Trials as a Means of Grace (3)

Introduction and Review of Means of Grace

0:02 The following message was delivered on Sunday evening, May 9th, 1993, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:13 Now as I indicated this morning, our study in the Word of God tonight would constitute a continuation of this morning's message, and I believe I have seen at least two or three who are present with us tonight who were not with us this morning, and I regret that I cannot go back over and cover the ground that was considered as we gathered in the presence of God here in the morning hour. But as we pray for God's help, I have prepared a very brief and succinct review, and I trust this will help you, especially if you are with us tonight and were not with us this morning,

0:58 so that you will not be completely lost as to where... where the preacher has been, where he is, and where he is going in the ministry of the Word of God.

1:10 So let us pray and ask God's special help as we come to the ministry of the Word. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for each man, woman, boy, and girl gathered in this place tonight, and we confess our confidence that we are not here simply because we decided to come, or our parents decided to bring us, or for some other human reason, but that we are here ultimately because you have purposed and sovereignly drawn us to this place,

1:50 and we pray that out of your perfect knowledge of our hearts, you would indeed minister to us through your Word. We pray especially for those who are visiting with us, and who were not present for the previous, meditations and the theme that will again be addressed. Give special help to them and to your servant, that he may be able in a relatively brief time to highlight where we have been and where we are going. And then, our Father, we pray that as we address this very critical subject again, that the Holy Spirit would write your Word upon our hearts,

2:33 that as a people we may be moved, marked as those whose response to trials, afflictions, tribulations, and your loving, fatherly chastisement of us is a response that parallels the Scriptures. O Lord, deliver us from every carnal perspective and every sinful response to these dark and pressuring providences. Hear us and help us, we plead, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

3:09 We are presently dealing, in our study of the Scriptures, with what I have called a manifesto of Trinity Baptist Church, which has been an attempt to bring into sharp focus those fundamental spiritual perspectives which have acted as the very life and soul of our twenty-five, now twenty-six, years, which have acted as the very life and soul of our twenty-five, now twenty-six, years, of life and ministry together as a congregation. And we are presently looking at the ninth affirmation in that manifesto,

3:52 and more particularly one aspect of that affirmation, namely, that in living the Christian life there are no effective substitutes for the divinely appointed means of grace. That is, when we find in the Scriptures that God has appointed certain disciplines, relationships, and activities as a means to nurture in His people the life He has imparted to His people, no substitutes conceived by any man, however sincere he may be,

4:33 can effectually advance the work of grace in the souls of God's people. And we have looked at what some of those means of grace are. We have considered the place of private prayer, the personal assimilation of the Scriptures, and we are now concerned with the place of grace, or the trials brought into our lives by God, along with afflictions, along with providences, and that which Hebrews 12 describes as God's fatherly,

5:16 chastisement of His people.

First Principle: View Trials with Biblical Realism

5:21 To concentrate our attention upon this means of grace, namely, trials, afflictions, and the fatherly chastisement of His children, we have established from the Scriptures that these things are part and parcel of all normal, intended by God as a means of grace. We have seen from the Scriptures that they do not operate automatically as a means of grace. It is only when we respond to our trials,

6:04 our afflictions, chastisements, in a biblical manner, that these things advance. The Lord, from another generation, has stated it in His commentary on the book of Hebrews, and here let it be distinctly understood that it is not affliction, but a presented action, unto be, as the chastisement of the Lord. The natural effect of affliction

6:48 on an unsanctified mind is either to irritate or depress. Instead of promoting, it hinders spiritual improvement entirely. Ignorance and unbelief and amnesty of the person afflicted, and even with regard to Christians, it is true that it is just in the proportion as they regard and improve affliction as the chastisement of the Lord, that affliction will promote,

7:25 as we ought to handle, I will in providences, that we will indeed find them to be a means of grace. What we did was turn to the scriptures to see the first of these constitutes from the scriptures that we must view these things

8:07 in formed biblical realism. The score is 1, 2 to 4, Hebrews 12, 5 to 11, and Romans 5 in verse, 3, all passages indicated that it is only when we certain things

