Chapter 12 of Brown and Wamfrey's Pious and Leverent Treatise Concerning Prayer, The Answer to Prayer. We're gonna be looking at the subject of chapter 12, which is mistakes, mistakes of God that are to be avoided in prayer. All of this, again, is with respect to John 14, 13, 14, whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. So Brown is going to raise a series of mistakes that people make. Some of them As we get into this, I'm going to point out, some of them have actually been encouraged by various ministers down through history. And these mistakes are problematic at a number of levels. We have to understand that many, if not most, of the mistakes that we're going to cover to be mistaken about these things is to fall into error with respect very often to things that pertain to the Second Commandment. So these are very often things that either are overtly idolatrous mistakes or covertly they are idolatrous or they tend to idolatrous thinking so Brown wants us to be aware and I think as we go through these some of them you may say to yourself well I've thought that way or that that's crossed my mind and so he's not He's not listing things just to be a nitpicker when it comes to this doctrine of prayer. He's concerned knowing, as Calvin would say, that our minds are idol factories. We're continually manufacturing idols. We're continually tending in this direction of idolatry. you know, very often and naturally by nature because of our fallen nature, we actually are much more likely to stretch ourselves in the direction of what is false and idolatrous than bend ourselves in the direction of the truth. I mean, it's our nature our fallen nature, except by the grace of God, we would be that way all the time. So if we don't have an understanding, a proper understanding of this, then we're going to be much more liable. Even when we're consciously striving to follow God by His Spirit, we're still not going to have that necessary information. So these are important things that he's going to list out for us. We're going to begin with question 249 then. And this is, again, if we remember that the last chapter we were talking about the object of our invocation, which is God, then This chapter is a natural follow-up, which is we want to avoid mistakes concerning God in our prayer. So the first instruction to avoid mistakes of God in prayer that he gives is we need to guard against mistaking thoughts and imaginations in our mind regarding the object of our invocation. In other words, we have to be careful that we are not ready to entertain wrong thoughts of God. And he points out from the very beginning, what is said in Deuteronomy 4.24 and Hebrews 12.29, our God is a jealous God, He's a consuming fire, and He will not give His glory to another. So He's a jealous God in this respect. He wants our attention. And the attention that we pay to God in prayer, He wants to be directed to Him. And not to some other. So we need to be careful here. So with that in mind, he's going to set forth a series of rules. And most of this chapter is, in fact, devoted to these rules. There are 13 rules he's going to give us before he comes back to a couple of other mistakes, or instructions, I should say, to avoid mistakes. These 13 rules are really designed to keep us from mistaken thinking, from vain imaginations, from corrupt conceptions of the divinity. Now, before we get into them, let me just reiterate something. Because our minds are idol factories by nature, our fallen nature, because we're so inclined to idolatry, men in general talk to you when they want to talk to you, when they're willing to talk to you about religious matters, they will talk to you in terms of, well, my God wouldn't do this or my God would do that. They're offended by the God of the Bible because the God of the Bible does not comport with their conceptions of God. And the very first thing you need to point out to people when they start talking that way is they're idolaters. Their conception of God is itself corrupt. And until they're willing to allow themselves to be instructed in this matter, they have a false notion of what God is, and who God is. They're unable to come to the knowledge of the truth, because they've already determined what they think must be true or must be false. Very often, you know, this is why people are triggered. This is why people have a very strong, what we would call a strong visceral reaction when something, when they're confronted with something about God, about what the Bible says, that is so far outside of what they believe that it is absolutely unnerving to them. They just can't handle it. The reason is, rather than allowing themselves to be instructed by scripture so that they might know the true God, they have constructed an idol god. So, again, this is not a vain exercise that Brown is setting before us. He's setting before us a series of rules now. to help us sort through, to make sure that we don't begin to conceive of this God as some other thing than He really is. So, number 250. What's the first rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God? That's the first part of it, and then B, of what is our safest course in this. So he says, look, the first thing, the first rule to avoid entertaining wrong thoughts about God is to think that we can comprehend in our minds the object of our invocation. He says, remember, God