All Things For Good: Chap. 2 Pt. 4

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Hermeneutics: Matthew Chap 24 Pt. 5

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All right, so we are continuing in all things for good. We are still in chapter two, because it's just chock full of good stuff.

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And we've been considering four, four evils that work for good, as Thomas Watson is explaining to us how even the worst things work for good to the godly.

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And so we discussed in depth affliction, and last week we spoke about temptation, and now this week we'll be discussing the evil of desertion.

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So I'm going to read the section, and I'll share some thoughts, but this is interactive.

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If you have questions, if you have comments, please raise your hand, or if I don't see you, just call out, and we'll consider this topic together.

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So number three, the evil of desertion works for good to the godly. The evil of desertion works for good.

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The spouse complains of desertion. My beloved hath withdrawn himself and was gone.

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There's a twofold withdrawn, either in regard of grace, when God suspends the influence of his spirit and withholds the lively actings of grace.

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If the spirit is gone, grace freezes into a chillness and indolence, or a withdrawing in regard of comfort, when

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God withholds the sweet manifestations of his favor. He does not look with such a pleasant aspect, but veils his face and seems to be quite gone from the soul.

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God is just, he goes on, in all his withdrawings. We desert him before he deserts us.

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We desert God. When we leave off close communion with him, when we desert his truths and dare not appear to him, when we leave the guidance and conduct of his word and follow the deceitful light of our own corrupt affections and passions, we desert

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God first, therefore we have none to blame but ourselves. This is a long section here,

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I'm going to keep reading and we'll come back. Desertion is very sad, for as when the light is withdrawn, darkness follows in the air.

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So when God withdraws, there is darkness and sorrow in the soul. Desertion is an agony of conscience.

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God holds the soul over hell. The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinks up my spirits.

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It was a custom among the Persians in their wars to dip their arrows in the poison of serpents to make them more deadly.

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Thus did God shoot the poisoned arrow of desertion into Job, under the wounds of which his spirit lay bleeding.

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In times of desertion, the people of God are apt to be dejected. They dispute among themselves and think that God has quite cast them off.

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Therefore, I shall prescribe some comfort to the deserted soul. The mariner, when he has no star to guide him, yet he has light in his lantern, which is some help to him to see his compass.

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So I shall lay down four consolations, which are the mariner's lantern, to give some light when the poor soul is sailing in the darkness of desertion and needs the bright morning star.

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Okay, that's a bunch of stuff, but I wanted to finish. Sorry, I just want to put this on silent.

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I wanted to finish that thought. But before that we get into the consolations, let's talk about the evil of desertion.

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When he references, what is that?

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Canticles? Canticle of Canticles. Thank you. The Song of Solomon. It's a Song of Solomon. I think, no, actually, because I looked up the reference and it was...

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It's a Song of Solomon? It's a Song of Solomon, yes. I thought it was an apocryphal book called

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Canticle. I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't know if Thomas Watson would use the apocryphal book to share something.

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That's a good question. You know, it's interesting when you hear about the Puritans talking about desertion and it almost seems like there's feelings.

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And what, did the Puritans have feelings back then? That's not how we view them. But the

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Puritans had a thriving relationship with the Lord, vibrant, you know.

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They had deep feeling. And if anyone gives them a fair read in their writings, you see that, that they were on fire for the

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Lord. And so, they understood these things about the idea of worship and drawing near to God in prayer and having communion with him.

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And I think that's something that is either, there's a ditch on both sides of the road, right?

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We have some of our brethren who seem to be all about feeling and not enough, you know, we might complain grounded in the word and grounded in truth.

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And then you have the other ditch on the other side, the frozen chosen, where we have all the doctrine and none of the emotion.

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And it's packaged one way or another. But again, these are ditches on both sides of the road. We should have a deep relationship with the

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Lord. We should feel his presence, you know, just recognizing he is always with us.

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And we should be aware of that and viewing life through the lens of understanding his presence is with us, his comfort is with us.

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I think sometimes we recognize it the most in times of trouble. He mentions about the withdrawing of comfort.

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And so, the twofold withdrawing that he says, God suspends the influence of his spirit and withholds the lively actings of grace.

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And then grace freezes into chillness and indolence and things just seem wrong. They seem off.

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And then there's times where we're not seeing comfort. We're dealing with difficult things and it doesn't seem, there's no assurance.

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There's no reassurance. And so we feel as though we have been deserted.