8:50 able to count it all joy when we fall into manifold trials lovingly to our Father's discipline and even in the language of Paul to its kind of response to these afflictive or pinching providences which will cause them under the blessing of God

9:23 and to be must we view these things with a well-informed but secondly, means of grace

Second Principle: Submit to the Sovereign God as Father

9:45 I did not say must submit to the sovereignty of God. You see, the sovereignty of God is an attribute or a characteristic of God. Sovereignty of God is a theological concept

10:28 rooted in the scriptures. The sovereignty of God asserts without reservation such truths as those stated in Ephesians 1, 11. He works the counsel of his own will. 11, 36, in which we are feeling the pressure of affliction,

11:07 in which we are feeling the God, sovereign God himself, who is our loving Father,

11:49 which so clearly appears in Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12. In this section, in which the writer to the Hebrews is, gently with pastoral skill, reminding his readers that there are certain truths already revealed in scripture that they have forgotten to apply to their present difficult, afflictive providences. He tells them in verse 9, Furthermore, we have had the fathers of our flesh

12:33 to chasten us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? He has chastened us, as seemed good to them, but he, for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. He reminded them from the book of Proverbs that they had forgotten this truth.

13:07 Verse 5, My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved of him, for whom the Lord loves, and scourges every son whom he receives, and goes on to say that chastening is a badge and an affirmation of our sonship. He then draws a comparison between the response that we gave to our earthly fathers in this passage called the fathers of our flesh, our earthly fathers who chastened us, and what response did we give to them. The Bible says we gave,

13:51 not saying that every son and every daughter who is justly and righteously chastened by his parents gives reverence to those parents. No, the Bible does. The kids should remember that incident in the book of Deuteronomy where the parents brought what appears to be a son in his late teenage years or perhaps even having just passed out of his teenage years, and they bring him to the elders and they say, he's encouraged sins from the glutton.

14:35 He is disciplined, saying that every single earthly son or daughter gave reverence to a loving, concerned, principled parent who disciplined and chastened that child for his good.

14:58 He is saying the ordinary course of response

15:44 is reverence, not the sovereignty of God, but unto the sovereign God, who is our Father. Shall we not be in subjection unto the Father of Spirits? Now, the exegetes debate the precise nature of this unique terminology, Father of Spirits, but I find my judgment flowing with those who say

16:29 it is the contrast between our earthly fathers, the fathers of our flesh, and our... It's clear that it's a reference to God, and God is our Father, and God...

16:54 Shall we not much rather be in subjection

18:03 to smenting on part of the text?

18:47 There is a very striking contrast between our human and divine fathers. Fathers of our flesh is we've had natural parents. They chastened us. They had a right to do so, and they did so.

19:02 Strained us. They asked to submit to chastisement, be much more obviously reasonable and right, to submit to the chastisement of the Father of our spirit, not so much the creator of our immortal minds who breathed into our nostrils the breath of life, but our spiritual father as opposed to our natural fathers, he to whom we are indebted for spiritual and eternal life. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto him?

19:46 Now, to be in subjection to our spiritual father is a phrase of extensive importance. It denotes an act of essence in his sovereign right to do what he will as his own, a renunciation of self-will, an acknowledgment of his righteousness and wisdom in all of his dealings with us, a sense of his care and love, with a due apprehension of the end of his chastisement, a diligent application of ourselves unto his mind and will, or to what he wills, or to what he calls us to in an especial manner at that season,

20:29 a keeping of our souls by persevering faith from weariness and despondency, a full resignation of ourselves to his will as to the matters of our afflictions. In one word, be subject. Additional motive to this subjection is contained in the final clause. Notice it.

21:11 And live. Shall we not? Be in subjection to the father of spirits and live. Live here is equivalent to be happy.

