Pilgrim's Progress Study Number Six Christian Loses His Burden Now I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian was to go was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a cross. and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back. and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, He has given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death. Then he stood while to look and wonder, for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent waters down his cheeks. Now as I stood looking and weeping, behold, three shining ones came to him and saluted him with, Peace be unto you. So the first said to him, Your sins are forgiven you. The second stripped him of his rags and closed him with a chain of raiment. The third also set a mark on his forehead. and gave him a roll with a seal upon it, which he bade him look on as he ran, that he should give it in at the celestial gate. And so they went their way, and now lesson six of Pilgrim's Progress before a live audience. Now something happened to Christian here. How do we explain this? I mean, in our Christian journey, we don't actually see a physical cross. And so how do you explain this? And sometimes in the Christian pilgrimage, there are times when we need the spirit in a way to bear witness with our spirit that we are his children. And some people say, but that's through the word. Well, how it is, the word does come to somebody, but it is something that can be experienced when God needs to shut up around his love in your heart and cast out fear. And we have an example of this in the life of Jonathan Edwards is when he said, Once, as I rode out into the woods for my health in 1737, having alighted from my horse—he gets off his horse—in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God as mediator between God and man, and His wonderful, grateful, pure, and sweet grace and love and meek and gentle condescension. Disgrace that appeared so calm and sweet appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued as near as I can judge about an hour, which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express, empty and annihilated, to lie in the dust and to be full of Christ alone, to love Him with a holy and pure love, to trust in Him, to live upon Him, to serve and follow Him, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with the divine and heavenly purity. I, several other times, had views very much of the same nature and which have had the same effects. Now, knowing what I know of Jonathan Edwards, he did not see a vision. He would be saying that those things that he had contemplated in scriptures came afresh with hour to him as he was getting off of his horse. And sometimes the assurance is so strong, it works upon the mental imagery, even though you're not actually seeing the vision. It affects you so much that you have such an assurance of it. But here's our question for this study. Is assurance of salvation necessary for salvation? What if you are a professing Christian, as Christian was for a while, and there's still a burden on the back? During the time when the burden on his back is on his back and the time he got relief, he was still a Christian, but he did not enjoy the highest assurance of the reality of his faith. In the book Holiness by J.C. Ryle, he says, quote, A person may have saving faith in Christ and yet never enjoy an assured hope, such as the Apostle Paul enjoyed. To believe and have a glimmering hope of acceptance is one thing. To have joy and peace in our belief and an abounding hope is quite another. All God's children have faith not all have assurance. I think this ought never to be forgotten. I know some great and good men have held a different opinion. I believe that many excellent ministers of the gospel, at whose feet I would gladly sit, do not allow the distinction I have stated." Well, what would the distinction be? That there could be a time when you have faith in Christ, but you are not enjoying a full assurance. Not that you don't have any assurance at all, but it isn't giving you that joy and that peace that sometimes Christ will be to a believer. He said, I desire to call no man my master. I dread as much as anybody the idea of healing the wounds of conscience lightly, but I should think any other view than what I have given, a most uncomfortable gospel to preach, the one very likely to keep souls back a long time from the gate of life." In our confession, we have a statement that assurance is not of the essence of faith. What is essence? that within the very nature of saving faith, its essence would include full assurance. And the early reformers seemed to teach this, John Calvin, Martin Luther, and so on, possibly overreacting to the Church of Rome who taught that a person in this life could never have assurance and maybe In order to correct that error, the early reformers emphasized too much assurance, so as to make assurance of the essence of faith. But the Puritans came along a century later, and as our Confession says in Chapter 18, and as the Westminster Larger Catechism says in Question 81, that assurance isn't of the essence of faith and that a Christian can struggle for some time before he has a full assurance. Ryle says, I do not shrink from saying that by grace a man may have sufficient faith to flee to Christ. Sufficient faith really to lay hold on him, really to trust him, really to be a child of God, really to be saved, and yet to his last day be never free from much anxiety, doubt, and fear. So there is a meme or a poem that's been put on Facebook. I've seen it a lot lately. Let's look at that poem. Feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the word of God, not else is worth believing. Though all my heart should feel condemned for want of some sweet token, There is one greater than my heart whose word cannot be broken." And that is a good poem, but we don't want to stretch it so far that if a Christian says, I never have any joy in peace because those are