is by nature. unsearchable and incomprehensible. He's above all that we can think, all that we can conceive. And if we boldly dive into the mystery, we can end up like the heathen vein in our imaginations. So God, and this is exactly why, by the way, it's necessary for us, although by nature we know there is a God, by nature, particularly with respect to the fall in our nature, we're absolutely morally disqualified from determining anything about this God. So we can't know who or what this God is. from where we sit. If we were to initiate the discussion, and this is the problem, every other religion in the world, in some way or other, it starts with man and tries to work its way back to God. Christianity, the Hebrew religion, Christianity, has said no, God has to reveal himself to man. And if God doesn't reveal himself to man, we are in a very unenviable position because we can't know. And this is the reason. So we need to keep that in mind. God is from where we sit, unsearchable and incomprehensible, so that if he doesn't reveal something to us, then we don't have certainty of knowledge. We shouldn't trust in our own imaginations because our own imaginations are, by definition, vain. He goes on to say, our safest course, this is 250B, our safest course is to satisfy ourselves with a view of his back parts. Which is to say, we satisfy ourselves with a sight of him in his glorious attributes. Because these are the things wherein we find God revealing himself to us. So instead of seeking after His glory or the essence of the Divine, we ought to be content with taking hold of the various names, styles, titles, attributes, things that have been revealed to us in Scripture. They are sound guides. And we need to be very careful that we don't, when it comes to this, that we don't cherry-pick what we like, the things that we like about God, the Bible says. Wicked men like the idea that God is love, for example, that God is merciful, but they hate all of that stuff that goes with judgment and and condemnation and justice and so on. They don't like that. And they don't like the holiness aspect of God. So they want to cut off really an entire series of revelations about this God because it doesn't fit their conception. And that's the problem. That's exactly what Brown doesn't want us to fall into. Beware of the God of your own conception. Because the God of your own conception is not the true God, it's an idol. And idols, according to the Bible, are made for destruction. And if you cling to your idol, you will be destroyed with your idol. So all these people who say, well, you know, if God, I can't believe God would do this. If God did that, you know, they go on and on and on. You know, you can hear them rant. There's plenty of forums nowadays where you can hear professing atheists and agnostics rant about the God of the Bible. And what they're really telling you is they are offended by the true revelation of God. And all that is is a confession that they are sinful and proud creatures and unwilling to submit themselves to the judgment of the divine. All right, 251. What's the second rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God? And part B here, what should we be satisfied to know in this? So the second rule, he says, There's one God in three persons, which is the object of our invocation, but it is a grievous mistake and will lead to wrong thoughts if you think that you can come to a full discovery of this mystery. He says, in fact, you should be satisfied simply to know this, that in the Godhead there are three persons, and that this Godhead, which is in three distinct persons, is in fact the object of our invocation. In other words, what we are worshipping is the divine nature. It's revealed to us in three persons. There's a revelation of that in these three persons, but the worship is of that which is divine. That's an important thing to keep in mind. Because as we get a little further into these rules, we're going to have reason to come back to this and consider this rule. Satisfied in knowing that the Godhead subsists in three persons, but the object of our devotion is in fact the Godhead or the Godhood, the divine nature. Subsisting in three persons. Which is subsisting in three persons. But the three persons are leading us back to, this is why we're monotheists, because we're worshipping one God, we're not worshipping three gods. Ultimately, our devotion terminates upon the divine nature. In other words, we're not worshipping the personal distinctions per se. were worshiping the common Godhead of the three persons. Right? That's, I think, what he's getting at here. Okay, the third rule. We're avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God. Let me just give you the third rule before we look at these other B through D. The third rule is we should beware of forming or framing ideas representation, shapes, and resemblances of this God, or of the three persons in the Godhead, in our heads or hearts, in order to better conceive and understand. So, when people show us these three interlocking circles, they say the Trinity is like a clover. All these kinds of things. These are teachers of lies. These are, in fact, not good representations. They're not sound representations of the Trinity. In fact, the more we try to picture make up these representations in our minds, the more problematic our conceptions of