21:21 Subjection to the father of our spirits when he chastens us is the own satisfaction, the childlike submission to divine chastisement, a conscious union of mind and will with God, which is far superior to any earthly pleasure, and it is in a patient suffering as well as in a persevering doing of the will of God. His children arrive in due time at glory,

22:04 even its most perfect form. So if you and I are to find our trials, our tribulations, and God's paternal chastisement a means of grace, we must not only view these things with a well-informed biblical understanding of certain things about them, but we must, as a sovereign God, when he brings us to the Lord,

The Cost of Non-Submission and Owen's Insights

22:49 in a limitable way, takes up this concept, and takes action to him as the father of our spirits, and says it is parallel to Peter's word in 1 Peter 5, 6, to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. And then he makes reference to that disobedient son in Deuteronomy 21, 18-21, the one who refused the discipline of his parents, and what was the result? He was stoned to death. Overtones of that passage.

23:25 If the price paid for an Israelite son who would not be in subjection to his earthly father's discipline was death, he says, what does it mean? Dejection to God in the midst of his afflictive dealings with us, in his disciplinary rod upon us. He says it involves one in his right and sovereignty to do what he wills,

24:05 to have the right, you see, to object. This morning the wind is at our back, and the warmth of the sun upon our cheek, and our road is smooth, and someone walks up, taps you on the shoulder and says,

24:48 you believe in the sovereignty of God, you say, oh, 1689 confession, I believe in the sovereignty of God, but let that sovereign God lay his rod, lay his rod upon you in a way that blasts your fairest, at your feet, given your life for, with respect to your business, your career, everything you've prepared yourself to be as a husband or a wife,

25:31 and all of it lies shattered. How will you fall? The story then is, that's exactly what we're called to. God is precise.

26:10 God calls us to, Owen says, an acquiescing in his right and sovereignty to do what he will with his own. Secondly, he says, an acknowledgement of his righteousness and his wisdom in all of his dealings with us. To say, oh God, you are never arbitrary, you are never capricious in your dealings, and though I may not be able to make any sense out of your dealings with me, and my own in this particular discipline, this trial, this affliction, whatever it may be, whatever form it may have,

26:50 to say that God is both right and wise in what he does. Thirdly, Owen says, it means to have a sense of his care and love, with a due apprehension of the goal of his chastisements. This is the God who so loved us as to give his only begotten son. It's not a different God.

27:14 The God who loved us when there was nothing lovable in us, when all that we were, and all that we have been, and all that we have ever been, called forth wrath and judgment, yet sovereignly set his love upon us. Has he become a different God because he's brought a stroke upon us that we cannot understand or comprehend? Then Owen goes on to give three or four other practical suggestions that constitute

27:50 what it really means to be in submission to the Father of Spirits. And he says, where these things are not in some degree, we are casting off the yoke of God, we are not in subjection to him, and that is the land inhabited by the sons of Belial. We then act like carnal men, Romans 8, 7, who are not subject, to the law of God. The carnal mind that is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be.

28:29 As one has tersely expressed it, it is inexcusable to murmur at an act of love whom the Lord loves he chases. It is inexcusable to murmur at an act of love. It is treason not to submit to heaven's sovereign. Two beautiful examples of this in the Old Testament.

Biblical Examples of Submission: Job and David

28:54 Perhaps you have already thought of them. Job chapter 1. Here is someone whose afflictions, whose trials, whose tribulations, whose chastisement knows bounds beyond perhaps that which any other human being ever knew, save the incarnate God-man Christ Jesus. And yet in one day, when this man, who was disciplined not for any sin in his life, but because of the consistent godliness of his life,

29:36 chastened not because there was some blatant inconsistency, but chastened because he was so consistent in his godliness. It was God who challenged Satan, saying, Have you considered my servant Job? When in one day he is bereft of all of his family except his wife, all of his possessions, what did he do? Verse 20 of chapter 1.

30:09 Then Job arose and rent his robe and shaved his head. You see, he wasn't a stoic. When God brings chastening of such a nature that brings grief and pain and heartache, God does not call us to a stoic response, nor does God call us to an unnatural response. Job arose, rent his robe, shaved his head.

30:38 Those are all signs of mourning and grief, and fell down upon the ground. But through his grief and pain and anguish, what did he do? It says he worshipped. He ascribed infinite worth to God, and he said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb.

