The Valley Of Vision (part 1)

Am I on? Good deal. I called this thing this morning in the Valley of Vision.

I can hardly wait to hear what I'm going to say. I thought I had this thing all lined out, then

I did some reading last night, and I thought, no, I want to do this differently. And so,

I can hardly wait to hear what I'm going to say. I'm going to talk to you about this little book this morning, and from that little book as we go on.

So, let's pray and ask the Lord to bear us along as we go. Lord, we ask your blessing on what we do this morning.

I pray that you would bear us along by the Holy Spirit as you bore the prophets of old along.

To write the word, we will not write the word, but we pray for your illumination this morning as we come to it.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen. This book was first published in 1975.

It's the Valley of Vision. I've talked to you about it before, but I've always wanted to do something that I have not done before, and we're going to give it a little try today.

It's now in its eighth printing in 2009. When it first was printed in 1975, it was not a screaming success.

However, since that time, it has sold more than 400 ,000 copies, and it is the expression of the

Puritans concerning the Scriptures. And I want to read to you why it's called, and you will recognize some of the names from which this was taken.

The editor is Arthur Bennett. He was at a college, a

Bible college in England. And of all places, where? So if you wonder where, where got its name from where?

From England. Where? And this guy, Arthur Bennett, was a professor there at that Bible college.

You would recognize some of the names that are here from the

Puritans. Richard Baxter, David Brainerd, John Bunyan, Philip Doddridge, Christmas Evans.

Any of you name your kids Christmas? I know there's no more Johns, Bobs, and Jims. So think about Christmas.

That would be interesting at Bethlehem Bible Church, those of you that are at that stage of the game.

William Jay, Henry Law, William Romaine, Thomas Shepard, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, probably the last of the

Puritans, Augustus Toplady, who was a hymn writer. You may know that name from that.

Thomas Watson, Isaac Watts, William Williams. If your last name is

Williams, think about naming your kid William. And then it could be William Williams. In any case, all of those people were part of the

Puritan movement, both in Europe, Scotland, England, and the United States. And what

Bennett did over a period of a lifetime, what he did was he went through their works.

Now in some of them, he found actual prayers that they had written. David Brainerd's prayers, for example, are in here.

David Brainerd is the missionary to the Indians in the Wild West. That would be

Pittsfield when they came here. And he died in Jonathan Edwards' house, as you may know.

And some of his actual prayers are here. Some of the others,

Bennett went through their works, and he found the prayers inserted in what they had written.

So when you come to this little book, The Valley of Vision, you don't find footnotes and attributions and all of that stuff.

Instead, what you find is simply the prayers. And so that's kind of where this thing comes from.

You say, well, how did it ever get published? Because Bennett was not going to publish it. And Ian Murray of Banner of Truth Trust encouraged him to publish what he had written, and so it comes out in this little book.

I find this little book not only significant, but very, very important. And I want to read to you from the beginning prayer why it is called

The Valley of Vision. Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly,

Thou hast brought me to the Valley of Vision, where I live in the depths.

So the idea here is that it's a valley, and it's a deep valley, but I see

Thee in the heights. So the idea is the pilgrim is in the valley, but as he looks up, he sees the

Lord in the heights. He says, I am hemmed in by mountains of sin, and I behold

Thy glory. Now we've got to stop right there, because some people object to the whole

Puritan thing for that very reason. Too much sin talk. Joel Osteen is not a great admirer of the

Puritans. For Joel Osteen, that's no sin talk. But so I was in a missions conference a few years ago, over in a church in Virginia, a pretty good -sized church, and was talking with the pastor, and I talked to him about how

I admired what the Puritans had said and written, and all of that, and he said, well, the

Puritans are okay, but you know, they were so dour, and they never could tell a joke.

That's incidentally not true. All right? And what he was saying was, too much sin talk.

Too much dwelling on sin. But what the prayers of these people in the

Valley of Vision, of these Puritans, is that the depth of the valley and the height of the mountains of sin, and the mountains are sin.

