Sanctification | The Whole Counsel

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is Chuck Baggett, and we're looking at the book,

Salvation in Full Color, 20 Sermons by Great Awakening Preachers, edited by Richard Owen Roberts.

And it's been a book that we've been working through. We're down to the last few sermons, and today we're looking at the theme of sanctification or perseverance.

It's kind of both of them together. The original title of the sermon is really probably a more specific explanation.

The title of the sermon is New Converts Exhorted to Cleave or Cling to the

Lord, and it really is a helpful sermon. So, Chuck, why don't you introduce us to its preacher?

The preacher was Isaac Chandler, born in Bristol, England. He came to America, I think, at age 32, pastored and passed away at 48, lived early 18th century.

Not a lot known about him. He was a Baptist pastor, and I think the only Baptist pastor that we have among these selection of sermons.

Mr. Roberts points out that in the early 18th century, the Baptist movement was not particularly strong, especially in the

U .S., and they were not on the forefront of evangelistic efforts. And so, they're working with Whitefield here.

They wouldn't have necessarily participated. A lot of them were more hard -shelled and didn't believe in using means to call people to salvation.

But Chandler was not one of those. And so, after Whitefield came through, Whitefield encouraged the ministers in the area to form kind of discipleship groups, helping the young believers with various teaching.

And so, the ministers in the South Carolina area where Chandler lived did that, and Chandler was one of them, and they took turns preaching.

And so, this is the sermon from his turn preaching to these young converts that came to Christ under Whitefield's preaching.

I was trying to find more information about him other than what we have right here. There is a diary that was published at one time, but it's out of print now.

So, that's about all I know to tell you. A couple of really interesting things before we hit the sermon is, this is the only

Baptist in the book, as far as we know. And it is good for us, I mean, we're

Baptist. It's good for Baptists to look back and see, you know, historically what Baptists believed, what early

American Baptists believed. We are not bound by tradition. If we feel that they have departed from Scripture at any point, our conscience is held bound to Scripture.

But we both feel that Chandler is a good example of a biblically balanced man, and it would be foolish to ignore, you know, the men that preceded us.

And so, it's good to see how early Baptists approach things, because we do believe once saved, always saved.

You know, that's not a very careful way of saying it, but we believe that, and Chandler believes that.

And yet, the things he says are so biblically, you know, carefully held in balance.

Another thing is that, as you mentioned, Whitfield encouraged the young believers to gather together and for the ministers in the area to help them.

One of the key elements of the Great Awakening, or especially in the

UK, the evangelical revival, was this gathering of believers into small groups.

They called them society meetings, or the Welsh called them experience meetings, where you would kind of get beneath the surface of the

Christian life and deal with each other. And the Welsh pastor or preacher and hymnist,

William Williams from Pentekellen, wrote a book on this called The Door to the

Society Meeting, where he talks about how you can guide a group through this. And I believe it was

Mrs. Lloyd -Jones, Dr. Lloyd -Jones' wife, who had that translated and put out.

Teddy will have to double -check my facts and make sure. But that's still available. So, you know, young believers meeting together under the guidance of an older believer was really at the heart of the...

We would say, you know, it was what gave that wonderful preaching in the

Great Awakening a lasting substance. After a great preacher like Whitfield leaves your town, how does it continue on?

And we'll talk about that at the very end, but it is important for us as we read the sermon to think of more than ourselves.

Well, the sermon really, he has this opening kind of introductory section, which is a little mini -sermon in itself, and then he has his main sermon.

So, let me read the verse that he uses for the sermon. It's Acts 11, verse 23, who, when he came...

Now, this is speaking of Barnabas, and the context is that Peter has preached the gospel to the

Gentiles by God's very clear direction, in spite of Peter's hesitancy. You remember in the book of Acts.

And so, Gentiles have been converted, and also the gospel is being spread after the persecution of Stephen.

Stephen becomes a martyr, and the Christians are running from that, you know, the center of persecution and carrying the gospel.