God actually become. Do you start to fashion God after a man, in human terms? By doing that, we're necessarily invoking our vain imaginations to conceive of the true God. If God wanted to give us a schematic of how He subsists, He could have given us a picture. He didn't. He gave us words. And is that why the creeds so often say what God is not? There is a lot of that, yes. In fact, in the early church, that was very often the approach that they encourage people to take, it was called apathetic theology. It's sort of a negative theology. And you work backward, right? God is not like this, God is not like that. It's a lot easier to say what He's not like from where we are than to say what the Godhead is actually like. So you know God is not unjust, but you know God is just, but we can't comprehend the truth of justice. Right, but our concept of justice, if it's not informed by Him, is inherently deficient, isn't it? So the reason why 252b is, of course, the object of our attention here is purely spiritual and invisible. And so all mental representations cannot but derogate from his glory as much as 252c, what was remarkable about the giving of the law. Well, it's remarkable that in the giving of the law, when God gives the law, we're told that they heard a voice, right? They hear something. They hear a voice speaking out of the fire and all of that, the thunder, but they see no similitude. any kind of representation. So the danger that we encounter if we don't abandon inward imaginations is what we mentioned at the beginning. We're in danger of provoking a jealous God to anger. Remember, he's consuming fire. So if we don't worship him acceptably, we're provoking him. This goes along with the general attitude that the Reformed churches have had with respect to the worship of God. We call it the regulative principle, right? But the general gist is this. We are not to worship God in a way that He has not appointed. Now most churches, and this includes sadly Protestant churches, they think that if God hasn't prohibited it in the worship of God, it's acceptable. This is why they have all kinds of things they're continually bringing in. This is how you end up with the liturgies and all of the other stuff going on in the Roman church eventually. That's just, the Roman church has taken the entertainment value and compressed it and made it more religious feeling. Protestant churches haven't, so-called Protestant churches haven't figured out that that's perhaps a more economical and effective way long-term of corrupting the worship of God and committing idolatry. So, they think, you know, God doesn't have to tell us, He didn't say we couldn't do this, we couldn't, you know, we couldn't have special music, for example. And our reply is, where did He tell you you can do that? Your vain imagination, see, you're pleased with that, and you assume because you're pleased with that, that God would be pleased with that. You think because you like the sound of the band that God also is pleased with that. That's false thinking. It's a violation of the regulative principle. God didn't tell us to do all of that. It's amazing to me, by the way, people want to use instrumental music, why don't they use psalteries and sack butts and the musical instruments you find in the Bible. They are using all kinds of instruments that didn't even exist then, but they go back and they'll appeal to that, these things, for their practice. They don't understand the difference between the old Mosaic dispensation and the New Testament worship, the spiritual New Testament worship. They don't understand that these instruments were were given to be used before the Holy Spirit was given in fullness in order to typify the Spirit of God in the worship of God. That's why they were only played generally at the sacrifices, and that's very clear in Chronicles. you know, instruments are played when the sacrifice is going on. The Roman Church, interestingly enough, resisted the use of instrumental music well into the Middle Ages. And as late as Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s, you know, he recognized that it was Judaizing. In other words, it was going backward to use them in the worship of God. The early fathers all reject them. because they understood this principle. Somehow they've worked their way back in to the churches and become part of the norm. But this is because there's a failure to abide by this regulative principle. So we talk about the worship of God here and how we conceive of God Failure to take these precautions is really to court disaster. God is a jealous God. He's a consuming fire. He will not give His glory to another. When we worship Him in some way other than His appointment, we are worshiping Him according to our vain imaginations, and it's an idle fit for destruction, and we're gonna get destroyed with it. So Brown talks about the fact that we really cannot conceive of what the Godhead is like, and yet this overboldness to to take hold of and to conceive of the Godhead is exactly the point at which all of these corruptions come in. The fourth rule, 253, fourth rule for avoiding and entertaining wrong thoughts about God, He says we have to be aware of fixing our hearts too much to any particular apprehension or conception of God under one notion or another. In other words, He's holy, just, righteous, etc. even though we can't understand