feelings, then I shouldn't be concerned about it because we want to have the highest assurance of the reality of our faith. So some people may be pressing that poem too far. I say that because what, in fact, are our feelings? Jonathan Edwards in A Religious Affection says, God is endued a soul with two principal faculties. The one, that by which it is capable of perception and speculation, or by which it discerns and judges of things, which is called de-understanding. The other, that by which a soul is in some way inclined with respect to the things it views or considers, or is a faculty by which the soul beholds things, not as an indifferent, unaffected spectator, but either as liking or disliking, pleased or displeased, approving or rejecting. Those are called the affections. This faculty, he says, is called by various names. It is sometimes called the inclination as it respects the actions determined and governed by it, the will and the mind with regard to the exercises of this faculty, and it is often called the heart. And what he is placing as a maxim here is that you cannot have strong inclinations You cannot be strongly pleased with something. You can't strongly approve of something and it has the inclination of your will. But because the mind is connected to the body, the stronger the inclination and affection, the more it will have its effect upon the body. Those are called your Such seems to be our nature, Edward says, and such the laws of the union of soul and body, that there never is any case whatsoever, any lively and vigorous exercise of the inclination, that which you're inclined to, without some effect upon the body, and some alteration of the motion of its fluids, and especially of the, what they called, animal spirits. how the natural body reacts when it is greatly affected by what is on the mind, what is the mind inclining to. Robert Dabney as well says, the function of feeling is as essential to the human spirit as ever present is a function of cognition or the function of understanding. The two are ever combined as the heat rays and the light rays are intermingled in the sunbeams. but the consciousness intuitively recognizes the difference of the two functions so that it is superfluous to define them. Feeling is the temperature of thought. In other words, you can't think strongly on anything, but it raises a temperature that is expressed by feeling. Feeling is the temperature of your thoughts. The same kind of feeling may differ in degree and of intensity as the heat ray in the brilliant winter sunbeam differs from that in the fiery glare of the dog days, but the thermometer shows there is still caloric in the wintriest sunbeam. In other words, even in the coldest winter, there is still some degree of temperature. So a human spirit is never devoid of some degree of that feeling which the truth then engaged in the intelligence tends to excite. is or can be inducement to volition unless it be apprehended by the soul as being both in the category of the true and of the good. But that function of soul by which the object is taken in as good is desire, which is an act of filling. So it follows that an element of filling is as essential to every rational volition It's an act of understanding. But we're answering the question, but what if a person does not enjoy this full assurance from Samuel Pike and Samuel Hayward's Cases of Conscience? This first came out in 1755. This person says, this has been my case. Through divine goodness, having been delivered from that burden, like Christian, I can therefore speak of it by experience. I find that it is one thing to be justified, pardoned, and accepted, And another thing, to know that this mercy belongs to me. Justification makes certain the safety of the people of God, that they can never perish nor miscarry of everlasting happiness. Knowing that this mercy belongs to them is a foundation of their present comfort under all their trials in the wilderness. It is what enables them by the Spirit of the Lord to always triumph in Christ. So the larger catechism, Question 81, says, Are all true believers at all times assured of their present being in a state of grace and that they shall be saved? Are they always assured? And the answer is assurance of grace and salvation, not being of the essence of faith. It isn't part of its essence. You can have faith in Christ. You can have saving faith in Christ. and not enjoy the joy and peace of full assurance. True believers may wait long before they obtain it, and this is what was happening to Christian. He was a Christian all the way through the House of the Interpreter, but he wasn't enjoying the joy and peace of his salvation. He was as he got a view of the cross and understand the substitutionary curse bearing of our Lord Jesus on the cross. In the eyes of his understanding or enlightened and in a new way, his heart leaped with joy as he realized, I really am forgiven. He was forgiven. He didn't have the joy of his forgiveness. It says in our Catechism and Confession, and by the way, Chapter 18 of the London Confession is the same as Chapter 18 of the Westminster Confession, Assurance of Faith. He may have his assurance weakened. and intermitted, that means temporarily blocked, stopped, through manifold distemper, sins, temptations, and desertions, yet are they never left without such a presence and support of the Spirit as keeps them from sinking into utter despair. Thomas Brooks of Puritan has a book called Heaven on Earth. And he says, it is one thing for me to have grace, it is another thing for me to see my grace. It is one thing for me to believe and another thing for me to believe that I do believe. It is one thing for me to have faith and another thing for me to know that I have faith. Now, assurance flows from a clear, certain, evident knowledge that I have grace, and that I do believe, and so on. Now this assurance is the beauty and apex of a Christian's happiness in this life. It is usually attended with the strongest joy, with