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You know, we consider some of the psalmists crying out to God and in their humanity, but here the

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Holy Spirit is still authoring this and he says, you know, wake up, you know, how long will you be far off?

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And these are the people of God crying out to him, feeling very much deserted. And yet you continue to go through the psalm and you come to the understanding that while they struggled, they recognized their doctrine was pure, that God was not far off, though at times it felt like it.

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And so we have this and Job who was struggling and not feeling comfort and we'll talk later on about Christ, you know, for that momentary desertion.

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But this is something that a Christian who, we'll get into a little bit with the terms of the consolation, but you might very well find yourself feeling deserted at times in your walk, feeling as though God was far off and not feeling the same presence, the same favor that you once did.

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We should be somewhat concerned if we never have this feeling, if we're just straight through even, how much are we reflecting on God and on his goodness?

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Are we basking in his presence and then having those times of sweet community where we feel like, oh,

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God is blessing and he's close and he's doing that or other times there's more difficult. Now, hopefully desertion is not something that we feel often, right?

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This is something where, as Thomas Watson mentions, there's usually a reason behind the desertion.

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We've deserted God first. We have gone astray and then we realize that he seems to be astray from us.

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Go ahead, Maria. No, right, it's like he is faithfulness and steadfast and he is and he's unchangeable so it's always us.

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Right, right. I mean, the reality is he is always there, right?

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But there are times where we don't feel his comfort. And so dealing with that feeling, dealing with that sort of awareness of a change in things or at least it feels that way and he's going to give us some comfort to consider it and to go through it.

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Jerry. One of the things I remember way back when I was in my early teens, I attended a

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Southern Baptist Church. One of the sayings that I remember hearing was, do you feel far from God?

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Guess who moved? Right. You know, because so often people say, well, God's left me. He's abandoned me.

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He's forgotten me. Yes. Not at all. Right, of course not. Even if we are faithless, you know, he is always faithful, right?

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He cannot betray himself and his own character, his own principles. But consider the song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 6, where the spouse complains, my beloved has withdrawn himself and was gone.

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And so we talked about the two different types of withdrawing and Thomas Watson makes it clear, as Jerry pointed out, if you feel far off from God, take a look around because guess who moved?

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The Lord is just in all his withdrawings. We desert him before he deserts us. We desert him in many ways and in many times and we have none to blame but ourselves.

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Desertion is sad. When the light is withdrawn and God is light, darkness always follows.

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And so he talks about the agony of conscience and talking about Job, feeling as though not only was he shot through with arrows, but those arrows were poisoned and he was just, he was in bitterness and despair.

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Poison arrows making them deadlier. The Saint is liable to think that they have been completely cast off, but there is comfort.

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And so that is what we're going to, you know, as we consider the topic of the book, all things work for good.

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We've considered the bad news, the bad circumstances that we are struggling with, but where is the comfort?

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And I really appreciate what he said about the Mariner, you know, where the clouds have descended, you can't see the stars, but you got a lantern and you can see the compass and we know that the word is a light, right, to our path.

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I just wanted to make one more comment. Sure. The abandonment that we were talking about just a minute ago.

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With Ezekiel, for instance, when God deserted the temple, he left the temple. Right.

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He left the people that were still in Jerusalem. However, he went to the people in exile.

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Right. The people in exile were still living wicked, wicked life, but there was a remnant.

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There was. So he did not desert his people. Right. He doesn't desert his people. So there are times where we're dealing with feelings, you know, and we're not, we're not

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Stoics. We do struggle with feelings and emotions. But what is our consolation?

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And how do we respond? And how can we turn even these difficult times, find comfort and reorient ourselves back towards the

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Lord? So before I get into the consolations, are there questions or comments? Any more questions or comments?

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I should say. No, not yet. Okay, very good.

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Oh, I'm sorry, Mike. Go ahead. He has a moment of desertion, right?

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Yeah, and we're going to get into that later on and discuss that.

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But that was desertion, right? He, I mean, not that the Lord is no longer there.

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But as he, as a benediction, is his face shining upon him? Or is he, he's taken on our sin and the

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Father has turned away. I mean, hell is not, hell is not the absence of God, but it is the absence of his favor, of his grace.

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There's no more common grace there. There's no more, even the common comfort for the unbeliever to have the ability to go on each day.

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Because the unbeliever still has a hope of sorts, right? Each day we have another breath and we can hope things will get better.