The mountains are not just mountains to look at and find beautiful. The mountains in the

Valley of Vision, that surround the Valley of Vision, are mountains of sin. But here's the deal.

The clarity of the glory of God, which he has just said here, the clarity of the glory of God is directly proportional to the depth of the valley or the height of the mountains.

And all of that is simply to say that if we're not involved in a recognition of what sin really is, that the glory of God will be diminished by how much we diminish the situation for sin.

Sin around us in a world that has fallen. Sin in our own personal lives.

Sin in the lives of brothers and sisters. If we are not keenly aware of that, we will not be keenly aware of the glory of God.

And when you read these Puritans, you find that perfect balance, in my view, that perfect balance between a serious understanding of the depths of sin, and the ugliness of sin, and the hatred of sin, and the glorying in the salvation that is in Christ.

If we minimize our sin, we will minimize our salvation. Now think about this. When you first came to Christ, or when anyone first comes to Christ, we talk about something that is required to be saved.

And that something is expressed by Peter at the end of Acts chapter 2, is it not?

When he is preaching to those people on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after they have crucified the

Lord. And he says, this Jesus whom you crucified is both Lord and Messiah.

Now when he said that, and he had already gone through all of the documentation, we are eyewitnesses of his resurrection, and all of that.

When he said that, you have crucified the Lord of glory.

Basically, is what he is saying, the testimony is, they were cut to the heart, and they said, men and brothers, what shall we do?

What was the what shall we do? What was that?

See, I didn't have you turn to Acts chapter 2. I just assumed that being a well -taught church, you would know.

What he said was, what you better do is, you need to repent. And then he followed that with be baptized.

Although baptism is not the means of salvation, it is the evidence of salvation. You need to repent.

Now repentance is simply a change of mind. But it is a serious change of mind.

And it goes in two directions, not just one direction. When people repent of their sin, you'll have to excuse me, it's the season of the

New England tickle and dribble. Okay, so I'm just going to do this. All right.

When people repent, the repentance has to go in two directions. What Peter was saying on that day, when he preached on the day of Pentecost, he was saying, you people have to change your minds.

When they said, what shall we do? You need to change your minds, first of all, about Jesus.

This Jesus who 50 days earlier, you had called a blasphemer, an imposter, and called for his crucifixion because it was many of the same people,

I'm quite convinced, that was before Peter on the day of Pentecost, that had been before Pilate 50 days earlier at the

Passover in Jerusalem. They came back two and a half, two months and a little more later for the feast of Pentecost.

It was a major feast. You killed the Lord of glory. What do we do? You need to change your mind about Him.

He's not an imposter. He's not a blasphemer. He is, in fact, God the Son. He has, in fact, been risen from the dead.

You need to change your mind about who you said He was. Not only that, you need to change your mind about your action on that day.

Your action on that day was sinful. So sinful that it merits your death.

Serious sin. Not little boo -boos, not hang -ups, not a little bit of psychosis or neurosis or whatever, but serious sin worthy of your death.

You have to change your mind about that. Fifty days earlier, some of you thought, we are doing the right thing to have this person crucified and to call for His crucifixion.

Peter said, you better change your mind about that. You are doing a sinful thing. You have killed

God in the flesh, put Him on the cross fifty days earlier. And so the repentance cuts in both directions.

You have to change your mind about your sin. Then, you need to change your mind about the

Lord Jesus Christ. You find that in what these people express in their prayers in the little book,

The Valley of Vision. You find a great balance of that. A serious understanding about the sin that's involved and a serious understanding about the wonder of salvation that is there.

We are going to look at it in just a minute. So the change of mind that's required when we come to Christ is a change of mind, now watch it, that leads to despair.

To helpless despair. If people say, well, yeah, right,

I'm a sinner. And what they really mean is, hey, nobody is perfect, you know.

But when I look left and when I look right, I see people that are very much worse off than I.

And if I go and look in a newspaper, well, there aren't any newspapers anymore. If I look at my iPhone, alright, and I see the news,

I find people that have done really horrendous things. And so, I am not perfect, you know, but I'm not helpless.