and comprehend how He is so. Right? We need to be careful that we don't fall upon and fawn upon one attribute rather than all of the attributes. And this goes back to what I said earlier. The world, you know, wicked men tend to like thinking about God in terms of some of his attributes, but they don't like to entertain all of his attributes. And Brown is saying, look, by faith we need to take hold of God in all of his attributes, let all of them inform. And the reason why, 253b, is what is infinite cannot be fully comprehended by what is finite and what is imperfect and corrupt. Right, so he's infinitely above all of our thoughts and yet we need to be careful that we don't try to make this or that thing The attribute of God is as though, as though comprehending that attribute, we comprehend God. Because we don't. The fifth rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God is that we need to beware in our thoughts and imaginations that we do not divide the object of our worship and invocation. What he means is this, and this is really getting at the why, Although there are three persons in the one Godhead that we adore, we should not think that we are dealing with three distinct objects of adoration. So whether we name one or more of the persons in the Trinity in our prayers, his point is we're still invocating God. in that the object is the same one God. So we have to be So there is something to this. And notice a lot of this discussion so far is about the doctrine of the Trinity. But there's something about what the early fathers said. I can't think of the three without my thoughts returning to the one. I cannot conceive of the one without the three appearing before my mind's eye. There needs to be that kind of, I would call it fluidity or plasticity. Contemplation. Well, yeah, in your brain, in your mind, you know, your mind's eye when you're praying, when you're meditating upon this sort of thing, so you're not staying on one or the other, but recognizing that you know, I don't, I'm not worshipping three distinct things, I'm worshipping one thing, God. So like the circumcision in the Trinity, you know, we should be doing the same thing in our reflection of the Trinity, thinking of our reflection of the Trinity should constantly, there should be that movement all the time. Right, our mind should be moving over it rather than stopping and focusing. It's sort of like the I've talked about this in different contexts, I think, but the idea, what happens when you stop, when you stop moving, your mind stops moving on this contemplation, So one thinks that an elephant is a big hose, and another thinks that he's a hunk of rope, another thinks he's like a tree, another thinks he's like a wall. It just happens to be what part of it you're able to touch, but they can't see the whole thing. Like the radical empiricists, and I've talked about them before, their idea that If I put something in your hand and I don't let you move it, you can't look at it, you can't really tell me much about it, but if I tell you, even though you can't look at it, if I tell you you can manipulate it in your hand and move it around, as long as you're moving it, you can begin to describe it to me so that it's in the movement that there's a revelation. That's why it's important that your mind it continues to go back and forth on this meditation. Ultimately knowing that we're not talking about three gods, we're talking about one god, one godhead. All right. The sixth rule. We have to be aware of thinking that one and the same kind of worship is not due to all the persons in the Trinity. We're going to come back to this. idea in a couple of minutes, I think, because there's... Brown is even going to say, look, we very often, probably usually, address God as Father, address the divinity through the Father, by the Son, or in the name of the Son, by the power of the Spirit, And while that's not precluding or prohibiting us from sometimes invocating God with respect to the Son or the Spirit, there is an ordinariness to this, and yet his point here is, don't let that, which is another point we're going to get into, don't let that make you think that we, for example, worship the Father one way and the Son another way and the Spirit another way, that would be wrong. Because there's one object of devotion that is the divine nature, the Godhead, present in all three of them. So it's the same infinite majesty of God present for us, presenting itself in the Father and the Son and the Spirit. It'll be a mistake, a very serious mistake to think that we worship one this way and one that way. That's, when I said earlier that we, the object of our worship are not the personal distinctions. That's exactly why we have to be very, very careful. There are people who are ostensibly Trinitarian, but they feed into a lot of It's called subordination, subordinationist theology, because they make these kinds of distinctions. We only pray to the Father. We only worship the Father. And we do it in this way or that way. That is mistaken thinking. It's one thing to say we ordinarily approach God in this way because God has revealed himself as an ordered God, you know, that the Father is the first person, the Son is the second, the Spirit is the third person. And so there's an ordering, and that ordering is, I think, ontological. It is, in fact, Something that pertains to the