Thomas Brooks on prayer
February 8, 2011
From Thomas Brooks (Works 2:256):
God looks not at the elegancy of your prayers, to see how neat they are;
nor yet at the geometry of your prayers, to see how long they are;
nor yet at the arithmetic of your prayers, to see how many they are;
nor yet at the music of your prayers, nor yet at the sweetness of your voice, nor yet at the logic of your prayers;
but at the sincerity of your prayers, how hearty they are.
Justin Taylor’s blog reminded me that yesterday marked 29 years since the death of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of the best and most influential preachers of the 20th century. I first encountered the preaching of Dr. Lloyd-Jones through college friend Brian Habig, who had to wait a ridiculously long time for a Starkville Christian bookstore to receive a special order copy of the Banner of Truth paperback of Dr. Lloyd-Jones’ Evangelistic Sermons. I borrowed the book, read one sermon, returned it, and bought my own copy the next weekend in Jackson off the shelf of the RTS bookstore. During my last two years in college and the next couple of years after I devoured a number of volumes of his sermons (on Romans, Ephesians, on the Holy Spirit, on spiritual depression), the collection of lectures entitled The Puritans: Their Origins and Their Successors, and listened to recordings I borrowed from the Mount Olive Tape Library.
Below is a good ten-minute overview of his life and ministry:
For biographies, see the following from Iain Murray, his official biographer and former assistant:
- D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939
- D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Fight of Faith 1939-1981
- Lloyd-Jones: Messenger of Grace
You can hear The Doctor preach online for free at Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recording Trust.
Flavel: Lord, the condemnation was yours
April 9, 2009
John Flavel (courtesy of Justin Taylor):
Lord, the condemnation was yours,
that the justification might be mine.The agony was yours,
that the victory might be mine.The pain was yours,
and the ease mine.The stripes were yours,
and the healing balm issuing from them mine.The vinegar and gall were yours,
that the honey and sweet might be mine.The curse was yours,
that the blessing might be mine.The crown of thorns was yours,
that the crown of glory might be mine.The death was yours,
the life purchased by it mine.You paid the price
that I might enjoy the inheritance.
John Flavel (1671), from his sermon, “The Solemn Consecration of the Mediator,” in The Fountain of Life Opened Up: or, A Display of Christ in His Essential and Mediatorial Glory.
A word from the original Sweet Dropper
March 13, 2009
This is from Richard Sibbes‘ The Bruised Reed:
Christ’s work, both in the church and in the hearts of Christians, often goes backward so that it may go forward better. As seed rots in the ground in the winter time, but after comes up better, and the harder the winter the more flourishing the spring, so we learn to stand by falls, and get strength by weakness discovered—virtutis custos infirmitas (weakness is the keeper of virtue). We take deeper root by shaking. And, as torches flame brighter by moving, thus it pleases Christ, out of his freedom, in this manner to maintain his government in us. Let us herein labor to exercise our faith, so that it may answer Christ’s way of dealing with us. When we are foiled, let us believe we shall overcome; when we have fallen, let us believe we shall rise again. Jacob, after he received a blow which made him lame, yet would not give over wrestling (Gen. 32:25) till he had obtained the blessing. So let us never give up, but, in our thought knit the beginning, progress and end together, and then we shall see ourselves in heaven out of the reach of all enemies. Let us assure ourselves that God’s grace, even in this imperfect state, is stronger than man’s free will in the state of original perfection. It is founded now in Christ, who, as he is the author, so will he be the finisher, of our faith (Heb. 12:2). We are under a more gracious covenant.
Pilgrim’s Progress anniversary
February 18, 2009
On this day in 1678 John Bunyan published the first edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Next to the Bible, Bunyan’s 
Pilgrim’s Progress is the best-selling Christian book of all time. It has never been out of print. In a decade when the fantasy genre has gained popularity in a “hip-to-be-square” kind of way in Christian circles, Bunyan’s work certainly deserves an honored place (if not a higher place) alongside the work of Tolkein and Lewis. J.I. Packer wrote in a conclusion to an analysis of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,
When I ask my classes of young and youngish evangelicals, as I often do, who has read Pilgrim’s Progress, not a quarter of the hands go up. Yet our rapport with fantasy writing, plus our lack of grip on the searching, humbling, edifying truths about spiritual life that the Puritans understood so well, surely mean that the time is right for us to dust off Pilgrim’s Progress and start reading it again. Certainly it would be great gain for modern Christians if Bunyan’s masterpiece came back into its own in our day.
I did not read until compelled to do so in a Restoration Literature class in college. I was then devouring most any Reformed work I could get my hands on. During the 1990′s I read it nearly every year and have read through it again every two or three years during this decade. The book never loses its charms or its convicting power. Someone told me that Charles Spurgeon said that when he was tired and depressed to the point of utter exhaustion, Pilgrim’s Progress was the only book he could stand to have read to him. As the years go by, I am beginning to agree.
I’ll let English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge raise the final note of praise for Bunyan’s work. Coleridge appreciated both its theological and literary powers:
It is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision… This wonderful book is one of the few books which may be read repeatedly, at different times, and each time with a new and different pleasure. I read it once as a theologian, and let me assure you that there is great theological acument in the work; once with devotional feeling; and once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.