And I'm certainly not in despair. And I'll just say this flat out. You cannot be saved unless you're in despair about your sin.

It won't happen. Alright, you fall into the, I'm not perfect, you know, crowd.

Nobody's perfect. And so on. If you change your mind about the Lord Jesus, if it's a saving change of mind,

He is the only hope. The single only hope by which you can be saved.

By which a person can be saved. That's the kind of repentance that Peter was talking about on that day.

The evidence of that repentance, of course, was that 3 ,000 of them were baptized. They were

Jews. That brought them into conflict with their culture. And probably with their families. Some of them had come from Gentile nations.

Remember the speaking in tongues and all of that stuff. Where they heard people speaking in their own

Gentile languages. Came from Gentile nations. And places where ultimately in the

Roman Empire they might be required to say Caesar is Lord. But no, they were helpless sinners who had come to the great

Savior. Who was the only means by which they could be saved. And so they could not and would not say that Jesus is

Lord. And some of them were persecuted terribly for that. So, when

I am justified, when I first come to Christ, that's the nature of the repentance that's involved.

All right? Now let me say this, and we're going to begin to see this as we look at some of these things in Valley of Vision.

Sanctification. My progress in Christ. My growth in Christ.

You remember Hebrews 10 .14? He has made perfect forever. Oh, praise the Lord. I am made perfect forever.

Why? I changed my mind. I'm a helpless sinner. He has made me perfect forever. Why? Because He is the great

Savior. He is the high priest that rules and intercedes for me by the power of an indestructible life.

All of that's true. However, He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

It's a present participle there that is highly significant. Who are being made holy.

If I'm to be made holy, the same conditions that I brought to justification are the conditions that will come to sanctification.

And we're going to see that here. To my progress in Christ. To my growth in Christ. To the end that Paul talks about when he says to the

Colossians, we want to present every person mature in Christ.

The motto of Bethlehem Bible Church. What will be required? What will be required are the same things that were required when we were justified.

Repentance from sin. Continual repentance from sin. What? Thought I was made perfect.

You were made perfect. But we all know about sin that hangs on. We all know the

Roman 7 story. And we're going to see some of that in here as it's expressed by these old

Puritans. We all know that we struggle with sin. That's why John wrote at the end of the first century, didn't he?

In his first letter, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and we make him a liar.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

All of those are present participles in there. So the idea is this. Even though I have been made perfect in God's sight, in my daily walk with the

Lord, in my anticipated growth in Christ, sin hangs on.

Don't forget, it is true that Paul blurted out, I am crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh,

I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. It's true that in Romans chapter 6

I read that we are crucified with Christ. We died with Christ. We were buried with Christ.

We were risen with Christ. All of that stuff is true. But let's talk about crucified flesh.

In fact, we are exhorted to crucify the flesh. Here is the problem with crucified flesh.

It's the same problem as with crucified people in the first century. You know, they hung on the cross sometimes for weeks.

You aware of that? So the crucified were still wiggling. And for my flesh, even though it is crucified, that's what the

Scriptures say. It still wiggles. All right? And it's still a problem.

And we are going to read about that in what these old Puritans have to say. And they are old

Puritans. They are older than me. So they must be old Puritans. All right? So our sanctification, our growth in Christ, requires a continual awareness and confession of sin.

You say, well, man, that's a real downer. We don't want to do sin. Well, guess what? If we don't do sin, then we can't do glory.

So it's just like when you are giving the gospel to an unbeliever, and we start out with,

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, or something like that. The response for a lot of them is,

Yeah, well, so does my mom, and so does my Uncle Charlie. They love me too, and they have a wonderful plan for my life.

Sorry, Uncle Charlie. All right. Have a wonderful plan for my life.

What's the problem? You gave them the good news, but you didn't give them the bad news. The bad news is that you are lost, and you are headed for destruction.

But there is a way out of that. That's the whole gospel. The same thing is true of our sanctification.

