God is a treasure beyond price.
To hear God speaking to you in a sermon is a treasure beyond price. If I speak the Word of God, then it is not I who speaks, but God. Many people wish to have God speak to them in some silly way, like horoscopes, or dreams, or by talking with the dead. God is speaking to you right now. And what He is saying is this: “Stop filling your life with idols, and come to My Son, and trust in Him. If you would have true happiness, you must have true holiness. My Holy Spirit will work in you.” That is what God is saying to you. That is what Cat would say, were she here now. If you would have fullness of joy in all eternity, and the love of all things holy right now, then you must have the Lord as your portion, and not anything else. You will find that the trade is worth it. Jim Elliott once said this about being a Christian, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what cannot lose.” If you give up money, pleasure, and power, which you cannot keep going into the next world, and if you gain the Pearl of Great Price, you will have treasure indeed. Indeed, that is true wealth, true pleasure, and true power. All of the things in this life that we think are those things really are not. Only in Christ can you find what will last. Come to Christ and be healed.
Real Change
October 2, 2006 at 4:10 pm (OT-Genesis)
Genesis 43One of my professors used to say “change has not taken place until change has taken place.” That might seem like something that is really obvious. However, in counseling, it is not obvious, precisely because many people will say that they have changed, but they have not. Change has not taken place until you can see that change has taken place. We are starting to see here in this chapter of Genesis that the brothers really have changed. They are not the same brothers who sold their brother into slavery many years before. Now, they are compassionate and loving to their father. No longer are they envious of Joseph. But the question is now this: “Will they be envious of Benjamin?” Joseph is going to put the brothers to a severe test to see if they have changed or not.
Verse 1 tells us that the famine was severe in the land. This means that the brothers will indeed have to go back to Egypt. They will simply be compelled to go back, since there is no more food. Joseph knew this, if you recall. That is why he could say that Simeon would be held prisoner until they return with Benjamin. If they do not return with Benjamin, then they will starve. This is something that the brothers know very well. But it is not something that Jacob is willing to accept, until the famine becomes severe.
Even so, Jacob does not want to send Benjamin. He thinks that the brothers would be able to get just enough to tide them over until the next harvest, even if they do not take Benjamin. That is why he says, “Just get us a little food.” In his mind, Benjamin is safe if all they need is a little food to tide them over.
However, the sons of Jacob know better. They know that they absolutely must take Benjamin back with them, and this is for two reasons: firstly, they must take Benjamin back with them because they promised to do so. Secondly, they know that they will not be able to trade for food at all unless they bring Benjamin with them. Hence, Judah takes on himself the task of convincing their father what the truth of the matter is. It takes quite some convincing, doesn’t it? Judah first tells his father that they will not get any food unless they bring Benjamin. Then Jacob replies that his sons should never have mentioned that they had a brother. Judah responds with the quite correct reply that they couldn’t possibly have known what the lord of Egypt was going to do with the knowledge that Benjamin existed. Judah then gives a pledge, a much more believable pledge than Reuben had given. This pledge is simply that he will bear the blame and the responsibility for Benjamin’s safety. Jacob had not believed Reuben’s somewhat similar pledge. Of course, Reuben had uttered it at the wrong time, when they had plenty of food, and Jacob had thought then that he wouldn’t need to send Benjamin. But now that he has to send Benjamin, Judah convinces Jacob that it is necessary.
Jacob responds finally with quite a bit of wisdom. He tells them to take every precaution for a favorable reception. They should take back the money that they had found in their sacks. They should take further presents. And they should take Benjamin. Notice Jacob’s resignation: he says “if I am bereaved, then I am bereaved.” He here gives Benjamin back to the Lord, who had given Benjamin to him in the first place. In the same way, if we are prepared to give up those good things, or those people whom we love the most, then it will certainly be somewhat less painful if they are taken from us.
Then we go to the second part of the chapter, in which the brothers are again before Joseph. Joseph sets them up for a great test. Everything from verse 16 in this chapter clear through the next chapter is designed to test the brothers, specifically with regard to Benjamin. Joseph knew that Benjamin would be Jacob’s favorite, now that Joseph was dead (at least in his mind). So, what would the brothers do if Joseph sets up Benjamin for favoritism? Would they sacrifice Benjamin? It was always Joseph’s intention to get them off their guard, to lull them into thinking that all was well, and then to put the cup into Benjamin’s sack, so that they would be faced with a similar decision as they did with Joseph: would they sacrifice a son to their own self-interest, or would they take responsibility for their actions, and repent of their sin? Everything Joseph does here is out of a motive for reconciliation and repentance on the part of the brothers, not in any way a desire for revenge.