very being of God right, but That's that is a logical That's a logical ordering but it is not a Theological ordering in terms of the divine nature as if the divine nature was say more in the father and So beware of that. We don't want to divide the three persons in such a manner that one or even two perhaps are the objects of worship, but not all three. Because really what is the object of worship is that divine nature, the Godhead. which is present in each. All right, the seventh rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God. We should beware of imagining that when we're praying to the mediator that we're only giving him some sort of peculiar middle kind of worship inferior to that which is due to God. We're going to start moving into considering now the person and deity of Christ. And the reason why this is a rule is The mediator, our mediator, is true God. So he has the same divine essence and attributes with the Father, as to his true Godhead. So we're not giving him this middling kind of worship, some sort of lesser worship. You know, that's the kind of idea that the Roman church has when it advocates worshiping of saints, the adoration of the saints. They say, well, there are two kinds of worship. There's duly and there's latria. And the highest worship belongs only to God. But this other worship, well, that's competent to men. That's not what we're talking about, and you shouldn't think that way. But I think a lot of people do. If I'm praying to the mediator, I'm not quite praying to God. I've sort of missed miss the full-on prayer to God. but was abused. Yeah, a healthy respect and honor into what is now known literally as the cult of the saints. It's the worshiping. They're praying to them and all of that. All right, so 256C, what should be noted of the person? Well, this is an important thing about the mediator, right? There are two natures in the mediator. There's only one person. And we're praying unto that person. That person is the eternal Son of God. There's no human person in Jesus. There's a human nature. There's a human nature. But the person underlying that nature is... The person... Assuming the nature. The person that assumed the nature is the eternal son of God. So he's the same God together with the Father. And by the way, he points out that the assumption of the human nature in no way derogates from the glory or the splendor of the divine nature. Remember, the human nature is not in what we would call a natural union with the divine nature. The bridge is not, they're not in this direct communion as like nature to nature, but the communion of the natures is in the person of the Son of God. So it's in the person that there is this mediation going on between the Godhead or the Godhood and the manhood. Understand, when we say Godhead, we're really talking about Godhood, we're talking about the divine nature. It's like we wouldn't say manhead, we would say manhood. But it's really the same concept. All right, 257, the eighth rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God and why? So the eighth rule is, we need to be careful in our worshipping of Him, of making any precision or abstraction in our minds of His human nature from His divine nature, as if one nature were to be worshipped and not the other. Now, the reason is, because the worship is directed not to the natures, but to the person. And the person is one and he is God. So this is one of these things where it can be tricky, but ultimately remember, In the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, what we're worshiping is the divine nature. And in the person of Jesus, it's the divine nature that's ultimately the object of our adoration. But we cannot adore the divine nature without going through His humanity. That's the point of the mediation. but the object is the Son of God. He is God. We have to remember that the human nature that he has assumed, it consists in and by the Godhead and not of itself. There's no separate human person. So when we talk about the man Christ Jesus, we're talking about the Son of God in His incarnation. The assumption of our nature is the assumption of His mediatorial office. It's the same thing. But the assumption of our nature makes no alteration in the person or the object of our worship. Because there's no change in God. There's no change in God. Right, so in 451 of Chalcedon when they say that in this assumption in Christ there are two natures, right, without mixture, without confusion, without separation. These natures don't Because it's what's called a hypostatic union, it's a personal union, there is not a direct communion of these natures so that there would be, one would transform the other, that the divine would somehow become less divine or the human would somehow become more than just human. It doesn't happen that way. When Jesus assumes our humanity, Paul says that he lays aside all the prerogatives of his divine nature when he comes on earth, we call it the humiliation, and he lives the life of a true man. He doesn't make all these appeals so that when Christ does miracles, He has to do them like the prophets would do them. By the help of the Spirit. By the Spirit. He's making an appeal to God. He doesn't do anything of himself, out of his own divine nature, until he raises himself from the dead. which is why that's a declaration that everything he's done is finished. He's