A word from our namesake
July 16, 2008
The Sweet Dropper is named for English Puritan Richard Sibbes (1577-1635). Read our tribute to Sibbes. These words come from Sibbes’ The Soul’s Conflict, and Victory over Itself by Faith:
It were an easy thing to be a Christian, if religion stood only in a few outward works and duties. But to take the soul to task, and to deal roundly with our own hearts, and to let conscience have its full work, and to bring the soul into spiritual subjection unto God, this is not so easy a matter, because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into itself, lest it should have other thoughts of itself than it would have.
The words speak of the depravity of the heart and the deceitfulness of sin. It’s no easy or pleasant task to think rightly about our lives. Many of us may enjoy analyzing our problems, but are we doing so in the light of God’s Word? Perhaps we are analyzing our lives in a self-serving, self-justifying way. We replay the mental DVD of wrongs committed against us. We sooth ourselves with arguments that hide the truth and shift the blame to others. None of us wants to acknowledge things about ourselves that we would rather deny. How do you learn to see straight when something inside is bending in the wrong direction? My old campus minister, Hal Farnsworth, is fond of asking people, “If you were deceiving yourself, would you know it?”
Join me in asking God to overthrow self-righteousness–yours and mine. Ask the Spirit to help you have “other thoughts of yourself” and to see clearly the grace of Christ Jesus coming to you in your sin and misery. Face up, and find mercy.
Tops of the mountains of our guilt
April 8, 2008
“Standing at the foot of the cross, and beholding the Redeemer in his expiring agony, the Christian may indeed gather courage. When I think of my sin, it seems impossible that any atonement should ever be adequate; but when I think of Christ’s death it seems impossible, that any sin should ever be great enough to need such an atonement as that. There is in the death of Christ enough and more than enough. There is not only a sea in which to drown our sins, but the very tops of the mountains of our guilt are covered. Forty cubits upwards hath this red sea prevailed. There is not only enough to put our sins to death, but enough to bury them and hide them out of sight. I say it boldly and without a figure, — the eternal arm of God now nerved with strength, now released from the bondage in which justice held it, is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Christ.”
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “The Believer’s Challenge,” delivered June 5, 1859
A Savior not satisfied
February 11, 2008
He shall see the labor of his soul, and be satisfied. [Isaiah 53:11].
The first sermon I ever preached was on Isaiah 53, and I think I have destroyed all recordings. Ever since, I have been captivated by that statement in v.11. Isaiah portrays Messiah as stricken, smitten and afflicted, led as a lamb to be butchered. BUT, he shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. His suffering was not purposeless and ineffectual. There is no need to pity Jesus the Suffering Servant. There is a joy set before him–the joy of bearing and removing the sin of his people and making intercession for them. He did what he set out to do. He cried from the cross, ‘It is finished!’ He fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law.
But Isaiah speaks of the satisfaction as future, not past or present. In a sense, Jesus is not yet satisfied. We will sing this coming Lord’s Day in public worship, ‘Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and heaven be one.’ God is at work. Redemption accomplished is not yet fully applied. The full number of the elect has not yet come in. There are others whom Jesus wants to put in our pews as worshipers. I am thankful that I am not what I once was, but I am just as thankful that it has not yet been revealed what I shall be either!
Today I found a similar meditation on Paul Tripp’s blog, and think it’s worth sharing with you…
The One on whom we wait is a dissatisfied Messiah. He will not relent, he will not quit, he will not rest until every promise he has made been fully delivered. He will not turn from his work until every one of his children has been totally transformed. He will continue to fight until the last enemy is under his feet. He will reign until his kingdom has fully come. As long as sin exists, he will shower us with forgiving, empowering, and delivering grace. He will defend us against attack and attack the enemy on our behalf. He will be faithful to convict, rebuke, encourage, and comfort. He will continue to open the warehouse of his wisdom and unfold for us the glorious mysteries of his truth. He will stand with us through the darkness and the light. He will guide us on a path we could never have discovered or would never have been wise enough to choose. He will supply for us every good thing that we need to be what he’s called us to be and to do what he’s called us to do in the place where he’s put us. And he will not rest from his work until every last microbe of sin has been completely eradicated from every heart of each of his children!
Proverbs: urban lions
December 5, 2007
The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion in the road! There is a lion in the streets!’
As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed.
The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth.
The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.
~Proverbs 26:13-16
Proverbs’ depiction of the sluggard contains a vivid illustration of the deceitfulness of sin and its operations in the human heart. Twice in Proverbs we hear the sluggard claiming that there is a lion in the streets. Why would he do that? He is creating imaginary circumstances to justify neglecting his work. He shifts the discussion from the sin of laziness to the danger of lions. No one will condone his staying home because he is lazy. But they might sympathize with him and agree with his decision to stay home if there is real danger in the streets. So, to hide his laziness and justify himself, he deflects attention away from laziness (truth) to lions (an illusion).
Do you see the broader insight into the human heart Scripture is giving us? The heart can exploit the mind to justify what the heart wants. We are not always willing to deal with things as they really are. We are not neutral when it comes to understanding our situation. On the contrary, we feel powerful desires and pressing fears, and then our mind can bend reality to justify the desires and fears and seek fulfillment or find relief.