Notice that they talk with the steward of the house, and try to explain their innocence even before they have been charged with anything! That is a fairly sure sign of a guilty conscience. Obviously, what they were really troubled about, as we saw last time, was their sin regarding Joseph. It comes out here. But the steward is very gracious. The steward knows completely what his master is doing. So, he continues the ruse by telling them that God had given it to them. Of course, this was true. But he wants them to feel comfortable and in favor with Joseph, so that the next chapter and the “stolen” cup will be a much more severe crisis. That is also why he restores Simeon to them.
These chapters are all really one piece. We cannot understand any of them without seeing what comes before and what comes after. All of this is to see if the brothers have repented of their sin. Their sin is recorded in chapter 37. Chapter 38 is about Judah and Tamar, which forms a contrast to Joseph resisting Potiphar’s wife. Chapters 40-42 tell us how God was with Joseph, despite those setbacks, and tell us how he came to power in Egypt in order to save the whole family. Chapters 43-45 show us how Joseph goes about reconciling the brothers to God, and to himself, proving that they had indeed repented and turned away from their sin. So that is where we are in the Joseph story, looking at the big picture.
Notice that Joseph loves his brother Benjamin so much that he cannot even see him without losing it. He has to leave the room, so that the brothers might not suspect who he was. He cannot blow his cover just yet, because there remains the final test, which we see in the next chapter with the cup put in Benjamin’s sack.
So, Joseph brings them to a meal. It is ironic, since the brothers sat down to a meal after they had put Joseph in the pit. Now, it is they who are in the pit, though they don’t know it, but all the brothers are again eating together. Notice in verse 33 that Joseph nearly gives himself away. They are all seated in order of birth. If one were to try to do this by mere chance, the odds of doing it correctly are 1 in 39,916,800. No wonder they were surprised that they were thus seated! Of course, these odds are lessened somewhat by the fact that some must have looked older than others. Still, the chances were very slim indeed.
Verse 34 prepares us for the next chapter very well. The reason that Joseph gives Benjamin five times as much as the other brothers is so that he can see whether they have changed or not. Will they envy Benjamin as they envied Joseph? The answer is that the brothers really have changed.
The brothers did not change themselves. It was God’s grace that changed them. This is vitally important for us to remember, since it concerns us as well. We do not change ourselves from being non-believers to being believers. God only can change us. He uses means, such as the Word preached, and the Word read, and prayer, and other people ministering to us. That is true. However, it is the Holy Spirit who really changes us. Jesus tells us this much in John 3, where he is talking to Nicodemus about the new birth. If you think about birth, you will realize that babies do not give birth to themselves. They cannot. It is the mother who gives birth. Then Jesus talked in that same passage about the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us the new birth. Has the Holy Spirit changed you?
If He has, then has change really taken place? You cannot claim to be a Christian and yet live like the world does. That is not change. If God changes you, then He also changes how you live. Now, God changes you, but yet you must hear and obey the call to change. This is the mystery of how God works, and yet we are still responsible. We are called to change. We can only change by God’s strength and power, and yet we can change in that power.
Have you changed? Have you become more loving to your spouse? More loving to your neighbor? More loving to your brothers and sisters in Christ? Have you stopped envying the good of other people? This was Joseph’s brothers’ problem. They envied Joseph. They thought that if they couldn’t have the good will of Jacob their father, then no one would. It was pure envy that motivated the brothers to do what they did to Joseph. And so, do you envy other people? Here, we must look at the example of Christ. Rather than envy his brothers and sisters, He gave up His own life for them. That is the very opposite of envy. Jesus, being now exalted to the Father’s throne, tests us in much the same way that Joseph tested his brothers. Jesus tests us to see if we will be faithful to Him. He tests us to see if we will envy our brothers and sisters, especially their good fortune. Jesus tests us. Jesus is testing us constantly. Do you recognize that test? Have you really changed? Or are you like the woman in this story, refusing to change? “You,” said the doctor to the patient, “are in terrible shape. You’ve got to do something about it. First, tell your wife to cook more nutritious meals. Stop working like a dog. Also, inform your wife you’re going to make a budget, and she has to stick to it. And have her keep the kids off your back so you can relax. Unless there are some changes like that in your life, you’ll probably be dead in a month.” “Doc,” the patient said, “this would sound more official coming from you. Could you please call my wife and give her those instructions?” When the fellow got home, his wife rushed to him. “I talked to your doctor,” she wailed. “Poor man, you’ve only got thirty days to live.” Has change really taken place, or are you so stiff-necked, like the Israelites, that you cannot change? We should always be changing from glory into glory. We should always be changing to be more like Jesus Christ. We are never done changing. So change.
Green Baggins 