Reflections on Lord’s Day 46 of 2019: “The Christian’s Guide”
On 11/17/2019 the sermon, “The Christian’s Guide,” preached by elder Albert Hernandez, was based on Psalm 1.
He quotes Ryan Denton:
What Does Man Teach?
1. The Bible Is Not Reliable
But based on what authority is this claim made? Perhaps you say your own. But why assume your authority carries more weight than God’s? You have limited knowledge of every fact in the universe. You are prone to make mistakes. The Bible says your heart “is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). Perhaps you say the Bible is unreliable because “scholars” told you so. But they also have a limited, mistake-prone understanding of the universe. Not to mention, apart from Christ, they have an axe to grind against God. They are “alienated and hostile in mind” when it comes to God (Colossians 1:21). They passionately desire the Bible to be unreliable and so fabricate ways to twist it to their own agenda and eventual destruction (2 Peter 3:16). Also, who determines which parts are correct and which parts aren’t? The culture? Present feelings? Humans? But these aren’t objective standards, nor are they authoritative. These are all subject to change and are vastly finite in their understanding of the universe. (“The Bible's Apologetic-God Speaks!”, https://www.christinthewild.com/blog/2019/11/14/2zphxrvev3htkp7ft00e084pjxya2e)
The elder refers to Psalm 1 as “the Christian’s Guide,” as many commentators do:
As the book of the Canticles is called the Song of Songs by a Hebraism, it being the most excellent, so this Psalm may not unfitly be entitled, the Psalm of Psalms, for it contains in it the very pith and quintessence of Christianity. What Jerome saith on St. Paul's epistles, the same may I say of this Psalm; it is short as to the composure, but full of length and strength as to the matter. This Psalm carries blessedness in the frontpiece; it begins where we all hope to end: it may well be called a Christian's Guide, for it discovers the quicksands where the wicked sink down in perdition, and the firm ground on which the saints tread to glory. (Thomas Watson's Saints Spiritual Delight, 1660, http://www.biblebb.com/files/SPURGEON/TOD/chstp1.htm)
What does the word blessed mean? “Happy”? It means that and more, explains Spurgeon:
"BLESSED" - see how this Book of Psalms opens with a benediction, even as did the famous Sermon of our Lord upon the Mount! The word translated "blessed" is a very expressive one. The original word is plural, and it is a controverted matter whether it is an adjective or a substantive. Hence we may learn the multiplicity of the blessings which shall rest upon the man whom God hath justified, and the perfection and greatness of the blessedness he shall enjoy. We might read it, "Oh, the blessednesses!" and we may well regard it (as Ainsworth does) as a joyful acclamation of the gracious man's felicity. May the like benediction rest on us! (http://www.biblebb.com/files/SPURGEON/TOD/chstp1.htm)
Yet there are Christians who suffer from depression, especially those who are prone to introspection. The elder also explained that counsel doesn’t just mean advice, but also a way of thinking, a way of life. It’s a mindset: “The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts” (Psalms 10:4 NKJV).
Planning your life without God, even in your everyday dealings, is one of the patterns of ungodliness and practical atheism: “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”” James 4:13-15 NKJV
How mindful are you of the things of God? When you abandon God in your thoughts, you will abandon him in your life. But Christ is the answer, “knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” I Peter 1:18-19 NKJV
“I have not departed from the commandment of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth More than my necessary food.” Job 23:12 NKJV
The elder admonishes us to pray this for the local church:
For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. (Colossians 1:9-12 NKJV)
Scripture tells us to love people more and need people less: “I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’” (Acts 20:35 NKJV).
A good admonition for children too is that there’s a time to play, and a time to pray. Everyone is born in Adam, outside of God, “that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Ephesians 2:12-13 NKJV
We should meditate on and interpret the Bible holistically. Many don’t reap the benefits from Scripture because they may read but don’t think! It’s not the one who reads the most books or listens to the most sermons, but the one who meditates the most on them:
My brethren, there is nothing more wanting to make Christians grow in grace now-a-days than meditation. Most of you are painfully negligent in this matter. You remind me of a sermon that one of my quaint old friends in the country once preached from that text—"The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting." He told us that many people who would hunt for a sermon, were too lazy to roast it by meditation. They knew not how to put the jack of memory through it, and then to twist it round by meditation before the fire of piety, and so to cook it and make it fit for your soul's food. So it is with many of you after you have caught the sermon: you allow it to run away. How often do you, through lack of meditation, miss the entire purpose for which the sermon was designed. Unless ye meditate upon the truths we declare unto you, ye will gather little sweetness, ye will acquire little profit, and, certainly, ye will be in no wise established therein to your edification. Can you get the honey from the comb until you squeeze it! You may be refreshed by a few words while you listen to the sermon, but it is the meditation afterwards which extracts the honey, and gets the best and most luscious savor therefrom. Meditation, my friends, is a part of the life-blood of every true Christian, and we ought to abound therein. (Charles Spurgeon, “Meditation on God,” http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/2690.htm)
After listening to this quote from Spurgeon and reading his sermon, I fell in love with his writings again:
Do not imagine that the meditative man is necessarily lazy; contrariwise, he lays the best foundation for useful works. He is not the best student who reads the most books, but he who meditates the most upon them; he shall not learn most of divinity who hears the greatest number of sermons, but he who meditates the most devoutly upon what he does hear; nor shall he be so profound a scholar who takes down ponderous volumes one after the other, as he who, reading little by little, precept upon precept, and line upon line, digests what he learns, and assimilates each sentiment to his heart by meditation—receiving the word first into his understanding, and afterwards receiving the spirit of the thing into his own soul. When he reads the letters with his eye it is merely mechanical, but that he may read them to his own heart he retires to meditate. Meditation is thus a very excellent employment; it is not the offspring of listlessness or lethargy but it is a satisfactory mode of employing time, and very remunerative to the spirit.
Meditation really is vital, “the lifeblood of every true Christian.” It convinced me to read Spurgeon daily, his Morning and Evening as well as his sermons:
https://www.monergism.com/sermons-charles-spurgeon-4-vol-800-sermons
The elder closed with an admonition from the London Baptist Confession of 1689:
Chapter 19: Of the Law of God
6. Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified or condemned, yet it is of great use to them as well as to others, in that as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their natures, hearts, and lives, so as examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against, sin; together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ and the perfection of his obedience; it is likewise of use to the regenerate to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin; and the threatenings of it serve to shew what even their sins deserve, and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, although freed from the curse and unallayed rigour thereof. The promises of it likewise shew them God's approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof, though not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works; so as man's doing good and refraining from evil, because the law encourageth to the one and deterreth from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law and not under grace. (Romans 6:14; Galatians 2:16; Romans 8:1; Romans 10:4; Romans 3:20; Romans 7:7, etc; Romans 6:12-14; 1 Peter 3:8-13; https://www.arbca.com/1689-chapter19)