30:58 Naked shall I return thither. Jehovah gave. You see, he's dealing with the strokes of a loving, wise father. Jehovah gave.

31:11 Jehovah hath taken away. Blessed be the name of Jehovah. In all this, Job's nor charged God who in the midst of his affliction has learned what it is to submit afresh to his sovereign God as a loving father, even when his stroke lay heavy upon him. And then the other example in the life of David, the man after God's own heart.

31:50 Though he sinned so grievously, 2 Samuel chapter 12, 2 Samuel chapter 12, you remember the prophet came after a period of almost a year between his sin and his repentance. And after getting to his conscience through the use of a parable, he turns and says, You are the man, David. And David breaks and owns his sin. And then the prophet speaks to him and tells him, verse 14 of 2 Samuel 12, Howbeit because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child that is born unto you

32:33 shall surely die. And Nathan departed to his house. And the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bore unto David, and it was very sick. David therefore besought God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night upon the earth.

32:51 And the elders of his house arose and stood before him to raise him up from the earth, but he would not. Neither did he eat bread with them. And it came to pass on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, Behold, how the child was yet alive!

33:11 We spoke to him, and he hearkened not to our voice. How will he then vex himself if we tell him that the child is dead? Do you see their reasoning? If the man would not listen to us, we tried to pick him up off the earth and from his apparent total fast for seven days, if he was swallowed up with such grief, while the child was still breathing and while there was still warmth upon his cheek and color in his flesh.

33:37 If he was that grieved while the child was alive, what will he do if we now tell him the child is dead? Will he go out of his mind? Will he go mad? And they are discussing this among themselves.

33:50 And David sees what they are doing. Verse 19, But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, after David perceived that the child was dead, and David said to his servants, Is the child dead? And they said, He is dead. Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his apparel, and he came into the house of Jehovah and worshiped.

34:28 Was he heartless? Was he indifferent? Was he someone having killed his tens of thousands? Was he utterly insensitive to the death of the child?

34:38 No! For seven days and nights he lay upon the earth, fasting and weeping and pleading with God. Even though God had said to the prophet that the child's life would be taken, David's attitude was and his knowledge of the ways of God was such that often God's pronouncements of judgment are a call to seek God that the very judgment pronounced may be averted. And so as long as there was life, he pleads with God earnestly with fastings and prayers.

35:12 But when the will of God in this fastisment finally comes and the rod falls and the color is gone from the little one's cheek, and no longer is there the warmth of life and it's evident the child is dead, David, gets up from the earth, bathes himself, anoints himself with oil, changes his apparel, puts on apparel fitting for the place of God's special presence and he came into the house of God and he...

35:53 One picture's worth a thousand words, dear people. He was being submissive to the Father of Spirits and lived. And that's what God calls you to. That's what God calls me to.

Poetic Expression of Submission and Trust

36:14 That's what God calls all of us to. If our afflictions and trials and tribulations and God's paternal chastisement is to be a means of grace, we must not only view those things with a well-informed Biblical realism, but we must submit afresh to our sovereign God and loving Father when he brings them upon us. Margaret Clarkson, a godly Christian woman who spent her life in singleness and in the service of God as a Christian school teacher, but also as a writer and a poet in what I think is her finest book,

36:59 Grace Grows Best in Winter, taken from a phrase out of the writings of Samuel Rutherford. There are a number of her own poems and hymns in that book, and one of them so wonderfully captures this principle. It's brief, but it's profound. It's entitled, In Darkness.

37:21 In faithfulness hast thou afflicted me, O sovereign love. I will not fear, but look in faith to thee, enthroned above. And know my Father's heart of grace has planned this darkness that I cannot understand. I rest in thee, though human tears may fall in sorrow's hour.

37:48 Upon thy faithfulness I cast my all, and claim thy power to work eternal wealth of holy gain from this deep night of loneliness and pain. In faithfulness thou hast afflicted me, most gracious one. In faithfulness may I accept from thee this thou hast done. For thou thy gifts of darkness dost impart, but to disclose the fullness of thy heart.