done everything that can be done in the human nature and he's no longer simply acting in accordance with that humanity. So he demonstrates. That's important. It's important because he demonstrates that the problem was not our human nature. The problem was with Adam. But he still raises himself by the Spirit, correct? Raises himself by the Spirit, but we're told he raises himself. That's when we see his active, he's actively re-assuming his divinity. I was going to say, he's taking upon himself the divinity that he put aside for a time. Yes, he's taking it back. Which is why, obviously, when he appears to the disciples, he has that different appearance. He can hide himself from them and he can just appear in the middle of them. Everything changes. Yeah. All right. The ninth rule. 258. The ninth rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God is, in praying to Christ, the mediator should not divert our thoughts and hearts from making use of Him as a mediator and as the way to God. or for making use by faith of his mediation and intercession." In other words, we should not, in praying, even if we pray to Jesus, there's a sense in which what he's saying is, we're praying to Jesus in the name of Jesus. Don't lose sight of the fact that you're still going to have to take hold of and use the mediation. That's the point of the Incarnation. That God has condescended to take upon himself our nature and enter into our reality. what should be kept in view together here is this is our meditation by faith um His mediation by faith and making use of him as our peacemaker and way to the Father should not be so abstracted so that we don't also look at him as the object of the same divine worship as is accorded to God. So what he's saying is, although we're taking hold of him as the mediator, and we recognize that we need his mediation as a way to God, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that he is God, and also worthy of this devotion. He is the object of our devotion as well. Again, this is This is really only possible, the way he's talking about a lot of this, is really only possible if your mind is in that state of kinesis. There's this motion going on, this continual moving over all of these objects. You're thinking of Jesus, on the one hand, you're thinking of him in your praying as the mediator through whom you have access to God, but you don't ever lose sight of the fact that he is himself the eternal son of God incarnate and therefore the object of that worship that he himself has given us access, acceptable access, to God to worship. By his spirit? By his spirit. Sure, we can keep moving all over this. And he's really saying that. You have to be careful. This is a problem with stopping. Again, imagine you've got that thing and you put something in your hand. If you stop turning it around your hand, all you can feel is you have something in your hand. But the moment you start moving it again, you can tell me things about it. You can start to describe what it really is. Hold it still. There's not information. The information is coming through, through the movement. It's that way. There's a revelation coming. is precisely why in the early church a lot of theologians for example would just sit and meditate upon the doctrine of the trinity or the person deity of christ because the more you contemplate and have that have that um interchanging of thoughts That continual flow of thought, the more that's going on, the more you're going to gain insight and understand it. The more it's not going to seem to you like this sort of alien conception. Alright, the tenth rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God and why? He says, in this story, he says, look, we normally in prayer, usually, we pitch on the Father by name. Yet, we should beware of thinking that He alone is the one to whom we're praying. And the reason, he says, is this, is so any of the persons may occasionally be named, yet we should beware to fix our minds so on the person named is to exclude the rest." Again, that's that problem of, this is why I keep saying, beware, you know, when you fix your mind, what are you doing? you end up focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all of the other things. And the idea here is, you know, the more attributes of God you've contemplated, the more you've thought about the intra-Trinitarian relations. the more you're going to avoid falling into that kind of unwarranted thinking and dangerous thinking where you begin to think that one person out of the three is somehow perhaps more God or more important or more worthy of your devotion and so on. What's the 11th rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God? 260. And why? 260B. A and B. He says we have to be careful that when we pray to Christ, we don't imagine in our minds that we're addressing ourselves to Him as mediator and then through him we address ourselves to the Father. And the reason is, he's saying, when you do that, you're making two addresses in place of one. And each address has its peculiar object. And that's really the result of hesitating on Christ's mediator, isn't it? before you move on to the fact that he is, in fact, God. So don't do that. So I'm praying to you, Jesus, in order that you'll pray the Father on my behalf. No, because you should really be addressing the Godhead. And when you address Jesus