So, some of the Jews are Hellenistic Jews. They speak Greek, and so when they go throughout the empire, they take the gospel to Greeks.

So, with Peter and these Hellenistic Jews, the gospel is going to the Greeks, to the non -Jews, and Barnabas is sent by the churches to kind of see what it looks like.

So, it says, who, when he came and had seen the grace of God, was glad and exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the

Lord. And so, what Chandler does in this is, he gives this introduction to the sermon, and he just takes the verse apart and kind of gives a summary.

He came, number one. Number two, having come, he saw the grace of God.

Number three, he rejoiced in what he saw. And number four, he exhorted them.

That's all introduction. And then he comes to a sermon, and it has four major points. First, he endeavors to unfold the nature and importance of the duty to which we are exhorted, that is, to cling to the

Lord. So, what is the nature of clinging, and why is it so important? Second, he says, he offers some reasons for the duty with the design to enforce it.

So, he gives some arguments that give weight to that command. You must cling to the

Lord. Third, he lays down some directions, or we would say applications, to assist us in a cheerful discharge of that duty.

And that really, I think we both feel, is the heart of the sermon. He gives seven or so exhortations or directions of, if you're going to cheerfully cling to the

Lord, you need to consider these things. So, we'll take some time on those. And finally, he addresses himself to all such who are poor, unhappy souls, who have not yet so much as turned from their vanities to the

Lord. So, an evangelistic ending there. Well, there's a lot in this chapter, so we thought that it might be good just to kind of hit some of the high points again, as we try to do most weeks.

And the first high point we want to hit, I guess we could put it in the form of a question. So, I'm going to shoot it to you in the form of a question,

Chuck. How does the passage here guide our thinking about a profession of faith and our response to that?

So, we often hear, especially in churches where perhaps you're not following kind of a cultural pattern.

And so, in the Mid -South, that means everyone around you, family, come to you and say,

Joey's four years old, and he asked Jesus into his heart at Vacation Bible School. And they look at you, and they want to know, are you going to be happy?

Or are you going to kind of condemn us because your church doesn't do that? Or, you know, or you're against the sinner's prayer, or whatever.

How biblically ought we to respond? And does this passage help us? It does help us.

Barnabas came, and he saw. He saw evidences of their faith, and it was because of what he saw that he rejoiced.

So, he's not basing his response simply on something that has been said, you know, not just a profession, but that there has been evidence that that profession is genuine.

And so, yes, it helps. I think of another passage in Colossians chapter one, let me read verse three through six, where Paul has heard.

So, he's in prison, but he's heard of the work of the gospel in the lives of these young believers, this new church.

So, notice what he says. He starts off by saying, in verse three, we give thanks to God, the

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you. So, he's grateful about something, and this is moving him in his prayers to give thanks to God.

Then the next verse opens up with the little word in the New American Standard, since, since, because.

There's a foundation. There's a reason for the thanksgiving. Because, or since, we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints.

So, there is something that the gospel does in the life of a person who's a true convert that is reportable, that's hearable, you know.

He goes on to say, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you just as in all the world also.

Listen to his description of what the gospel does. It is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth.

So, a two -fold picture of the gospel's increase. You know, geographically, the gospel is spreading from city to city, but also within each individual.

When the word of God, when life is implanted, and through the preaching of the gospel, the

Holy Spirit opens the eyes, you know, regenerates, and faith and repentance are exercised, it is the kind of thing, like in Barnabas' day, that can be seen.

It is the kind of thing that can be reported. I think this helps us with a couple of errors.

One would be kind of the easy -believe -ism of maybe, you know, the sinner's prayer approach.

And there's nothing, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a sinner crying out to God. What we're concerned about is if someone gives you a formula prayer and says, once you say these words, then you have the thing that you kind of named, you know.

So, God, come and save me. I'm asking Jesus into my heart. Amen. And then the preacher turns to you.

