Love Letters | Behold Your God Podcast

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Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Grantiae, and I'm with Dr.

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John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and author of the Behold Your God study series.

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John, how are you this morning? Good, especially good because tomorrow

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I'm headed with the family down to the in -laws, so some time just to spend with them, but also to have some quiet to write the third

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Behold Your God study, so that's always helpful. Yeah, I understand your phone doesn't work down there. No, it doesn't get good reception there, so that's a nice place to be.

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It's a nice writing retreat. Well, we'll pray in that direction, and if you're listening, we would appreciate your prayers with us for that project.

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This week we're talking about letters again. This is the third episode in a row where we've talked about some sort of Christian correspondence, but this one's a little different because this week we're going to talk about letters from Christian husbands to their wives.

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Especially sweet time of preparation and looking through these things, encouraging. The first person that we're going to talk about is a

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Welsh minister from the late 1700s called Thomas Charles from a book called

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Thomas Charles Spiritual Councils by Edward Morgan, which was first published in 1836 and has now been republished by the

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Banner of Truth Trust. We'll look at one of several great letters to Sarah, the woman who becomes

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Charles' wife later. Give us a little bit about Thomas Charles, John, and then set this letter up for us.

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Yeah, the book that Matt has is such a great book, and so, you know, we're kind of getting close to the

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Christmas time, so I would recommend that if you don't have that book, it's a great book to get for Christmas. But that book's divided into two sections.

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Essays, which are really like, you know, maybe 10 page chapters on pretty helpful, experiential

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Christian topics, like what is faith, what is repentance, but not just in a kind of a theological systematic way.

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He was a good theologian, but in a very practical way, you know, so a lot of areas of growing as a

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Christian are dealt with in those. But the second half of the book deals with letters and those wonderful letters to his wife while they were courting.

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Charles was the leader of the second generation of Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, of the

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Welsh revival in the 18th century, and he was the theologian side of the leadership.

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There was another man named John Elias who was really the fiery preacher, and we hope to talk about him at some point, particularly one of the great periods of revival under his preaching.

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But Charles helped fashion the people that had been converted under this preaching for 50 years are now under the

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Anglican Church. There's a divide, a spiritual divide, and eventually they come to separate from the

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Anglican Church and form their own denomination, Welsh Calvinistic Methodist, which was later renamed the Welsh Presbyterian Church.

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So Charles really led them during that period and helped them to fashion a careful theological identity.

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But it's these letters to his wife, you know, that are so sweet, because you see the letters there.

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Obviously the editor chooses ones that are theologically helpful for us, but also, but they are full of a real tenderness toward the young lady as he's gone far from her, and they write back and forth.

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I think one letter we can deal with in the book is that we chose one that where she deals with spiritual doubts, and these are doubts that that have plagued her for some time, and they're leading her to the edge of despair.

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And this is one that Matt has it in that book, April 16th, 1781, and in this he gives two major questions to help lead her to some clarity out of the fog of despair and doubt.

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The first question is this, are you afraid that you don't love

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Christ? In other words, are you concerned that you're not really a Christian? Now that may seem to some people today as kind of a no -brainer question, like, well of course

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I'm a Christian, I go to church, but in Thomas Charles's day, the definition of a Christian I think was a pretty biblical definition.

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And so let's think about it. It is the believer that is so often plagued by a grief, by a longing, by an agonizing in the heart, what one old writer called the pain of love, because we know the love we ought to give

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Christ. Now before we were Christian, we thought that Sunday morning was enough. Once we meet Christ in that saving way, we feel that nothing we give is enough.

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And so the Christian is bothered by that. And if we're not careful with how we deal with that agony, with that pain of love, the devil, the enemy, can use that to great detriment to us.

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So what Charles says in this letter is helpful. I'll give you his first half of his argument. Charles says to her, he says this, why are you so heavy, my dearest friend?

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Why are you so disquieted? And then he gives that first question, or is it because you don't love

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God? And then he's a very picturesque writer, and he says this, he says, wait, look all around you.