the sweetest comforts, and with the greatest peace. It is a pearl that most lack, a crown that few wear. His state is safe and happy, whose soul is adorned with grace, even if he doesn't see it, even if he doesn't know it and feel it. Assurance is not of the essence of a Christian. It is required to their well-being, to their comfortable and joyful being of a Christian, but it is not required to their being a Christian. A man may be a true believer and yet would give all the world were it in his power to know that he is a believer. And Thomas Ridgely in a book called The Body of Divinity, which is a exposition of the larger catechism, and on question 81, he says, a believer may wait long before he attains assurance. disappears from daily experience and observation. The sovereignty of God discovers itself in it as much as it does when he makes the ordinances effectual to salvation and giving converting grace to those who attend upon them. Some are called early to be made partakers of the salvation which is in Christ, others late. The same may be said with respect to God's giving assurance. Some are favored with this privilege assurance soon after or when they first believe. Others are like those whom the Apostle speaks of who, through fear of death, are all their lifetime subject to bondage. Many have often inquired into the state of their souls and been unable to discern any marks or evidences of grace in themselves, whose conversation is such Their Christian manners, their Christian conduct, their deportment, we call it their conversation, is such that others cannot but conclude them to be true believers. Their spirits are depressed. Doubts and fears may prevail and tend to make their lives very uncomfortable. They wait and pray for the evidence and sense of God's love to them, but cannot immediately find it. We'll discuss the reasons for this and look at John Owen's exposition of Psalm 130, The Forgiveness of Sin. But first, I want to make you aware that there are some that teach that assurance is of the essence of faith. In other words, If you have saving faith, you must have assurance. And so a little historical background of something that went on in Grand Rapids. There were two denominations. There was a Protestant Reformed denomination, which used to be part of the Christian Reformed Church. However, three of their main professors of this disagreement with the Christian Reformed Church, did not believe in common grace, the free offer to gospel, and so on. And so they took a stand against what the Christian Reformed Churches believed on that issue. So the Christian Reformed Church basically kicked them out of the denomination. If you want to know what happened, One of the first routes that I ever had as a mailman, I had this postal route, and it was in a really historical part of Grand Rapids, so now that's not a nice part of town, but it was south of Wealthy Street, which went east and west, and it was called Eastern Avenue, and there was this Christian Reformed church. that Herman Hoeksema was pastoring, and because he had taken the stand that common grace and the free off the gospel is not biblical, the Christian reform took a stand against him. And he shows up to church on a Sunday morning one day, and he finds that the doors have a chain and a padlock on them. In other words, you're done. We're kicking you out. And so not to be deterred, a number of people followed him because they liked his preaching. And by the way, even Cornelius Van Til often attended his services. He was a good preacher. So Van Til lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and he would either attend the church where Herman Hoeksema was pastoring, the Christian Reformed Church on Eastern Avenue in Grand Rapids, or he would attend the preaching of R.B. Kuyper, one of the first professors he became at Westminster, R.B. Kuyper. So what had happened historically is the Protestant Reformed Church not only began to deny common grace, they didn't like the Puritan teaching that assurance is not of the essence of faith. On the other hand, in Grand Rapids, you had the Netherlands reformed churches that were on the other extreme. And that is that they so emphasized the possibility that a person could deceive himself, that to have assurance at all was very rare. And they pushed it so far that it became suspect for you to have assurance. Don't you know? It's very probable you could be deceived. And they pressed this so much. And this is before Dr. Joel Beakey became the pastor of the Heritage Netherlands Reformed Church on Crescent Avenue in Grand Rapids. And it's interesting because assurance was so rare in the Netherlands Reformed Church that there was this website, and I got a kick out of it. You remember this statement, Got Milk? This website was Got Assurance, and it was a collection of testimonies of people that were in the Netherlands Reformed Congregation. And this is no exaggeration that out of, I'm just going to say a fraction of one out of ten people who were members of the church, they were not communicant members of the church. In other words, they believed that they were probably Christians, but they were afraid to take the Lord's Supper because they never had assurance. So, you could see these two sides would be antagonistic to one another. And in an overreaction to the Netherlands reformed congregations. The Protestant reform would teach assurances of the essence of faith, and these people weren't doing a great deal of damage by teaching people that assurance was so rare that few people ever had it. So, Dr. Beakey came along and was pastoring this church, and he had went to Westminster Theological Seminary and other seminaries, but his doctrinal dissertation was on assurance of salvation in the Dutch Second Reformation. And it's interesting, it caused such a consternation in the old Netherlands Reformed people, whose previous pastor was a man named William C. Lemaine. And when these churches started up before Beaky got there, they were