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When that time comes, there'll be no more hope. The aspect, in my mind, of who feels deserted or feels like he's been separated or he doesn't feel that comfort, one would hope that they would compare that to the time when they were in comfort and when they were in God, you know, what they felt was

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God's light. But unfortunately, sometimes our sin causes us to be blinded to that.

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Okay. Yeah, you guys are already touching on some of the things that we're going to cover. So before you get too far ahead of me, we'll start considering these constellations.

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I really, again, appreciate how he said that the sailor depends on, you know, the mariner, the sailor depends on the stars for guidance, at least way back when, before all the fancy technology.

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But even without it, if you have a lantern to see the compass, to know which direction you're headed, and we have that lantern in the

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Word of God, we are not ever without hope. And so let's read the first constellation.

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None but the godly are capable of desertion. Wicked men do not know what

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God's love means, nor what it is to lack it. They know what it is to lack health, friends, trade, business, but not what it is to lack

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God's favor. You fear that you are not God's child because you are deserted. The Lord cannot be said to withdraw his love from the wicked because they never had it.

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The being deserted evidences you to be a child of God. How could you complain that God has estranged himself if you had not sometimes received smiles and tokens of love from him?

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Not yet. All right. So to feel the desertion of God is a contrast because you felt something else before.

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You felt his favor. You felt his blessings. You felt his love.

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And for a believer, you hopefully have a contrast. I know it might be a little bit more difficult, perhaps, although I don't know if we give him enough credit sometimes, for younger people.

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You know, if you were raised in the church, you're raised in a Christian home, you get saved at an early age.

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And for some of us we think, oh, we hear, you know, perhaps the dramatic testimonies of people who are saved out of all sort of wretched sin.

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And they have this huge contrast going from being an unbeliever and a rebel against God to being saved and just feeling the difference in their life, seeing how

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God has changed them. They really understand what it means that their desires and affections have changed and they have felt the love of God and it's a dramatic change.

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And so sometimes young people growing up at the church and they get saved at an early age like, I don't know, because they never felt and they're almost like our

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Presbyterian brother who's like, I always loved God since I grew up. I grew up loving God and they couldn't even tell you when their conversion was necessarily because they just always had this understanding.

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Go ahead, Alex. I think there may be potentially, especially young people who do grow up in families, a danger of perhaps, because even though a child who is raised in a

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Christian home, but not saved, they could still feel the love of God upon the family.

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Right. So that's not an assurance of salvation. That's right. That should be kept in mind as well. That's a good point.

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Excellent point. God doesn't have grandchildren. That is the truth. Yeah, you know, getting to the point where coming to embrace reform theology, and I remember talking to some

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Presbyterian brethren and talking about, you know, covenant children and all their covenant children because they were baptized.

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Like, no, you can still be a covenant child because you are in a home with at least one person who is in covenant with God.

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And so that family is under the blessing of God for the sake of one spouse, you know, ideally both.

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But there, they are in relationship with God. They're a child of God. They have blessings from God and there's certain protection and graces that go along with that.

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How much more so if both parents are saved, if both parents are living for the Lord. That household is a blessed household because they have the gospel, because they have

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Christ, because they have the Holy Spirit. And so yeah, you can be a young person growing up in that situation and thinking, look,

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I'm a child of God. Well, that's why, you know, as Baptists, we want to encourage you to know, understand, you know,

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God has been gracious to you just like he was to all the children of Israel. And when I say the children of Israel, I mean children of Jacob, all his descendants, the entire nation.

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They experienced so much kindness and yet some of them were destroyed for their unbelief. All the grace that they were given, all the truth that they had, all the blessings, and yet they still had hard hearts and God destroyed them.

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Christ destroyed them. And so we want to be aware.

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We want to be examining ourselves. We want to see if we're truly in the faith as we're encouraged to by the scriptures, but we can sometimes have that understanding.

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And sometimes I was saying, you can have children who do acknowledge and realize they're sinners and they've come to embrace the gospel, but they feel like there's not a big change in their life.

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But what they don't appreciate, they'll come to appreciate later on, especially if they do fall into sin, but how much more so that grace of God has been in their life.

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The person who's lived the life of a scoundrel for decades, how they wish they could go back and undo that time, how they wish they could have been saved at an earlier age and done more for the

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Lord or at least not carry so much scars and baggage and done so much harm. You have to recognize coming to faith at an early age is a blessing.