38:27 You see what she did? She learned not to point her finger to an abstract doctrine, but to fall at the feet of a living, loving, sovereign God and Father. And that's where you and I must also go. And in that will be our safety and our sanctification.

Third Principle: Plead for God's Purposes to be Accomplished

38:57 But then thirdly and more briefly, we must not only view these things with a well-informed biblical realism, submit afresh to our sovereign God and loving Father when He brings them upon us, but we must plead with God that the special purposes of God in these things may be accomplished in us. We must plead with God that the special purposes of God in these things may be accomplished in us. Now sometimes the affliction, the discipline of God, the chastisement of God

39:41 will come as an obvious chastisement for blatant sin. In other words, when the trial comes, when the affliction comes, when the tribulation comes, when that set of circumstances or incident comes to pass, we are caught as it were with our hand in a cookie jar and we know exactly why it's come. There's no question in our minds. For example, with the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, they had been guilty of gross disorders at the Lord's table.

40:18 Some were coming into the Lord's table staggering, blethering, blubbering drunk. That's what He said. Some of you come drunk. Others of you come hungry.

40:33 They were turning the Lord's table into a horrible, horrible charade. And He says because of this, verse 29, 1 Corinthians 11, He that eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he discern not the body, if you're not coming to the Lord's table with all of your faculties intact and with your mind and spirit filled with the spiritual realities that are represented at that table, He says you're eating and drinking judgment to yourself for this cause many among you are weak and sickly and not a few sleep. But if we discerned or discriminated ourselves

41:17 we should not be judged. But when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world. Now if you were sitting there the day this letter was read and you had in the last few months been one of those who was coming half drunk to the Lord's table taking the bread in the cup and treating it as common food and drink and you had also in that similar period of time come down with a strange malady and you couldn't figure it out and the doctors couldn't understand it and you heard this letter read for this cause many are weak and sickly among you. I tell you it wouldn't need

42:02 to be a profound exercise in spiritual searching of heart to say Lord there's the answer and immediately know that God was chastening you for that particular sin. You were caught with your hand in the cookie jar just like David. David was caught with his hand in the cookie jar and the prophet came and said you're the man David and because of this and because your sin has been emblazoned abroad the child will lose its life. David could clearly discern the chastening hand of God and therefore it's relatively easy in those situations to plead that the special purpose of God might be accomplished.

42:45 In those cases it is oh God give me thorough repentance for the sin that has brought your rod upon my back. Those situations are obvious. However there are other times when manifold trials come and to the best of our knowledge our hand is not in the cookie jar. We can say with the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 4 I know nothing against myself.

43:14 We're not living with a bloodied conscience. We are not walking in any known way of disobedience to the law of God. We are not knowingly deliberately omitting any known duty laid upon us by the word of God. So what are we to do?

Praying for Wisdom and Blind Submission

43:31 Well it's interesting if you turn back to James 1 apparently James anticipated this very problem. For after telling us in verse 2 to count it all joy when we fall into manifold trials knowing well informed judgment about the purpose of God that the proving of your faith works patience and let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and entire lacking in nothing. What is his next word? But if any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God.

44:12 And what's the most immediate connection of this asking for wisdom? Well it's obvious. It's asking for wisdom in conjunction with our commitment to respond as we ought to our manifold trials Lord. I know that the trials come to put my faith to the test to the end that I might have worked in me the grace of steadfastness and that as that grace is worked in me I will come more and more to wholeness and to relative Christian perfection lacking in nothing but oh God this series of afflicted circumstances

44:56 these pinching galling providences this long drawn out agony of singleness when I've prayed for a husband I've prayed for a wife this long drawn out agony of this affliction that the doctors cannot seem to identify that makes it difficult for me to pray and to meditate and to profit from it and on and on we could go and you don't know how it can work to the proving of faith and in turn to the increase of patience and to that pattern of maturity what are you to do

45:39 you're to cry to God and say oh Lord give me wisdom I don't ask to peek into your secret decrees I don't ask to see the whole scroll of your purpose for the ages and how these circumstances are woven into that fabric that spans eternity but oh God give me the measure of wisdom needed to respond as I ought to know what grace you are seeking to increase in me through this trial what sin you may be seeking to mortify that I'm not even aware of we must plead with God