so Dutch that the preacher preached in Dutch. And where this is interesting to me, as I was friends with a lady that was part of this congregation, and I knew that her parents lived in this apartment complex where the widow of William C. LeMayne was still around. He had passed away in about, I don't know, 1970s or something, and these people did not like Dr. Beeky, because Beeky was teaching that we should seek after assurance, and he did his PhD dissertation on assurance of salvation. But within the Protestant Reformed churches, you had their theologians. After Hermann Hoeksema passed away, you had two of them, mainly David Engelsma and Hermann Henko. And Henko, they both get my ire for different reasons. One, they don't like the Puritans and their teaching on conversion. So they have no use for the Great Awakening, no use for revival. All of that's enthusiasm. It's all mysticism. So Dr. Beeky took his doctrinal dissertation, and I meant to bring the book. And he republished it in a more modernized format. And I just got in my second copy last week. I must've given my original away. And the book is called The Quest. The Quest. You're on a quest for full assurance. And David Engelsma really took issue with that. And so he published a book, and I was reading it again this last week, called The Gift of Assurance. And Anglesmo was saying that these people, by not saying the assurances of the essence of faith, have a bunch of believers. And you always got to create a straw man to make your point. So you say these people who go to these churches, a lot of them don't even know if they're saved. They're afraid they may be going to hell. So, which of course isn't anything that Beaky would have taught at all. And so, there was and is quite a difference in the Protestant Reformed Churches on the nature of assurance and the, what became the Netherlands Heritage, Netherlands Reformed Congregation, because basically, because there was such antagonism to Beaky, they formed a new Netherlands Reformed Congregation. And Beakey has really been a breath of fresh air to me on the doctrine of assurance. I had his doctrinal dissertation. He wrote one of the best historical treatments of what the Puritans taught about assurance not being of the essence of faith. And I became interested in this when I was teaching pilgrims progress in the past, because I was interested in some of the controversies that were going on in Grand Rapids. So David Engelsma was interviewed in an article that got published in a magazine called Grace and Focus in 2014. And so he is being interviewed and he said to David Engelsma, the interviewer, you said that the Puritans got assurance wrong. We should mention that you are a theologian in the Dutch Reformed tradition, whereas the Puritans grew out of the Reformation in England and that there are differences between the two traditions, especially on this issue. Where? Did the Puritans go wrong? David Engels, no. They went wrong by denying that assurance of salvation is of the essence of faith itself. That is a crucial issue. The question is, does assurance belong properly and essentially to faith in Jesus Christ? Or is assurance of salvation some element that is lacking in faith and that God gives to a few believers at a later time, usually by way of answering their hard work. In other words, he's saying that they have to work hard to obtain this. So, it's part of the straw man that he is making. So, I was interested in this this week, and I wanted to brush up on it. So, I said, I'm going to go to Sermon Audio, and I'm going to see if there's any teaching out there by David Engelsma on this subject. So, here's the dilemma. I told you that in the Netherlands reformed churches in the past, because people lacked assurance of salvation, they would not come to the Lord's table. But in this sermon by Engelsma, he said, if you do not have assurance of salvation, You have no right to come to the Lord's table because the Lord's table is for believers. So basically he's gone to 180 degrees to the other side, but he's saying the same thing. He's scolding these people for saying you don't come to the Lord's table unless you have assurance. And he's saying because assurance is of the essence of faith, if you don't have assurance, you all can't come to the Lord's table because you are not a believer. But pastorally, you could see the problem that that would have if somebody came up to you and like our dear brother David, and he's struggling with assurance. And as a pastor, you were saying, well, if you're struggling with assurance, it indicates that you are not a believer. The interview goes on, but I've laid enough of that foundation. In page 63 of his book, I show, as I'm studying this, that he is painting a caricature of the Puritans. He wrote, these Puritans taught that assurance is not so much a gift of the Holy Spirit as it is a work of the church member himself. Having convinced believers that day, the believers had not received assurance with their faith, these Puritans then exhorted the believers to pray fervently, to work arduously, and to struggle heroically, often for many years in order at last, by dint of all this spiritual work, to obtain assurance." So what he's really saying is they're teaching salvation by works. That's the straw man that he has created, the caricature. These Puritans thought that assurance is and should be a real problem for many, if not most, believers, children of believers. Why is that a problem in children of believers when you're talking about a Protestant Reformed Church? What you've got to understand about the Protestant Reformed Church, if they don't believe in the free offer of the gospel, they're not going to be evangelistic. So how do you become a believer in a Protestant Reformed Church? through what we call the covenant nurturing model of rare and children. When they are baptized into the Protestant Reformed Church, we are going to assume that our children are believers. And so, what that would create