Dear congregation, we've seen last night that to truly enjoy God's great salvation, we have to be brought by the Holy Spirit to recognize who we are in Christ as true believers, namely, sons and daughters of God. but also to truly enjoy God's great salvation. We have to know that we know and we have to believe that we believe by the same gracious Spirit's work. And that's what we call assurance. Assurance of faith is to know that I know and to believe that I believe. That is to say, when I possess assurance of faith, I know that I am saved by Jesus Christ in His free grace alone, that I belong to Him, and that I will ultimately enjoy everlasting salvation in heaven above. This carries with it a sense of fullness J.W. Alexander and many of the old divines called it full assurance of faith. Alexander writes, assurance is like a tree laden with fruit or a vessel's sails stretched by a favoring gale. There is something beautiful, something ripe, something mature, something fulsome about full assurance of faith. And if you are a true believer, is that not your desire? To enter into a relationship with God in a fulsome way. A child of God is never content being a mediocre child of God. Having half-faith. Having a fainted heart for the Lord. You want to know the Lord better. You want to know your own salvation is secure in Him. You want a richer, fuller relationship with the Most High God. That is a good desire. Blessed are they who always want to know more of the Lord and grow in assurance and grow in their relationship. There are, of course, many, many marks of grace. We'll see a few of those momentarily, by which we may know whether or not we are children of God. William Perkins, the father of Puritanism, says at one point in his writings, sometimes we search and we search and we search our consciences, and at the end of it all, we still don't know. He said, but you may know. And you may know by the most basic mark of all. And the most basic mark of all, he said, is that a true believer is never satisfied with where he is at spiritually because he's always longing to know God more, to know Him better. Dear friends, if you don't want to know God better, may I say to you lovingly and yet bluntly, you are not. a child of God, or at very best, you are seriously backsliding. You see, if a husband loves his wife, but he doesn't want to know her better, and he doesn't want to be with her, he doesn't want to talk with her and walk with her and share with her, is he a good husband? Of course not. So it is with a believer. We're not just believers to get to heaven. A true believer's desire isn't so much heaven as it is God. I want to be with God. I want to know God better, you see, and I want to be more assured of my relationship with Him. This is what is behind this great question of assurance. I promised you last evening that today we would again look at the great lessons the Puritans have to teach us in this most important area. And I want to do that through looking in part at what one great Puritan has taught us, Anthony Burgess. And I will look at his teaching together with some of the other Puritans based on the Word of God. And I want to do this under four sections. this afternoon and this evening. Sections that parallel the premier teaching of the Puritans on assurance that you find in the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 18. Four paragraphs. First of all, we want to look this afternoon at why we need assurance. And then secondly, we want to look at how we get, by the grace of God, assurance. Then tonight, we want to go further and look at how do we grow in assurance and how do we lose and regain assurance. So that's our outline for this afternoon and this evening. Our subject then, with God's help, is personal assurance of faith. And this afternoon, why we need it, And secondly, how we get it. And that will bring us through 18.1 and 18.2. And then tonight, how we grow in it, 18.3, and how we lose and regain it, 18.4. Now there are many reasons why we need assurance. And I'm only going to give you four of what I think are contemporary and important reasons. And the first is this. I believe that today the church is crippled, not with maximal, but with minimal assurance. There is today a comparative absence of this full and genuine assurance of faith when compared to a former day. And how do we know that? Well, we know that because assurance, like faith itself, bears fruits. And the fruits of assurance are a close life of fellowship with God, and a sense of childlike, or filial, as our forefathers called it, filial relationship with God, a thirsting after God, spiritual exercises that extol God, You see, assurance is not something that every Christian just simply has today. When I originally came at Westminster Seminary to having to choose what topic to study for my doctorate, I went to a few professors and I said, what do you think if I were to study the area of assurance of faith? And I'll never forget, the first professor I approached said, Well, why would you do that? Everyone has it today. You see, I believe that's totally wrong. People are mixing up the beginnings of faith with full assurance. Or else they are falling into easy believism. And they think, well, I've accepted Jesus and I believe in Him, so I have assurance. But assurance is not a self-given thing. Spirit-applied certainty that moves the believer Godward through the Lord Jesus Christ. Assurance is the opposite of self-satisfaction. It's the opposite of carnality and secularization. Assurance makes a God-centered Christian. And it evidences godliness even as I Don't rely on my personal righteousness or my service for God for my own justification. You see, where assurance is genuine, there's a passion for the glory of God. There's a God-centrality that reverberates through such a believer. And that believer lives in anticipation of heaven as his home. And he longs to be with God. He's longing for the second advent of Christ and His translation to glory. And so when we look at the fruits today in the church of Jesus Christ, we see that the church is seriously impoverished in all these areas compared to a former day. The desire to enjoy fellowship with God, the sense of the reality of heaven, the relish for the glory of God fall far short of a former day. When the church's emphasis today is on earthly good and dominates her conviction, rather than traveling through this world with her eye upon eternity, her eye upon God and glory, then assurance is at a low And so we need assurance today because of the lack of