I mean, this is kind of probably how you were dealt with. This is how I was dealt with as a kid. You ask

Jesus into your heart, and you kind of look at the preacher like, uh, and he said, did you just say that prayer?

Well, yes. And, you know, and you ask Jesus in your heart, yes. Then where is he? You know, you say, in my heart?

Yes, he is. You know, never doubt it. Well, in the last decade or so, you know, that approach has been, you know, dissected.

And, you know, culturally, it's not as popular as it used to be. But I find that Reformed people are oftentimes, they swing the other way.

And there's this danger. If a person can agree with you about five points of Calvinism, you know, if they know the truth, if they agree with the truth, and they come to a church which teaches the truth, then it is assumed they are regenerate.

We had an older man in our church at one time, a really sweet older man who would always, whenever he looked at a life of a person who claimed to be a

Christian, and then they just walked away and lived for self, this older man's response was always the same.

He would say, I don't know how they could do that. They know the truth, as if they were born again, because they agreed with five points.

And I would always say, knowing, you know, aligning facts in your head that you've been told by your pastor, and appreciating how they fit together, that is not equivalent to regeneration.

So it is good for whether you belong to a church that does the sinner's prayer, you know, with little children at the end of VBS, and you have another hundred kids saved, some of them, a lot of them were saved last year, you know, or whether you belong to a church that has reacted against that, and maybe not looking for any real changes, as long as the intellect is informed.

I think that Isaac Chandler's emphasis there at the beginning of the sermon is pretty helpful. So, John, what do we do with the family member or friend who comes up to us excited that their child has made a profession of faith, and asks

Jesus in their heart, and we don't want to be a, you know, a bucket of cold water, but maybe we don't want to rejoice in the same way they're rejoicing just yet.

How do you respond? Yeah, I think that, really, I think it's our attitude that probably would be the most important part of that response.

Of course, I agree that there are some wrong responses. You know, if we jump on them and say, you know, you led them through a sinner's prayer, and you know that's dangerous, and, you know, it's detrimental to your kid's soul, and why would you do that?

And, well, that obviously wouldn't be right. And then jumping on board and saying, wonderful, another person is headed to heaven, without seeing some changes.

I don't think that's right either. So, in those kind of touchy situations, especially if you are the person in your family that's become known as, oh, so you're reformed, so you don't think anybody gets saved, you know, at a young age, which is not true.

We do have many wonderful examples of young people being wonderfully converted. If we believe that God is sovereign, then

He can convert at any age, you know. So, I think that if there's some concern in our mind about, you know, knowing the way that family maybe approaches the whole issue of, you know, salvation,

I think that we can lovingly express hope that what you're saying, that's really good news, and I'll be praying, you know, as God continues to work, and, you know, and through the changed life, it just becomes so apparent that nobody would ever doubt it.

You know, and so, you know, and even if... So, let's say it's like a nephew or a niece in your family, you know, to write them a letter and to say kind things, but to point them to Christ, not as if they're lost, but not as if they're saved either, you know, just saying, you know, you profess faith in Christ.

He is such a perfect Savior. This is what I found Him to be. And just talk about Christ. And if they are a believer, they'll grab hold of those facts and live on them, you know, at their level.

And if they're not a believer, you know, in a sense, they, in time, they kind of shrug their shoulders and say, well,

I already did all that, and it'll be made clear. The same thing could, to some degree, be said about an adult.

They don't have to just be a child. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. When we talk about new believers, we don't mean seven -year -olds.

We mean a person who's recently embraced Christ, so it could be a 60 -year -old. Yeah. Another thing about the sermon that really is encouraging is that he points out that Barnabas says these things to new believers.

Again, not necessarily physically young. And it's good to remember that conversion is not the end.

Okay, once a person embraces Christ, and you could say, well, they are in the kingdom now. They are. But that's not the end of the

Christian life, and that's not all we care about. You know, there's a whole, they've opened the gate. They've walked into the new kingdom.