in my mind, unless I am mistaken, is a lot of children who never really had a conversion experience, and I don't say everybody has to have an experience, but who probably has a false hope because they were told that because they were baptized and they're part of the covenant family that they are believers. So I've quoted this before in Jonathan Edwards' treatise on the religious affections, and this is to tie assurance to perseverance. In other words, there are different reasons people don't have assurance. Some of it is physiological. Some people are natively melancholy. Sometimes it is because of spiritual desertion, because God, in order to keep us from depending too much upon our frames, sometimes will remove his comfort from us so that we could learn to trust him in the dark, as we say, when we don't have that strong joy and peace. But the other reason a person lacks assurance is because he's in a sorry, declining state spiritually. And I've quoted this before as I've been teaching this, but this is so important. He says, lack of assurance is a preventative measure that alarms a professing Christian who is in a serious state of spiritual declension. that something is seriously wrong and peace and joy is withheld, so that his lack of it and present misery, and I'm putting these in my own words, is to cause him to take heed and not stay in his present precarious condition. He wrote, no such signs, signs of regeneration, are to be expected that shall be sufficient to enable those saints certainly to discern their own good estate. who are very low in grace, or such as have much departed from God and are fallen into a dead, carnal, and unchristian frame. It is not agreeable to God's design that such should know their good state or should have assurance, nor is it desirable that they should, but on the contrary, it is every way best that they should. Not. That is so foreign to Engelsman's thinking. But it is a safety mechanism that God has put into the plan of salvation that when a person's body hurts, he's going to feel pain. And when his spiritual condition is in a state of declension or in a precarious state, he should not have assurance. That is to get him out of that state and to renew fresh acts of faith and repentance. He says, we have reason to bless God that He has made no such provision that such who are in a state of declension certainly know the state they are in any other way than by first coming out of their ill frame and way. But Engels must say, lacking this assurance, we are not comforted but are terribly uncomfortable, indeed terrified. And nobody says that it's healthy for any professing Christian to be terrified, so he has created a caricature. But I answer, if assurance is lacking because a professor is in a state of declension or hard-heartedness and indifference that is felt, that is not necessarily terrifying fear, because you have terror, and you are afraid when your heart is able to melt under warning. But a person that's in this state of declension has such a hard heart, he does not even have a terrifying fear. David Engelman then says, the reason is that this grace of salvation, which rightly is highly prized as the best and greatest mercy, is obtained not by the free gift of the Spirit of Christ, but by the working and works of the believer. He that will have it, assurance must work. and sweat and wheat and weight to obtain it. None can obtain it, assurance, but such is labor for it. A man must win it before he can wear it. The Puritan doctrine of assurance is a form of salvation by works. A doctrine of works is necessarily also a doctrine of doubt. But when I was teaching on the mortification of sin, I was saying the mortification of sin is the means to our sanctification, and our perseverance in the faith. It is a means to this end. If you use those means, that is how you get to that end. It isn't cause and effect. But by him saying that this is a doctrine of works, he's saying that we are teaching that mortification is cause and effect. In other words, because you're mortifying sin, you have earned this peace with God. The Christian is not working for salvation. And it is so common for detractors to redefine the terms. He is working out his salvation. Perseverance is a means of grace and is a means to an end. David Engelsma posits that we teach it is cause and effect. He states, the Puritan doctrine of assurance must be rejected root and branch is heretical mysticism and spiritual rubbish. So Engelsma would have no use whatsoever for the experience of Christian that he had such joy and peace in believing that the burden fell off of his back. He believes in every case, the burden should no longer be on your back the moment you enter into the wicked gate. In other words, if the burden is still on Christian's back, he can't be a Christian. So, I'm not going to spend a lot longer on this, but Archibald Alexander says in his work, Thoughts on Religious Experience, Another reason why God withholds assurance. Young Christian converts are prone to depend too much on joyful frames and love high excitement in their devotional exercises, but their Heavenly Father cures them of this folly by leaving them for a season to walk in darkness and struggle with their own corruptions. When most sorely pressed and discouraged, however, he strengthens them with might in the inner man. If a Zingelsmus says about this being a work salvation, one would have to argue that when Jonathan Edwards says that the effort to come out of your ill-framed way and exert the effort to get into a better spiritual condition is adding works to justification. This mistake is so common because, as I have said before, regeneration and sanctification, excuse me, regeneration and justification, and modern evangelicalism have become synonymous terms. But the Bible says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Not work for it, work it out. Persons like Engelsma to be consistent would also have to say that that is legalism. But I want to