The sluggard desires to stay at home and avoid work. Instead of dealing with his evil desire, he uses his mind to create unreal circumstances to justify his desire. He may even believe the excuses he has fabricated. [Remember George Costanza's advice to Jerry: "It's not a lie if you believe it."] The deceitfulness of sin can actually make us mentally deranged!
Understanding this truth makes Proverbs 26:16 come alive: “The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can give a discreet answer.” The self-deception makes the sluggard resistant to any truth that exposes his sin. When seven wise men confront him and say, “There is no bloodthirsty urban lion in the street. We walked here safely. We’ve searched the neighborhood. You are not in danger of becoming a lion’s lunch,” the sluggard still will not get out of bed. Their testimony won’t change his mind. He knows better. He insists that the hungry urban lion is out there. Otherwise his laziness is exposed for what it is. Truth gets flushed down the toilet of self-justification.
No one is immune to this. It goes far beyond the matter of work ethic. Walking in the darkness of evil makes us hostile to the light of truth–and in the process our mind concocts and spits out “spin”–half-truths, equivocations, sophistries, evasions and lies – anything to protect the our evil desires from exposure and reproof.
The longer I serve as a pastor, the more I see this at work in people with addictions, people who harbor bitterness, people whose marriages are crumbling–in other words, sinners who need help. And, at the same time, it makes me cry out to God to deliver me from my delusions as well. I must reckon with God’s grace and truth as I really am and in the situation I am really facing–that is, without the urban lions.
Thanks are in order to John Piper for being the catalyst for these insights.
Fear of the Lord: where does it go?
August 14, 2007
Where does the fear of the Lord take us? What is its orientation? Proverbs maps it out for us: Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil [3:7]. The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate [8:13]. By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for,
and by the fear of the LORD one turns away from evil [16:6]. Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the LORD all the day. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off [23:17-18].
The fool has no fear of God before his eyes [Psalm 36:1]. He lives for what this moment can deliver and for what his eyes can see.
Fearing God has a lot to do with what we love and hate, i.e., our affections. In fearing the Lord we love what he loves, we hate what he hates. We are happiest when we are pleasing him. Fear of the Lord is the internal motivator of the wise person. God, his presence, his will, and his glory drive him to do what he does. He does not live for his own momentary pleasure or for what he can possess. He does what he does because God has spoken—not because someone is watching, or out of fear of the consequences, but out of a deep, worshipful love and reverence for God. The thought of knowingly and purposefully disobeying God is unthinkable.
Why are you doing what you are doing? What you really are is what you are when no one else is watching. What will keep you faithful, loving and obedient in times of temptation when no ‘authority’ is watching and when the pressure is on to step outside of God’s boundaries?
Fear of the Lord: what is it?
August 9, 2007
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction. [Proverbs 1:7; 9:10]
The fear of the LORD is the principal part, the primary ingredient of godliness, the foundation of spiritual life. It is a comprehensive term for the way we live the Christian life—not just what we say, not just the activities we are involved in, but the way we act, feel, and live.
It is something more than FEAR + LORD. It not the fear that paralyzed the wicked and lazy servant in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25:24-25); rather, it is the attitude of a loving child toward his father.
The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor [Proverbs 15:33]. The proverb draws a parallel between the fear of the LORD and humility. You know humility, right? Paying close attention to who God is and what he does, not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought–rather, forgetting ourselves in our love for God and others. This arises from the depth of mercy shown to us in the Gospel (see Jeremiah 32:39-40 and Psalm 130:4). I think it is Eugene Peterson who describes humility as becoming absorbed in what God has been doing and the way he continues doing it by his Son Jesus and by the Holy Spirit. Humility involves reckoning with a holy God at every moment in reverent responsiveness.
Here are some powerful lines from Frederick W. Faber about the fear of the Lord:
My fear of Thee, O Lord, exults
Like life within my veins,
A fear which rightly claims to be
One of love’s sacred pains.Thy goodness to Thy saints of old
An awful thing appeared;
For were Thy majesty less good
Much less would it be feared.There is no joy the soul can meet
Upon life’s various road
Like the sweet fear that sits and shrinks
Under the eye of God.A special joy is in all love
For objects we revere;
Thus joy in God will always be
Proportioned to our fear.Oh Thou art greatly to be feared,
Thou art so prompt to bless!
The dread to miss such love as Thine
Makes fear but love’s excess.The fulness of Thy mercy seems
To fill both land and sea;
If we can break through bounds so vast,
How exiled shall we be!For grace is fearful, which each hour
Our path in life has crossed;
If it were rarer, it might be
Less easy to be lost.But fear is love, and love is fear,
And in and out they move;
But fear is an intenser joy
Than mere unfrightened love.When most I fear Thee, Lord! then most
Familiar I appear;
And I am in my soul most free,
When I am most in fear.I should not love Thee as I do,
If love might make more free;
Its very sweetness would be lost
In greater liberty.I feel Thee most a father, when
I fancy Thee most near:
And Thou comest not so nigh in love
As Thou comest, Lord! in fear.They love Thee little, if at all,
Who do not fear Thee much;
If love is Thine attraction, Lord!