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But you are responsible as well for your relationship with the Lord, for drawing close to him, not taking him for granted and not just like the

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Israelites of old, experiencing the blessings without giving him the glory, without giving him the gratitude. And yet, so if you have that relationship, you're going to have times, especially if you decide to live faithfully before him, where you're going to have difficulties and trials.

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And sometimes it comes from persecution, you know, and so you draw near to God and you find comfort in him.

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And then there's times where you're going your own way and you feel like I'm making a mess of things and I don't feel like the Lord is looking after me and perhaps he's just given us some leash to allow us to fall into our own hands and recognize how we need to turn back to God.

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Did I see a hand back there? Right.

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Right. Yeah, discussed that last time at certain areas with temptation and being foiled by temptation and there'll be some of that to still come even still because we're going to talk about desertion and we're going to talk about sin as the fourth thing, sin of others and sin of ourselves, where God can overrule and use it for good.

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But to come to the point, only the godly are capable of desertion.

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So if you've experienced the love and mercy of God, if you've had those times of sweet communion, if you've had times of feeling his favor, that can be an encouragement to you even in your desertion that you see the contrast, but that means that you have been in relationship with the

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Lord and this is temporary because you have experienced and we know that he who begins a good work will complete it.

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So he will bring us back to himself. Number two, there may be the seed of grace where there is not yet the flower of joy.

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The earth may lack a crop of grain yet may have a mind of gold within. A Christian may have grace within though the sweet fruit of joy does not grow.

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Vessels at sea which are richly fraught with jewels and spices may be in the dark and tossed in the storm.

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Tell you, Puritans are poets. You see the ground and you don't see anything growing and yet the seed is there or perhaps a mine of gold that's under the ground.

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That's just filled with riches and treasure and grace and the storm -tossed ship on the sea and yet it's loaded, you know, within with all things that are good.

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And so we can feel those times of darkness. We can feel like tossed and yet God is still there and there is still comfort to be had.

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I think there was more to say on this here. A soul enriched with the treasures of grace may yet be in the dark of desertion and so tossed as to think it shall be cast away in the storm.

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David in a state of dejection prays, take not your Holy Spirit from me.

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And he does not pray says Augustine, Augustine, Augustine, whichever your reformed preference is.

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Lord, he does not pray, Lord give me your spirit but take not away your spirit so that he still had the

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Spirit of God remaining in him. So that prayer, take not the

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Holy Spirit from me, restore the joy of my salvation, not give me salvation, but restore the joy of it, of being in right relationship with you and please don't take your

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Holy Spirit, which means he has the Holy Spirit. So though there was darkness, though there was trials and tribulations and in David's case, those of his own making and doing and often that's the case for us, all hope is not lost.

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There is still the Spirit of God within. Question or comment on that?

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No? Okay. Number three, these desertions are but for a time.

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Christ may withdraw and leave the soul a while, but he will come again. In a little wrath,

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I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on you. When it is low water, the tide will come in again.

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I will not always show my anger. The tender mother sets down her child in anger, but she will take it up again into her arms and kiss it.

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God may put away the soul in anger, but he will take it up again into his dear embraces and display his banner of love over it.

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Is there more on that? No, it's four. Okay. And again, for the believer, we are faithless, but he is always faithful.

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And so even though we might have times of feeling lost and abandoned, those times are temporary, you know, for the believer.

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And he gives some Old Testament examples and that's Isaiah 54. 8, not 64. 8.

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If you're searching for it, didn't think we'd get through a whole section here without a couple of errors in the numbers, right?

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But it says in an overflowing anger for a moment. I use the

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ESV to bring some of these out. I think he's using the King James, but in an overflowing anger for a moment.

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I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love, I will have compassion on you and Isaiah 57.

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16. I will not contend forever, nor will

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I always be angry. And so there are times where the consequences of our sins make us feel deserted because sometimes we're feeling the discipline.

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We're feeling that, you know, the curse is no longer on us. The condemnation is no longer there.

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But as I shared earlier in sermons in Jude, there are consequences to our sin and Hebrews 12 talks to us about, you know, being chastened as sons and disciplined as sons from the father.

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And if we weren't, we would be illegitimate children. And so even though there are times of consequences and times of perhaps feeling like God is far off just because we're experiencing our consequences and not just blessing, blessing, blessing in our sin, we can recognize that it is temporary.