it. Secondly, assurance of faith is sorely needed today because it is inseparable from genuine revival and conviction of sin. Today, we sorely need revival, I think you will agree with me, in every area of the world. Some areas are undergoing a certain measure of revival, but we desperately need a worldwide revival. And it ought to be our prayer every day, dear believer, that we will live to see the day when the Spirit would again sweep over the earth and fill the earth with the knowledge of God from sea to sea. But revival is always accompanied, isn't it, with genuine conviction of sin. How low an end conviction of sin is at in our day. In our day, our self-gratification day, our microwave day of instant solutions. So few know what it means to be convicted of sin. So few know what it means to become lost before a holy God. And so few, therefore, also know the height and the joy of deliverance in Christ. And so we desperately need this great recovery of assurance that coincides with a profound conviction of my sinfulness, in the sight of a holy and a righteous God. But then thirdly, we desperately need assurance today because we are living in a day of tremendous secularization and apostasy. Now, the Gospel has always been difficult to live out in a tempting, challenging world. But sometimes, opposition to the Gospel is peculiarly intense. And certainly we are living in such a bruising time, are we not? We are called to be lights on the hill, in the thick of spiritual battle, while the devil is promoting apostasy on all sides, within the church, within seminaries, within the highest echelons of the church's institutions. To be lights on the hill, we need spirit work, genuine convictions of assurance of faith. And then fourthly, today, the doctrine of assurance is sorely needed because doctrine itself is sorely despised. Few understand today Martin Luther's assertion that doctrine is heaven. You see, Luther could say that because doctrine was applied to his heart. He lived by the truths of the Word of God. And there's perhaps no doctrine that touches all the other doctrines of the Bible so comprehensively as the doctrine of assurance. I've sometimes thought you could write an entire systematic theology from the framework of assurance of faith. Assurance is the nerve center of doctrine put into use, as the Puritans would say. Assurance intertwines itself, doesn't it, with every aspect of the whole chain of salvation, from internal calling all the way to glorification. Assurance is connected with the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of grace, with the atonement, with union with Christ. It's inseparable from all the marks and steps of grace. It touches on divine sovereignty and human responsibility. It's connected with our view of Holy Scripture. Assurance flows out of election. It settles on the promises of God. It's interwoven with the covenant of grace. Assurance is fortified by preaching, by the sacraments, by prayer. Assurance, you see, is broad in scope. and profound in depth and glorious in height. So we need a restoration of this grand and glorious doctrine of assurance, particularly in our day. So many people claim it so easily. So many people say they feel it, and yet the fruits of their lives don't bear it out. Today, the fastest growing branch of Christianity is Pentecostalism. Charismatic movement. Millions and millions and millions are swept into this. And they have so much feeling. But you see, what we need desperately in our day is that the Reformed faith, which is so cerebral, so cognitive, so intelligent, and so biblical, would not be dry and cold. Which I believe is one reason why many people in Reformed denominations today around the globe are leaving the Reformed faith for Pentecostalism. Because the Reformed faith addresses the head in many circles, but not the heart. And you see, we need a recovery of that heart religion that brings head and heart and hand together. Because, you see, true doctrine informs the mind. And when the mind is informed and persuaded and assured, the heart is taken up into it. And we say with Hezekiah, by these things I live. And it makes our hands active. And we bring, you see, the doctrinal truth then by the Spirit into experiential, heartfelt reality. And that in turn motivates us practically with hands and feet to do the work of the Lord. And so we need assurance to marry together our heads and our hearts, head knowledge and heart knowledge, faith and feeling. So the problem of Pentecostalism, it's got the feeling, but it doesn't have the right head knowledge. It's feeling detached from Scripture. It's emotion for emotion's sake. The problem with many Reformed circles is it's doctrine for doctrine's sake, but without the application. Now, happily, the Puritans have showed us a better way. They have brought the two together. And in doing so, they've been true to Scripture. And nowhere have they brought the two together better. Nowhere in all confessional literature than chapter 18 of the Westminster Confession of Faith. In this chapter, The Puritans have codified a biblical and Puritan doctrine of assurance. In the first paragraph, they address the possibility of assurance. The second, the foundations of assurance. The third, the cultivation of assurance. And the fourth, the renewal of assurance. And I want to look at that now with you through the lens of one of the greatest most underestimated writers in this area, a man named Anthony Burgess. Anthony Burgess was, just briefly, let me tell you a little about him. He was a Puritan of the 17th century, a nonconformist clergyman and writer who served as vicar at Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire from 1635 to 1662. He was one of the most judicious and savory Westminster divines at the assembly. His advice was relied upon, and some years later, he was ejected from there by the Uniformity Act of 1662, after the Restoration. From there, he retired to Tamworth, Staffordshire, where he attended a parish church until his death. But over a 15-year period, beginning about the time of the Westminster Assembly, late 1640s, Burgess wrote a dozen books based largely on his sermons and lectures that had a profound effect upon the people at large. And in every one of these books, the cultivated scholar and the experiential preacher combined to produce Astute and warm and devotional language and literature. Now, Burgess's magnum opus, that means his largest, his most special work, was a two-volume set called Spiritual Refining. Spiritual Refining, 1652 and 1654. And these volumes have rightly