They've been transferred from a kingdom of darkness to light. They can never go back to the kingdom of darkness, but it's just the beginning.

So, if we leave them there, we're departing from the New Testament pattern. Barnabas didn't see them and say, great, you're in the kingdom, and it proves that God loves the

Gentiles as well, and all that God promised is coming to pass. He exhorts them.

Now you need to cling to the Lord daily. You know, and it also helps us to realize that baby

Christians, new Christians, can handle strong words, and those words, you know, the timing of those words is pretty significant.

Yeah. Chandler, he's addressing new believers, as we've said, said,

I desire to teach you the necessity of abounding in good works and how you might perform them in an evangelical manner.

So, not to earn salvation, but because you have been saved. With a view to God's glory, the love of Christ constraining you,

I'm concerned to show you from where you are to derive fresh supplies of grace for your final perseverance, as well as how to derive comfort and peace when laboring under a humble sense of your corruptions and shortcomings, or when buffeted by Satan, or when under any other kind of affliction.

And so, you know, this is a battle, and there's a journey ahead of you.

Here's how to be prepared for it. A lot of wisdom. Yeah, and we talked about before the show how any godly counsel that can be given and embraced in the earliest days of the journey, that, in a sense, we could say that counsel has the potential to be more valuable than any counsel that follows, in a sense, because if it can affect the entire journey, you think of a person who's...

So, you know, I became a Christian at 20, and things that were said to me by the person that led me to the

Lord at 20, in some way, have affected every day since then, so now it's been 32 years.

Now, if someone comes and talks to me tomorrow, and the things they say are very beneficial, they only have the potential to affect the next however many years

I have left, you know? So, early counsel, so helpful to set, like you said, to set with biblical realism and kind of truth that puts steel in your soul, to set them on the right path from the beginning.

Yeah, and he mentions that if we misunderstand the nature of grace and kind of let the new convert think that grace can be used as an argument for not pursuing good works, he warns against that lie.

He says it this way, to argue from the free, immutable grace of God to a life of rebellion against God is to argue more like devils than men.

So, never think that salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, that the logical outcome of that would be that we live for ourselves, you know?

Another thing he hits is he talks about the balance in perseverance between two great elements in the

New Testament, in particular, between the promises that God will enable us to endure, and he will not lose one of his children, and the duties that we must cling to the end.

So, Chuck, when you see both of those, how do you see those working together, and why is it important to hold both?

Yeah, so the promise, the promises that Christ has made to us hold before us hope and a destination.

The duty I think of is kind of putting the boundaries on the pathway. Here's the way to go.

I was thinking about this earlier today. We recently went on vacation with my children, and traveling with them is always a journey in itself.

It makes you want to stay home, but how much worse would it be if there's no destination known?

So, we go load up, and we're going to be driving for hours, kids. Where are we going? Ah, we're just driving. So, there's, in a sense, duty.

There's a journey, but there's no destination. It's drudgery. It's just mile after mile of boredom and tedious in their minds, but there's a destination in mind, and the hope of arriving at this destination, the things we're going to do when we get there helps them to not be as bored or for it to be as tedious.

So, you know, there's duty, and if all we know is there's duty, then it can become, you know, a burden.

It's just something to do. I'm supposed to do this. I don't know why. Check off the boxes, but the promise says, oh, here's why.

Here's where we're headed, and this is why we're doing this. If you only have the promise, though, then you don't have, like, a, you know, sense of roadmap.

So, we're going somewhere. We don't know where. We're just going to drive till we get there.

How do you know you've arrived? Ah, well, I don't know. Yeah, I think that's a helpful illustration.

So, the duties are the roadmap. We're not free to just go wherever, kind of, we feel like going today and just, kind of, have a sentimental, vague idea of I'm just here to love the

Lord. Well, but what would that look like, and what would sticking very close to Him look like? If clinging is commanded and clinging to a certain person is commanded, then we really, who that person is and where he's walking would, that would change everything, you know.