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It's for a moment. And there again, we'll be embracing. I think Russ had a hand and then Jerry. Say again.

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What you just said and then going back to David, do you think it's proper for a believer to ask God not to take the

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Holy Spirit? Yeah, I should clarify that. He says restore the joy of my salvation, right?

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He's already saved. You know, he understands, you know, the forgiveness that's found in God and the grace that's found in God.

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When he says take not thy Holy Spirit from me, I don't think he's saying please don't take away my salvation.

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We associate salvation, rightly so, with the regeneration by the Holy Spirit and an indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit. And yet Old Testament workings of the

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Spirit versus New Testament. Think about Moses, where he had the Holy Spirit upon him and then

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God poured out the Spirit on 70 elders and they're prophesying in the camp and Joshua's like, stop them.

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He goes, I wish everyone had the Spirit, you know, because he's recognizing the

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Spirit, the Holy Spirit in the way that Moses had and the way David has.

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When God had work to do, he put an anointing of the

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Spirit on his people to do that. Saul had a different Spirit when he was prophesied over that he was going to be king and then

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God took his Spirit away. Did he have salvation and God took it? No. He would have seen that first hand, the

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Spirit that's part of his soul. Yeah, I mean David had intimate acquaintance with that. Because here

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David, Saul rather, was anointed and had God's anointing to do this work and to be this great king.

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And yet when the Holy Spirit departed from him, evil demon, you know, an evil

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Spirit had run of the house with him and tormented him and so much so that Saul was trying to pin

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David to the wall with his spear, spear, not Spirit. And so I think when he's saying that he's asking that the

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Lord would not remove him, not take away that anointing, not do that. And he's not talking about, you know, please don't take away my salvation.

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So we have the Holy Spirit as believers and yet we also have, you know, you see in Pentecost that the baptism of the

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Spirit and we don't hold to a second blessing, you know, as some of our brethren do and thinking that the baptism of the

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Spirit is somehow different from salvation. But we recognize that we have the Spirit upon us that we are to be working for the kingdom, you know, to be advancing it and we have this calling on us to serve.

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So does that make sense? Did I clear that up? Jerry? I was actually going to comment on that as well.

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But the other thought I had is that there's another side, is the idea of excommunication.

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In a sense, we kind of excommunicate ourselves sometimes because of our sin.

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Yeah. And the, you know, God uses that to bring us back to him.

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Any desperate situation that we're put in, God uses for his people to bring it back.

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Just like where the prayer and hope is, obviously, if the believer quotes, because we don't know for sure, is put out of the church and put into the world.

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The hope is that the realization of that loss of that, those blessings and the means of grace, etc.

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Right. You know, is going to draw the person back. Right. Church discipline, you know, and excommunication specifically there, that is meant to be a grace.

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It's meant to be something that brings about restoration. The person who is excommunicated saying you're outside of the body.

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It's be a warning to them. You're at a step with the body. You're very likely at a step with the head who is Christ and you are off and your soul's in danger.

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And so hopefully recognizing that and again being part of a covenant community, your household first and foremost, but then the greater covenant community of the church.

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There are blessings there, you know, there's grace there and to be outside of that protection.

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I mean Paul says it stark terms, you know, I delivered him over Satan for the destruction of his flesh that his spirit might be saved.

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So he's recognizing he wants to see this person saved and yet tough love requires if there's a stubborn refusal to repent, they must be put out.

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They must recognize the danger that they're really in and hope that God will use that grace of shame of being cut off and dealing with the consequences of their sin in full to bring them back.

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And so our prayer is always to see them restored. That's why we have that's part of our church prayer list is to pray for those who have been excommunicated who have been under church discipline and refuse to repent that the

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Lord would have mercy and restore them and we've seen it restored. We've seen people restored and what a blessing that is.

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It's sad when people excommunicate themselves. They don't even go through the process. They just depart and they're left to themselves and their own devices, but we continue to pray that Lord bring them back help them to see and God is merciful.

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So there's times of desertion but left to ourselves. It can be worked for good and to be brought back and as Thomas Watson shares here it is but for a time it's temporary and embraces will follow because he's the perfect father right waiting for that prodigal son a far way off waiting for him to return and so that's our our comfort in it.

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And so these desertions work for good to the godly desertion cures the soul of sloth.

