Matt Hand brought it to my attention that Graeme Goldsworthy addresses the same issue with which we have been concerned in our Gospel and evangelism posts. In light of the importance of this particular topic for the church I decided to post Goldsworthy’s comments for your reflection.

“My concern about evangelism is that sometimes there is a greater emphasis on the need for some kind of response than on the c lear exposition of the gospel. Telling people they need to come to Jesus, that they must be born again, that they should commit their lives to Christ, and so on, is not preaching the gospel. It is, at best, telling them what they ought to do or, in the case of the new birth, what has happened when they have received the gospel. It is a remarkable thing in Acts 2 that Peter’s sermon contained no appeal. The appeal came from the congregation: ‘What should we do?’ It was the power and clarity of the gospel message that impressed them with the need to do something about it.

The evangelistic sermon, as we see in Acts, will therefore contain elements other than the gospel. Telling people their need for the gospel, both their felt need and the real need, is plainly important, but it is not itself the gospel. When we have explained what God has done for us in Christ –the gospel – then we may go on to explain the benefits of receiving the gospel and the perils of ignoring it. However, telling people that they can choose either heaven or hell is not telling them the gospel. Telling them, as Peter did, that repentance and faith go hand in hand with the gift of the Holy Spirit is important, but it is not the gospel. Whenever people’s sense of assurance of salvation is expressed in the first person, something is amiss. When the question ‘How do you know God will accept you?’ is answered by ‘I have Jesus in my heart,’ ‘I asked Jesus into my life,’ ‘The Holy Spirit is in me,’ and so on, the real gospel basis for assurance needs to be reviewed. We rejoice when the answer comes in the third person: ‘God gave his only Son to die on the cross for me,’ ‘Jesus died, rose, and is in heaven for me.’ When the focus is on the finished and perfect work of Christ, rather than on the unfinished work of the Spirit in me, the grounds for assurance are in place” (Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, p. 95).

“We pray and worship in such a way as to make room in our prayer and worship for the living presence of Jesus as our Mediator in whom Offerer and Offering are one and the same, but in whom we are gathered up, with whom we are inseparably united, so that with Him we pray and worship as we could not otherwise do.

“At the end of the day when I kneel down and say my evening prayer, I know that no prayer of my own that I can offer to the heavenly Father is worthy of Him or of power to avail with Him, but all my prayer is made in the name of Jesus Christ alone as I rest in His vicarious prayer. It is then with utter peace and joy that I take into my mouth the Lord’s Prayer which I am invited to pray through Jesus Christ, with Him and in Him, to God the Father, for in that prayer my poor, faltering, sinful prayer is not allowed to fall to the ground but is gathered up and presented to the Father in holy and eternally prevailing form. At the same time, I recall that the Father has promised to send the Spirit of His Son, mediated through the name and vicarious humanity of Jesus, into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father; and I am assured that as I pray in the name of God’s beloved Son I am caught up with all my own infirmities within the inarticulate intercession of the eternal Spirit of the Father and of the Son from whose love nothing in heaven or earth, nothing in this world or in the world to come, can ever separate us” (T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, pp. 88-89).

This is part three of Torrance’s thoughts on the Gospel and worship. You may wish to review part two in order to follow his flow of thought into this section.

“We do not come before God, then, worshipping Him and praying to Him in our own name, or in our own significance, but in the name and significance of Jesus Christ alone, for worship and prayer are not ways in which we express ourselves but ways in which we hold up before the Father His beloved Son, take refuge in His atoning sacrifice, and make that our only plea. ‘Nothing in my hands I bring; Simply to Thy Cross I c ling.’ In worship and prayer Jesus Christ acts in our place and on our behalf in both a representative and a substitutionary way so that what He does in our stead is nevertheless effected as our very own, issuing freely and spontaneously out of ourselves. Through His incarnational and atoning union Jesus Christ has united Himself with us in such a reconciling and sanctifying way that He interpenetrates and gathers up all our faltering, unclean worship and prayer into Himself, assimilates them to His own self-oblation to God, so that when He presents Himself as the worship and prayer of all creation, our worship and prayer are presented there also. When the Father accepts us in Jesus Christ His beloved Son, who then can distinguish our worship and prayer from Jesus’ worship and prayer, for they are one and the same, wholly His and wholly ours in Him?

“Thus in all our worship and prayer, private and public, informal or formal, we come before God in such a way as to let Jesus Christ take our place, replacing our offering with His own self-offering, for He is the vicarious worhip and prayer with which we respond to the love of the Father” (T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, p.88).

It has been a while since I’ve posted anything about J. R. R. Tolkien. So here is an excerpt from letter 89 by Tolkien to Christopher Tolkien (pp. 99-100):

“… I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of truth…. It percieves– if the story has literary ‘truth’…–that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest fairy story– and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love…”

–Letter 89

Also, note my new Tolkien link section to the right.

This section from Torrance’s The Mediation of Christ is NOT an easy read, but it is well worth the effort of mind and heart to work through his words. You may wish to reread Part One of The Gospel and Worship (February 18th post) before reading Part Two below. Have fun!

“In that perspective we must think…of Christian prayer as grounded in and governed by the fact that through His Incarnation Jesus Christ has stepped into that relationship as the Mediator, who not only brings God and man and man and God near to each other in propitiation but who in doing so stands in our place where we cry in prayer to God and makes Himself our prayer, a prayer not in word or even in an act only but a prayer which He is in His own personal Being. Just as in Jesus Christ God addresses His word to us in such a way that He Himself is wrapped up in His word in the form of personal being, so in Jesus Christ God has provided us with prayer that is identical with the personal self-offering and self-oblation of Jesus Christ to the Father on our behalf. It is as such that Jesus Christ stands in our place where we pray to the Father, so that from deep within our humanity, where He has united Himself to us, and from out of it, assimilated to His own self-consecration to God He prays: ‘Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…’ That is to say, where we are unable to pray to the Father as we ought or in any way worthy of Him for all our prayers are unclean, Jesus Christ puts His prayer, prayed with us to the Father, into our unclean mouth that we may pray through Him and with Him and in Him to the Father, and be received by the Father in Him: ‘Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased’” (T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, pp. 87-88).

“Jesus Christ embodied in Himself in a vicarious form the response of human beings to God, so that all their worship and prayer to God henceforth became grounded and centered in Him. In short, Jesus Christ in His own self-oblation to the Father is our worship and prayer in an acutely personalized form, so that it is only through Him and with Him and in Him that we may draw near to God with the hands of our faith filled with no other offering but that which He has made on our behalf and in our place once and for all” (Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, p. 87).

Comment from yesterday’s post: How would Torrance understand the commands of personal responsibility to ‘believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved’? Or ‘repent…everyone of you…for the forgiveness of sins’?

The following statements find no biblical basis, to be sure: “this is what Jesus Christ has done for you, but you will not be saved unless you make your own personal decision for Christ as your Savior. Or: Jesus Christ loved you and gave his life for you on the Cross, but you will be saved only if you give your heart to him.”

But how, if at all, does Torrance verbalize man’s personal responsibility toward the message of the gospel and person of Christ?

Better yet, what gospel-centered personal responsibility toward the message and Man of the gospel look like and how is it to be exercised?