been called an unequaled anatomy of experimental religion. The first volume is actually 120 sermons called, A Treatise on Grace and Assurance. And the second volume is 42 sermons on sin, with its causes, differences, mitigations, and aggravations. But it's particularly in this first volume that Burgess presents, I believe, a more balanced, biblical, thorough, comprehensive, helpful, practical doctrine of assurance than anywhere else in all of Puritan literature, with the possible exception of Thomas Brooks' Heaven on Earth. In the opening of this book, Burgess discusses assurance, And he refutes the antinomian error that internal marks of grace within a believer are no evidence of a spiritual life. And then in the second and third sections, he goes on to explain the various signs of grace. Then he's got nine more major sections in which he discusses how the Spirit works in regeneration, in the new creation, in God's workmanship, grace in the heart, sanctification and so on. conversion. And throughout all these sermons, Burgess separates the precious from the vile, saving grace from its counterfeits. Well, let me look with you now then at what Burgess has to say through the grid of the Westminster Confession of Faith. And first, if you have a sheet in front of you, if you'll look with me at Paragraph 1. I'd like to read that a moment with you. The Possibility of Assurance, I'm calling this paragraph. Here Burgess says, or rather the Westminster Divines say this. Although hypocrites and other unregenerate men may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favor of God and a state of salvation, which hope of theirs shall perish, yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may in this life be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed." Well, paragraph 1 of chapter 18 of the Westminster Confession presents us with three possibilities in relation to assurance. The first possibility is that of false assurance. False assurance. You can have false hopes, says Burgess, and carnal presumptions. Now, our forefathers would later come to call these things historical faith and temporary faith. And Burgess picks up on that in several sermons based on Jeremiah 17 verse 9, the heart is deceitful of all things and desperately wicked who can know it. And there he says this, it is a most sad delusion for an ungodly or unregenerated man to be persuaded that his estate is a state of grace, whereas indeed it is nothing but that of sin and death. We pity a man possessed with a devil turned into an angel of light. And in the sixth sermon of his book, titled, Showing the Difference Between True Assurance and Presumption, Burgess provides us with a typical Puritan exposition of discriminating preaching. That is, preaching that discriminates between the believer and the non-believer. And he seriously warns against false assurance. He says this, A large part of Christians are delivered up to such a carnal confidence that they are like that mad Athenian who thought all the ships on the sea were his. How many there are today who when they hear the exact discoveries that are made of grace in their soul, whereby they evidently conclude that they are for the present shut out of this kingdom, do yet bless themselves as if all were well with them after all. And then Burgess goes on to say, how can you tell the difference? Well, he says there are several reasons, several thoughts. First of all, false assurance is motivated by self-love, and it is totally disassociated with conviction of sin. Secondly, the grounds of false assurance arise from a mere natural light. my own conclusions about my state of regeneration. Third, false assurance does not identify with this Holy Spirit's way of working assurance, which humbles me from my sin and increases assurance through a way of conflict and doubt in which I do battle against the fiery assaults of Satan. Fourth, false assurance is exposed by the lack of effects. That is to say, the fruits of one's life are not present. There is not a diligent use of the means of grace. There is not an inflaming of the heart with love to God, Burgess says. And there is not an ability to keep up the heart under discouragements and desolations. Fifth, false assurance is not accompanied with the holy fear and trembling, the humility and lowliness of mind that is present in true assurance. And finally, false assurance will be shaken by some outward troubles rather than by sin, whereas true assurance is impacted by sin and humbles me and remains strong in the midst of trials and needs. Well, after he identifies all these marks of false assurance, Burgess then goes on and comments that there are remedies the Holy Spirit can use to overthrow false assurance. One remedy is a powerful and searching ministry that pierces the soul. Another remedy is the Holy Spirit's strong and particular application of the law in the heart of a sinner. There's still another remedy. is a discovery of the fullness and necessity and beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you see, the drift of all of this is that it is a terrible, real possibility that someone can claim assurance and really not have it at all. And if you read Burgess carefully, and you boil all the marks of false assurance down into one thing, I think really what he's saying is this. The professor who has false assurance, the Christian professor has false assurance, is someone who really is living out of his own spiritual pride. He's not someone who's humble before God. He's not someone who's living out of the righteousness of Christ. He's not someone who can truly say, I'm saved by grace alone. Deep down, he's living out of his own experiences. He's living out of his own righteousness. He's living out of his own tears, his own prayers, his own good works, his own morality, his own religiosity, his own sincerity, his own reputation as a converted man or woman or boy or girl. He's living out of his own conviction of sin, his own repentance, his own love for the brethren, his own zeal for his own religion. False assurance builds on me and not on the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. False assurance Never comes to that point where it says, woe is me, for I am undone. Oh God, be merciful to me, the sinner. But then secondly, there is the possibility, the possibility of true assurance. Every part of 18.1 connects this possibility with the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you notice that when you read it over? True assurance is always connected with Jesus. It is a believing in Him that gives