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We find the spouse fallen upon the bed of sloth. I sleep and that was earlier in Song of Solomon before they say my beloved withdrew first the spouse is asleep and very reluctant to get up and to meet the bridegroom and presently

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Christ was gone. He says my beloved had withdrawn himself. So 5256 Song of Solomon who will speak to one that is drowsy desertion cures inordinate affection to the world.

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I want to take a moment there. Just yeah that that verse before about the the beloved saying

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I sleep right and you know that my beloved is at the door and they can't rouse themselves no time for intimacy with Christ no time for prayer no time to be in the word, you know, all those things that Thomas Watson started off with that we desert him before he deserts us.

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He's there at the door and we know that not only from Song of Solomon, but even

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Revelation where he says I stand at the door and knock and he's talking to the church. He's not talking to unbelievers.

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He's talking to his own people. He's there to have communion with them. Will they acknowledge him and we realize that these churches some of them most of them are facing sin that needs to be dealt with where they were losing their fellowship with Christ.

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Just one quick comment on that. It's a more personal comment. I find that myself sometimes obviously we don't want to study.

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You don't want to play and it becomes harder and harder when we put it off. Yeah, but then when we do and I think we can all relate to this.

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I hope what it's like a thrill. It's like a shot of adrenaline.

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It's you know, it's like why did I put this off? You know type of thing and I think my point being that you know, as we separate ourselves, you know, it becomes easier and easier to separate harder and harder to do but then when we do those blessings are just abundant.

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Right? He's there to embrace us immediately. We are the ones who were going astray from him. We didn't want to spend time in prayer.

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We didn't want to spend time in the study. We didn't want to go to church. We didn't want to we didn't want to embrace those means of grace that he gives us and so we astray from him and then all of a sudden we feel deserted because he's he's just kind of pulled back and allowed us to have our space knowing the folly of it but helping us to discover it ourselves.

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So who will speak to one who is drowsy and then he says desertion cures inordinate affection to the world love not the world.

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We may hold the world as a posy in our hand, but it must not lie too near our heart. We may use it as an end where we take a meal, but it must not be our home.

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Perhaps these secular things steal away the heart too much. Godly men are sometimes weighed down with an overabundance of temporal things and drunk with the luscious delights of prosperity and having spotted their silver wings of grace and much to face

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God's image by rubbing it rubbing it against the earth the Lord to recover them of this hides his face in a cloud.

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This Eclipse has good effects. It darkens all the glory of the world and causes it to disappear.

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The blessings that we have are blessings that God has given us and yet when we look to the gift rather than the gift giver, right?

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We start to lose sight of God. We again, you know, these things are written for our example about the

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Israelites. He warned them ahead of time. You're going to live in houses. You didn't build and and benefit from vineyards.

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You didn't plant and you're going to forget your God and that's what we do. God gives us everything, you know, and when we gather for worship, there's certain things that we should be just having in mind as part of how we order our life.

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We gather on the first day of the week to remember that God has made us a new creation. He has made all things new and we were always called to honor

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God with our time and if he sets aside a day for himself to say this is the day you'll rest and it's a day you're going to honor me and worship me.

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He is the priority and so we should order our time according to him and his ways.

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We give our tithes and offerings and we recognize everything I have is from you that job.

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I have is because you gave to me the fact that I'm healthy enough to go and work that job is because you sustain me day by day.

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And so he says give me the firstfruits again. We prioritize all of our resources our time our money our energies are everything we have belongs to him knowing that when we honor him he is the one who has been blessing us this entire time.

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But sometimes we look to our prosperity. We look to all these things and we forget God. We're too busy too busy enjoying the gifts and forgetting who made it possible.

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And so sometimes to cure us of this inordinate affection to the world. He will take away his presence and when the sun goes you don't have the light by which everything looks so shiny and new and wonderful and we recognize if he's not there.

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It's just darkness. And so he sometimes helps us to lose our our improper affections for the world.

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I mean these things are blessings from God, but when we we forget our place it makes things work worse.

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So he referenced from 1st John do not love the world or the things in the world desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the father but is from the world.

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I mentioned already about the Israelites were called to seek first his kingdom and have our lives rightly prioritized and so Lord the

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Lord hides his face that the shine of the worldly things is lost and we seek him once more. Desertion works for good as it makes the

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Saints prize God's own glory. Countenance more than ever. You're loving kindness is better than life. You know, we read that in the

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Psalms and I wonder how much we actually take that to heart that his loving kindness is better than life.