My answer: I’m not sure how Torrance understands the commands of personal responsibility to repent and believe. He does not specifically address that issue in The Mediation of Christ. But here are my brief thoughts on the subject. (1) Graeme Goldsworthy makes some helpful comments: “According to Mark 1:14-15, Jesus began His ministry preaching the gospel of God, a message summed up as ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.’ The response demanded by this gospel is ‘Repent, and believe the gospel.’ It hardly needs to be said that this indicates a distinction between the gospel and the appropriate response to it. If we take the imperative to repent and believe as part of the gospel we end up with faith in faith. The distinction between the message and the demand to believe it is vital. It means preaching the gospel must involve more than simply calling on people to make a decision” (Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, p. 82). So I think it’s helpful to keep the distinction between the Gospel and its demands for faith and repentance in mind. Goldsworthy continues, “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” (ibid., pp. 83-84). I think a truly evangelical presentation of the gospel puts the stress primarily not upon what the hearer must do, namely, repent and believe, but on what Christ has already done in His vicarious life and death (if you want to read more about the vicarious life of Christ, go to http://www.eucatastrophe.com/blog/archives/2005/01/24/). If our stress is primarily upon the hearers’ responsibility, we are encouraging them to look primarily within, that is, at the quality and sincerity of their own faith/repentance, rather than to look primarily without, that is, at the saving life and death of Christ. So I think that we stray from Gospel-centered evangelism when our presentation leads them to think mainly upon what they must do rather than mainly upon what Christ has done.

(2) Also, I think it is important to remember that what the Gospel demands from us it also provides for us. In other words, the Gospel itself is the power of God unto believing and repenting. Romans 1:16-17 is key for me on this point. Paul says that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation precisely because it reveals the righteousness of God. This revealing does not merely refer to our mental apprehension of this righteousness which God provides through faith in Christ. Paul is speaking of a revealing that happens with saving effect. In other words, Paul is teaching that this righteousness of God is dynamically revealed unto our salvation. It is an operative revealing, a saving revealing, and this saving righteousness is revealed in the preaching of the Gospel, that is, in 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.” Therefore, in our calling on people to repent and believe the Gospel, we need to keep in mind that their repentance and faith will not be self-produced, but rather Gospel produced by the righteous that is revealed with saving effect. With those brief comments said, below is more of Torrance’s thoughts on the Gospel and evangelism.

Torrance continues: “How, then, is the Gospel to be preached in a genuinely evangelical way? Surely in such a way that full and central place is given to the vicarious humanity of Jesus as the all sufficient human response to the saving love of God which He has freely and unconditionally provided for us. We preach and teach the Gospel evangelically, then, in such a way as this: God loves you so utterly and completely that He has given Himself for you in Jesus Christ His beloved Son, and has thereby pledged His very Being as God for your salvation…From beginning to end what Jesus Christ has done for you He has done not only as God but as man. He has acted in your place in the whole range of your human life and activity, including your personal decisions, and your responses to God’s love, and even your acts of faith. He has believed for you, fulfilled your human response to God, even made your personal decision for you, so that He acknowledges you before God as one who has already responded to God in Him, who has already believed in God through Him, and whose personal decision is already implicated in Christ’s self-offering to the Father, in all of which He has been fully and completely accepted by the Father, so that in Jesus Christ you are already accepted by Him. Therefore, renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

“To preach the Gospel of the unconditional grace of God in that unconditional way is to set before people the astonishingly good news of what God has freely provided for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus. To repent and believe in Jesus Christ and commit myself to Him on that basis means that I do not need to look over my shoulder all the time to see…whether my faith is at all adequate, for in faith it is not upon my faith, my believing or my personal commitment that I rely, but solely upon what Jesus Christ has done for me, in my place and on my behalf, and what He is and always will be as He stands in for me before the face of the Father. That means that I am completely liberated from all ulterior motives in believing or following Jesus Christ, for on the ground of His vicarious human response for me, I am free for spontaneous joyful response and worship and service as I could not otherwise be” (T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, pp. 94-95).

Today’s post is part two in a series where we are considering some of the implications of a Gospel-centered approach to evangelism from Thomas F. Torrance’s The Mediation of Christ. The section on evangelism in Torrance’s book appears toward the conclusion of the book. So it based upon his earlier discussions on the reconciling vicarious life and death of Jesus.

“There is, then, an evangelical way to preach the Gospel and an unevangelical way to preach it. The Gospel is preached in an unevangelical way, as happens so often in modern evangelism, when the preacher announces: this is what Jesus Christ has done for you, but you will not be saved unless you make your own personal decision for Christ as your Savior. Or: Jesus Christ loved you and gave his life for you on the Cross, but you will be saved only if you give your heart to him. In that event what is actually coming across to people is not a Gospel of unconditional grace but some other Gospel of conditional grace which belies the essential nature and content of the Gospel as it is in Jesus. It was that subtle legalist twist to the Gospel which worried St. Paul so much in his Epistle to the Galatians, a distortion of the truth which can easily take a ‘gentile’ as well as a ‘Jewish’ form. To preach the Gospel in that conditional or legalist way has the effect of telling poor sinners that in the last resort the responsibility for their salvation is taken off the shoulders of the Lamb of God and placed upon them–but in that case they feel that they will never be saved. They know perfectly well in their own hearts that if the chain that binds them to God in Jesus Christ has as even one of its links their own feeble act of decision, then the whole chain is as weak as that, its weakest link. They are aware that the very self who is being called upon to make such a momentous decision requires to be saved, so that the preaching of the Gospel would not really be good news unless it announced that in his unconditional love and grace Jesus Christ had put that human self, that ego of theirs, on an entirely different basis by being replaced at the crucial point by Jesus Christ himself” (Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, p. 93).

Over the next few days we will be considering some of the implications of a Gospel-centered approach to evangelism (you would think that all evangelism within evangelicalism would be Gospel-centered!) from Thomas F. Torrance’s The Mediation of Christ. Although you may not agree with all of his conclusions, I think his thoughts concerning the Gospel and evangelism will help to deepen your understanding of the Gospel itself. So enjoy!

“The Gospel is to be proclaimed in such a way that full place is given to the man Jesus in his Person and Work as the Mediator between God and man, otherwise it is not being proclaimed in a way that corresponds with its actual message of unconditional grace and reconciling exchange. The pattern had already been c learly set by our Lord when he proclaimed that all who wished to be his disciples must renounce themselves, or give up all right to themselves, take up the cross and follow him, and when he laid it down as a basic principle that those who want to save their lives will lose them. Face to face with Christ all would-be followers find themselves called into radical question, together with their preconceptions, self-centered desires and self-will, for to have him as Lord and Savior means that he takes their place in order to give them his place. The preaching of the Gospel in that radical form is not easy, for when we call upon people to repent and believe in Jesus Christ that they may be saved, we have great difficulty in doing that in such a way that we do not throw people back upon themselves in autonomous acts of personal repentance and decision, or encourage them to come to Christ for their own sake rather than for Christ’s sake, in direct conflict with the very principle about motives laid down by Jesus” (pp. 92-93).

I would like to recommend the blog of Adam Bailie. He currently oversees Adult and Family ministries at Grace Community Church (where John MacArthur shepherds) in Sun Valley, CA. Adam does a great job of Critiquing the current state of evangelicalism in America from a biblical perspective. So give him a read!

We sang this song in chapel yesterday. It seemed to me that a profound awe fell over the student body and faculty/staff as we sang it. It’s entitled “The Look.” The original lyrics are by John Newton with new and alternate lyrics by Bob Kauflin.

Verse 1
I saw one hanging on a tree
In agony and blood
Who fixed His loving eyes on me
As near His cross I stood
And never till my dying breath
Will I forget that look
It seemed to charge me with His death
Though not a word He spoke.

VERSE 2
My conscience felt and owned the guilt
And plunged me in despair
I saw my sins His blood had spilt
And helped to nail Him there.
But with a second look he said,
“I freely all forgive
This blood is for your ransom paid
I died that you might live.”

CHORUS
Forever etched upon my mind
Is the look of Him who died
The Lamb I crucified
And now my life will sing the praise
Of pure atoning grace
That looked on me and
Gladly took my place.

VERSE 3
Thus while His death my sin displays
For all the world to view
Such is the mystery of grace
It seals my pardon too
With pleasing grief and mournful joy
My spirit now is filled
That I should such a life destroy
Yet live by Him I killed.

CHORUS
Forever etched upon my mind
Is the look of Him who died
The Lamb I crucified
And now my life will sing the praise
Of pure atoning grace
That looked on me and
Gladly took my place.

Original lyrics by John Newton. New and alternate lyrics by Bob Kauflin. Music by Bob Kauflin.
© 2001 PDI Praise (BMI). Sovereign Grace Music, a division of Sovereign Grace Ministries.

This is the second blog post this week dedicated to helping us remember the Gospel for God’s glory and our joy. It was preached on February 6th, 2005, by Dan Mc Intosh of Sovereign Grace Community Church. I encourage you to take the time to read this sermon. You will not be disappointed because it will give you opportunity to rejoice afresh in the Gospel.

Sovereign Grace Community Church
February 6, 2005
Philippians 3:1-7

I don’t know about your family – but my kids love to answer the telephone. If you didn’t know better, you might think that the electrical current that signals the ringer in the phone was somehow connected to their rear ends. Because when the phone rings there is only a nanosecond delay before they jump up from wherever and whatever they are doing and rush for the phone. And they are not necessarily discerning about who they are willing to talk to. Me for instance, if I look down at the caller ID and see Alpine Lending or IMC Marketing or Craftsmen Home Improvements, I don’t answer. The kids, on the other hand, they don’t care – they just want to talk to somebody.

One of the kids came to me once to inform me that he had purchased tickets to a Beatles Concert. He wasn’t sure how he did it but he felt sure that he had. Of course I informed him that the Beatles were no longer performing together nor did I think it was possible for a telemarketer to sell over the phone to a minor - but he was sure – and he was, because a about a week later 2 tickets @ $15 a piece arrived. Not for the Beatles, unfortunately, but for a group singing Beatles songs. We got that mess cleared up.

And this has given me the opportunity on a number of occasions to impart my wisdom to my children. And often, the wisdom I find my self dispersing after these phone calls is the old axiom “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Or maybe I say something like this “Nothing is free” But Dad – the guy said you and mom won a free 3 day vacation to Florida – no strings attached, really. To which I reply there are always strings attached. Tell them no thank you. I have sat through the 3 hour vacation presentation and had my arm twisted as they tried to get me to buy a time share condominium in Oklahoma. I have been accused of not loving my wife and children for denying them the right to vacation in Toledo. That, to me is a string. Tell them no thank you, Nothing is free, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. You get what you pay for – and when you pay nothing?

We want our children to be wise – we don’t want them to be played for the fool or taken advantage of. We want them to understand how life works – you get out of it what you put into it. You get what you deserve. You work hard and you reap the results and the rewards. Nothing is easy and nothing is free. And if some one tells you any different be on your guard, read the fine print, look for some stipulation or condition, look for some if, and or but.

This morning in our text here in Philippians 3:1-7 Paul challenges that kind wisdom. He challenges this wisdom when it is carried over into our understanding of the gospel and our standing before God.

Let’s read the passage

Philippians 3:1-7

Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. 2 Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. 3 For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh- 4 though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Let’s pray!

Martin Luther tried everything but nothing would help. His sense of sin was too deep. In reflecting on his life as a monk Luther wrote:

“I myself was a monk for twenty years. I tortured myself with praying, fasting, keeping vigils and freezing – the cold alone was enough to kill me – I inflicted upon myself such pain as I would never inflict again, even if I could. If any monk ever got to heaven by monkery, then I should have made it. All my monastery companions who knew me can testify to that – if it had lasted much longer, I would have killed myself with vigils, praying, reading and other labors” (Martin Luther, Stephen J. Nichols page 29.).

But for all this labor and work and effort Luther found no resolution to his spiritual crisis. Again writing about life in the monastery he says:

In the monastery I did not think about women, money or possessions; instead my heart trembled and fidgeted about whether God would bestow grace upon me …for I had strayed from faith and could not but imagine that I had angered God, whom I in turn had to appease by doing good works” (Sovereign Joy, John Piper page 84).

One final quote from Luther brings us face to face with our passage today,

“If I could believe that God was not angry with me, I would stand on my head for joy” (Sovereign Joy, John Piper page 84).

Here at the beginning of Philippians 3 Paul’s instruction to “Rejoice in the Lord” is only possible when we understand the true nature of our salvation. And the true nature of our salvation is this – we are made right before God and remain right before God not by our works but by His grace as a gift.

Joy for the Christian is truth based not performance or experience based.

The liberating, and humbling, and joy producing truth of the gospel of God’s grace is this – and we sang it this morning – “Nothing in my hands I bring” we contribute nothing to our salvation. Not one thing.

And to rejoice in the lord and to live out life confident of God’s love and acceptance requires us to know and live in the truth of the gospel daily.

At the time of Luther and Calvin and the Reformation the gospel was nearly lost. Now of course God would not allow this to happen. But during the middle ages believers were constantly reminded by the church that their relationship and right standing before God depended on them. The official teaching of the church at this time was one of infused or imparted righteousness or grace; which essentially meant that God’s grace was a “boost to help them live a holy life.” It was an aid or a means whereby their right living secured their salvation. And through rituals and spiritual exercises and pious formulas and various routines of the church and through indulgences lost grace could be recovered and weak strengthened. The reason many joined monasteries was because they understood their significant role in their own salvation and they felt the power and the allurement of sin and in fear sought to shelter themselves from the world, but to no avail as Luther soon realized. Sin is not out there (point out ward) but resides in here (point to my heart) and no monastery or any other external barrier can protect man from its power.

In reference to salvation and the believers right standing before God, what theologians call our justification, 3 phrases sum up the main struggle of the Reformation. Grace Alone, Faith Alone, & Christ Alone.

Paul here in Philippians 3 with a harsh and critical and angry tone takes on those who would seek to add stipulations and conditions and rule keeping as necessary for salvation. We know that throughout Paul’s ministry he was hounded by men who sought to add the burden of circumcision and law keeping on to the backs of the gentile believers. It was a major issue in the early church – a church that was predominately Jewish at the beginning but soon found acceptance and significant growth among the gentile peoples.