You have to cling to Him. So, you're not commanded to say, let Jesus follow you, you know, closely, but rather lean upon Him, cling to Him.

Yeah, good balance. So, without the hope, we're paralyzed. I mean, I don't know about you, but, you know, if, when we see the sin that still remains within us and the old habits that seem to cling to us when we're trying to cling to Christ, and when you see the sin of the world, now, maybe at age 15, that's not so clear, but at age 52,

I mean, I feel like every day we live longer, you know, the bitter, heartbreaking consequences of sin that God told us would be there, the death that He warned us about, you just see it, you know, it's like it's unveiled more and more in people you care about or reach out to.

So, without the promise of enduring and being kept by God while we persevere,

I think we would just be paralyzed with the despair, and we would just sit down in self -pity and say, why try?

I have never seen in a person despair produce a faster pace. It always produces kind of a paralyzing, crippling, you know, impact.

Yeah, so, I think that's really helpful to hold them together like that, and when they are held together, and we don't pick one or the other,

I only focus on the promises, God's going to keep me, you know, nobody can snatch me out of His hands, but you ignore the duties, or you only focus on the duties, and you ignore the hope that there is in God's sovereign keeping.

Either one of those approaches is pretty dangerous. Yes. So, perfect balance that God gives us.

Now, we're going to come to the heart of the sermon, and we'll have to hit this kind of quickly. He gives seven directions, seven counsels, seven applications for this.

How do you do this? How do you cling to Jesus Christ every day of your life and do it cheerfully, effectively?

And He gives a number. I'm going just read through them, and then, Chuck, if you want to pick one that you feel is particularly helpful for our day, for yourself, and I'll pick one, and we may kind of wander a little bit, but we'll be okay.

Here they are, and this is kind of restated in my language. Number one, he says, make sure that you give

Christ your heart and not just an external profession.

So, heartily cling to him. Number two, make sure that you continue to hate the expressions of sin that remain in your life.

Number three, beware of becoming absorbed or entangled with the world.

Number four, be careful of your choice of company, activities, entertainment, things that feed the soul and fill up the soul.

We could say your spiritual diet, your social diet. Next, keep constantly in mind the reality of your need to depend upon God as you're clinging.

So, that reminds me of the picture in the Song of Solomon in chapter eight, where Solomon is walking out of the wilderness, and his wife, his bride, is there.

She's coming up, but she's weary, and it says, who is this coming up out of the wilderness, leaning on the beloved?

And so, the wonderful picture, the Christian turning their back on the world's old temptations, all the old lovers, and tired with the struggle at times, weary, heart -weary, and the only way to do it is to lean heavily on Christ.

And, you know, when you think of leaning, how much strength does it take to lean? Well, you know, you don't have to be strong to lean.

You just have to be determined, I cannot do this on my own. I must lean on him.

So, good point. Number six, live with your thoughts directed toward what is yet to come.

And we've kind of mentioned that, the anticipation of the glorious end ought to fuel today.

Then finally, he says, make every diligent use of the means of grace, prayer, scripture, worship, whether that's individually or whether that's with other believers corporately.

So, all right, Chuck, great list. If you were to, for the sake of time, pick one or two that you felt most helpful, which would you pick?

They are all good, as you said, a great list. I'm going to mention the first one, make sure you give him your heart and not just your external profession.

I think he actually talked about beware of resting in mere skin -deep convictions.

So, you know, give yourself fully and completely to Christ and not just, well, love him deeply, give him your heart.

But the one that I think that probably is most helpful to me or the biggest problem for me, perhaps, is the third one about being entangled with the world.

I have not found it easier as I've gotten older to, I've not found that the world has become less entangling.

You know, there are things that, there are things that are obviously sinful. I'm not talking about that so much as good things, even necessary things that are given wrong priority and you allow, you know, you chase them or you allow them to occupy time and space that they do not have the right to occupy.