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It says yet the commonness of this mercy lessens it in our esteem when pearls grow grew common at Rome.

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They begin to be slighted. God has no better way to make us value his love than by withdrawing it a while.

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If the sun shone but once a year, how would it be prized when the soul has been long benighted with desertion?

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Oh, how welcome now is the return of the son of righteousness. We do.

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We do take him for granted. You take his blessings for granted his mercies for granted and we just we don't appreciate it the way we ought to you know, there's that saying absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

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Yeah, his loving kindness is better than life. And if we take it for granted and appreciate it the moments of desertion should have us give should give us

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I should say a deeper appreciation for him and for just being aware of his presence of his blessing that we would have hearts that are filled with gratitude and gratitude is such it's a persistent theme throughout the scriptures.

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I mean you look at Romans 1, you know, we think about all the sins and giving themselves over but how does it start that they knew

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God but did not honor him or give thanks. That's where it starts a lack of gratitude.

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Leads to all sorts of the worst kinds of sin. We start off with being ungrateful desertion works for good as it is the means of in bittering us to sin.

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I'm sorry in bittering. Well same difference right and bittering sin to us and bittering us to sin. Can there be a greater misery than to have

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God's displeasure what makes hell but the hiding of God's face and what makes God hide his face but sin they have taken away my

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Lord and I know not where they have laid him. So our sins have taken away the Lord and we do not know where he is laid the favor of God is the best jewel.

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It can sweeten the prison and unsting death. Oh how odious then is that sin which robs us of our best jewel sin made

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God desert his temple sin causes him to appear as an enemy and dress himself in armor.

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This makes the soul pursue sin with a holy malice and seek to be avenged on it the deserted soul gives in gall and vinegar to drink and the spear of mortification and lets out the hard blood of it.

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One second. He referenced God hiding his face and trying to remember my notes here because he talks about that sin would make

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God hide his face and we talked about Christ before that, you know Christ calls out on the cross my

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God my God. Why has thou forsaken me and in that moment he experienced desertion because of the sin that was laid upon him that he became sin for us that God in his wrath turned his favor and grace away.

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Not that God was suddenly absent, but he no longer had his favor. God is he's omnipresent even in hell.

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God is there but there will be no favor. There will be no grace. And so that should cause us to hate sin to realize that when we sin we are causing

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God to be out of favor with us to take away his favor his countenance upon us.

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If we don't repent and to recognize what it did to our Savior the cost he had to pay we should hate sin and we should desire to give it gall and vinegar to drink and to mortify it put it to death with the spear.

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So the next one desertion works for good as it sets the soul to weeping for the loss of God when the

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Sun is God the dew falls and when God is gone tears drop from the eyes how

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Michael was troubled when he lost his gods. He's taking away all my gods and I have nothing left. So when

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God is gone, what more do we have left? It's not the harp and violin which in comfort when

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God is gone, although it is sad to lack God's presence yet. It is good to lament his presence.

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It shows that our attitude is right. We do have a good understanding that it's a terrible thing for God's presence not to be with us not to be felt and so we should be lamenting it and that is part of the process of returning back to the

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Lord that he might return to us. You know, he says he referenced in Judges.

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He's taken away my gods no gods at all. But these were the things that he found his comfort in and we should be wary of the idols that we would make as false gods that we would comfort ourselves with because they might offer a false comfort, but they will be our destruction.

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Right? And so it is sad to lack his presence, but it's good to lament it so that we have a proper understanding.

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Okay desertion sets the soul to seeking after God when Christ was departed the spouse pursues after him.

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She searched for him in all its streets and squares and have not having found him. She makes a cry after him.

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Have you seen him anywhere this one? I love so much. The deserted soul ends up sends up whole volleys of sighs and groans.

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It knocks at Heaven's gate by prayer. It can have no rest until the golden beams of God's face shine.

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How are we doing on time? All right, this yeah, we're coming down to the last but we can finish this so desertion sets a soul to seeking after God.

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This is what's bringing us back anything that would bring us back to God even desertion and feeling far off is working for our good because it's rightly orienting us to where we need to be.

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It says desertion puts the Christian upon inquiry. He inquires the cause of God's departure. What is the accursed thing that has made which has made

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God angry perhaps pride perhaps sloth perhaps worldliness. I was angry and punished these greedy these greedy people.