In Acts 15 we read that men from Judea came to Antioch, which served as Paul’s sending church for his missionary journeys, and they began to teach that unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses you could not be saved. And others who were called the circumcision party were teaching that Gentile believers must not only be circumcised but they must keep the law of Moses. The Jerusalem council met to debate these claims and judged against those who sought to add stipulations and conditions to the gospel.

But that did not stop these men who trailed behind Paul seeking to profit from his evangelistic efforts by convincing his new converts of the benefit and necessity of human effort in salvation. And so here, Paul reminds the believers in Philippi what he apparently had spoken to them many times when they were together – adding any thing to the gospel is evil and dangerous and joy stealing and must be guarded against.

We experience and grow in joy by knowing and guarding the truth of the gospel.

It is interesting in this passage how quickly Paul moves from Rejoice in the Lord in verse one to anger in verse 2; especially when you look back at chapter 1 and Paul’s response to those who were preaching the gospel out of rivalry and selfish ambition. There he says this:

Philippians 1:18

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

No anger there in chapter 1 – but now in chapter 3 we get anger and sarcasm:

Philippians 3:2
Look out for the dogs (not a compliment) look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.

What is the difference? The difference is that when we add anything to the Gospel we no longer have the gospel. Grace + anything nullifies the Gospel, Faith + anything nullifies the Gospel, and Christ + anything nullifies the gospel. It is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone! No human additions needed no human additions allowed. And when men seek to add stipulations and conditions to the gospel the gospel is lost. And Paul knows it and he is angry – and rightfully so.

But he not only knows the difference he knows the danger. Paul understands the appeal of adding human effort and works to the gospel. He understands our desire for self –justification. He knows what it means to be religious and that self-righteousness is no righteousness. And that those who are the true decedents of Abraham, the true children of Israel are those who place their confidence outside of themselves. What distinguishes Christianity from all other religions of the world is this – your salvation comes by believing and boasting in the accomplishments of another and has nothing to do with you. It is Free. It must be free. By works and human effort no man is justified. The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. There are no strings attached. If there were it would not be the gospel. There is nothing we do to earn God’s favor or grace – it has been earned and could only be earned for us by Jesus. He alone could satisfy God’s holy demands – Yes we must believe – but that believing is not a work but a gift. And now because of Christ’s work on the cross we don’t get what we deserve, we get what Christ deserved.

But when I say free, when I say no strings attached, when I say that God is not treating you as your sins deserve, do you feel yourself wanting to add stipulations and conditions? Of course it’s free but…but what? Of course there are no strings attached but you have to…have to what? Well, what I mean is I know that I am counted righteous in Christ but only as long as…as long as what? Once the sinner stops trusting in himself and his own works and his own morality for his salvation and repents and places his hope in Christ and his work and his perfect righteousness and believes that the penalty for his rebellion against God was paid for on the cross by Jesus, he is saved, freely saved by God’s grace. Now of course the new believer will have to maintain certain things in order to…hah! Don’t you still feel like I must add something to it!

One of the greatest dangers we face as Christians is the desire to stray from the gospel and to put our confidence in our own performance. As a result Paul’s command to rejoice in the lord – to have joy in God – is only realized on the days we meet our own expectations for right living. Some how we have gotten it in to our heads that we must constantly earn, daily earn God’s approval and on going forgiveness through our performance. And it is a trap.

Philippians 3:4-7

If others think they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless (NICNT, Philippians, Gordon Fee, Page 305).

Legalistic Righteousness:

We experience and grow in joy and in God I might add, by knowing and guarding the truth of the gospel.

And one of the greatest hindrances to joy in the Christian Life is legalism. C.J. Mahaney gives a simple definition of legalism in his book. “The Cross Centered Life.”

“Legalism is seeking to achieve forgiveness from God and acceptance by God through obedience to God” (pg. 25).

A legalist is not just someone who doesn’t smoke or drink or go to movies or listen to music with a beat. A legalist is someone whose actions betray an underlying belief that they can and must somehow earn God’s approval through their personal performance. And a lack of joy in the believer is one of the ways we detect legalism.

Tom Schreiner writes,

“Legalism has its origin in self worship. If people are justified through their obedience to the law, then they merit praise, honor, and glory. Legalism, in other words, means the glory goes to people rather than to God” (As quoted in; The Cross Centered Life, C.J. Mahaney, Page 25).

But here in Philippians Paul tells us that the true, the real, the genuine people of God are those who glory or boast in someone else. See it right there in

Philippians 3:3

For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh

Now while we may know mentally that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone all of us have a natural drift toward a performance based relationship with God. Remember, a legalist is someone whose actions, not their right theology, but their actions betray an underlying belief that they can and must somehow earn God’s approval through their personal performance.

Now, I couldn’t continue any further – at least not with integrity – if I did not confess that this is a struggle I often face. As a matter of fact for the last month or so I have experienced the reemergence of anger and impatience to a degree I have not felt for a number of years. I have lacked joy. I have felt heavy and sad and irritated. My sadness and my anger and my impatience only worked to tighten the grip of legalism within in my soul. I was caught in the performance trap. So while my theological belief was grace alone my functional belief was grace plus my works. While my theological belief was faith alone, my functional belief was faith plus human effort, and while my theological belief was Christ alone, my functional belief was such as to call into question the sufficiency of Christ’s work on the cross and the truth of the gospel.

It might surprise you, it might not, that my turn away from the Gospel began at a spiritual high point. Pastor Tim Keller says that this legalistic tendency “will lead either to self-hatred because you can’t live up to the standards or self-inflation because you think you have lived up to the standards” (Sermon notes: The Centrality of the Gospel, Tim Keller, Page 3). In my case I began in my heart to take credit for my spiritual growth and took my eyes off the cross and off the gospel and wham – Have you ever said this to yourself concerning your walk with God, “How did I get here, things were going so well!” That is precisely what happened to me.

But instead of simply repenting of my self righteousness and self-sufficiency, instead of repenting of my pride and arrogance – and the accompanying sins of anger and impatience, instead of doing that I moved from self-righteousness to self-loathing and self-pity which then led to the desire for self atonement. Whew, a lot self talk isn’t it? I want to punish myself, do penance – and then I want to be able say to God look I did it I’m worthy again, I am ready to come back into fellowship and eat at your table. I got myself into this funk and it is my job to dig my way out, I must pay for my mistakes, I must bear the brunt of God’s displeasure with me, Well actually it is all wrong – yes I got myself into this mess but only Jesus can get me out.

Yes, it is biblical and beneficial to feel sorrow for our sin – but it is not biblical nor beneficial to assume that through that sorrow we pay anything to God. Jesus paid it all – Jesus completely satisfied God’s righteous demands. There is nothing left, you have no outstanding debt – it was cancelled

Colossians 2:13-14

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

We are free! Why do we continue to act as if we are not? Why do we respond to God as a debt collector rather than a father?

Richard Lovelace says that most people’s problems are just a failure to be oriented to the gospel – a failure to grasp and believe it through and through.

If you are depressed this morning or caught like I was trying to dig yourself out of the mess you made of things – Only the truth of the Gospel can restore joy in the heart of the believer – true joy blooms from a constant watering of your soul in the gospel.

We experience and grow in joy by knowing and guarding the truth of the gospel.