Baxter: Lord, it belongs not to my care
July 25, 2008
Here’s some potent verse from English Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (1615-1691), who is generally better know for his prose than his poetry:
Lord, it belongs not to my care,
Whether I die or live;
To love and serve thee is my share,
And this thy grace must give.If life be long, I will be glad
That I may long obey;
If short, yet why should I be sad
To soar to endless day?Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than he went through before;
He that unto God’s kingdom comes
Must enter by this door.Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet
Thy blessed face to see;
For if thy work on earth be sweet,
What will thy glory be?Then shall I end my sad complaints,
And weary, sinful days,
And join with the triumphant saints
That sing Jehovah’s praise.My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
But ’tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.
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.
A word from our namesake
March 26, 2007
With men it is confess and have execution, but with God confess and have mercy. We should never lay open our sins but for mercy. So it honors God; and when he is honored, he honors the soul with inward peace and tranquility. We can never have peace in our souls till we have dealt roundly with our sins, and favour them not a whit; till we have ripened our confession to be a thorough confession.
What is the difference between a Christian and another man? Another person slubbers [is careless] over his sins and he thinks if he comes to the congregation, and follows the minister, it will serve the turn [end].
But a Christian knows that religion is another manner of matter, another kind of work than so. He must deal thoroughly and seriously, and lay open his sin as the chief enemy in the world, and labor to raise all the hatred he can against it, and make it the object of his bitter displeasure, as being that that hath done him more hurt than all the world besides;
and so he confess it with all the aggravations of hatred and envy that he can…
That we in our confessions (in our fastings especially) ought to rank ourselves among the rest of sinners. Perhaps we are not guilty of some sins that they have been guilty of. God has been merciful to us and kept us in obedience in some things.
But, alas! There is none of us all but we have had a hand in the sins of the times.
Richard Sibbes, Works 6:188-189
Why you should read the Puritans
March 22, 2007
Our blogging friend Tony Reinke at The Shepherd’s Scrapbook has posted the notes from Joel Beeke’s address, Why You Should Read the Puritans, given at last week’s Ligonier Conference in Orlando. Last year Dr. Beeke and Randall Peterson wrote an outstanding book called Meet the Puritans, loaded with information and biographies on more than 140 Puritan authors, overviews of over 700 Puritan volumes, a list of all the known reprints published beween 1956 and 2005, excellent articles ,and a helpful glossary. At 900 pages, it’s a deep well of information, and as a clothbound, will endure years of use. It also includes chapters which explain who the Puritans were in their theological and historical context and why we should read them today. Here is one quote from the section explaining why we should read the Puritans today:
“With the Spirit’s blessing, Puritan writings can enrich your life as a Christian in many ways as they open the Scriptures and apply them practically, probing your conscience, indicting your sins, leading you to repentance, shaping your faith, guiding your conduct, comforting you in Christ and conforming you to Him, and bringing you into full assurance of salvation and a lifestyle of gratitude to the triune God for His great salvation” (xix).
Such a deformed slut
October 19, 2006
Tony Reinke of Omaha, Nebraska, has one of the best blogs around–The Shepherd’s Scrapbook. This week he reprinted this from the original ‘Sweet Dropper’, Richard Sibbes:
No man is more ready to charge the church than she is to confess her infirmities.
She never hideth them, she never justifieth them;
she is black, she hath afflictions, she kept not her own vine,
she wants [lacks] knowledge, affection, discretion, love.
She never denies it, but confesses all freely from her heart;
she hides not her sin, but tells what she is, what she hath done,
that so she may give glory to the Lord God of Israel.
And indeed, it makes much for the honor of Christ, and commends his grace,
that he, such a king, will set his heart and his eye
upon such a deformed slut as the world deems her to be.
It makes for the comfort of her poor children, and much stayeth [sustains] them,
when they shall hear the church in all ages, and in her Abraham, David, and Paul, saying,
‘I am black,’ I have affliction, corruption, as well as others.
It makes for the silencing of all saucy [flippant] daughters that will upbraid her;
an ingenuous confession stops their mouths, and puts them all to silence.
It much quickens her to the use of the means, and maketh her cry,
‘Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest.’
And to seek her comfort in Christ Jesus.
Oh it doth her good to receive the sentence of death, shame, poverty, damnation,
in herself, that so she may be found in Christ,
arrayed with the rich robes of his righteousness.
Hence her plain-hearted openness in her confession.
Let us do the like, and leave it to the harlot and whore of Babylon
to say herself is a queen, she is glorious, she cannot err.
But let us say with the church, we are black;
yea, let us see it, let us speak it with sorrow, with shame,
as the saints have done,
and be so affected with our estate that it may truly humble us, and cause us to say,
‘It is the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed.’
And let us so confess it in ourselves,
that we pity others, and bear with them, though full of sins and miseries;
so confess it, that we stir up others thereby to run, as Paul did,
and use the ordinances with all diligence,
to pray much, to read much, to hear, to confer, to advise, and be humble and sincere.
A verbal confession of frailties,
without humility, mercy, diligence, without the use of the means, is hypocrisy.
If we will speak with the church,
we must feel what we say, and so well understand ourselves and our estate,
that we may gain humility, mercy, and watchfulness by it.
- Richard Sibbes, Works 7:97-98