I've not found that battle to become easier with age. Yeah. The first one you mentioned there when he talks about heartily with all the heart clinging and not just the externals, you know, so not forms, formality.

I go through the forms of religion and not, you know, just intellectual profession and lining up truths in the right order, but the heart being penetrated by those things in a way that is irreversible, not perfect.

You know, there will be one day where the pain of love is no longer ours. And that's a phrase from an old writer, and I forget who wrote it, but they talked about love must be pain now, if it would be bliss in heaven, that is because of love to Jesus Christ.

There are certain things that grieve us now, sin grieves us, sluggishness grieves us, indifference grieves us, and the unbeliever feels no grief over those things.

We do. We break our hearts over how slow our hearts are to just be, you know, wholly given over to Him.

And one day that will be laid aside. And so that's one of the great things we look forward to, not just heaven and some streets of gold, you know, and a little cabin in the corner, you know, but there will be my

King in a new creation. And there will be an intimacy with that now we have only had just a little foretaste of, and there will be no sin to cloud it ever.

That is one that I think I find most helpful and most difficult, which was the second to the last one, number six, live with your thoughts directed toward what is yet to come.

And again, I don't mean some ethereal kind of floating around in a cloud of glory, but a very real physical new creation in which there will not be one church because He will be here.

And there will be, you know, Revelation paints that wonderful picture that kind of is paradoxical.

It's obvious, not literal. There is a throne in the midst of the land. He's on the throne.

And there is a street that, in a sense, connects to every individual's house.

So, it's not that I'm on, you know, I'm on 22nd Street, but I'm about 10 miles down the road.

No, every house is kind of directly connected. And there's a river that flows by every front door and a tree of life, you know, just the unimpeded intimacy with the

God -man. So, Newton gave an illustration of this once.

John Newton said, imagine a man who has found out from his lawyer that some distant relative that he didn't even hardly know died and has left him an enormous inheritance.

So, you're supposed to go to the bank and sign all the papers, okay, next

Monday. So, he gets up and he gets dressed. And this man who barely can make his bills, he's a poor man, is going to immediately be one of the richest men in the city.

So, he gets a little cab, you know, this is back in the 1800s. So, he gets his cab and the horse -drawn carriage kind of cab, and he's being taken through the city of London to go to his bank.

And halfway there or almost there, the cab breaks, the wheel snaps, and the cabbie gets off and he's grumpy and he's apologizing.

And Newton says this, what would the man do that's in the cab? You rented the cab, the cab's broken down, but you know that just in a few more minutes of a walk, you're at the bank and you will be a millionaire.

So, do you sit there and, you know, and cuss the cabbie and sit around in your self -pity and say, why does this always happen to me?

You would say to the cabbie, don't worry about it, man, don't worry about it. That can't stop me from being happy.

And you would just pick up, and run the rest of the way. I've kind of, you know, butchered his illustration, but that's the basic picture.

So, how I live today being altered by the anticipation of a reality that we are allowed to taste today, that we're allowed to take a little of today, the down payment, but the fullness is, you know, right ahead of us.

Unlike you, I think the fourth one that he mentioned, or sorry, the third one that he mentioned, being absorbed or entangled with just the nice stuff that the world offers is, you know, probably the most plaguing for me.

And I have to look at ways that that enters into my heart, you know, whether it's, you know, getting an email ad saying, hey, the newest fountain pen is available.

That may not tempt anybody else out there, but I find it quite tempting.

So, I just delete it. I think, I don't want to know about the new fountain pen. And I am right now speaking to Teddy James, who just is looking at a new pen.

So, if you're listening, Allison, you might need to check the credit card balance. All right. Now, let me read his cure, because I find it so helpful.

He says, here's the cure to a distracted heart, and it's Christ. Here's what he says.

Oh, that I might prevail with you to try and try again how good the

Lord is, that you might daily study more and more the ravishing sweetness and pleasures of a holy and devout life, even a life of faith and fellowship with God in all acts of holiness.