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Who are those children that surround you? And he's using that as a metaphor, and he says, the love that you have for God, the longing that you have, all these soul struggles that you feel, he says, these are the things that only appear in a

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Christian's heart. So these are like children that God has birthed in your life. And though the enemy might say to you, you're not a

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Christian at all, he argues that the existence of these longings within the heart, these desires for the nearness of God, these struggles over our lack of love, these are actually evidence that you are the

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Lord's. Then he says, another argument under that question is, so the first argument is these come from the

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Lord. The second argument is, well, look at the world. Do you see a person who only shows up at church occasionally?

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Do you see them having these things in their heart? Do they agonize over the question when they go to the church, did we really meet with the

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Lord? Was there a sense of his nearness? Or when they open the Bible, have I been fully responsive? And so Charles's argument is that the very things that are causing her pain, these longings to love

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Christ better, are an evidence that she belongs to him, and she must not doubt unnecessarily that she's a

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Christian. But you have in that letter a second major argument. Yes, so he says, but you're unhappy because you think that Christ does not love you, and you dare even say to him who intercedes for you in heaven, thou dost not love me, oh say not so.

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So the picture changes now. Having taken her very pains that were causing her doubt and in love, helping her to see those as reasons to have assurance that she is a child of God, she now deals with, well, but what if Christ doesn't love me?

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So he says to her, first take a turn to Bethlehem and view the stable in the manger.

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Retire to Gethsemane and see the bloody drops. Ascend the top of Calvary and behold the cursed and bloody cross.

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What can you see but scenes of astonishing love? What do you hear from the expiring

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Savior but the cries of love? Father forgive them, etc. Are these expressions of hatred?

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Does the Son love the Father? We cannot doubt it, but he left the Father's bosom for our sakes.

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Astonishing thought. It is almost too wonderful to be believed. Yeah, his arguments, they're so helpful for us because they take the believer immediately out of the condition of looking within to see the foundation of our hope, you know.

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I remember reading one older writer that said, well, if we were to put it in a modern language, if you feel that you're cold and you know when you go in your home, you go to your thermostat to see what, like, what is it in here, you know?

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Is it 60? I feel like it's cold. And you look at the thermostat. The thermostat can tell you how warm the house is or isn't, but it doesn't make you warm by looking at the thermostat.

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And we can look within to see where, you know, where we're at, where the struggles are right now.

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And there are times to do that, but the cure lies outside of us. And so immediately Charles takes us into these objective historical facts about Christ that should dispel or at least form the foundation of dispelling every doubt that God loves us.

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And he also has, he has three other points that he makes to us. So the second one is, he hath surely put his love beyond all suspicion of doubt.

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Who but the devil could have sophistry, could have this kind of deceitful argument?

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Who but the devil could have sophistry enough to persuade us that Christ, after all the proofs he has given, doth not love us?

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Yeah. Knowing whose voice it is we're hearing is a big help to knowing how we're supposed to respond to it.

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And we talked about that in previous podcasts about be careful how you listen, be careful who you listen to.

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So, but when we come to the struggles of the heart and kind of the whisper in the mind, so to speak, it's not so easy sometimes to distinguish.

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So whose voice is that? Yeah. Is that Christ saying to me, you don't love me? You say to me,

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Lord, Lord, but I don't know you. Or is it the enemy saying, well, I don't know that a person like you could be loved by the

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Lord. And that, that's a pretty, that's not an easy answer, a question to answer, but that's an important one.

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I think that, you know, when we, when we deal with souls that have that question, one question

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I would ask them is, what do you do with that kind of whisper? Does that drive you to the mercy seat?

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Yeah. To say to him, here's this question in my mind, do you love a person like me?

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And you go to Christ, you go to the scripture, you look at the descriptions, look at the invitations of Christ.

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Does that, does that, does that summarize you? Does that sketch you? I am weak,

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I am heavy laden, I'm weary, I'm thirsty, I'm lame,

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I'm blind, I'm stained, I'm one of the unclean that the fountain is open for.