If we are not continually aware of sin in our lives, we will be less aware of the glory of God in our salvation.

Why? The awareness of sin drives me to hate it. There are things in my life which once were considered boo -boos.

Or, of course I said that. You'd say it too if that happened to you.

All right. We come to a realization that those kinds of things are sin.

What kind of sin? Sin worthy of my death. Sin requiring the cleansing fountain.

That's a Puritan phrase. The cleansing fountain that comes from the crucified

Christ. That kind of thing requires that. Jesus upped the ante when He was here, didn't

He? He said, you've read that you shall not commit murder.

I say, if you hate your brother, you're guilty. You've read you shall not commit adultery. I say, if you've thought about it, you're guilty.

Whoa. But, when we realize the seriousness with which

God takes sin, then we will get a glimpse of the glory and the wonder of the salvation that is provided for us in Christ.

So, our hatred of sin is directly proportional to our love of salvation.

Okay? Well, I ask myself when I read these. I started out,

I read one of these and I thought, man, that's really good. And the question is, why is that really good?

And the answer was, it's so good that I'm going to write it down here. So, I wrote it in the front of this little book.

I'll read it to you quickly. This is one which

I hang on to still. And what is there about it that I find so good?

There's this. These Puritans were masters of the English language, first of all.

They were not... when they wrote or preached or spoke, all right?

But they were also masters of the Scriptures. And so, they provide in this, and I commend this to you.

They provide words about things that I have thought or feel.

Feel, did you get that? We're big on feel in our culture. Things that I think or feel about myself and about my own walk with the

Lord, they provide words that are elegant beyond anything that I come up with.

And they express things that I think. Listen to this. O God of grace, thou hast imputed my sin to my substitute.

You say, where did he get that? Have you ever heard of imputed sin? Yes, you have.

All right? And here the guy is praying about it. He's expressing what he knows from the

Scriptures. And you have imputed his righteousness to my soul. How many times has

Pastor Mike, or Pastor Bob for that matter, said that when you come to Christ, there are two things that go on.

There's a two -part transaction. One, my sin is imputed to him. His righteousness is imputed to me.

The Puritan, 200 years ago, said as he prayed, as he rehearsed the

Scriptures, to his edification and my benefit, 200 years later, said, you have imputed my sin to my substitute.

Imputed his righteousness to my soul. Clothing me with a bridegroom's robe.

Decking me with jewels of holiness. But, now watch it, here's the valley.

The mountains of sin. The glory of God. We've looked at the glory of God, have we not? My imputed sin to Christ.

His imputed righteousness to me. But, in my Christian walk, I'm still in rags.

You ever feel like that? I do. My best prayers.

You ever ask to pray in a meeting? Okay. Dear Heavenly Father.

You know, we start out like that. This guy says, my best prayers are stained with sin.

You ever feel like that? How should I pray? What should I pray? My penitential tears.

And I repented that. I have penitential tears. So much impurity.

My confessions of wrong. So many aggravations of sin. I confess,

Lord, I have sinned. It aggravates sin more, he says.

My receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness. You know what a tincture is? A tincture is a mixture of iodine.

You ever been down that road? It's a mixture of iodine and alcohol. Okay? My receiving the

Spirit. The Spirit that I have received upon my justification. It is tinctured with, it is mixed with selfishness.

Alright? I need to repent of my repentance. I need my tears to be washed.

I have no robe to bring to cover my sins. No loom to weave my own righteousness.

Is that not elegant language? Is that not language way beyond me? But when

I read it, I'm going, yeah man, I hear ya, I hear ya. I have no loom to weave my own righteousness.

I am always standing clothed in filthy garments. And by grace, I'm always receiving change of raiment.

That's an old word for, I get new clothes. Okay? You say, now where's this guy getting this?

Alright, is he just getting it out of his flowery head? No, he's not getting it out of his flowery head.

You can hear the Scriptures behind this. Alright? For thou dost always justify the ungodly.

Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's ringing in the back of this guy's head.

And all of the other passages like it. And so that's what he blurts out. I'm always receiving clean clothes.

Why? Because thou dost always justify the ungodly. You say, this guy's been in the depths of sin, man.

He's way down in that valley. The mountains of sin are way up here. And what does he see?

Because of the high mountains of sin around him. He sees the glory of God and the wonder of salvation.

I always am in rags, but you are always giving me clean clothes.

Why? Because you do always justify the ungodly. None of that would come, I don't think, had he not been able to articulate the depth of the sin that was part of his own life.

I'm always going into the far country. Immediately, your computer -like minds go, whoop! I'm always going into the far country.

And I'm always returning home as a prodigal. Whoop! The story of the prodigal son. That's in this guy's head.

The Scriptures are in their heads before they ever express anything like this.

Always saying, Father, forgive me. And you are always bringing forth the best robe.

On the worst days that I have, and that's many, on the worst days,

I come home in rags, and Father brings out the new clothes. Why? Because he does always justify the ungodly.

Every morning, that new robe, that best robe. Every morning, let me wear it.

Every evening, return in it. Go out to the day's work in it. Be married in it. Be wound in death in it.

Here there is aspiration that matches up with the Scriptures. Okay? Stand before the great white throne in it, which we will.

Enter heaven in it, shining as the sun. Now watch this. Grant me never to lose sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sin.

Oh yeah, the valley of vision. High mountains of sin all around me. But because the mountains are high, when

I look up, I see the glory of God better. Right? The exceeding righteousness of salvation.

Did you get that balance? The exceeding sinfulness of sin. The exceeding righteousness of salvation.

Those He has made perfect forever. Those who are being made righteous.

You can just see, whoever he was. They don't put any footnotes in here. Whoever he was that Bennett found in the writings or in the diaries or whatever.

And he went through more Puritan than I could possibly read in my lifetime.

Because it's not light reading. Okay? Whoever said these things, whoever thought these things, whoever articulated these things, did that with the

Scriptures banging around in their heads before they ever opened their mouths. The exceeding glory of Christ.

Grant me never to lose sight of the exceeding glory of Christ. The exceeding beauty of holiness.

The exceeding wonder of grace. Did you catch that word that's there at the end of that?

Exceeding, exceeding, exceeding. Look, if the sin is just little, if it's just a boo -boo, if it's a few little things, well, you know, it's just me.

Alright? You ever think that? I've thought that. I'll tell you this.

Usually I get along fairly well with people. I don't get along with things that don't behave like I want them to.

Alright? I don't do well when I cut the piece of flooring too short.

And it's still too short. I cut it again and it's still too short. I don't do well with that kind of stuff.

Okay? I can dismiss that as, well, that's just me, you know. Or I can say, no, it's a piece of the mountain of sin.

And I'm going to count on the Lord to remove it from my life. And we all have stuff like that. That happens to us.

And you say, hey, that's a little thing, you know. When the hammer hits the wrong nail, lots of us don't go, oh, praise the

Lord. Alright? I get it. Alright? When the thing gets cut off twice and it's still too short, a lot of us don't say, praise the

Lord. Do you get it? We're minimizing that stuff. We're saying, hey, that's just little. That's just little.

No problem. It is a problem. And when it becomes a problem, a big problem, the exceeding wonder of salvation, the exceeding glory of Christ, the exceeding beauty of holiness, the exceeding wonder of grace, we will have.

Now, actually, I wasn't going to read that to you at all today, that particular one.

I love that. But let me point this out to you. This was articulated by this person who had the

Scriptures rolling around in his mind. This was articulated by him, and it is an elegant confession.

Sometimes those are articulated orally, but very often, in Puritan times, these things were articulated in writing.

In fact, it was a practice of Puritan pastors to encourage their people to write their prayers.

You say, do you write your prayers? Not very often. You know why? Because we don't write. We text.

We don't write. We look at the computer. We don't do that stuff. But it would be a good exercise, and it certainly is a good exercise for us as we read this.