So, enjoying God in every deed you do that day, thereby anticipating the unspeakable joys of the glorious upper world.

This will at once sweeten all the bitters and render insipid all the vain and sensual pleasures of this life.

Walking near the Lord will enable us to go through the bitter times with a sweetness.

And all the things that the world offers us, it will make them appear as they really are, and that is insipid, just kind of, you know, lukewarm, not worth really paying attention to.

Then he goes on to say, this will cause you to move closer and closer to the Lord. Believe it, oh, believe it, that as to be carnally minded is death, so to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

And that comes from Romans 8, 6. So, the cure to a distracted life is not legalism.

It is to give a great deal of spiritual energy, focusing on the

Lord, to draw the heart off and onto Him. Unlike you,

I think the fourth one that he mentioned, or sorry, the third one that he mentioned, being absorbed or entangled with just the nice stuff that the world offers is, you know, probably the most plaguing for me.

And I have to look at ways that that enters into my heart, you know, whether it's, you know, getting an email ad saying, hey, the newest fountain pen is available.

That may not tempt anybody else out there, but I find it quite tempting.

So, I just delete it. I think, I don't want to know about the new fountain pen. And I am right now speaking to Teddy James, who just is looking at a new pen.

So, if you're listening, Allison, you might need to check the credit card balance. All right. Now, let me read his cure, because I find it so helpful.

He says, here's the cure to a distracted heart, and it's Christ. Here's what he says.

Oh, that I might prevail with you to try and try again how good the

Lord is, that you might daily study more and more the ravishing sweetness and pleasures of a holy and devout life, even a life of faith and fellowship with God in all acts of holiness.

So, enjoying God in every deed you do that day, thereby anticipating the unspeakable joys of the glorious upper world.

This will at once sweeten all the bitters and render insipid all the vain and sensual pleasures of this life.

Walking near the Lord will enable us to go through the bitter times with a sweetness, and all the things that the world offers us, it will make them appear as they really are, and that is insipid, just kind of, you know, lukewarm, not worth really paying attention to.

Then he goes on to say, this will cause you to move closer and closer to the Lord. Believe it, oh, believe it, that as to be carnally minded is death, so to be spiritually minded is life and peace, and that comes from Romans 8, 6.

So, the cure to a distracted life is not legalism, it is to give a great deal of spiritual energy, focusing on the

Lord, to draw the heart off and onto Him. So, when we say the cure is to focus on Christ, I think that just about everybody that attends church would say, well, that's exactly what we do at my church, we focus on Christ, or I focus on Christ, I mean,

I don't focus on somebody else as my Savior. But some very practical ways, one would be to really search out in the scriptures those passages that give you the highest, clearest views of the person and the work of Christ.

Colossians 1, you know, following that prayer, Paul gives, depending on how you divide it, these seven or so descriptions of Christ, that if a person would walk through those slowly, using other passages in the

Bible to help fill that in, using commentaries to help fill in detail, if you were to memorize that, what a gripping thing.

I mean, can you think of other passages that you found particularly helpful on the person of Christ? Hebrews 1, the descriptions in Isaiah are helpful passages to my soul.

Yeah, we've talked about those so many times, those are always my favorites. Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 53 are songs about Christ.

Yeah, I mean, the scenes in Revelation, Revelation 5, you know, so really just a long soak in passages that deal primarily or directly, not indirectly, with the person of Christ until that begins to alter you within.

Another thing you can do is really be careful in the books you pick, and he talks about that in the chapter. Don't just read good books.

You don't have enough time. Read the very best books, and the very best books will probably be the books that give you the clearest pictures of Christ.

Owen's book, The Glory of Christ, is good, but really one of my favorite is, not by a

Puritan, but by a 19th century man named William Blakey, Scottish man in the late 19th century, who wrote a book called

The Glimpses into the Inner Life of Our Lord, something like that. A little hard to find. Do you have a favorite?