46:22 that the special purposes of God in these things may be accomplished in us and to that end let me suggest in a very practical way first of all engage in prayer that the genuinely revealed purposes will be fulfilled let the word of God frame your prayers Lord you've said that manifold trials are sent for the proving of my faith to work patience oh God manifold trials are upon me may they work to the end that you have here revealed in your word or turn to Hebrews 12 Lord you have said that

47:05 you are chastening your children to the end that we might be partakers of your holiness oh Lord grant me more of your holiness grant me more of the fruits of righteousness oh Lord do in me what you've said these things are sent to accomplish pray that the genuinely revealed purposes will be fulfilled but then secondly pray for wisdom to respond as you ought to James 5.13 says is any among you afflicted let him pray the throne of grace is open to us and we can go to the God

47:48 who has brought the afflictions through whatever secondary means he has used and we can ask him that he would indeed grant us wisdom to respond as we ought wisdom to identify if we're to know now sometimes we are not to know we are simply to submit to the Father of our spirits and say God I don't have a clue as to what you're doing but I know you know and that's all I need to know and then lo and behold six months six years later a set of circumstances comes to pass and then it's as plain as the noonday sun

48:32 and you say ah now I see God who comforted us in all our tribulations that we might be able to comfort others God was laying up in store in your own soul the felt experience of that period of unusual testing that concentrated pressure of affliction because he knew six years later he was going to bring someone into your life who would in agony of soul bare his or her heart and say has anybody ever gone through this? is there any light at the end of the tunnel? you can put your hands on their shoulder

49:15 look them straight in the eye and say yes there is I'm living proof then and only then does it become plain what God was purposing but we can pray that he would grant us wisdom to respond as we ought grace to submit blindly when no light comes even as with Job and as his trials increase one of the most moving sections in all of the book of Job is found in chapter 23 and this illustrates the principle Job has gotten no light from God

49:58 he's gotten no light from his friends he says if I could even find God I'd lay out my arguments before him and I would as it were prosecute my own case in the court of heaven he says I go forward verse 8 and he's not there and backward and I can't perceive him on the left hand when he does work but I can't behold him he hides himself on the right hand I can't see him God's dealing with me but I can't find him to get an answer to the question why is he dealing with me as he is but then look at verses 10 to 12 but he knows the way that I take

50:41 when he has tried me I shall come forth as gold and though I'm in darkness as to what he's doing I know that he's doing it to purify me and bring me as gold out of the fire and then he says meanwhile my foot hath held fast to his steps his way have I kept and turned not aside I've not gone back from the commandments of his lips I've treasured up the words of his mouth more than my necessary food you see there are some of you so rottenly petulant if God doesn't give you an answer as to why he's dealing with you the way he is you go sulk

51:25 and get out of the ways of God and the law of God and the powers of God shame on you God's worthy to be obeyed when I cannot see him or find him for he is God and he is my salvation father and he sent his son to die for me and there our stand must be taken but we can pray that God might be pleased to give us light and then thirdly we can do what Lamentations 3 40 and 41 enjoins the people of God to do in a period of great affliction we can give ourselves to a season of intense self-examination

The Temporal Nature of Chastisement and Warning Against Heresy

52:09 I didn't say morbid introspection but a period of intense spiritual self-examination you remember the city is lying in devastation from the judgment of God upon it and yet in Lamentations 3 40 and 41 we read let us search and try our ways and turn again to Jehovah let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens there is a time to search and to try our ways to make Psalm 139 23 and 24 our prayers search me oh God and know my heart

52:52 try me and know my thoughts see if there be any wicked way or way of pain in me and lead me in the way everlasting sometimes seasons of affliction and trials and tribulation and paternal discipline from the hand of our father are God's way of getting our attention because our hearts have become insensitive to certain things and God wants them uncovered that we might deal with them and so in addition to viewing these with a well-informed biblical realism submitting afresh to our sovereign God and loving father when he brings them upon us we must plead with God