properly, you are addressing the Godhead. He says when we pray to the Spirit, make use by faith of His aid and assistance in approaching God, we need to be careful that we don't conceive of truth to address as first to the Spirit, as the one by whom we have access to the Father, and then to God, right? So this can go in a number of different ways, where we can get hung up on one person we end up with essentially two addresses. And here's the problem with two addresses in prayer, or three addresses in prayer. We're actually beginning to court like bi-theism or tri-theism. Instead of having one object of our devotion, we're in danger of having two or three objects of devotion. It's poly-theism, and that's the religion of the heathen. So we need to be careful, very, very careful, and don't let ourselves fall into that sort of thing. All right, 261, what is the 12th rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God and why? he says we need to be careful here in mentioning Christ in prayer. We have to be aware of thinking that Jesus is more easy to be spoken to than the Father, that he's less severe and rigid. And that's one of the ones where, you know, I have to pinch myself and say, Brown died in 1679, right? And that sounds like a warning that is so apropos to our current situation that it's almost unbelievable that he foresaw this. I suppose there were people who thought that way then. We are infested with people who think that way now. And you get this in different ways. There's this general sense in a lot of churches that the God of the New Testament is nicer than the God of the Old Testament. That the new God is kind and loving, that Old Testament God, you know, It's almost like I've described him to people who think this way. They think of him as sort of God emeritus, right? He's the mean God that was over the Jews, but now that Jesus has come on the scene, it's peace and love. And so Jesus is almost the hippie God, right? That's the idea. It's actually, and the reason this is so wrong, of course, is, When we pray to Christ, we're praying to God. And the essential properties that are in the Son are in the Father and vice versa. So the Father is not more rigid than the Son, because God is one. This idea that the Father is going to be offended, but Jesus, we can tell him anything. The Father is that God sitting back there behind the curtain with the big stick. But if I approach Him through Jesus, well then, you know, everything is fine. Now there's a sense in which that's true if we're talking about mediation. But the mediation of Christ is not only a New Testament phenomenon. It is something which existed under the Old Testament in anticipation of Christ coming and dying. The fact is that Old Testament believers were saved in the same way that New Testament believers are. The difference is their faith was in the Christ who was to come, whereas our faith is in the Christ who has come. That's it. There's really nothing different. They were not saved by works that they had done. They weren't saved by all the elaborate ceremonies in the Mosaic economy. Those were all designed to point them, point out to them what Messiah would do when he came, what it would look like when he was on earth, and also there are a number of things hinting at the pouring out of the Spirit of God, and the idea of the Gospel spreading out beyond just that little piece of land called Palestine, going into all of the world. Nonetheless, the object was the same. So if we were simply talking about mediation, You know, that would be one thing, but we're really not. A lot of people, I think, really believe, and this is, you know, they will convey this in different ways. They'll tell you when you see what the Bible says, that's the Old Testament. What are they saying? God was meaner then. If I say to you that's the Old Testament, I might be indicating to you that there may be something typical or shadowy about it that you need to take into account. But it doesn't mean that we're dealing with a different God, that all of a sudden the rules have changed, there's a different conception of justice and mercy, which is, I think very often, how people tend to think. And that's not just an error, that is something subversive of Christianity. It's really to encourage people. And this is why I think a lot of groups don't even encourage Christians to read the Old Testament. Because they see it as containing, generally speaking, a different religion altogether. And that tells you already they are reading the Bible from not just a wrong point of view, but from a totally corrupt point of view. The apostles themselves tell you again and again what they're telling us in the New Testament they've gotten from the Old Testament. So this idea of there's this radical disconnect, it's a false narrative. And to a large extent we can thank we can thank dispensationalism for that point of view. Anyway, 13th rule for avoiding entertaining wrong thoughts about God, 262. This actually gets to something I just alluded to, which is when we approach God in prayer, we have to be aware of conceiving of God Absolutely, or out of Christ. We are to conceive of him now as in Christ. Christ is our propitiation. He was typified by the mercy seat placed above the ark. He points us to Exodus 25-21 and he resigned five. The reason this is to be avoided, 262b, is our capacities are finite