Fear is Thy very touch.Love could not love Thee half so much
If it found Thee not so near;
It is Thy nearness, which makes love
The perfectness of fear.We fear because Thou art so good,
And because we can sin;
And when we make most show of love,
We are trembling most within.And, Father! when to us in heaven
Thou shalt Thy Face unveil,
Then more than ever will our souls
Before Thy goodness quail.Our blessedness will be to bear
The sight of Thee so near,
And thus eternal love will be
But the ecstasy of fear.
There is no plan B…
April 23, 2007
Dr. Elliott Greene has been doing a marvelous job at FPC Kosciusko’s annual Bible Conference (look for mp3s of the sermons later this week at fpckosciusko.org), taking us through the book of Ephesians under the title ‘What the Church Would Be If She Knew What She Was.’ In introducing Dr. Greene on Friday evening I read for the second time an excerpt from Dr. Ligon Duncan’s introductory address at the recent Twin Lakes Fellowship. He had posted it on his blog. It sums up so much of the vision of what The Sweet Dropper is about and what FPC Kosciusko is about:
“What do we long to see come out of the Twin Lakes Fellowship?
“. . . a strong coalition of Bible-saturated, truth-driven, God-entranced, prayer-soaked, aggressively evangelistic, Christ-treasuring and exalting, Spirit-filled, sovereign grace-loving, missions-advancing, hell-robbing, strong-thinking, real-need-exposing, soul-winning, mind-engaging, vagueness-rejecting, wartime-life-style-pursuing, risk-taking, justice-advancing, Scripture-expounding, cross-cherishing, homosexuality-opposing, abortion-denouncing, racism-resisting, heaven-desiring, imputation-of-an-alien-righteousness-proclaiming, justification-by-faith-alone-apart-from-doing-preaching, error-exposing, complementarian, joyful, humble, loving, courageous, happy pastors working together for the Gospel. (Thanks to John Piper for many of these words and thoughts).
“And we want to see them leading strong evangelical churches who, while they hold as faithfully and biblically as they know how to certain doctrinal distinctives not shared by all other biblical evangelical churches, band together for the Gospel on a basis that is robustly doctrinal, historic, orthodox, reformational, world-opposing-while-at-the-same-time-world-serving, Bible-preaching, scriptural-theology-inculcating, real-conversion-prizing, deep biblical evangelism-practicing, New Testament church-membership-and-leadership-implementing, church-discipline-applying, healthy and growing Disciple-making – all for the display of God’s glory in the churches.
“May the Lord raise up such a ministerial fraternity – not on the basis of doctrinal minimalism but rather on the basis of shared conviction of the truth and Gospel forbearance in the areas where we differ; not to the detriment of our convictions regarding our distinctives in faith and practice in the local churches and families of churches we serve, but to their enhancement. And may the Lord raise up churches that are truly a witness to grace in this passing age, a display of the glory and power of God’s saving grace, outposts of heaven, suburbs of eternity. For the church is God’s strategy, and there is no plan B.”
Hazards of dealing with trials
January 5, 2007
A believing friend who is being treated for rapidly advancing cancer wrote in his e-journal today about some scriptural examples of people who succeeded and failed in dealing with fiery trial:
“Let us not be
…Hezekiah and pray for long life
…Asa and only turn to physicians
…Job’s wife and have contempt
…Jonah and long to die.
Let us be like Paul, who chose contentment And most like Jesus, who suffered obediently”
The first four people illustrate some hazards of dealing with trial.
- Hezekiah’s hazard – Focus on loss instead of on gracious provision. Hezekiah focused on future years lost rather than past years provided in grace. “Am I to be robbed of the rest of my years?” (Isaiah 38:10).
- Asa’s hazard – Reliance on medical advice to the exclusion of God’s power. Asa, a good king of Judah, became so focused on medical advice for his disease that he forgot his total dependence on God. “Yet even with the severity of his disease, he did not seek the Lord’s help but turned only to his physicians. So he died in the forty-first year of his reign.” (2 Chronicles 16:12-13). John Piper writes in “Don’t Waste Your Cancer,” “Cancer does not win if you die. It wins if you fail to cherish Christ. God’s design is to wean you off the breast of the world and feast you on the sufficiency of Christ.”
- Job’s wife’s hazard – Bitterness toward God for fiery trial. She said “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.” (Job 2:9) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). Our Savior became a curse for us. There is no curse, no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
- Jonah’s hazard – Giving up the fight. Jonah concluded that the fight was not worth it “Death is certainly better than living like this!” (Jonah 4:7) Satan will use trials to lead us into isolation and solitude instead of deepening and strengthening our relationships with others.
Listen again to my friend: “Asa’s example probably hits closest to home for me these days. Thank God for surgical therapy, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy – we are using them all. But God help me to remain focused on my need for Him, knowing Prayer Therapy is the best therapy of all!”