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And so, you let the, you open the scriptures and you let the King assure the soul, it's you

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I love. It's just, it's the, you're just the kind of person I gave my life for.

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So, I think that's a healthy response. The unhealthy response is, when we hear this struggling question, does he really love a person like you?

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We, we look at ourselves and think, well, I don't even like me, so I don't know why a holy God would like me.

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And then we go, like Adam and Eve, and hide behind the trees. Yeah. Until we can make ourselves spiritually pretty.

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Yeah, probably the most helpful way that I've heard that summarized is, you know, how do you know, is it, is it conviction from God or is it condemnation from the enemy that I'm hearing?

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The enemy always wants to come and say, see, see what a sinner you are? Now run as far as you can from God.

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He's not gonna want to see somebody like you. But when the Spirit comes and convicts us of sin, it's, see, you know, see, this is a wicked thing and this is something that you have to deal with.

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Now go to Christ and go to Him now. So, so does it drive you to Christ or does it drive you to the fig leaf?

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You know, that's, that's a great way to distinguish. Yeah, and I think another thing that I've seen in my own life and in the life of church folks is that a false sense of assurance, hey,

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I'm fine, thrives when God is distant or when you're far from the means of grace.

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I'm not reading my Bible and if I read it, I'm just getting through my daily reading and when I come to church, I'm just enduring the sermon.

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So when you hold God at arm's length, the false assurance feels solid.

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True assurance thrives when you, when you drive near to the Lord and you, you open the word and yeah, it exposes you, it's a mirror of you, but it's a picture of Him and you say, yeah,

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I indeed but Christ. So two very different responses. Yeah, well

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Charles, third point, we have reason, often at least I have, to suspect our love to Him and to bewail sorely the weakness and coldness of our warmest affections.

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Let us condemn ourselves and repent in dust and ashes, but let us always endeavor to entertain honorable, enlarged, and suitable thoughts of Christ and His love.

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I know from experience that nothing so sensibly pains and so deeply wounds as a suspicion in the object of our affection of the sincerity of our love and regard.

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And may we not suppose that our suspicions of Christ's love toward us do not a little grieve and pain

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Him, especially when He has given us such amazing proofs. I am grieved and ashamed to think that I should ever so dishonor

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Him. So what is he saying there? Yeah, I think that's a glorious blow against the enemy's lies because he, you know, it's very tempting to think that it's noble, it's humble to doubt that God would love me and to stay at a distance because you think,

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I'm so ugly spiritually, I don't belong in that family, and if I'm in the family by a legal adoption, at least

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I should not really be up in front. I need to be in the corner, always in the corner. So the black sheep of the family kind of attitude.

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Does that honor Christ? Because if it does, let's do it. But if it doesn't honor Christ, then for the

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Christian soul, one of the great arguments I find for my own self to move me forward is to say to myself,

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John, it honors Him most if you would take all that He gives and live on it.

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Not if, not to sit in the corner and say, oh no, no, no, just just give me a little corner here and I'll be okay.

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So his argument here for the Christian, you know that Christ loves you.

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It greatly grieves your Savior to doubt it. So it's not honoring to Christ to say,

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I don't think He could love a person like me. So we humble ourselves and we say, I'm not a lovely person, but He has loved the unlovely, and so I will live in that reality without adjusting it to fit me.

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Well, the last thing that Charles says is, oh may the Lord teach us to know more clearly this love which passeth knowledge.

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It is our life, our eternal life, to know and enjoy it. I think

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I hear you say, oh yes, this is all my desire and all I long after in time and in eternity.

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So great stuff from Charles. The other author that we have is John Newton, and this is in the in the collection of John Newton's works that Banner of Truth has put out.

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I have a six -volume set. I think it's still six volumes. I'm not sure. They recently redid it. It's a really nice edition, but this is actually an antique copy, as you can see, and there's a funny little story behind this, so I will go ahead and confess to the public.