me assurance. A loving of Him. A walking before Him. Assurance is interwoven with Christian believing, Christian loving, and fruits of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now Burgess goes on to say that this possibility of assurance is provable in a variety of ways. First of all, he says there are biblical saints who evidenced assurance. He quotes people like Job, I know the Lord is my Redeemer, Job 19, or Paul, I know in whom I have believed, and so on. Secondly, there are many scriptures that talk about getting assurance and tell Christians how to go about it. Thirdly, there are commands in Scripture to seek it. 2 Peter 1.10, of course, is the most famous one. To seek, to make your calling and election sure. Fourthly, this is the purpose of the sacraments, Burgess says, for the believer. As signs and seals, particularly to witness God's love with assurance to us. And fifthly, He says, this is the reason why God gives so many exercises of divine grace, that we might know more and more that these marks and steps of grace within us are indeed the work of the Spirit of God. And then finally, he says, assurance is the peculiar task and calling of the Holy Spirit. He is called, we heard that last night too, to witness with our spirits to seal unto us our salvation. But then thirdly, there is a third possibility. And that is that a believer can possess a certain degree of assurance and yet lack a comfortable consciousness of what He possesses. And that is, I suspect, where some of you probably are at as well, and where many of my own people are at back in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They're actually God-fearing people, and they love the Lord, they hate sin, they're pursuing holiness, but you see, They have so deprecated, so minimized what God has done in their lives, that they've actually convinced themselves that at the very best, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, they have a small beginning of the Lord's work in their heart, but they hardly dare to claim it. And so every Lord's Supper is a great struggle. Yes, they cannot dare stay away either. dare to deny the Lord who bought them, but oh, they lack this assurance that He is mine and that I am His. Now, Burgess says about this kind of phenomena that the first thing we need to establish is that assurance is necessary for spiritual health, but not necessary, absolutely, for salvation itself. But to be a healthy Christian, I need to have some measure of assurance, you see, for inward joy and peace and usefulness to serve to the glory of God, to speak to my neighbor about the goodness of God. And yet, assurance is not absolutely necessary to my salvation. So, a believer, you see, is someone who wants, desperately wants assurance. And yet there are reasons, somehow reasons, that keep standing in the way from his freedom to lay hold of this assurance as he would. What are the reasons why many believers seem to make no progress or seem to tread water at best. Let me give you, very quickly, five important reasons. The first is this. False conceptions of the character of God. I believe, and this is not Burgess now, this is reasons that I've gleaned from pastoring people today. I believe that many of God's people do not understand, as they should, that God quintessentially, in the core of His own being, is a God of love and mercy. As Micah says it in chapter 7, verse 18, He delighteth in mercy. Or as Thomas Watson said it in his Body of Divinity, judgment is of the essence of God, yes, but it is His strange work, like a bee that stings only when it is provoked. So God is not often provoked to use His justice, but God's very heart is a heart of mercy. He delights in mercy. He rejoices in mercy. Mercy is the core of the essence of God. He wants to show mercy. And you see, sometimes people get weighed down because of all their sin. And they think God won't be gracious to them, even when they come and ask for forgiveness and repentance, because they don't see rightly the character of the mercy of God. Secondly, there can often be a lack of clarity on understanding the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Even though we mean so well It's quite possible that when we emphasize the work that goes on inside of us, that we actually come to a kind of Roman Catholic position where we're trying to mix God's justification with our sanctification to justify us. And we forget that we're justified by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone, to the glory of God alone, based on the Word alone. And that searching for inward marks of grace is not the foundation of our faith, even when it can be one of the foundations of our assurance of faith. I don't learn salvation from finding marks within me. I learn to know salvation by casting myself as a naked sinner upon a fully completed salvation outside of me. And I learned that at the cross, you see, I lay my sins at the cross and there I justify my sovereign, gracious faith alone. Now, a third reason that often hinders assurance is, of course, disobedience. It is backsliding, whirliness, carnality. Neglect of the use of the means of grace. Walking like a worldly. You see, if you persist in low levels of obedience, it's no wonder that you have low levels of assurance. A believer who doesn't act like a believer, doesn't talk like a believer, doesn't think like a believer, is seldom going to have assurance like a believer. And so if you are careless, spiritually sloppy, you don't read the Bible every day, it's no wonder you lose your assurance. I once had a man call me, just as I was leaving for the plane. And he said, I need to talk to you right away. I said, I'm sorry, I'm leaving for the plane. Oh, he said, I'm at my wits end. I'm at my wits end. He was an elder in our church for many years. He said, I don't even know if this makes any sense to pray to God anymore. It's so cold. It's so dark. It's so hopeless. So hopeless. I said, let me ask you a quick question. I've got to go right now. Let me ask you a quick question. What's your daily devotional life like? He said, well, it's almost non-existent. I said, brother, I said, I'm coming back in six days. I'll come over and talk to you. But for the next six days, you spend one hour in the Word every morning, prayerfully, searching the Word, meditating on the Word, singing psalms. You spend one hour, even if you don't feel like it, every morning. And I'll call you when I get back. Well, when I got back, there was a note on my desk. You don't need to call Mr. So-and-so because everything's alright. You