Thomas Vincent's The True Christian's Love to the Unseen Christ. John Flavel, is it his first volume or second volume that deals with the mediatorial glories of Christ?

Yeah, The Fountain of Life or something. Yeah, that's one of the sweetest. I spent almost a year reading a sermon a week just walking through that, and it was so good.

Yeah, it really is. There are so many. Another practical help is how we approach the quiet time.

I mean, you can approach it in a way to just read, or you can approach it to look at Him and to spend time with Him in whatever passage you're in.

I'm reading right now through Clyde Cranford's book Because We Love Him with a Young Believer, and Clyde talks about having that goal of spending time with Him for the purpose of knowing

Him and having our hearts preoccupied with Him. Yeah, I've been reading through First and Second Chronicles in the last couple months in my quiet time, and I did not expect this to be the outcome, but every time

I look at David or Solomon or a failed king, of course David and Solomon both failed at times, but it's just sweet to back up from that portrait and realize the son of David, not

Solomon, the son is the perfect king, and how every place where David or Solomon or Josiah or Hezekiah or Asa were strong,

Christ is infinitely better, and every place they were weak, Christ is flawless, and just to see how a kingdom is blessed under a godly king, and then step back and think, but John, you belong to an unshakable kingdom, and the king is perfect, and you know, how these things ought to move you to grab hold of Him and not let an inch be between you and your

Lord today. Yeah, so good things. Well, we wanted to give a concluding thought to all of this, and there's a whole lot more in the chapter, but a concluding thought would be what we mentioned earlier on.

It isn't enough to read this chapter and then look at your own life and apply it.

If you're a believer, you want to also look at other believers, especially those who have just embraced

Christ, whatever age they are, and consider how to take, so just take those seven points of how to cheerfully cling to the

Lord. What if you went back and you read the chapter for yourself and marked down those seven points, and what if you use that as a guide of how to help new believers walk very carefully with the

Lord? But while we say that, there's probably some cautions we should give.

Yeah, you want to be careful how you approach people. You could come, you know, intending to kind of preach a mini -sermon and probably not be well received, at least not more than once or twice.

So you should think ahead how to ask these questions in a way to be helpful and, you know, not to be seen as judgmental, or also,

I suppose, make sure that you have some concrete, correct advice on how to point them to the

Lord and not just sentimentalism yourself. Yeah, surely one of the best ways to do that is that you have given significant time to these points, you know, alone with the

Lord over weeks or months, and so these seven points, in a sense, are kind of second nature to you.

Like, this is part of clinging to the Lord today, guarding my heart here, guarding it here, focusing it here.

So reality is that you yourself are living on. If you've walked that path, it is so much easier than to turn back to the young believer and say to them,

I have been there many times, and I have found this to be so helpful. And then it's not like you've appointed yourself as the preacher, and you come with a kind of a sterile list of seven things that you're not doing it again.

I have seven things. How many did you do this week? Yeah, which would probably just mean that they would run from you every time they saw you.

And that isn't necessarily that they're not spiritual. It just may mean they're not ready to trust you.

You're not. Yeah, you're not spiritual. Yeah, so I think that's probably...

Acquaint yourself with these seven things in the chapter. Find room in the soul for working them down into the fabric of normal everyday life, and that will take some time.

Learning, memorizing, you know, writing them down, that's the easy part. But the great adventure is applying them.

And then in applying them, you will be able to look back and call to the younger believer and say, don't get stuck there.

I've been there too many times. You know, here's the way forward. And that is so much more significantly helpful than just saying to someone at church, so how's your week been?

Or how's your quiet time? How's your prayer life? Well, those aren't bad questions. But there ought to be people in your life that you know well enough to say, how's it really going?

And what are areas... And they trust you enough to open up. Well, there's a wonderful closing doxology in the book of Hebrews that unites both the activity of God and the responsiveness of the believer in this persevering.

So let me read that. Hebrews 13, verse 20 and 21. Now, the

God of peace, who brought up from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even

Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do

His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.