examine Engelsma's point that the subjective experience of full assurance, that which Christians experience when the burden fell off from his back, is mysticism and too much dependence on his feelings. John Owen wrote, There is not in the covenant of grace provision made of ordinary and abiding consolation or assurance for any under the guilt of great sins or sins greatly aggravated which they fall into by a neglect, abusing, and abiding in the aforementioned conditions of abounding actual grace. Sins are our witch, either because in their own nature they wound and waste to conscience, or their effects break forth in a scandal, causing the name of God and the gospel to be evil spoken of, or in some circumstances are full of unkindness against God. Deprive the soul, if you're living this way, wounding your conscience. It deprives this soul of its consolation, of its assurance. There is an abiding, dwelling sense of God's love upon the hearts of the most of those of whom we speak who have had long communion with God, consistent in a prevailing gospel persuasion that they are accepted with God in Christ. But both Owen and Brooks mention sometimes awaiting on God as a means to the end of assurance. Thomas Brooks says, Waiting patiently on God is a gift which brings you within the promise of everlasting happiness. And he who has but a waiting frame of heart has that which God will eternally own and crown, Isaiah 30, 18. Blessed are all those who wait for him. So what is spiritual desertion? What if you feel deserted? What if you just don't feel the presence of God? A believer's lack of assurance is, for the most part, attended with and arises from divine desertion. Not that we are to suppose that God will cast off his people whom he has foreknown, affectionately called and preserved, so as to forsake them utterly, for to suppose this is inconsistent with his everlasting love and the promises of the covenant of grace with respect to their salvation. What we understand by divine desertion is God's withdrawing His comforting presence and withholding a witness of His Spirit to the work of grace in the soul, whence arise those doubts and fears which attend a lack of assurance. Thus God says to His people, For a small moment have I forsaken you, but with great mercies will I gather you. In this respect they are destitute of God's comforting presence, though at the same time they may be favored with His supporting presence. They're not enjoying the comfort as they should, but he never fails to support them. And those powerful influences which are necessary to maintain the work of grace, which at present appears to be very weak and languishing. Now, I want to just end on this note from our confession, chapter 18, paragraph 4 on assurance, because I think it needs to be qualified. And I believe Thomas Ridgeley's commentary on the larger catechism, question 81, is the best qualification I've seen of it. So let me read it, and then there's a couple of paragraphs, and then I'll ask for questions from this huge audience that's standing here with their hands in the air, hanging on every word, and waiting to ask their questions. Okay, so, true believers may have the assurance of their salvation in a number of ways, shaken, diminished, and intermitted. as by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the spirit, by sudden or vehement temptation, or by God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and allowing even such as fear him to walk in darkness." By the way, there's a excellent book on that, and I have narrated it more than once. The Child of Light Walking in Darkness by Thomas Goodwin. He was only 36 when he wrote this, but it's so—his analysis is so helpful. He walks in darkness, and he has no light. That's how the Bible says it. It's not like he's walking in sin, and therefore he has no light. But he's walking in darkness because he doesn't feel and enjoy the favor of God. Yet are they never destitute of the seed of God and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty out of which by the operation of the Spirit this assurance may in due time be revived. Now, here's what I want to focus on in closing. This is in our confession. And by the witch, in the meantime, they, the elect, they, the believer, the believer is preserved from utter despair. However, that needs qualification. What about believers who have lived the life of almost utter despair. Did you know William Cooper lived that way? God moves in a mysterious way, and there is a fountain filled with blood. Cooper four times in his life went into such a state of depression, and the last time it was so heavy and so thick. And if you ever have a mind to listen to it, it's a very excellent biography of William Cooper that was done by John Piper. But I've only got these two paragraphs because I need to qualify that statement. We are thus led to consider the last thing mentioned in this answer, namely that though believers are thus described, they are not left without such a presence and support of the Spirit of God as keeps them from sinking into utter despair. This observation ought to be explained and considered with certain limitations lest, while on the one hand we assert that which affords manner of encouragement to believers when they have some degree of hope, we should on the other hand throw discouragements in the way of other—we don't want to throw discouragements in their way—who will be apt to imagine when they are ready to sink into despair that what they experience is wholly inconsistent with any direct act of faith. I dare not say that no believer was ever so far deserted as to be left for a while to despair of his interest in Christ. For Scripture on Daily Experience gives us examples of some whose conversation in many respects discovers them to have had the truth of grace, whom God has been pleased for wise ends to leave to the terror of their own thoughts. And if you want an example of this, it's Heman in Psalm 88. If you read Psalm 88, the only thing that you will read there is, Despair thy wrath, lieth hard on me. I'm like those who go down into the grave." However, his hope was he was crying out to God to it. But it seemed that he was in utter despair. He says, if the meaning of the confession is that they have the supports of the Spirit of God so as to be kept from relapsing into a state of unregeneracy in their despairing condition, that may be easily accounted for. First, the meaning is that believers are not generally given up to the greatest degree of despair, especially such as is inconsistent with the exercise of any grace that is not to be denied. I would rather say, however, that, though a believer may have despairing apprehensions concerning his state, Though the guilt of sin may lie upon him like a great weight, so as to depress his spirits, yet he shall not sink into endless misery. For though darkness may continue for a night, light and joy shall come in the morning. Accordingly, though there are many who are far from heaven assurance, yet they are at sometimes favored with a small glimmering of hope. hope, which keeps them from utter despair. There's actually a book written, and so many of these books will never be republished, and yet there are masterpieces of analysis of spiritual biography of people in despair, and this was called The Life, Genius, and Insanity of William Cooper by George Beryl Cheever, which interestingly enough, George Cheever wrote one of the best commentaries on Pilgrim's Progress in the 1850s. But in this biography of Cooper, Cooper was, he was living with John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace, and they studied him on his deathbed, and there seemed to be a glimmer of hope, but it was one of the most depressing cases I've ever read in the annals of Christian biography that Cooper, for the last seven years of his life, was so in despair that for seven years he never set foot into the house of God. And we're going to get into that when we get into the Castle of Giant Despair. how serious it is when somebody is under extreme melancholy. And Jonathan Edwards says something that is so interesting, and that is that some people are in such a state of depression that if you read the Bible to them, it doesn't help them because they misimprove everything that you read. They turn everything against them, and all you can do is pray for them and then tell God opens eyes of the understanding to have hope again. And we'll look at actual case histories. There is a book written on a discourse of melancholy and trouble of mind by Timothy Rogers, who was in that case for two years. A believer, when in a dispirited way, is notwithstanding enabled by a direct act of faith to give himself up to Christ, though he cannot see his interest in Him, and to long for those experiences and comforts which once he enjoyed, and when he is at the worst, he can say with Job, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. Moreover, in this case, a person has generally such a degree of the presence of God that he is unable to justify God and all of his dealings with him. and lay the blame of all the troubles which he is under on himself. And this is attended with shame and confusion of haste, self-abhorrence, and godly sorrow. Finally, despairing believers have notwithstanding such a presence of God with them, it keeps them from abandoning his interest or running with sinners into all excess of riot, which would give occasion to others to conclude that they never had the truth of grace. Now, what's interesting as I close, when I was teaching Pilgrim's Progress before, And I really got into the case of people that were under this almost utter despair. You have people in the church, Blake, that they hear these stories, and they're incredulous, and they're like, oh, I'm having a tough time believing that. They just can't enter into people that are like that. And because of some of the people I minister to in God's providence, and they continually get a hold of me, three of them in the last two weeks, and I have to write to them, try to help them and so on. Then I spent two full weeks in the Castle of Giant Despair and looking at these cases and actually reading from magazines from the 1850s and that, and how they were helped. But there are a lot of people, and a lot of times they come out of fundamentalist Baptist churches. And they just don't have a lot of patience with people that really, really struggle like David did. And Michael too, you know, there was a time, I'm telling you, I watched my son in Grand Rapids. I would be out in the yard with the dog and I could look in because it was a two-story house and I could see Michael pacing back and forth from the kitchen. to the living room, to maybe the foyer, just back and forth, back and forth. His mind just could not settle. It was so bad that I wondered if he needed some kind of medicine at least to calm down the anxiety that he was continually under. And so let's open up the floor to questions. Anybody out there? With everything you've been saying about assurance, everything you've been saying about people being in this, like, despair, I actually went through this yesterday. And here's how I wrote it out, because my mind gets jumbled with a bunch of words and I'm constantly thinking about stuff. So... I have to put everything down on a piece of paper and write it down so that I don't sound like a blabbering fool. So here is their question regarding all that. What if instead of someone approaching the throne of grace with confidence, I believe it's in Hebrews 4, they're approaching the throne of grace with discouragement? The person is praying, don't shine your face upon me because I have failed a lot, Lord. Don't show your grace to me because I've sinned against you too much. I've failed you too much. I don't know who I am anymore. Why is it that some people approach the throne of grace this way? That's innate self-righteousness. Because they say, uh, I'm unworthy of you showing me in favor of you showing me grace. So they say, no, it's one thing to say like Peter, because he was afraid apart from me for I'm a sinful man. But that is a self loathing because you realize who here standing in the presence of, and you realize how undeserving you are. Self loathing and mourning. because we see ourself in and of itself can't be wrong. But when you come to the conclusion that if you show favor to me in my present condition, that wouldn't be correct until I make myself better, I correct what's wrong in my conduct, and then I deserve your favor, I deserve your face to shine upon me. So really, at the heart of it, it is based in self-righteousness. However, it's always right to complain to God, no matter what we feel. Never about God, complaining about what we're going through. And when you have these kind of doubts and fears, always take it to God in prayer and just freely confess, Lord, this is really what's going on. There's a lot of unbelief. And if you don't believe that there's this kind of unbelief, just get to Westminster Larger Catechism and read the Sins Forbidden in the First Commandment. and then you begin to realize how in fact sinful we are. Yes, so hopefully I didn't misquote you, but I think during the lesson you said a feeling is a temperature. Regarding to that, how do we have a healthy and biblical understanding of feelings? Well, feelings are inevitable because the soul is connected to the body. So, all a feeling is, is expressing through your members, through your body, what is affecting your mind with the understanding the mind is part of the soul. When you die and you are separated from your body, you will still have understanding, conscience, and affections, holy affections, but you will not longer have feelings because feelings are expressed by the body, not by the soul. And so what they are saying is you cannot have a strong disinclination or inclination something you desire or something you abhor without it in some measure, no matter how small, affecting your body, the members of your body. So that's what Dabney is saying, that feeling is a temperature of what you are affected with in your mind, in your understanding. But Feelings, to be correct, the body cannot itself put forth moral actions. The actions come from the heart, from the understanding, from the mind, the conscience, the volition, the will, and the body is affected by the things. But the body itself is just reacting to what's going on in the soul. in the mind, the will, and the affections, the three things that make up the soul. And so, what we seek to strive after is holy affections. Now, an affection is just a very, very strong inclination. If you're very much inclined to something, then you have a love towards it. If you're very much disinclined to something. You are disaffected to it. You have a loathing of it. So, for affections to be holy, the affections are guided by the Holy Spirit working in us. So, we want to strive after a holy joy, a holy love, a holy disinclination to sin. The unregenerate man is not capable of that at all. Okay, listen to this. What are the sins forbidden in the first commandment? The sins forbidden in the first commandment are atheism, you shall have no other gods before me. The second commandment is don't make any graven image. But to have other gods before him includes having dishonorable views of the one and only true God not revealed in his word. So atheism and denying or not having a God, idolatry and having or worshiping more gods than one, or any with or instead of the true God, the not having and avouching Him for God and our God, the omission or neglect of anything due to Him required in this commandment, ignorance of Him, forgetfulness of Him, misapprehensions of Him, false opinions, unworthy and wicked thoughts of Him, bold and curious searching into His secrets." In other words, don't lean on your own understanding. You start to pry into what God is doing. That's a violation of the first commandment. You're forbidden to do that because that's not acting in faith. It's a different thing from gaining wisdom. All profaneness, hatred of God, self-love, self-seeking, and all other inordinate and in a moderate settings of our mind, will or affections upon other things and taking them off from him and whole or in part vain credulity, unbelief, heresy, misbelief, distrust, distrust of him, despair, incorrigibleness, in other words, You're not going to affect me. God and insensibleness under his judgments of God is judging you and you're insensible of it. That's a sin. You need to be sensible when you're being chastised that the unregenerate is not capable of. Hardness of heart, pride, presumption, carnal security. They're taking these all from different scriptures. Tempting of God, using unlawful means and trusting in lawful means, carnal delights and joys, corrupt, blind and indiscreet zeal. Your zeal as a Christian is indiscreet. That's a sin. Lukewarmness and deadness and the things of God. You know, it'd be good for somebody to preach on the Ten Commandments here. Deadness and the things of God. You're sitting there in the service and you are dead. Spiritually, you're just indifferent. Estranging ourselves and apostatizing from God, praying or giving any religious worship to saints, angels, or any other creatures, all compacts and consulting with the devil and hearkening to his suggestions. making men, men, the lords of our faith and conscience, slighting and despising God and his commands, resisting and grieving of his spirit, discontent and impatience at his dispensations, charging him foolishly for the evils he inflicts on us, and ascribing the praise of any good we either are, have, or can do to fortune. I was fortunate. It was my lucky day. Fortunately for you, Idols, ourselves, or any other creature. You know, we use all this terminology. Oh, must be, you know, knock on wood, must be my lucky day. Well, if I am fortunate, all of that is a disbelief in God as the disposer of all things that come to pass.