see here, it's just grown sloppy. and careless. Fourthly, ignorance of what the marks of grace are and of what to look for in those marks of grace. It's quite possible that a sincere, conscientious child of God sets the marks of grace so high even beyond the level of a very mature saint. And when they don't find those marks of grace within them, then they get discouraged and they say, I must not be a child of God. You can set the bar too high. You can demand of yourself unrealistic things. For example, I know a child of God who said, I cannot be a child of God because I've got all these lustful thoughts that spring up from time to time. And if I were a child of God, I wouldn't have these things. That's nonsense. Romans 7. Oh, wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me? This isn't what the Bible says. It's what the devil was saying to him. And he was believing the devil. Well, it doesn't mean we should be content with such thoughts. Oh no, we should fight against them. And that's a whole other subject. But you don't say I'm not a child of God because I'm still struggling every day with sin. If you're a child of God, it's precisely the opposite, isn't it? You will struggle with indwelling sin every day of your life. And then fifthly, I believe a reason that many of God's people lack assurance of faith is because they're not acknowledging what God has already done for them. They're despising the day of small things. You know, in our Dutch tradition, of course, we have Heidelberg Catechism. And there's a beautiful Lord's Day, Lord's Day 45. And it says something like this. What is the chief part of thankfulness? And it says prayer. I think it adds a comment, an amazing comment. It says God will only continue to give large measures of the Spirit to those who are thankful for what they've received. Think about it. Think about it with your own children. If you went out and you bought your son a bicycle, and you brought it home, and you gave it to him, and he said, oh, I don't like that kind of bike. That's not big enough. The handle bars aren't wide enough. And he smashes it on the ground and destroys it and says, I want another bike. Would you give him another bicycle? It would be a foolish parent to do so. We have got to learn to thank God for any grace we receive. To thank Him for that conviction of sin. To thank Him for the outgoings of our soul to the Lord Jesus Christ. To thank Him for what He's done in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's not presumption. That's humility. Not to despise what He has given and ask Him, yes, indeed, to help you grow in grace, but acknowledge what He has already done. That's not humility to cast that to one side. In fact, there is such a thing as humble pride in which we refuse to acknowledge what God has done out of our own pride because we want to have more experience. Well, for all these reasons, you see, we can sometimes lose assurance we once had or we never seem to achieve any substantial measure of assurance because these are roadblocks standing in our way. We need to discern these things. We need to wrestle with them. We need to move beyond them. We need to overcome them by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Now, how do you do that? Well, that's what 18.2 is all about. Let's look at that now. How do we get assurance? This certainty is not a bare, conjectural, improbable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope. but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon, now here it comes, first, the divine truth of the promises of salvation. Second, the inward evidences of those graces unto which these promises are made. Third, a testimony of the spirit of adoption, witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, which spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption. So the Westminster divines set before us here a three-fold complex ground of assurance. A primary ground, the divine truth and the promises of salvation. And two secondary grounds, at least I believe there are two, some Puritans said one, the inward evidences and the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Now, these three things, the Puritans say, these three things are what's involved in gaining and retaining full assurance of faith. Now, if you turn your sheets over just a moment, you can see that listed in the left column, the three kinds of assurance, the promises of the gospel and secondary ground number one, inward evidences, or that's the fruits of saving grace, and then secondary ground number two, the testimony of the Holy Spirit. And you can see how I've lined up there scriptures that match these three. Then I've shown how the Heidelberg Catechism teaches all three things. The Canons of Dort teaches all three things. And, of course, the Westminster Confession in 18.2. And I'd like you to take this home with you, if you will. And if I could give you a little homework assignment, I would say, study this, study this, and see the consistency in all Reformed traditions. These same three grounds work together to enable us to grow in assurance of faith. And what the divine said, both in the continent, in the Dutch tradition, and in your own tradition, the Puritan tradition, the Westminster tradition, what they all said, they were all in harmony on this, is that what the Spirit does is He works All three of these within us. And the more we have of each kind, the greater will our measure of assurance be. We need all three if we have only trust in the promises. If there's no evidences, well, we're going to presume. That's what millions of people who call themselves Christians today do. They say, I believe all the promises of the Bible are mine. But the fruits of living out of those promises are not evident, you see. Other people say, I've got the Holy Spirit. I've got a testimony of the Spirit. The Spirit talks to me. The Spirit showed me this this morning, showed me that this afternoon. It's like they have an ongoing dialogue with the Holy Spirit outside the Bible. So they say, I'm assured. But they don't know what it means to trust in the promises. And they don't show evidences and fruits in their life. Other people seem to have some evidences and fruits, but they're not leaning on the promises. And so those evidences and fruits wane away very quickly. And so you see, all three depend on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and all three work together to assure us. Well, let's look at each of them briefly. The first is the divine promises in Christ. Burgess writes this, God's