Remember, the true nature of our salvation is this – we are made right before God and remain right before God not by our works but by His grace as a gift. This is the good news – on going good news. God’s grace not only saves but it eternally secures. The gospel gives joy, none of your efforts today to grow in God and please God add one thing to your standing before God. That’s where we put our confidence, not in the flesh or human performance. But in the work of Christ on the cross for us!

The truth of our justification before God is intended to produce overflowing joy in our hearts. The truth of the Gospel lifts our burdens:

Matthew 11:28-30

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

The truth of the Gospel gives us joy and makes us strong,

Nehemiah 8:10
“for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

Rejoice in the Lord – and again I say rejoice in the Lord! Be happy in God. You are forgiven you are counted righteous before God. Let that truth flow through your soul!

Some of you are still waiting for me to pull the rug out from underneath you – you, like my children and me have grown up hearing the conventional wisdom that if it sounds to good to be true it is –you still want to believe or feel you must believe that it could not be totally free, there must be a string somewhere. And many of you think you know what that string is – your on-going obedience to God. Huh? What about that – I can’t just forsake all of God’s commands can I? If I do that I am out so I must obey to be in.

Well I came across a passage this week that really struck a blow to that kind of thinking – at least for me.

John 14:15

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

My obedience to God is not intended to earn his favor but rather flows out of a heart of love. And love for God is fueled, and thus obedience to God is fueled by feasting and watering ourselves in the amazing grace of the Gospel, the unbelievably good news of complete acceptance by God because of Christ’s work on the cross.

Obedience is not a string it is a response. And because I know that I am secure before my God, because I am confident in my standing before him – When I fail to obey I should run to him – and ask his forgiveness and receive his grace and his help. Not away from him until I have paid what I feel is the appropriate price for my mistake. We have a savior who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, and who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yes without sin, that essential but he understands

Hebrews 4:16

16 Let us then with confidence (let me not in the flesh but in the Gospel) draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

This includes our disobedience, absolutely.

So our obedience is not a string – it is a response.

We experience and grow in joy by knowing and guarding the truth of the gospel.

Do you see how the truth of your justification, this great truth that was nearly lost 500 years ago, the truth that it is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, do you see how it gives joy? Does it not fill you with joy and confidence that your righteousness, your right standing before God, was secured and made sure by another? And your sins are not on you, but on the cross of Christ! Does it not fill you with joy to know that your obedience is not a string, a stipulation, a condition to be met, that your duty is not to earn or deserve Christ, but to depend on Christ? Does this not make you glad? Does this not make you want to leave behind your foolish self focus whether that is self-righteousness or self loathing?
Luther said,

“If I could believe that God was not angry with me, I would stand on my head for joy.”
Well Luther finally realized the truth of the gospel and it set him free and filled him with joy.

I can hear a different voice whispering in my mind, If it sounds to good to be true, it can only be one thing…it must be the Gospel.

The next two days of blogs (today and tomorrow) will be dedicated to the necessity of remembering the Gospel. It is my conviction that forgetting the Gospel is the reason for all our spiritual struggles (depression, discouragement, worry, anger, self-righteousness, lust, etc…). Daily remembering and meditating upon the gospel is absolutely vital for our spiritual health and growth as Christians. So today’s and tomorrow’s blogs are dedicated to helping us remember the Gospel of sovereign grace. Today’s blog is a sermon I preached a couple years ago. It primarily addresses believers who are struggling with a sense of hopelessness or heavy discouragement over their lack of spiritual progress. Tomorrow’s blog is an EXCELLENT sermon preached this past Sunday by Scott Anderson’s pastor, Dan Mc Intosh, at Sovereign Grace Community Church. It addresses our tendency to seek to earn God’s approval through our personal performance.

The Gospel of Deliverance - Psalm 3

Introduction: I want to direct your attention to verse 2 where David says:

Psalm 3:2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help [no deliverance] for him in God.

• This sermon is meant to address two different groups of people who struggle with the hopeless thought that there is no deliverance for them in God.
1. The first group is made up of people who are losing hope of ever experiencing sustained victory over a particular sin or sins. They may have been fighting against a particular sin for a long time and yet it remains attractive and strong. Their struggle with temptation is usually in the realm of the thoughts and desires and often this sin has become addictive behavior. There are those who are in this condition and do not desire deliverance. But there are many who are in this condition and desperately want deliverance but have lost hope of ever receiving it. They have come to believe that “there is no deliverance for them in God.”
2. The second group is made up of people who are suffering from some form of affliction whether it be on the job, or heath problems, or family challenges, or just a trials in general. Their struggle is not so much with the affliction itself but with what the affliction draws out of their hearts. Afflictions of this sort always bring out the worst in us. They expose our lack of faith, patience, love, kindness, forgiveness, submission to God, joy, and so on. They draw out the lust and anger and pettiness and superficiality that has been in our hearts all along. Those who are in this group often grow discouraged with what they perceive to be an utter lack of progress in Christian growth and sometimes after a prolonged struggle in this area they come to believe that “there is no deliverance for them in God.”

• What we find here in Psalm 3 is a psalm that gives hope to people who desire deliverance but fear that they will never get it. Now let me back up at this point and say that there are people who are at different stages within these two groups. Some of you may be facing the struggles of one of these two groups but have not yet come to the point where you are fearing that you will never experience deliverance. Psalm 3 is for you as well so that you will not get to that point. So what are we to do when we start to believe the words of verse 2?

• The answer that Psalm 3 gives us has three parts: 1. Recognize the attack. 2. Refocus your vision. 3. Remember God’s provision.

Recognize the Attack

• Notice that this idea that there is no deliverance for David in God comes directly from his enemies.

Psalm 3:1 LORD, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me. 2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God.

• So what are David’s enemies seeking to do here with these hopeless words? Well, they are seeking to defeat David by offering what appears on the surface to be a viable interpretation of his experience. This psalm was written when David was fleeing for his life from his son, Absalom. So here David finds himself, once chosen by God to be king in Israel, having to abandon his throne in a manner of speaking. I wonder if David looked at his situation and thought, “Could this be happening because of my sin? Could God be removing me as He removed Saul?”

• On top of this David heard these hard words from one of the men of Saul’s house:

2 Samuel 16:7 And thus said Shimei when he cursed, Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial 8 The LORD hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou hast reigned; and the LORD hath delivered the kingdom into the hand of Absalom thy son: and, behold, thou art taken in thy mischief, because thou art a bloody man [In other words, Shimei says, “David, there is no deliverance for you in God.”].

• On the surface these words seem to be a viable interpretation of David’s situation. This is what gives them such weight and power. The verbal attack of the enemy here is pretty brilliant.

• There is something else that I want you to notice about verse 2.

Psalm 3:2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no [deliverance] for him in God.

• I think verse 2 would be better translated this way: “Many there be which say TO my soul, ‘There is no deliverance for him in God.’” The enemy is trying to penetrate his venomous words into David’s inmost being. He is trying to destroy David’s sense of security in God.

• Also, notice that this attack is coming from many different sources. David says, “Many there be.” This was not a verbal attack that David heard just once. No, he was repeatedly confronted with these penetrating words.

• This is exactly how the enemy attacks those who find themselves in those two groups that I described at the beginning. (1) He comes to those who can’t seem to find sustained victory over a particular sin and says, “Have you ever wondered why you can’t seem to find victory? It’s because you are living outside of God’s grace and mercy. The reason that you can’t get out of this sin is because there is no deliverance for you in God. It is the only reason that makes sense of your situation.” (2) He comes to those who through their affliction are seeing all kinds of junk come out of their hearts that they never knew were there to that degree and says, “Are you wondering how all that stuff could be in your heart after all these years of being a ‘Christian’? It’s because you just thought you were a Christian and God never really delivered you from your sin after all. Doesn’t my explanation make a lot of sense?”

Question: When we start believing the lie that there is no deliverance for us in God, what are we doing wrong?

1. We are guilty of elevating God’s law over against His grace.
2. We are guilty of operating in the self-salvation mode and as a result become disconsolate because of our failure to keep the law.

• Let’s look at both of these briefly. Both of these are a functional rejection of the Gospel. Hopefully I will be able to make that clear.

1. When we start believing the lie that there is no deliverance for us in God, we are guilty of elevating God’s law over against His grace. Now what do I mean by that?

• The Bible makes it clear that the law demands perfect righteousness (Romans 8:4). The law was given to us to condemn our disobedience and so bring us under its curse and judgment. The law in part is meant to bring us to the place of utter despair of ever coming under the favor of God. It is meant to enslave us by its condemnation. But if that is all we understand of the law, we fail to see its big picture. The law is not only full of condemnation. It is also full of grace in that it points us to its fulfillment. In other words, the law is full of grace in that it points us to Christ as the only one who perfectly obeyed it in every point.

Romans 10:4 . . . Christ is the end [the fulfillment] of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

• So when we start to believe that there is no deliverance for us in God, we are seeing the demands of the law and not the fulfillment of the law. In other words, we are guilty of elevating the law of God over against the grace of God. We have fallen into the trap of using the law unlawfully, that is, as the means of placing ourselves under God’s favor.

2. When we start believing the lie that there is no deliverance for us in God, we are guilty of operating in a self-salvation mode and as a result become disconsolate because of our failure to keep the law.

• Often when we start entertaining the idea that there is no deliverance for us in God, what is actually happening (and it is very, very subtle!) is that we have begun to put our hope and trust in our performance and not in Christ. We have begun basing our security in God on how we are performing. If our security in God is ultimately based upon our performance, then we are living according to a self-salvation paradigm. So what happens when someone who is living within the self-salvation paradigm can’t seem to get victory over a particular sin? He begins to believe that there is no deliverance for him in God when in reality the source of his discouragement is that he is realizing that there is no deliverance for him in himself. He just doesn’t realize that his belief system is operating within the self-salvation paradigm. I’m not saying that this individual doesn’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God or that he/she hasn’t prayed a prayer to Him. I am saying that he/she might just be using Jesus as a helper in his/her project of self-salvation rather than looking to Christ as Savior.

• So what are we to do with this tendency to functionally reject the Gospel?

Refocus your vision

• Notice first what David does not do with the enemy’s attack. He does not listen to it or entertain it. We cannot deny that on the surface of things the whisperings of the enemy appear to be true. “David, how can you still be God’s chosen man for the throne of Israel and be in such a seemingly Godforsaken predicament?” Let’s apply this to the two struggles I talked about at the beginning. “If there were deliverance for you in God, you wouldn’t keep repeating this same sin.” “If there were deliverance for you in God, affliction wouldn’t reveal the level of trash in your heart that it is revealing.”

• So what did David do and what should we do? David did not entertain the enemy’s take on the situation, rather he immediately turns to the unbelievably goodnews of the Gospel as it applies to himself. Notice verses 2 and 3.

Psalm 3:2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. 3 But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.

• David wastes no time arguing against his enemy’s whisperings. In a manner of speaking he grabs himself by the shoulders and says, “It may seem like there is no deliverance for you in God,” and then he grabs his head and tilts it up toward the heavens and says, “but You, O Lord, are for me not against me!” He absolutely refuses to listen to the enemy or his doubts.

• In his book, Spiritual Depression, Martyn Llyod-Jones writes:

“The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself . . . You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’—instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say . . . ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God’” (p. 21).

• This is exactly what David does here. He faces the attacks upon his faith by confronting them with the truth about the object of his faith. He recognizes that the enemy is seeking to blur his spiritual vision. So he seeks to refocus his vision upon the true picture of who God is for him. Notice first that he sets his eyes upon God as:

1. His Perfect Protection.

Psalm 3:3 But Thou, O LORD, art a shield about me

• David refers to the Lord as his perfect protection, but we really need to tweak our understanding of protection here a little. The kind of shield that David refers to here is very significant. The shield that went around the soldier was primarily used for offensive purposes, not defensive. If you were using this kind of shield, your purpose was not so much to protect yourself as it was to advance yourself against the enemy.

• This is important to note because the use of a shield like this demands a particular mindset. If your mind is not prepared for the use of this shield, than you will merely assume a defensive posture and a defensive posture does not win conflicts. It just delays defeat.

• So when David says that God is a shield around him, he is recognizing the necessity of having the loins of his mind girded up. In other words, if he is to defeat the lie that there is no deliverance for him in God, he must attack it with the truth of who God is for him personally.

• This is the only way to defeat the assaults of the enemy upon our faith. Our defense, our protection is the offensive attack of truth upon Satan’s lies. And David refers to God’s truth as his perfect protection because there is not one lie of the enemy that it can not overwhelm in victory.

• As we move on in this psalm we will see the weapon of truth that David uses. But notice secondly that David sets his eyes upon God as:

2. His Personal Significance.

Psalm 3:3 But Thou, O LORD, art a shield about me, My glory

• David is relocating the true source of his glory. What do I mean by that? Everything that David was tempted to find his significance in was stripped away from him. David’s popular acclaim, his political power, and the loyalty of his friends and family were all taken from him. He lost the very things in which we as fallen men and women seek our significance.

• When we do this we make ourselves fair game for the lies of the enemy. If what we have sought our significance in is stripped away, it will not be difficult for us to believe that there is no deliverance for us in God because we have made these finite values our god.

• In his book entitled, Two Worlds, James Oden makes some powerful observations about what happens when we seek our glory, our significance in the wrong place.

“When a finite value has been elevated to centrality and imagined as a final source of meaning, then one has chosen . . . a god . . . One has a god when a finite value is . . . viewed as that without which one cannot receive life joyfully . . . We are constantly taking good things—relationships, sex, music, food . . . [vocations]—and viewing them as if they were ‘that . . . which nothing greater can be conceived.’ Idolatry is the elevation of any finite value to a pretended ultimacy. Idolatry treats a limited value as if it were absolute (p. 95) . . . Anxiety becomes neurotically intensified to the degree that I have idolized finite values . . . The more I worship finite gods, the more I make myself vulnerable to intensified anxiety [or to the lies of the enemy] . . . Suppose my god is [popular acclaim] or [my own spiritual growth] . . . If I experience any of these under genuine threat, then I feel myself shaken to the depths. In this way, idolatry intensifies anxiety” (p. 97).

• David knows that he has no chance of defeating his enemy’s lies if he is seeking his glory, his significance in some finite value. So he repents by relocating his true glory, namely, God Himself. Whenever we begin to despair of ever knowing deliverance from our sin it is very likely because we have made something other than God our glory.

Notice thirdly that he set his eyes upon God as:

3. His Perpetual Encourager.

Psalm 3:3 But Thou, O LORD, art a shield about me, My glory, and the One who lifts my head.

• Whenever Scripture speaks of someone lifting up his own head, it is referring to the activity of pride. We see this in Midian when they were a trouble to Israel. In Judges 8:28 we read:

Judges 8:28 So Midian was subdued before the sons of Israel, and they did not lift up their heads anymore. And the land was undisturbed for forty years in the days of Gideon.

• In other words, through Gideon God leveled the pride of Midian. This same expression for pride is found in Psalm 83:2.

Psalm 83:1 [Asaph cries out] O God, do not remain quiet; Do not be silent and, O God, do not be still. 2 For behold, Thine enemies make an uproar; And those who hate Thee have exalted themselves [they have lifted up the head].

• So what is David doing here in Psalm 3 when he identifies the Lord as the one who lifts up his head? He’s humbling himself. He is in essence saying, “Lord, I have elevated finite values to a pretended ultimacy. In seeking to lift up my own head I have placed to much value on my popular acclaim, on my political power, on the loyalty of my friends and family. Lord, forgive me for not giving You your rightful place. You alone are my glory and the one who lifts up my head!”

• This is what David is doing here and this is what we need to do every day because as John Calvin once said our hearts are idol factories always seeking to elevate finite values to the place of ultimacy.

• So David is fighting the lies of the enemy by setting his eyes upon who God is for him. First, he recognized the attack. Second, he refocused his vision. And Third, he remembered God’s Provision. So we too must:

Remember God’s Provision

• Here is where everything we’ve talked about thus far comes together. If we are not careful, we can read verse 4 and not recognize it as a hugely significant and amazing verse. It is a verse that puts all of David’s circumstances in proper perspective. You will not find a verse in Scripture that makes a more amazing claim that this one.

Psalm 3:4 I was crying to the LORD with my voice, and He answered me from His holy mountain.

• Now how can David say with such utter confidence that he, a sinner, cried unto the Lord and the Lord answered him from His holy mountain? How can David possibly make a claim like that?

• If you study out the historical setting found in 2 Samuel 15 in which David writes this psalm, you learn that just before He cried out for deliverance he sent the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem, that is, back to Mount Zion, God’s holy mountain. So, when David cried out to the LORD, his cry went to the holy mountain where the ark of the covenant again rested. The ark itself represented the LORD’s presence, and it was the most precious possession of the Jews. But it did not only represent God’s presence among His people. It also represented His character. God wanted His people to both recognize both His presence and the content of His character which was revealed by the tablets of stone that it contained (Deut. 10:4-5). In Exodus 25:16, the LORD says to Moses,

Exodus 25:16 You shall put into the ark the testimony which I shall give you.

• This testimony was the Ten Commandments and it declared the LORD’s holiness. It declared that those who would approach and fellowship with the Him at His holy mountain must too be holy as He is holy.

Leviticus 19:1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.’

So the “testimony” not only reflected the holy character of God Himself, but also what the character of those who would worship Him must be. The presence of the Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant testified in large measure to the fact that the holy God can only be worshipped by holy people. Its presence meant that God would only receive prayers from His holy mountain from people who too were holy.

• So one thing we learn from the presence of the Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant is that God can in no way receive anything from sinful man, whether or not it is offered as worship, praise, or even prayers from a distance.

• So how can it be that David can say:

Psalm 3:4 I was crying to the LORD with my voice, and He answered me from His holy mountain.

• How can this possibly be? After all, just four chapters earlier in 2 Samuel 11 we read the account of David’s sin with Bathseba. When David prays in 2 Samuel 15, he prays as one who has committed adultery. How can God hear and answer the prayer of an adulterer?

Answer: because there was more to the Ark of the Covenant than the Ten Commandments which it contained. It also had a covering. Lets go back and look at Exodus 25:16 and read through verse 17.

Exodus 25:16 [The LORD says to Moses] You shall put into the ark the testimony which I shall give you. 17 You shall make a mercy seat [literally, a propitiatory] of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and one and a half cubits wide.

• The measurements of the mercy seat becomes significant when we compare it to the measurements of the ark itself.

Exodus 25:10 They shall construct an ark of acacia wood two and a half cubits long, and one and a half cubits wide . . .

• The propitiatory, or as our version has it, the mercy seat, is made to exactly cover the law. Just a few verses later at verse 21, God again instructs Moses as to the propitiatory coverings relationship to the Law:

Exodus 25:21 You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony which I will give to you.

• And it is only after giving these instructions that God says,

Exodus 25:22 There I will meet with you; and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak to you about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel.

Question: So what do we learn here? We learn that God would not meet His people at the level of the Law. If He did, they would have been utterly consumed. Rather, He met them at the level of the propitiatory covering. If God were to meet sinners only at the level of the Law, they would be separated from Him for all of eternity. His holy wrath would burn against them without end, but God made a covering, a propitiatory covering. In other words, God Himself provided for the satisfaction of His holy wrath so that sinful people could approach Him on that basis.

• Listen to the words of Paul from Romans 3:23-25.

Romans 3:23 . . . all have sinned and fall short of [or lack] the glory of God, 24 Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25 whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.

• Paul says that God set Christ forth to be ‘the propitiatory’ covering. He used the same word that the Greek translation of the OT uses to translate the Hebrew word for ‘mercy seat.” So what is Paul saying? He is declaring in no uncertain terms that Christ is ‘the propitiatory’ covering that perfectly covers God’s holy character, that He is the complete satisfaction of God’s wrath not leaving the smallest fraction of it unsatisfied.

• So how could God not only hear the prayer of an adulterer, but also grant the adulterer’s request from His holy mountain? The answer is that God did not meet David at the level of His Law. If He had, David would have been struck down immediately. No, He met him on the level of ‘the propitiatory covering.’ God did not meet David as the adulterer that he was. No, He met David as one whose sin had been atoned for completely.

• Do you feel the joy filled emotion that spills out of Psalm 3:4? David pens this verse with the song of unbelievably good news in his heart!

Question: So what should we do when we find ourselves functionally rejecting the Gospel? What should we do when we find ourselves believing that there is no deliverance for us? Answer: We should look to the cross. When Christ went to the cross as our substitute there was no deliverance found for Him in God. Instead He bore the full weight of the Father’s wrath against sin and He felt the full weight of it. So much so that He cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

• At the cross we see that since Christ bore our sin without deliverance we can come to Father sinners though we be and find mighty, unfailing deliverance. We too can confidently claim the words of Psalm 3:2.

Psalm 3:4 I was crying to the LORD with my voice, and He answered me from His holy mountain.

At the cross we find abundant redemption and deliverance. So as we move to the Lord’s Supper we are saying that in our Savior we have one who bore our sin without deliverance so that we who are sinners might find and enjoy complete deliverance.

“Our receiving of the Spirit is objectively grounded in and derives from Christ who as the incarnate Son was anointed by the Spirit in his humanity and endowed with the Spirit without measure, not for his own sake (for he was eternally one in being with the Spirit in God) but for our sakes, and who then mediates the Spirit to us through himself. As one of us and one with us he sanctified himself in the Spirit that we might be sanctified in him and thus be sanctified in the truth. Our receiving of the Spirit, therefore, is not independent of or different from the vicarious receiving of the Spirit by Christ himself but is a sharing in it. Since he received the Spirit in the humanity he took from us, we on our part receive the Spirit through union with him and through him with the Father” (T.F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 148).

A Conference for Pastors and Preachers
hosted by Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C.J. Mahaney, Albert Mohler
with special guests John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C. Sproul

April 26–28, 2006 / Louisville, KY

Dear friends and partners in the gospel:

As co-laborers for Christ, you have our respect and appreciation for all that you do in proclaiming the glorious gospel. It is the most important task of your pastoral ministry, yet we well understand how other, seemingly urgent activities can obscure it. In our friendship, we never cease reminding each other of the primacy of cross-centered preaching. Although there may be secondary points of church practice on which we differ, we enthusiastically celebrate the centrality of the gospel—keeping the main thing the main thing. And that’s what the watching world should always notice about us.

For this reason, we’d like to invite you to join us for three days of interaction among four friends and three of our preaching heroes: John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C. Sproul. Not only will we all benefit from the fine preaching of each speaker at this event, after each session we will host a panel discussion about that topic.

Our prayer is that through this event we will be able to extend to many other partners in the gospel the encouragement, exhortation, and edification we have enjoyed as preachers and brothers in the Lord.

We look forward to seeing you in Louisville.

Celebrating the priceless legacy of the gospel with you,

Mark Dever
Ligon Duncan
C.J. Mahaney
Albert Mohler

This is an article that seeks to demonstrate the necessity of the gospel by examining an issue raised in the popular movie entitled “The Village,” by M. Night Shyamalan (who also wrote “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable,” and “Signs”). The movie recently came out in dvd a few weeks ago. So it is still very popular. Matt’s article is a good example of what Paul did at Mars Hill (Acts 17:22-31). Matt Hand said, “I think we would do well to be a little ‘Pauline’ in our thinking and learn how to apply theology to what unbelievers are watching/reading/listening to, etc.” I think you will enjoy the article. By the way, if you read this article and haven’t yet watched the video, it WILL NOT ruin the movie for you.

Matt writes:

It’s October, 1897. The body of little Daniel Nicholson is being laid to rest after he lost a battle with a serious illness. One of the village elders, Edward Walker, stands and solemnly speaks to the people: “We may question ourselves at moments such as these. Did we make the right decision to settle here?”

Where have they settled…why have they come? the viewer asks. They have settled in a picturesque valley in a place they call Covington Woods. Here they have built their own village and their own way of life miles away from the nearest town. And why have they come to this place? In Walker’s words, they left the towns and settled in the village “out of hope of something good and right.” The towns were, as one of the young men put it, “Wicked places where wicked people live…that’s all.” Walker tells his daughter, Ivy, that the towns are “a darkness I wished you would never know.”

The villagers are convinced they have left evil behind them for good. The elders seem to believe they have created an isolated, ideological, safe haven that is sheltered from the very presence of sin and sorrow. This motif is repeatedly stated by several prominent characters in the movie. One of the elders, Mrs. Hunt, cautions her son with these words: “The evil things of my past are kept close and not forgotten. Forgetting would be to let them be born again in another form.” She is clearly implying that evil is not being reborn in the village, not even in new forms. Walker exemplifies this conviction while defending a difficult judgment call he made: “If we did not make this decision, we could never again call ourselves innocent. And that, in the end, is what we have protected here—innocence!”

The village elders hold to a prevalent worldview known as determinism or behaviorism. This philosophy says, in essence, that people are the products of their environment. The only real way to change people for the better is by altering the environmental factors that inevitably produced their improper behavior in the first place. The elders believed people acted wickedly because they lived in wicked places surrounded by wicked things. One example of this is when Edward warns Ivy, “Money can be a wicked thing. It can turn men’s hearts black—good men’s hearts.” So what did the elders do to avoid evil? They created a micro-economy that did not use any form of currency. Their worldview was this: If we can create a village that is innocent, the people who live here will always remain in a state of innocence.

Sound familiar? Ever heard of any other innocent people living in a perfect environment before? How about in the very first chapters of the Bible? Genesis 1:26ff tells us the true account of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, whom God created in His image. God blessed them abundantly and gave them dominion over every other living thing. God even placed them in a perfect environment—a beautiful garden called “Eden” (which means “delight”). God called His creation exceedingly beautiful and morally perfect (Genesis 1:31). Adam and Eve were totally innocent people living in a state of innocence.

That innocence didn’t last very long. God had only one boundary for Adam and Eve, yet they wasted no time overstepping it. Though there was nothing in their environment that could inevitably produce their improper behavior, they nevertheless lost their innocence when they were tempted of the devil and chose to satisfy the proud desires of their own hearts (Genesis 3:1-7). Contrary to the determinist worldview, the Bible makes unmistakably clear that evil is not simply a problem with our environment. Evil also resides in the power of “the evil one” (1 John 5:19) and within every human heart (Genesis 8:21).

Since evil resides in three sources, rather than one, we cannot escape evil by simply leaving overtly wicked places. Even when we avoid these places, we still carry sin within our own hearts. And none of us can physically leave the devil behind. We need a solution to evil that is far more realistic—and far more radical—than the village paradigm. We need a Savior who can deal with all three sources of sin.

1. Jesus Christ defeats the power of an evil environment.

God’s solution is not to run from the world, but to renew the world. Many Christians are guilty of the village mindset, which leads them to isolate themselves from sinners so that they might preserve their own sense of holiness. That isn’t what Jesus had in mind when He told His followers that they were the salt and light of the earth—agents of preservation and renewal (Matthew 5:13-16). The future return of Christ will prove once and for all His power over the corruption of this present world. In that day, He will destroy the decay of this world and make “new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).

2. Jesus Christ defeats the power of the evil one.

As soon as sin entered the world through Adam, God promised that Christ would ultimately defeat Satan (Genesis 3:15). That promise saw it’s partial fulfillment when Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead, humiliating Satan and defeating his power of death (Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14). Christ mortally wounded Satan through the triumph of the cross, enabling believers to experience victory over Satan’s temptations (Ephesians 6:16; James 4:7). The future return of Christ will mark Satan’s ultimate defeat and eternal judgment (Revelation 20:1-3, 10).

3. Jesus Christ defeats the power of our evil hearts.

The elders in the village thought they could avoid defilement and experience true innocence by leaving the world behind them. But Jesus taught, “Out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23). Though the elders did not recognize it, they were just as sinful as the people in the towns that they had left behind. They created a new environment, but they could not create new hearts. Only Christ, the Savior, can change our hearts and free us from the power of evil within us. By sheer grace, Christ freely gives us what we could never earn—and the very thing we crave: new, perfect, innocent hearts (Ezekiel 36:26).

So go ahead and watch “The Village.” Enjoy it. There’s a lot more to it than what I have told you! I’ve done my best not to ruin it’s suspense for those who have not seen it. But as you watch, remember: utopian societies have never worked because they fail to address all three sources of evil in this world. There is no substitute for the Savior. Only Christ can give you true freedom from the world, the devil, and your own flesh.