Now, watch this. Why is it good? Romans chapter 10, 9 and 10, you know that.

We take them as evangelistic verses. They might be, but they might be something else too.

If you confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised you from the dead, what's the action?

You will be saved. That's the action. The principle comes in the next verse.

For with the mouth, confession, the word is amaligeo.

It is to say out loud, along with God, the truth. That's what's happening right here.

Every morning let me wear the robe that has been exchanged for my rags. That's articulated.

When that's articulated, with the mouth, confession is made unto, with the heart one man believes and is justified, or confession is made to righteousness.

With the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. With the mouth. It's a say out loud.

It's an articulate. It might be a write it. But it's a rehearse it. It's a say it over again deal.

And that's what we find here. And we don't do that. We are all very cerebral.

We North Americans. I think the Europeans probably are too. In fact, when we went to England, I think a lot of them were really cerebral.

They didn't have much to say. Pastor Michael makes a great point from the Scriptures.

And we all go, and what we mean is,

Amen! Great! But we don't articulate this. I mean, we just don't do that.

How many of us read the Bible out loud? I don't know. You'll have to answer that question for yourself.

Well, where does this reverence for the Scriptures come? These are elegant confessions.

These are elegant Romans 10, 9, and 10. Okay? When Paul gets to Romans chapter 10, by the way, he has covered all of salvation.

Justification, sanctification, glorification. So when he says, with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation, he's saying your justification is rehearsed with your mouth.

Your sanctification proceeds on your confession. Pastor Mike has just been in Hebrews.

Let us hold fast our confession. That's a say out loud, rehearse it again confession.

Okay? And with the mouth, confession is made to anticipation of that glorification.

That's all happening right here in these prayers of these puritans. And not only is it happening, it is elegant.

It is elegant in the way that it happens. Now let me say this. This is just an editorial comment about all of this.

We don't use the King James Bible. The King James Bible is written at about a 12th grade level.

Most of the translations that we have now, that we read, including the good old

ESV, or the NIV, or the whatever be, okay, are written at some place between about the 7th and the 9th grade level.

When you read the King James Bible, in spite of all of its problems, and it has problems.

We're not going to do this King James only thing here. All right? Okay? It has lots of problems, including the text from which it was translated, including the

Greek text from which it was translated, which is a late text and earlier manuscripts have been found.

The language soars and it is eloquent. Sometimes it's indecipherable.

But it soars and it is elegant and eloquent. And these guys come from the same thing.

These expressions that we read here are probably from the Geneva Bible, which was the

Bible of the Reformation, and later the King James Bible, which was in some ways just a political exercise.

In any case, it became highly significant. That's another story for another day.

All right? Now, where did the reverence from the Scripture come from? From these guys.

So they're talking about imputed sin and imputed righteousness and the prodigal son and robes of holiness and all of those things, and then soaring to the exceeding righteousness of salvation, the exceeding glory of Christ and all of that.

Where does all that come from, that reverence for the Scriptures? Don't forget, from about the 3rd century up until about the 15th century, everything was in Latin, on purpose.

You weren't supposed to be reading the Bible for yourself. The reverence from the

Scriptures comes from these things. The translation of the Scriptures into the heart language of the reader.

That's one reason that the King James Bible is not quite so applicable today as other translations that we have.

You say, what are you talking about? The modern translations are dumbed down? Well, kind of.

Kind of. And it's about English, though. It's not about the Scriptures themselves. All right?

So the translation into the heart language of the reader. John Hus, John Wycliffe, guys burned at the stake for what they did.

That was a piece of the production of the reverence for the Scripture that results in what

I read to you here. The development of the printing press. It's okay for John Wycliffe to translate the

Bible into English so that every plow boy could read it. All right? It's quite another thing to have to copy the whole thing.

If that's the homework assignment for today, please go home and copy your Bible. Oh yeah, okay.

Before the Packers come on? Well, you know, you might have to stop there. And so on. All right?

They didn't have to do that. Why? Gutenberg was bringing the press. Let me tell you, there's a lot of providence here.

Okay? Gutenberg developed the printing press, and so the translations into the heart language were able to be distributed to the people widely.

So much so that kings got really upset about that. Okay? The chaos and the persecution of the

European, English, and Scottish Reformations. It was a chaotic time during the time of the

Reformation. And the chaos related to the fact that more and more people were reading the

Bible. The Geneva Bible in the early part of the Reformation with its 3 ,000 footnotes.

All right? But they were reading the Bible. They were beginning to see the exceeding righteousness of salvation, the exceeding glory of Christ, the exceeding beauty of holiness, the exceeding wonder of grace.

It wasn't about just going someplace on Sunday and doing a bunch of muggas. It was about knowing

Christ. And it came from the Scriptures. And these guys express it. All right?

Persecution. Judy and I went to St. Andrews. You golfers. You know, you have to go to the 18th

Green, which is right there by the road, and get down on your knees and kiss the grass. Because it's the original golf course in the world.

Well, about the time it was becoming the original golf course in the world, Judy looked up and said,

Oh, what's that? A big monument. Four guys were burned at the stake at St. Andrews at the time of the

Reformation. And what was the problem? They had gone to Europe, and they had found out about the exceeding beauty of holiness, the wonder of grace, the glory of Christ, and the righteousness of salvation.

They brought it back to St. Andrews, and they burned them at the stake. You know what? That increased the reverence for the

Word that produces things like I've just read to you. And then

I would add to that for our own selves. That's not good.

My English teacher, who's not dead, would not like that. But for us, I would say this.

The hardship of colonization in Massachusetts produced not only a colony, but produced a reverence for the

Word. Brought with them from Europe, from England, sure. But the hardship here drove them back to the

Word. Just like hardship in our own lives drives us to the Word. We know about that at Bethlehem Bible Church.

We're praying for you folks that are experiencing hardship now. And we are rejoicing and encouraged when we hear your testimony about how the hardship that you are facing.

You know who you are. The hardship that you are facing is driving you to the

Word. And when it drives you to the Word, it will drive you to the valley of vision. There will be sin that becomes apparent.

But when you look up out of that deep valley, there will be the glory of God, the exceeding beauty of holiness, righteousness,

Christ, and glorification in Him, the wonder of His grace. All of that drives us to the

Word, which drives us to see our sin, which drives us to see the glory of God.

Well, I ask... I guess I've already answered it. Because I really haven't paid any attention to what

I wrote here. I ask, what informs these guys?

Every time I read this, I ask, what informs them? What is it that informs them? And of course, it is the

Scriptures. So I'd like to do this. We only have a couple of minutes. But I'd like to do this.

I don't know if I'll pursue it next week or not. We'll see. I'd like to have you read me some

Scriptures. And then ask yourself, when we've read these Scriptures, ask yourself, what is the response of the

Puritan to these Scriptures? So somebody get Hebrews 6.

Well, 1 through 12, that's quite a bit. Hebrews 10, 19 through 39.

Jude 1, 17 through 25. And while you're turning to those,

I just want to remind you of a couple of episodes, okay? When Jesus said, you have to eat my body and drink my blood, on the day that He said that, because I am the bread of life, a lot of people turned back.

They said, wow, this is really a hard saying. We can't follow this guy anymore. When Paul spoke to the philosophers on Mars Hill in Acts chapter 17, it says at the end, some of them believed.

Many of them said, this guy's crazy. Others said, well, we'd like to hear more about the resurrection.

Alright? And then there was a guy that came and asked the Lord to heal his son.

He was a Gentile. And the Lord said, your son is healed. And the guy said,

I believe. And then he blurted out, help my unbelief. Okay, now read for me

Hebrews 6, 1 through 12. Somebody. Who's got that? And read in your radio voice, because this is being recorded.

Okay? So we don't just get silence. Alright? Hebrews 6, 1 through 12.

Yeah, go ahead, Fred. Okay. That's long. What's it about?