53:37 that the special purposes of God in these things may be accomplished in us again Owen so beautifully stated he said if we do not learn the lesson of our afflictions all we have for those afflictions is the memory of the pain that's all we've got no profit no partaking of his holiness and in my final application I want again to quote from Owen who said moreover this fatherly discipline pertains only to the present life there's no chastisement in heaven nor in hell

54:20 not in heaven because there's no sin we won't need any chastisement and as I've been trying to come up with a simple working description that would not be an artificial or limited description of what these things are in their total complex the trials the afflictions the tribulations the divine chastisement one thing I know whatever they are they are all limited to this present life and to conditions in this present life there'll be none of them in heaven for the things which precipitate them are not needed there for we shall be like him and Owen has said no chastisement in heaven not in heaven

55:05 because there is no sin but not in hell because there is no amendment chastisement is a companion of them that are in the way and only of them whom the Lord loves he chastens dear child of God chastisement however it comes to us is a badge of honor it's God's seal upon our sonship and his commitment to make us like his son partakers of his holiness if you're without chastening it proves that you're outside the orbit of God's committed love

55:49 and in hell there is no chastisement there is nothing but pure unmixed retribution for sin the fiery indignation of God that does not have in view the correction the improvement of the sinner no my friend hell is pure unmixed justice poured out in the wrath of God forever I'd far rather go to heaven with stripes upon my back than a thousand unanswered questions in my mind and heart as to why God did this and what he was doing with that knowing that I now know in part

56:33 and understand in part but then face to face I shall know even as I am known I'd rather go to heaven with my stripes and my unanswered questions but know that I'm on my way to heaven than either to sit back in arrogance and say unless I can understand how a good God does this to his people and how a good God does this why should I serve a God like that my friend I marvel God lets you breathe your next breath puny little worm of the dust who are you to question the ways of God that God in mercy has kept you breathing he has sent out the gospel of his son another day in this place

57:17 oh my friend go to this God and through the Lord Jesus come to know him as your father a father who is committed to care for us to keep us protect us and ultimately to stamp upon us the family likeness until we shall be in the language of scripture those who surround Christ the firstborn and we will be his brethren and the family likeness will pervade every single one of his brethren well may the Lord help us that as we commit ourselves to the biblical truth that there are no substitutes for the divinely appointed means of grace

58:02 take your health wealth and prosperity nonsense and send it back to the pit from whence it came people offering a brand of the Christian life which would rip out one of God's major means to make us like Christ a horrible thing don't look upon it as an innocent aberration it is rotten stinking God denying Christ defying heresy can only land people either in disillusionment because if they are true children of God in spite of what these guys promised them God is still going to beat up on them

Concluding Prayer and Exhortation

58:45 to make them like his son or at worst it is so deceptive heresy that people love to believe and they believe a lie the scripture says and they are damned may God help us to respond as we are to his loving father Jesus loving fatherly chastisement let us pray our father we are so thankful that as our loving father you do order every circumstance in our lives to the end that your purpose to make us like your son may be advanced in us we confess that so often

59:29 our purpose runs counter to yours we live to be comfortable to be happy to be secure to be accepted to be loved by our fellow men and yet oh Lord you are prepared to subject us to pain to disappointment to shame grief slander not because you delight to afflict but because you do delight to see the image of your son reflected in us and though he were a son we know he learned obedience by the things which he suffered oh forgive us that we thought we could learn obedience in any other way minister especially to those of your saints among us

60:14 who have come into manifold trials lengthy trials trials that greet them when they wake with their first thought in the morning trials that steal their sleep in the night oh God minister comfort to their hearts and may they respond to these trials as your word directs them and thereby find their sanctifying influence to be real have mercy upon those our God who go slithering along on that slippery slope into hell

60:58 oh God arrest them deal with them we pray give them no rest until they have turned from their smug selves satisfied ways and cast themselves upon your mercy as held forth in the Lord Jesus seal your word to our hearts and bring it to our remembrance when we most need it we ask in Jesus name Amen