and can't comprehend what is simply infinite. That's why the Lord, out of his wonderful love and condescension, approached us in his Son and made himself accessible to sinners in Christ. like took upon himself our nature. So again, people think that they can get to God apart from Jesus. Remember, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. Anybody tells you that you're spiritual, they are religious or they worship God. If they don't believe in the mediation of Christ, not only are they not Christian, they're no different than the pagans. We're either going to approach God in our own persons, or in the person of Christ. Those are our only choices. And in our own persons, what we're going to do is what he's been warning about in this whole chapter. We're going to begin to set up vain imaginations. We're going to begin to conceive of God in ways and under similitudes that are absolutely prohibited by the Bible. In Christ, God is condescended to reveal himself in a manner that we are able to comprehend. By entering into creation in our nature, God shows himself in a manner that is, in fact, comprehensible. So this idea that we can approach God outside of Christ is to approach God as he is a consuming fire. Outside of Christ, God is the definition of hell. So to keep us from these mistakes, he gives us a couple of things that we should do. First thing, 263. First thing it says is, have the truths revealed in the word concerning God, the mystery of the Trinity fixed in our hearts. Our apprehensions of the Trinity should be according to the word of truth. And that's not going to be prejudicial to our case. So that's the first thing. All right, 264. The second thing we would do well to keep us from these mistakes is to have right apprehensions of the condescensions of love and free grace in the gospel dispensations and of Christ the meat-eater in his person and office. Offices, really. So, to have right apprehensions of the condescensions of the love and free grace which are held forth in the gospel, and of Christ our mediator in his offices, the prophet, priest, and king. And by the way, you would think that these kind of things would be on the short list of the instructions that the churches would want to give to people, but they're not anymore. And they're not because too many of the churches don't use catechisms anymore. Catechism is a good way to get these basic apprehensions that we're talking about. All right, third, the third thing that we would do well keep us from these mistakes, 265. We should have our hearts ballasted with a sense of God's greatness, majesty, and glory. If we were impressed with fear, awe, and reverence, we would be much less inclined to go after those vain imaginations, wouldn't we? That would be better for everyone. And the last thing that we're going to talk about here in this chapter, 266, the three practical beliefs which, if the heart improved, would keep us from vain imaginations and mistakes. So the three things he says that would keep us is, first of all, God alone is the object of divine worship. And we have to pray to this God, who's one in essence, but three in persons. that Christ as mediator, as God-man, is to be made use of by faith as a grant of our access to God. And the third is that the Holy Spirit is purchased by Christ. In other words, the Holy Spirit with respect to the economy of redemption, the covenant of grace. The Holy Spirit is purchased by Christ and promised and sent by the Father to help our infirmities, that he be made use of by faith, so that by his assistance we can come to God through Christ. This is if we would keep these things in mind, and the reason for this is the first thing, That God is one God, one in essence, three in persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That is keeping a proper object before us for our devotion. The second, regarding Christ the mediator, is keeping us focused on the fact that we cannot approach God. apart from the mediation of Christ, that is, apart from the condescension that God himself has made for the benefit of fallen mankind. The third, the emphasis on the Spirit, is reminding us and keeping our own spirit, if you will, at a distance and keeping it under that kind of constraint that we are aware that the motions of the natural man are not going to be sufficient to carry our petitions to God. We need the assistance of the Spirit of God, and the Spirit has been given for that very purpose, among other things, but for that purpose as well. So that we need to seek the motions of the Spirit in praying to God, if we would pray to God and run. So right there, that's kind of like an example of maybe praying to one person in particular rather than remembering the other two. You pray to the Spirit to strengthen your faith in Christ so you can approach your Father and pray for all. Yes. You know what I mean? Right. So those are the mistakes that Brown doesn't want you to make with respect to God when you're praying to Him. The summary at the end, I think, pretty well takes up the overarching concerns of the points that we covered in this chapter. With that in mind, in Chapter 13, we're going to break up into a couple of weeks, but in Chapter 13 we're going to be looking at the right manner of prayer, enforced from the fact that it's God to whom we pray. So we'll be addressing that over the course of a couple of weeks.