In general. I get it. There's six sermons in there. Alright? What is it about in general?

In general, it's about going on to maturity. For those that aren't saved, it's a mixed congregation in the audience to the

Hebrews. For those that are thinking about, well, let's go back to the temple worship and all of that.

This Jesus thing has caused us a lot of trouble, persecution, and so on. Maybe we ought to go back.

The exhortation of the writer of the Hebrews there is, fix yourselves firmly in this.

Okay? Now I'm going to read the Puritan response to this kind of thing. Hebrews 10, 19 through 39.

Now that's 20 verses. So, who's got it? Okay, go ahead,

Mark. Okay. Now those are two hard sayings from Hebrews. There are six warnings in Hebrews of that kind.

I want you to go back now a couple hundred years. Back to the days, 300, 400 years.

Back to the days of the Reformation. These people have just begun to read this. It's rattling around in their heads, these kinds of things.

They take it very seriously. They're in the valley of vision. Somebody read Jude 17 through 25.

Quickly. Now we're going to have to get out of here. Go ahead, Chris. Okay. Now let me comment in about just two minutes about that.

These aren't the only passages like this. But here are these people who are taking the

Scriptures as seriously as the Puritans took the Scriptures. Here are people who are seeing themselves in the valley of vision.

Mountains of sin on either side, but the glory of God high overhead. And so they read these

Scriptures. But unlike us, they express something about them.

We kind of go, whoa. That's hard. That's about it for us. All right.

But listen to this. And I'm going to knock it off here. And I'll pick it up next week.

Got to think on that. Thou righteous and holy sovereign, in whose hand is my life, and in whose hand are all my ways.

A confession of the sovereignty of God. Now watch this.

Keep me from fluttering about religion. Now the three passages we just read, we read about doubting, we read about going back, we read about not keeping the teaching of the apostles, we read about snatching those from the fire, we read about all of this stuff.

This person read that kind of thing too. And those aren't the only passages. But he confesses something.

He expresses it. And his cry to the Lord is, keep me from fluttering about religion.

Now 300 years ago, in Europe, Scotland, England, and the colonies, when they said religion, they were not thinking about Islam, the

New Age, or anything like that. It was always biblical, Reformed Christianity.

Okay? Keep me from fluttering about religion.

He read these passages of Scripture and said these people are fluttering. And they are warned not to do that.

They are warned to go on. They are warned to leave the elementary things. Oh God, keep me from fluttering about religion.

Fix me firm in it. For I am irresolute. Do you ever feel like that? I don't even know what my decisions are.

I decide one thing one minute and another thing another minute. My decisions are smoke and vapor.

And I do not glorify Thee. Cut me not off before my thoughts grow to responses and the budding of my soul into full flower.

Now watch it. And this is how Jude ended it, didn't he? Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling, able to present you faultless before His throne with exceeding joy, to the only wise

God, be glory and majesty, dominion and power. And this guy ends this little part of his prayer with cut me not off.

Do you ever feel like that? God ought to kill me. Do you ever feel like that? Cut me not off before my thoughts grow to responses and the budding of my soul into full flower.

For Thou art forbearing and good, patient and kind.

And in the words of Jude, will present me faultless before Your throne. That's his confession.

That's not just his, oh yeah, that's very cool. That's his confession. That's what this is about.

Did you catch the balance? I am a flutterer. My decisions are vapor. But you are forbearing and good, patient and kind.

Balance. Perfect balance. Elegant balance. That's why I love these prayers.

Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for Your Word that inspires us. Thank You for Your Word that inspired these

Puritans. Thank You for the confessions that they made based on Your Word that are recorded here.

We'll take them for ourselves because some of us are not elegant at all. Some of us hardly know what to say.

Some of us can hardly make sense of our feelings. These people based on Your Word make sense of those things.

We're grateful for their testimony as well as Your Word inspired by the

Holy Spirit. It's in Christ's name we pray, and we pray that we may see the exceeding wonder of salvation in Him.