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Years ago, a co -pastor and dear friend of mine,

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Lanny Autry, it was it was Christmas time or birthday time, and I wanted to get him a gift because he shouldered so much of the work in the early days of the church.

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So I went online and found John Newton's letters to his wife, and then

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I saw I was on an antique book website, you know, and so I found two copies. I thought, well,

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I'll get one and give one to my wife, and then I'll give one to Lanny, and so they both came in.

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Now, this is one set, and the other was a single volume. Now, the other single volume, it was a old calfskin, but look, let's be honest, it just wasn't as pretty, and when

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I saw these books, and then I compared them to the other book, which was a nice book, but not this,

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I said to myself, I think I need to give this to my wife, which was kind of to me, so I kept these and sent the not quite so pretty one to Lanny, who is now in heaven with the

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Lord and forgives me finally, probably, but anyway, these are the two volumes. Now, I want to say a couple of things about Newton and these letters because there are many things that the enemy could do to make biographies and works of Christians in the past ages of no benefit to our soul, and one of them is just to point out the legitimate shortcomings in their life, and if we cover those over and say, no, that's not a big deal, it's just that's just the way life was back then, then we really dishonor

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Christ because we deny the work of the Spirit and sanctification. Does not the Lord Jesus Christ, when

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He purchases and awakens and adopts a person into His family, does

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He not change them? He does, and it doesn't matter what generation the man lives in, but we do need a biblical expectation.

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Does that happen immediately? Well, no, so we want a balanced view of these people's lives, but also there's some helpful things about the progression of these letters, so just two things.

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First, John Newton writes these letters right after being married to Mary Catlett, and Mary was a young woman who loved

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John Newton when he was in the stage of his worst rebellion. He lived a foul, angry, rebellious life, and you can read his biography and see that, and as a classic

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Englishman, he understates everything. You know, it's not like our day where he would make a big show of it, so he understates.

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So you have to kind of read between the lines to see how bad he was. John Newton lived a wretched life, and Mary Catlett never gave up on Newton, and it was one of the things that God used in Newton's life before he was converted to keep

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Newton from committing suicide when he was chained to a tree in Africa and on the edge of death.

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He remembered Mary's love, and he wanted to continue to live, and so Newton always saw

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Mary as an instrument in the hand of the Lord, as a great expression of God's love for him.

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Now, because of that, when he writes these letters to Mary, there is a progression.

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These two volumes, the first volume, mostly the letters are just charming love letters between a husband and his wife in the early days of marriage when he's separated from her, working on a ship, and so they really do praise marital love, and the things that are there,

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I've been trying to read them to Misty, my wife. I've only made it a hundred and four pages in of the first volume, but tried to grab times where we could just, me and her at night, and just read one of these letters, and most of the time, we laugh at them.

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He's very funny, and you know, it's a good reminder of keeping the romance alive in your marriage, and not becoming, you know, stale.

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I mean, these aren't love letters written before they were married. These are love letters after they're married, so very charming love letters, but there's a progression.

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The early love letters are really in praise of marriage love, but as he grows as a believer, because he's just a baby believer when he first starts writing them, but as he grows as a

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Christian, the letters become more spiritual, and he wants to help his wife to grow as well, and so we're gonna read a letter from the beginning of this period, and then we'll read one from the end of the letters, where we're only months away from the death of an adopted daughter.

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So that's one issue. There is a clear progression of spiritual growth in Newton, and Newton even said himself that Mary was so dear to him that he idolized her, and he felt later that he needed to, not to love her less, but to love her in the right way, and not to attribute to marriage the things that only

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God really can give, and so Newton had to kind of guard his heart, not to think, not to let

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Mary become his God. Another thing that we need to talk about, and just quickly, is that Newton wrote these letters from a ship, and that was a slave trading ship, and we want to be very clear, and we completely agree with John Newton here and the

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Scripture, that there is never an occasion where buying and selling men and women and children is allowed in Scripture.

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Christ has not given us the freedom to treat people that way, so that's a sin, and it was a sin that was culturally acceptable in the 18th century, and John Newton didn't own slaves, but John Newton was in charge of transporting slaves.

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Now, when Newton becomes a believer, immediately he begins to be bothered by the slave trade, but it's really just the exterior edges that bother him.

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He sees how slaves were treated on the ships, so he, when he was a captain, made the slaves to be treated better, but that wasn't really enough, was it?

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So, as the Spirit of God continues to convict Newton, and as he grows as a Christian, month after month, he becomes more and more concerned, and eventually he cannot bear it, and he realizes the whole thing is wrong.

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It doesn't matter how you treat a slave, a slave is wrong, and later in life, Newton clearly breaks with the slave trade, and he speaks out against it, and he helps a young member of Parliament that he's mentored spiritually, a man named

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William Wilberforce, and there's a great book on that by Eric Metaxas called Amazing Grace, and they turned it into a movie, but he helps

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England put to death the slave trade by his own writings, firsthand examples of how slaves were treated.

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So, there was clear repentance in his life, but what I mentioned, I have to say this, when a person is a

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Christian, there is growth, and sometimes a baby

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Christian doesn't see the sins of the culture clearly, but we can't say to a person, well, that's just the way

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I grew up, so it's okay for me to stay the way, so take racism, well, I grew up in a racist family, it's okay to be a racist.

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No, what we see in Newton is a wonderful picture of reality. At first, he begins to feel it's wrong, but it takes some time, but as he grows as a

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Christian, the evidence that he is a follower of Jesus Christ is that he is willing to break with all the cultural sins, no matter what the cost, to follow

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Jesus of Nazareth, and so that's a very balanced biblical example. If we take his letters to his wife,

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Matt, you have one there where he just basically describes some of the happiness of being married.

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Yeah, alright, so this was, I'll dig through this, this was published, well, these are from 1750 to 1754, and I'm not sure when they were published, but it couldn't have been too long after that, so this is one of those situations where all the

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S's are F's, and your brain sees it, and it says, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it, and as you approach it, you say,

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I could speak on this subject from morning till night, so I'll try to avoid that.

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The Spectator tells us that Socrates, in discoursing upon marriage, placed it in such an advantageous light that he induced all his auditors to marry as fast as possible, and yet it seems he was at that time himself wedded to a noted shrew, so that he could hardly draw many persuasive arguments from his own experience.

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Surely, had he been matched like me, he would have spoken with still greater emphasis.

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Methinks if I had his eloquence, I could delight to speak on this subject from morning till night.

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I could tell the foolish world how strangely they wander from the path of happiness, while they seek satisfaction in luxury, wealth, or ambition, which nothing but mutual love can afford.

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So, Newton there, again, as a young husband, you know,

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Socrates' wife is a noted shrew. She's a monster, so he's not talking from experience, but, oh, if someone gave me

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Socrates' eloquence, I could convince people to get married. But the rest of Newton's letter, he deals with the issue of being on a ship with a bunch of sea captains who are living, they're married, but they're living immoral lives.

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They're, you know, they're at every port, they're finding prostitutes, and they can't understand why this young man, who used to live a debauched life, is now so faithful to his wife when he's so far away.

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And so, Matt, if you read the rest of the letter, we'll see the back -and -forth he gives. Yeah, so Newton writes, They can form no idea of my happiness.

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I answer, I think the better of it on that account, for I should be ashamed of it if it was suited to the level of those who can be pleased with a drunken debauch or the smile of a prostitute.

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We shall hardly come to an agreement on these points, for they pretend to appeal to experience against me.

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Just so, some of the poor objects in Bedlam, which would be the insane asylum, while raving in straw and dirt, mistake their chains for ornaments of gold, and announce themselves to be kings or lords, and are firmly persuaded that every person who pities them is out of his wits.

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Yeah, so again, Newton doesn't mention Christ, he doesn't explain the gospel, but he is a young believer who has totally altered his view of what is real love and what is faithfulness to a wife.

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But the humor there, in the humor there's a lot of truth. Yeah. Two things in particular.

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A Christian should be ashamed, he said, if the world could understand everything that makes you happy.

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He said, I would be ashamed if you, you people who a drunken party and the smile of a prostitute, if that's all that takes to make you happy,

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I'd be ashamed if you understood what makes me happy. So that's a great response when the world says to us, you

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Christians live such boring lives, you Christians, you know, you think church is fun, you think reading the Bible is enjoyable, and instead of being ashamed of that, and not with an arrogance, but with an honesty in our own heart, we should say to ourselves, well,

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I would be ashamed if they did understand everything that thrilled my soul. I mean, there has to be something that Christian above what the world loves.

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And, but the other thing he mentioned, and it's a wonderful picture of sin, it's a very, it's a very frightening picture.

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He says that people in an insane asylum, who back then in the terrible conditions, you know, there's straw on the floor, there's chains on their arms to keep them from hurting themselves, and he said, but they think that these chains in this room, these chains are golden ornaments, and they're kings in a castle, or in a palace.

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And Newton says, how can the unbeliever understand the happiness of a pure love between a husband and a wife, when they're full of the madness of self and sin?

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And really, that's how the Christian ought to look with pity on the unbeliever, who chases after everything the world offers, but doesn't understand the happiness that Christ gives.

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Now, in another letter that we've chosen for us today, that Matt will read to us, is one that comes from the very end of the collection, and it's published in 1785, and in the month of August.

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Now, the reason that's important is this, that in August of 1785, there's only a couple of months left in the life of a young teenager named

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Eliza. Now, John Newton and his wife, his wife had two nieces whose family died.

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One of them was, I know was from tuberculosis, I can't remember the situation of the other. One was named

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Betsy, and she came years earlier, back in 1774. And Betsy, her family dies, and so John and Mary adopt her.

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Then years later, 1783 now, another girl, Eliza, her family dies of consumption.

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Now, her dad was dying of consumption, and John and Mary moved him into their house.

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Now, consumption is tuberculosis, so he's dying a slow, painful death. You're slowly drowning in your own blood, in your lungs, and coughing up blood, and so they nursed that man for a year while he died.

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There was no cure for tuberculosis. And then Eliza, they take her, they adopt her, because her parents are gone, her family's gone, and they soon noticed that she has evidence of tuberculosis, which was very, it was very dangerous, easily spread.

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They paid for her to go to as many experts as London could offer them, but nothing seemed to help.

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They took her to the sea, they took her to the country, and there, you understand that there, they love this girl.

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She becomes a believer, and she has a wonderful testimony as she slowly, painfully suffocates on her own blood.

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But you can imagine being the adopted parents of this girl, and so they write letters back and forth about what to, how to, how to walk with Christ through the slow death of your adopted daughter.

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And Matt has a letter there that, where Newton talks to Mary about hoping in God, and what he does, and his wisdom.

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Yes, so Newton writes, I laid me down in peace, and awoke in safety, for the

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Lord sustained me. He is about our path by day, and our bed by night, and he preserves us from innumerable evils, which could come upon us every hour, if his watchful providence did not protect us.

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He is our sure, though invisible shield. Therefore we are unhurt, though in ourselves we are weak, and defenseless, like a city without walls or gates, and open to excursions from every quarter.

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Could we but live more sensible of his goodness, and maintain that feeling of gratitude toward him, which we do to some of our fellow creatures, we should be happy.

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For what is the great design of the gospel? Is it not to introduce us to a state of the most honorable and most interesting friendship, and to perpetuate to us the pleasure which we find in pleasing those who are dearest to us.

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The Lord Jesus is our best friend. His character is supremely excellent.

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Our obligations to him are inexpressible. Our dependence upon him is absolute, and our happiness and every sense is in his hands.

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May our love therefore be fixed upon him, and we shall do well. He will guide us with his eye, guard us by his power, and his fullness and bounty will supply all our wants.

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As to dear Eliza, I hope I have made up my mind about her. If her recovery could be purchased,

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I think I would bid as high for it as my ability would reach, provided it was the Lord's will.

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But I am so short -sighted that I dare not ask for the continuance of her life, nor even of yours, but with a reserve of submission to his wisdom.

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I know not what might be the possible consequences if I could have my own will. I know he can restore her, and I believe he will if it be for the best.

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If not, I desire to submit, or rather to acquiesce to be satisfied.

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I shall feel for myself if she be removed, and probably my feelings will be doubled and accented upon your count.

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But he can support us, and sanctify the painful dispensation to us both.

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I pray to be enabled to entrust and resign everything to him.

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This is not an easy lesson to flesh and blood, but grace can make it practicable.

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For the rest, if he should be taken off in a moment, this is not an easy lesson to flesh and blood, but grace can make it practicable.

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For the rest, if she should be taken off in a moment, I have reason to be quite easy about the event, and as to herself.

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And if she should decline gradually, I have little doubt but that the Lord will enable her to speak to the comfort and satisfaction of all about her.

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She is in his wise and merciful hands, and there I am content to leave her."

34:52

Yeah, so wonderful, honest letter between a husband and a wife who have taken on a daughter who's dying of tuberculosis.

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August, still struggling with hopes. Will she recover? By October, she's passed away.

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But finding everything that they need in the goodness and the faithfulness of Christ, regardless of what comes next.

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You can really see him pastoring his dear wife there. He doesn't come across like, well, look,

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I'm just a man, and men deal with these things, and we just have to chin up, chin up. He shows, look, this is a hard lesson to flesh and blood.

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But he points her, as he's pointing himself, to the goodness and trustworthiness of Christ. Such a great picture of how to pastor and shepherd our wives.

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Yeah, and in another podcast, we'll be able to look at it, but I remember reading a letter where he writes to a woman whose life was plagued with a chronic illness.

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So, you know, kind of what we think of as a person who was a shut -in, but not old, but illness had isolated her.

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And in the letter, he starts to commiserate, and he starts to say, yeah, I'm so sad that, and then he stops himself, and he said,

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I almost, I almost began to write a letter telling you how terrible your life is, and I'm sad for you, but he said, but then

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I remember you're a Christian, and he and he shifts gears, and he goes immediately to Christ, and he said, how can I really pity a person that has this king?

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So, it's one thing to write it to someone. It's another thing when you're nursing the girl day and night to apply it to yourself and your wife, and so I'm glad to see the consistency.

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Well, the last letter that we're going to talk about in the podcast today is from Dr. Martin Lee Jones. It's from a collection of his letters.

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One of the things that I loved about making the Lloyd -Jones film, Logical on Fire, was getting to know what kind of man the doctor was in his home, the kind of relationships that he had with his wife and his children and his grandchildren, and you know, if all you know about Lloyd -Jones is his preaching and maybe the photographs that you see on the book covers, you could be forgiven for thinking that MLJ was kind of a hard and maybe a severe and a grave sort of man in the pulpit, which he certainly was, and out of the pulpit, which really could not have been further from the truth.

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He was surprisingly gentle and affectionate, and we hear those stories from his daughters and his grandchildren in the film firsthand, but if we go to his letters, we can see his affection and his love that he feels directly from him to his beloved bride,

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Bethan. So I hope you don't blush easily. This is maybe surprisingly affectionate from the doctor.

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But on September 25th, 1939, when he was 40, the doctor wrote,

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My dear Bethan, thank you for your letter this morning. Though I am very angry that you should have been up till 1130 p .m.

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writing it, I see that you are quite incorrigible. The idea that I shall become used to being without you is really funny.

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I could speak for a long time on the subject. As I've told you many, many times, the passing of these years has done nothing but deepen and intensify my love for you.

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When I think of those days in London in 1925 and 26, when I thought that no greater love was possible,

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I could laugh. But honestly, during this last year, I had come to believe that it was not possible for a man to love his wife more than I loved you.

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And yet I see that there is no end to love and that it is still true that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

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I am quite certain that there is no lover anywhere writing to his girl who is quite as mad about her as I am.

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Indeed, I pity those lovers who are not married. Well, I had better put a curb on things or I shall spend the night writing to you without a word of news.

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So here's a man who who gets quite carried away thinking about how much he loves his wife, who

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I'm sure they'd been married for 15 plus years at this point and says,

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I better put a curb on it before I go any further in this letter. But here's a man who takes

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Ephesians 5, 28 and 29 seriously. When God's word tells us to cherish our wives, you know, not only that, but here's someone who is displaying for us the blessing and the enjoyment of the blessing that comes from taking the word of God seriously in that way to cherish and nurture our wives over the years.

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Now, I've been married for 16 years and I have not been as good of a husband as Lloyd -Jones was to Bethan, I'm sure.

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But Megan and I have often said to one another at Christian weddings that we attend and we see the young couple and they're about to just burst with excitement and and with love and with desire for one another.

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And it is beautiful. But I laugh sometimes and I've whispered to Megan, you know, they have no idea.

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He thinks that he loves her in this moment and that he could not possibly love her any more than he does right now.

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But just wait 16 years from now, you know, when by God's mercy, they're where we are and he'll know that this day was just the beginning.

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I mean, it was the first drop in the bucket. And he thinks, you know, right now that if he were to love her any more, that his heart would explode.

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He just he doesn't have the capacity to love this person any more than he does. But he cannot imagine the depths and the intensity of love that are possible to know in Christian marriage.

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And, you know, as Lloyd -Jones put it, I see now that there is no end to love. The passing of the years does nothing but deepen and intensify his love for his wife.

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You know, I know that that is sadly not the experience of every marriage. But if you young people who are who are newly married, who are engaged perhaps, and you feel that your your heart would explode if you if you loved your wife any more, take the word of God seriously here when it tells you to love and cherish your wife and forsaking all others as you have vowed to do or are preparing to vow to do.

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You it will not decrease the love and passion. You know, it changes form.

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You'll you'll do a lot of things that you couldn't imagine doing from from the very mundane to the to the not so fun.

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You know, when the when the stomach virus comes through the house and, you know, things that you just you don't want to think about on your on your marriage day.

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But the depth and the love and even the intensity that comes in time of loving and cherishing your wife.

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I want to encourage you that if you if you take the Lord seriously there, that there is a blessing that that Lloyd -Jones knew and that you can know as well.

42:17

Yeah, certainly. So if you've enjoyed hearing some of these letters from Christian husbands to their wives, there's a book that we want to commend to you.

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It's from our friends at Ligonier Ministries. It's written by Dr. Michael Haken, professor of church history and biblical spirituality at Southern Seminary.

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And the name of the book is The Christian Lover, The Sweetness of Love and Marriage in the

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Letters of Believers. So take a look at that. That's available on the Ligonier website. We'll put a link to that down in our show notes.

42:51

We're going to bring the podcast to a close now, but there's one other letter. It's actually a telegram that we want to take a few minutes to talk about in our supporter appreciation podcast.

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So as I say at the end of the podcast every week, that's not something that we sell. You can't buy it.

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It's something that we make to give out of appreciation to those who come alongside

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Media Gratia with monthly donations that enable us to continue to do the work that we do from the big studies all the way down to this podcast.

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If you want to find out more about how to do that, you can go to mediagratia .org and look for the support button.

43:29

In English, that's themeansofgrace .org. But as we always say, if you are not in a place where you can become a monthly supporter and you find that this content is helpful to you, we never want finances to be a barrier between the content that we produce and anyone who may be helped by them.

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So please do get in touch with us at supportatmediagratia .org and we'll make sure that you have access to it.

43:54

We want to thank you for listening, for continuing to show support and feedback to the podcast.

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We're glad to hear that it has been helpful to people. It has been really helpful to me and to John.

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We've talked a good bit about how much we are enjoying doing this. So thank you and we'll see you again next week.