promises in Christ are the primary ground for believer's assurance. You see, everything else builds on that. It cannot be denied, he says, but that it is a more noble and excellent way to believe in the promise than to believe upon the sense and evidences of grace in us. Yet, the latter, that is inward evidences of grace, is also lawful and encouraged by God. What he's saying is the promises are foundational. If I look for marks of grace in myself, apart from the promises of God, as Calvin said it, that is sure damnation to me. Because I'm going to see all my sins. And if I don't see the promises of God in His promise to be merciful and faithful, I'm going to come to despair. So, when I look for inward evidences in my own heart, in my own life, I do so on the basis of the faithful promises of God in the Lord Jesus Christ, as He has revealed Himself in the Gospel. So the same promises that lead me to faith and to salvation in the beginning of my spiritual life, these same promises are the bedrock for growing in faith and growing in assurance. And so we must not think of assurance over here and faith over here. Rather, assurance is, may I say it this way, strong faith. It's the same essence. Thomas Brooks, I guess, put it best. He said, you know how some of you may remember in the olden days You'd buy a jug of milk and there'd be cream on the top and you could scoop out the cream. Well, it belongs to the milk, but it was more solidified. Well, Brooks says, assurance is the cream of faith. The cream of faith. So it's natural that the same promises that give us faith are the same promises that help us grow in assurance. Now, Burgess stresses that these promises are always Christ-centered. Jesus Christ is the sum, fountain, seal, and treasury of all the promises He sets. In Him, all the promises of God are yea and amen. And so when we rest on the promises, it's saying the same thing as saying we are resting on the Lord Jesus Christ alone. The important thing to remember here is you don't rest on the inward evidences of grace more than you rest on the promises. You rest on the promises and then you look for inward evidences on the promises. Listen to Burgess. This is a wonderful quotation. We must take heed that we do not so gaze upon ourselves to find graces in our own hearts as thereby to forget those acts of faith whereby we close with Christ immediately and directly and rely upon Him only for our justification. The fear of doing this hath made some cry down totally the use of all signs. And the truth is, it cannot be denied but that many children of God, while they are studying and examining their own hearts, whether there be grace in their own souls, that upon the discovery thereof, They may have comfortable persuasions of their justification, but are at the same time neglecting the more important acts of faith whereby we rest upon Christ alone for our acceptance with God. This is as if old Jacob should so rejoice in the chariots that Joseph sent, whereby he knew that Joseph was alive, that he should forget His desire to go to see Joseph himself. Thus, while thou art so full of joy to perceive graces in thee, thou forgettest to rejoice in Christ Himself, who is more excellent than all thy graces. I hope you understand what he's saying. If you just end in the internal march and you forget to go to Christ with them and end in Him as the Promiser and the foundation of your salvation, you say, than you actually detract from your own spiritual progress. And so what Burgess is saying is that though sometimes the subjective phenomena in your soul may make you feel more sure than faith in God's promises outside of you, actually those experiences give less glory to God than divine promises that are apprehended directly by faith. Listen to Burgess. Trusting in God and in Christ, when we feel nothing but guilt and destruction in our lives, is the greatest honor we can bring to God. And therefore, though living by signs and marks may be more comfortable to us, living by faith is greater honor to God. Now, what Burgess then would ask is, If you have assurance, you're growing in assurance, you are then trusting in Christ alone for salvation. You see beauty in Him, and you're resting in Him, and you're confessing Him, you see. This is the mark of faith that's foundational to all the other marks of faith, is faith itself. Where is your faith? Where is your trust? Is it in Christ alone? And if it's in Christ alone, who taught you that? Did you teach that yourself? Did Satan teach you that? No, of course not. God taught you that. The Holy Spirit taught you that. To look to Christ alone. He emptied you of your own righteousness. And He brought you to see everything in the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, your assurance lies in Him as the sum and the treasury and the seal of all the promises of God. Secondly, We also get assurance by the inward evidences of grace. And the Puritans said these evidences are confirmed by syllogisms, syllogisms. And that sounds difficult, but I'm going to try to make it very simple for you. What is a syllogism? Well, you put out a major premise and then a minor premise and then a conclusion. And we do it every day in our lives without even realizing it. But this is how you do it. Say you're going to use what the Puritans call a practical syllogism. Your major premise is this. According to Scripture, only those who possess saving faith will receive the Spirit's testimony in their heart that their lives manifest the fruits of sanctification and good works. Minor premise, I cannot deny that by the grace of God, I have received the Spirit's testimony that I do manifest fruits of sanctification and good works. Conclusion, I am therefore a partaker of saving faith. Now, what Burgess writes is this. He says, there is the direct act of the soul by which I I lay hold of Christ and His promises directly. That's the foundation of my assurance. But there's also this reflexive act by which I ask the Spirit for light to look back in my life to see these marks of grace. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Yes, Lord, I cannot deny Thou hast made me poor in spirit. Blessed are they that mourn. I cannot deny, Lord, I've learned to mourn over sin. Blessed are the meek. I cannot deny that Thou hast made me humble and submissive before Thee, though I wish I could be more humble and submissive. Blessed are they that are hungry and thirsty after righteousness. Oh, that I definitely cannot deny. I need a righteousness better than mine. I'm hungry and thirsty for the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, I'm a child of God, you see, because I can't teach these things to myself. Satan won't teach me these things. It's the Holy Spirit that did it. So, I reflect back and I say, these fruits and marks are not a fruit or mark of my own field, my own heart. And therefore, I am a child of God. So, the Puritans called these the reflexive acts of faith, to reflect back. And from that reflection, you get greater strength in your assurance because you say, by the grace of God, I cannot deny what God has done in my life. Now, they also spoke about the mystical syllogism. And that wasn't based so much on sanctification and good works outside of me, but it was based more on what I experienced in the inward man. And that meant something like this, major premise. According to Scripture, only those who possess saving faith will so experience the Spirit's inward confirmation of grace and godliness that self will decrease and Christ will increase. Because after all, that's the heart of all true religion, isn't it? Self decreases, Christ increases. Minor premise. I cannot deny that by the grace of God, I experience the Spirit's testimony, confirming inward grace and godliness, such that myself decreases and Christ increases. Conclusion, I'm a partaker of saving faith. Let me ask you this question. Look back in your life ten years ago. Do you think more or less of Christ now than you did ten years ago? And then ask yourself this question. Do you think more or less of yourself than you did ten years ago? And if you can say, self decreases. I think less of myself. And I'm increasingly learning. Yes, there's ups and downs, but gradually I'm learning to think more and more of the Lord Jesus Christ. My friend, you are growing in grace. Even when you can't see it. And you see, it's a tricky thing, isn't it? Because we often can't see it. Because if we become less, we really become less. I like to compare it this way. I like to compare it with a woman who comes in and she cleans up all the furniture in the living room. It's a cloudy day. She cleans it all up. She thinks she's got every piece of dust off the furniture. And then the sun comes up and shines on the furniture. And it seems like there's more dust than ever. Is there more dust? No, the furniture is actually cleaner than it was before she cleaned it. But now she sees more dust, you see. So she concludes, oh what a filthy living room I have. But in reality, it's cleaner than it was. So it is with assurance, you see. As I decrease in self-estimation, as God shines with His light and His holiness and His purity in my life and I come to know Him better and I see His purity and His glory and His brightness, I see more of my sin. But you see, if I fly to Christ with that and Christ increases and I fall upon His mercy alone, I'm actually growing even as I think I'm declining. Now, the Puritan said, The marks you can use here for the practical syllogism are things like 2 Peter 1, verses 5 through 10. It speaks about virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly love. You look for those marks in you. And all those examples of 1 John. 1 John is the book of syllogisms in the Bible. Remember what John says. Hereby we know that we love God if we keep His commandments. Or we know we pass from death to life because we love the brethren. We know that we are the children of God if we love God and if we love our brother. So you take those marks and you say, do I have a special love for the brother? Am I bonded to God's people? Well, if so, that's a mark of grace. It's a mark of grace that I'm a child of God. The mystical syllogism, they look for more inward things. Burgess writes, sometimes this is the fear of God can be a sign. Sometimes poverty of spirit, sometimes hunger and thirsting after righteousness, sometimes repentance, sometimes love, sometimes patience, he writes. Well, these are the things the Puritans used to, based on the promises, not divorced from the promises, to reassure themselves that they were the children of God. Now, Burgess warns, about two or three things here. Let me briefly state them. First of all, you never engage in the syllogism apart from the Holy Spirit. You ask for the light of the Holy Spirit. You see, you don't trust in your own trusting, but you trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, you never do the syllogism apart from the Word of God, the promises of God, and the Son of God. You look for the major premise in the Bible. What are the marks of grace in the Bible? Don't make up your own marks of grace. And then you do it in dependency upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And thirdly, remember, remember, remember, this is a secondary ground of assurance. The primary ground is the promises of the Word of God. William Bridge was a Puritan and he said something like this, If a man sees his own inward evidences, and the river is full, stay but a while. And if that man does not betake himself to the promises of God, his river will dry up. If you build all your assurance on the inward evidences of grace, you'll lose them all. Because God never designed us to rely upon ourselves. As George Gillespie, the Scottish Puritan put it, all thy marks will then lead thee in the dark. You see, what happens is this. When I build on the promises, I come to learn God's faithfulness to me every day. And as the years roll by, I learn more and more and more how faithful He is. And He increases. What a good God He's been to me. He's never treated me as badly as I deserve for one minute of my entire life. And I've never treated Him as well as He deserves. To Him be all the praise. You see, I rely on Him. And as I learn His faithfulness, I then learn to see how that faithfulness works out evidences in my life and I give Him all the glory rather than myself the glory for the evidences of His grace that I see in me. Those two things are very, very important. Don't try to build apart from God's faithfulness and God's promises. I was speaking with someone yesterday and I said something like this. You trusted your wife when you married her. But now you're married for 20, 30 years. She's always been faithful to you. You trust her even more now, don't you? You have more assurance than ever she's going to be faithful to you. So it is in spiritual life. The accumulation of the years and years of experience of God's faithfulness to us gives us strength To go forward. To know Him as Father. To trust Him. To say, I know in whom I have believed, this faithful and merciful God and Father. Now, there's