Heavenly Springs

Holding Fast The Doctrines of Grace

Why We Study The Puritans

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Dr. Joel Beeke explains what we stand to profit when we study the Puritans.

“The Puritans show us how to marry doctrine and practice in our lives by addressing the mind, confronting the conscience, and wooing the heart.

Puritan literature addresses the mind. The Puritans loved and worshipped God with their minds. They refused to set mind and heart against each other, but taught that knowledge was the soil in which the Spirit planted the seed of regeneration. They viewed the mind as the palace of faith.

The Puritans teach us to think in order to be holy. They understood that a mindless Christianity fosters a spineless Christianity. An anti-intellectual gospel will spawn an irrelevant gospel that doesn’t get beyond ‘felt needs.’ That’s what is happening in our churches today. We have lost our intellect, and for the most part we don’t see the necessity of recovering it. We do not understand that if there is little difference between the Christian and unbelievers in what we believe, there will soon be little difference in how we live.

Puritan literature confronts the conscience. The Puritans were masters at naming specific sins, then asking questions to press home the guilt of those sins. As one Puritan wrote, ‘We must go with the stick of divine truth and beat every bush behind which a sinner hides, until like Adam who hid, he stands before God in his nakedness.’

Devotional reading should be confrontational as well as comforting. We grow little if our consciences are not pricked daily and directed to Christ. Since we are prone instead to run away, we need help in our daily devotions to be brought before the living God, naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do (Hebrews 4:13).

Puritan literature woos the heart. It is unusual today to find books that both feed the mind with solid biblical substance and move the heart with affectionate warmth, but the Puritans do this. They reason with the mind, confront the conscience, and appeal to the heart. They write out of love for God’s Word, love for the glory of God, and love for the souls of readers. They set forth Christ in his loveliness, moving the reader to yearn to know him better and live wholly for him.”

Read the entire article here.

The Mute Christian under the Smarting Rod

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Hello everyone!  I am back from my little blogging hiatus!  As you can see, Heavenly Springs received a much-needed face lift during my time away and I, for one, couldn’t be happier with the results.  A very special thank you to my dear brother and compadre in the Reformation, David Lopez, who despite his busy schedule found time to make Heavenly Springs a beautiful blog! 

I wasn’t planning on returning quite yet as we’re still ironing out a few technical, and design issues but after reading the words of this great saint on the matter of patience in the face of affliction, I made the decision to post.  I also wanted to return with a special book giveaway.  That is still in the pipeline so please stay tuned!

In his book, The Mute Christian under the Smarting Rod, the lowly but great English Puritan and preacher, Thomas Brooks, reflects upon his own experience of grace in the midst of great trial and distress. He calls suffering saints to accept God’s seemingly harsh dealings with them quietly and with calmness of soul. “The Lord is in his Holy Temple: Let all the Earth keep silence before him,” (Habakkuk 2.20)

The thoughts conveyed in the excerpt below express an understanding of God’s grace that can only be known when we see our suffering in light of our own depravity. While it is true that many of us suffer in this fallen world as innocent parties, it is also true that none of us, before the Lord, stand as innocent men and women.

When we are tempted to push back on the sad and darker providences of life — when we suffer injustice as a consequence of someone else’s sin — when our hearts cry out, “Lord, I don’t deserve this!”, let us be quick to repent and praise God for his tender mercies that are all found in Jesus Christ. For it was he who stood in our place and drank the full cup of God’s wrath so that we might stand forgiven and fully accepted in the sight of God.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”(2 Corinthians 5:21)

Now that’s mercy!

“To move you to silence under your sorest and your sharpest trials, consider, that you have deserved greater and heavier afflictions than those you are under, Lam. 3:39 and Mic. 7:7-9.3

Has God taken away one mercy? You have deserved to be stripped of all.

Has he taken away the delight of your eyes? He might have taken away the delight of your soul.

Are you under outward wants? You have deserved to be under outward and inward together.

Are you cast upon a sick-bed? You have deserved a bed in hell.

Are you under that ache and that pain? You have deserved to be under all aches and pains at once.

Has God chastised you with whips? You have deserved to be chastised with scorpions.

Are you fallen from the highest pinnacle of honor to be the scorn and contempt of men? You have deserved to be scorned and contemned by God and angels.

Are you under a severe whipping? You have deserved an utter damning.

Ah Christian, let but your eyes be fixed upon your demerits and your hands will be quickly upon your mouths; whatever is less than a final separation from God, whatever is less than hell, is mercy; and therefore you have cause to be silent under the sharpest dealings of God with you.”

You can read the entire work here.

Thomas Boston on man’s utter inability to rescue himself

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“A man that is fallen into a pit cannot be supposed to help himself out of it, but by one of two ways; either by doing all himself alone, or taking hold of, and improving, the help offered him by others. Likewise an unconverted man cannot be supposed to help himself out of his natural state, but either in the way of the law, or covenant of works, by doing all himself without Christ; or else in the way of the Gospel, or covenant of grace, by exerting his own strength to lay hold upon, and to make use of the help offered him by a Saviour.

But, alas! the unconverted man is dead in the pit, and cannot help himself either of these ways; not the first way, for the first text tells us, that when our Lord came to help us, ‘we were without strength,’ unable to recover ourselves. We were ungodly, therefore under a burden of guilt and wrath, yet ‘without strength,’ unable to stand under it; and unable to throw it off, or get from under it: so that all mankind would have undoubtedly perished, had not ‘Christ died for the ungodly,’ and brought help to those who could never have recovered themselves.

But when Christ comes and offers help to sinners, cannot they take it? Cannot they improve help when it comes to their hands? No, the second text tells, they cannot; ‘No man can come unto me,’ that is, believe in me (John 6.44), ‘except the Father draw him.’ This is a drawing which enables them to come, who till then could not come; and therefore could not help themselves by improving the help offered. It is a drawing which is always effectual; for it can be no less than ‘hearing and learning of the Father,’ which, whoever partakes of, come to Christ (verse 45). Therefore it is not drawing in the way of mere moral suasion, which may be, yea, and always is ineffectual. But it is drawing by mighty power (Eph. 1.9), absolutely necessary for those who have no power in themselves to come and take hold of the offered help.”

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
Romans 5:6

“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him”
John 6:44

 

Source: Grace Online Library

Charity by Thomas Watson

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Once again, in the spirit of this week’s book giveaway (for which there still remains time to enter) I am posting an excerpt from A Plea for Alms, one of the six sermons published in “The Fight of Faith Crowned”.

In this sermon, Watson explains how charity runs along two different channels: “charity to the souls of others and charity to the temporal needs of others.”  As Christians, we ought to be concerned with both.

On charity to the soul, Watson utters these gracious but challenging words:

“Charity to the souls of others is a spiritual alms. Indeed, this is the highest kind of charity. The soul is the most precious thing. It is a vessel of honor, a bud of eternity, a spark lighted by the breath of God, a rich diamond set in a ring of clay. The soul has the image of God to beautify it—and the blood of God to redeem it. It being, therefore, of so high a descent, sprung from the ancient of days, and of so noble an extraction, that charity which is shown to the soul must be the greatest.

This is charity to souls—when we see others in their sins, and we pity them. If I weep (says Augustine) for that body from which the soul is departed, how should I weep for that soul from which God is departed! This is charity to souls—when we see men in the bondage of sin—and we labor by counsel, admonition or reproof to pull them out of their dreadful estate, as the angels did to Lot in Sodom. “Hurry! Get out of here right now, or you will be caught in the destruction of the city! When Lot still hesitated, the angels seized his hand and the hands of his wife and two daughters and rushed them to safety outside the city!” Genesis 19.”

“When shall we see a resurrection of charity, which seems to lie dead and buried? Surely it will not be, unless God works a miracle upon men’s hearts. May the good Lord by His Spirit cleave the rocks in our bosoms so that the water of repentance and the wine of charity may flow forth!”

You can read the whole thing here.