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I withdrew myself from them. Perhaps there is some secret sin allowed a stone in the pipe hinders the current of water.

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So sin lived in hinders a sweet current of God's love thus conscience as a bloodhound having found out sin and overtaken it this aching is stoned to death, right?

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What had caused the people to lose the battle of AI at first was because there was sin in the camp and they recognize something was wrong.

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God's presence wasn't there. His favor wasn't there. They had experienced casualties and been pushed back and so recognizing this this failing the spiritual warfare and for them physical warfare.

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They go Lord what's going on? And so he brings to mind the sin in the camp and he reveals it so that it can be dealt with so that God's favor and presence can be with them once again and they can have victory.

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So when we feel that we should be setting ourselves to examine ourselves, you know, we talk about this every time we take the

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Lord Supper, but this should be part and parcel of our life day in and day out. We should be examining ourselves to make sure that all is right between us and the

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Lord. Desertion works for good as it gives us a sight of what

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Jesus Christ suffered for us. If the sipping of the cup is so bitter, how bitter was that full cup which

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Christ drank to the dregs upon the cross. He drank a cup of deadly poison, which made him cry out.

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My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's Matthew 27 46. None can so appreciate

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Christ's sufferings. None can be so fired with love to Christ as those who have been humbled by desertion have been held over the flames of hell for a time.

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And just like we mentioned before about recognizing sin and hating sin, being embittered to sin because recognizing this is what

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Christ, this is what caused Christ to be deserted on the cross. This is he took the wrath for us.

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He took what we deserve. And so now we should consider Christ himself being deserted on our behalf that we would have ever more love for him to recognize how hard is this for a moment of desertion feeling like God's present isn't there and we deserve it, right?

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We have sinned. We've gone astray. We've chosen not to draw close to him and Christ the man

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Christ Jesus. He lives for Lord for the Lord to be close to him.

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Part of the greatest temptation he faced was to know that he going forward with this would be separated from God and being perfect.

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He never had to deal with that like the way we do and what he had to face on our behalf.

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It gives us a sight of what he suffered and so we should have ever more love for him and appreciation for him.

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One more desertion works for good as it prepares the Saints for future comfort. The nipping frost prepares for spring flowers.

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It is God's way first to cast down then to comfort when our Savior had been fasting then the angels came and minister to him when the

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Lord has kept his people long fasting then he sends the comforter and feeds them with the hidden manna light is sown for the righteous the

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Saints comforts may be hidden like seed underground, but the seed is ripening and will increase and flourish into a crop.

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These desertions work for good as they will make the heaven the sweeter to us here on Earth. Our comforts are like the moon.

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Sometimes they are in the full sometimes in the wane God shows himself to us a while and then retires from us.

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How will this set off heaven the more and make it more delightful and ravishing when we shall have a constant aspect of love from God.

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And so again, we can find comfort for the future knowing that while we have these moments of desertion, we have these moments where we feel far off from God.

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We have a greater appreciation for what's to come when there'll be no more darkness.

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There'll be no more clouds. We'll see him fully face to face. We will be made like him and have communion with him from that time and forever.

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And so this is a comfort for us and it makes heaven sweeter to us to know how glorious Eternity will be when his prompt his presence is constant.

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Thus he concludes. We see desertions work for good. The Lord brings us into the deep of desertion that he may not bring us into the deep of damnation.

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He puts us into a seeming hell that he may keep us from a real hell. God is fitting us for that time when we shall enjoy his smiles forever when there shall be neither clouds in his face or sun setting when

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Christ shall come and stay and stay with his spouse and the spouse shall never again say my beloved has withdrawn himself.

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So that idea of he makes us feel damnation as opposed to experience real damnation makes us feel hell so that we don't go to the real hell.

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You know, as as believers who hold to reform theology, we recognize that we are told to keep ourselves in the love of God and yet how does

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Jude end that doxolity that benediction he who keeps you he will resent you blameless.

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And so we recognize he does it. We're called to to work out our salvation with fear and trembling and yet these are parts of the way.

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These are the mechanics of how God does it. He puts us through the paces at times. He he lets us experiences experience the consequences of sin.

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And so these are how God goes about it and yet we're always sovereignly in his hand and we can find comfort in that.

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So are there any questions or comments before we conclude this section next week?

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We'll talk about the evil of sin. But before we go to prayer any other thoughts comments explained it perfectly.