one more thing I need to say here. And that is this. There is a third thing called the witness of the Holy Spirit. The witness of the Holy Spirit. And this is the most difficult of the three to explain, but I'm going to be simple and short. Some of the Puritans said this, the witness of the Holy Spirit is nothing more than the Spirit entering into that reflect acts of faith with us and witnessing with our spirit, our conscience, that we are the children of God. That's all it means. They would collapse these two secondary grounds into one and say there's only one secondary ground. So you get assurance from the promises of God and from the inward evidences of grace applied by the Holy Spirit. That's the Spirit's testimony. Now, Jeremiah Burroughs, Anthony Burgess himself, George Gillespie agreed that this is the way 18.2 is to be interpreted. They believe Romans 8.15 and Romans 8.16 I'm speaking about the same thing. But there were other Puritan divines who said no, no. Samuel Rutherford, William Twiss, Thomas Goodwin. They believe that the witness of the Spirit in 8.15 is something distinct from that of verse 16. It's one thing for the Spirit to witness with your spirit that you're a child of God, and another for Him to take the Word of God and apply it directly to your spirit that you are a child of God. So one is a co-witness, the Spirit's witness and my witness, and the other is the Spirit taking the Word of God and directly witnessing it to your heart, saying, you are a child of God. Or, my son, your sins are forgiven you, or something of that nature. And they said it's possible, you see, that the Spirit's direct testimony from the Word becomes another aspect of assurance. Personally, I agree with the latter. The Spirit's testimony is important, also for inward evidences. You can have no assurance apart from the Spirit in any of these three categories. But it's also quite possible that the Spirit takes the Word of God and persuades the mind and the conscience with power, as you read the Word, that you are a child of God, that these marks of grace do belong to you. And there's a direct testimony in that. It may not be as common as the other forms of assurance. I call it a dessert. The promises and the inward evidences are like the meat and potatoes, and the direct testimony is like a dessert. It's an added bonus. You must ask for it, but sometimes God's people don't experience this so much. And in my tradition, what happened is when people lack the direct testimony of the Spirit, they often concluded, I have no assurance at all. And they threw away all the meat and potatoes. And they only said, if I don't have the dessert, I have nothing. That's very wrong to do. Now, why did those other divines not say there was this third testimony? Why were they so reticent to allow for a direct testimony? Well, they were reticent because they were afraid that people would become antinomians. That is to say, they would say, the Spirit spoke directly to me through the Word, and therefore, my inward evidences, my walk of life doesn't matter. And that is a danger, of course. But what Rutherford said, and Goodwin, and I believe that's correct, as long as we don't make that third form of assurance to be greater than the other two, You see, if I'm a better Christian than you, if I have some direct testimony of the Spirit, as long as we don't do that, we're still on safe ground. We need all three. That's the point. Well, that brings me then to this conclusion that what we need to remember is that as we seek to grow in these different areas of assurance in our lives, We need to grow in a daily life of communion with God. Let us remember that the bottom line of assurance is all about faith, living out of God's Word, resting in the finished work of Jesus day by day. And as we experience the faithfulness of God in this way, and we learn to rest on Him, faith will triumph. Not every day with equal measure. And let us not despair when we don't feel face triumph. But the more we grow in faith in Christ, the more we will normally grow in assurance as well. But remember, it's always in Christ. B.B. Warfield put it this way, it is not even faith that saves us, but faith in Jesus Christ. Yes, it is not even, strictly speaking, faith in Christ that saves us, but Christ who saves us through faith. The saving power, therefore, resides exclusively not in the act of faith, or the attitude of faith, or the nature of faith, but in the object of faith, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. In Him, we will find our assurance. John Calvin said this, It is He, the Lord Jesus, who wishes to cure the disease of unbelief in us so that among us He may obtain full faith in His promises. That's what faith and assurance is all about. That's what Kelvin and the Puritans and Reformed theology is all about. That's what Scripture and life itself are all about. Honoring the Triune God through faith in Jesus Christ. Well, I close. this afternoon with a short prayer that you can find at the end of Anthony Burgess' major treatise on justification. This is what he says, Lord, who was more plunged into sin than I? Whose diseases were greater than mine? It may be thousands and thousands for less and fewer sins than I have committed are now taking their portion in the bottom of hell. O Lord, this Thy overflowing goodness doth overcome me. O, that I had the hearts of all men and all angels to praise Thee and to rest assuredly in Thee for Thy great salvation. May God make that Your prayer and mine as well. Amen. Let us pray. Lord God, we bow before Thee, thanking Thee for the gift of faith and the gift of assurance and praying that we may realize why we need these things and why we need to grow in assurance. And we do pray for spirit-work growth in this area. And Lord, we pray that Thou would take this explanation in accord with the Puritan biblical teaching and use Thy promises and inward evidences and the testimony of Thy Spirit to reinforce in our lives, if we are true believers, that we are true believers indeed. Lord, may we use these means prayerfully, humbly, simply. And we pray that in and through the use of them, that Thou wouldst increase our assurance so that we may live to the praise and the glory of Thee, the Triune God. All this we ask, praying that Thou wilt go with us also tonight as we look at the great question tonight of how do we grow in assurance? What means do we use? And how do we use them? Lord, give insight and give light and give practical benefit. Help us, we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen.