Latest / Reformed Thinking / Directions for Judging of Persons' Experiences | Jonathan Edwards
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to reformed thinking. It is good to be back at the
- 0:02table with you. It's good to be here.
- 0:04We are doing something a little a little distinct today.
- 0:07We're not looking at a whole book, and we're not opening up a
- 0:10systematic theology text to a specific chapter on soteriology.
- 0:14No, not at all. Instead, we're looking at a
- 0:16checklist. It is a checklist in a sense,
- 0:19but it's perhaps the most terrifying and a necessary
- 0:22checklist a Christian could ever read.
- 0:24It really is. We're looking at a text called
- 0:27Directions for Judging a Person's Experiences by Jonathan
- 0:31Edwards. That's right.
- 0:32This comes to us from the Ages Digital Library.
- 0:35It's a digitized version of a work that was, you know,
- 0:38intended to be of practical utility to the church.
- 0:41And honestly, reading through this, you realize very quickly
- 0:45why Edwards is such a giant in our tradition.
- 0:48He does not waste time. He certainly does not.
- 0:50And for context, when we say judging of person's experiences,
- 0:53we have to understand the era Edwards lived in.
- 0:55This was the time of the Great Awakening.
- 0:57You had people crying out, swooning, claiming to see
- 1:01visions, and, you know, claiming to feel immense joy.
- 1:05The question that every pastor and frankly every serious
- 1:08Christian had to ask was simple but critical.
- 1:12Is this real? Is it real?
- 1:14Is this the Holy Spirit regenerating a heart?
- 1:16Or is this just human emotion, adrenaline and imagination?
- 1:19Exactly. That is the mission for today.
- 1:22We're going to walk through these directions.
- 1:23We're going to analyze Edwards's specific criteria for valid
- 1:27faith. We're going to distinguish
- 1:29between the imagination and the will.
- 1:32We're going to try to understand what true religious affection
- 1:34looks like from a Reformed theological perspective.
- 1:38As we'll see, Edwards is not interested in how high you jump.
- 1:41He's interested in where you land.
- 1:42That is a very good way to put it.
- 1:44The source material we have here is concise, but it's incredibly
- 1:47dense. It functions almost like a,
- 1:49well, a diagnostic tool for the soul.
- 1:51The diagnostic tool, I like that.
- 1:53Let's jump right into the first segment, then, the seat of the
- 1:56experience, head versus heart. The very first direction Edwards
- 2:00gives us is about where this operation takes place, he said.
- 2:04See to it that the operation be such upon the will or heart, not
- 2:07on the imagination merely, nor on the speculative understanding
- 2:10or motions of the mind. This is the distinction we have
- 2:13to start with. It's foundational in Reformed
- 2:15anthropology, the study of man. We recognize different
- 2:19faculties. You have the mind, which thinks
- 2:21and understands. You have the imagination, which
- 2:24you know creates mental images. And then you have the will, or
- 2:27what the Bible often calls the heart, which loves, chooses and
- 2:30decides. Edwards is saying that a true
- 2:32work of God must terminate on the will.
- 2:35It has to land there. So it's not enough for it to
- 2:37just be in the mind or just in the imagination, it has to get
- 2:40to the chooser. Precisely, he warns against
- 2:42things that draw great affections merely as a
- 2:45consequence of the imagination. Can we unpack that?
- 2:48I think a lot of people today equate a spiritual experience
- 2:51with a vivid mental picture or a strong intellectual realization.
- 2:56Oh absolutely, it is a common error.
- 2:58Let's say you are sitting in a service and and the preacher
- 3:03describes the crucifixion in really graphic detail.
- 3:07You use your imagination. You see the blood, the nails,
- 3:10the suffering. You might start to cry.
- 3:13You feel a melting of affection, as Edwards calls it.
- 3:16Later on you feel something very powerfully.
- 3:19Right. It feels real.
- 3:20It feels very real. But Edwards would ask, has your
- 3:23will changed? Have your deep seated desires
- 3:26and choices been altered? Have you chosen holiness over
- 3:29sin because of this? Or did you just have a
- 3:32physiological reaction to what was essentially a sad mental
- 3:35movie? Wow, a sad mental movie.
- 3:37That's a sharp distinction. It's the difference between
- 3:39watching a tragedy on the screen and actually being part of the
- 3:42story. 1 engages your feelings for a moment.
- 3:44For a moment, yeah. The other alters your life.
- 3:46Correct. You can weep at the end of a sad
- 3:49film, but that doesn't mean you're a different person on the
- 3:50credits roll. It doesn't mean you'll make
- 3:52different moral choices. Tomorrow, Edwards is looking for
- 3:55a renovation of the volition, the chooser, the part of you
- 3:58that governs your life. He also mentions the speculative
- 4:01understanding that sounds like the other side of the coin from
- 4:04imagination. Yeah, the academic side.
- 4:07It is precisely you can have a speculative understanding of
- 4:11doctrine. You can understand the mechanics
- 4:13of justification by faith alone. You can argue the finer points
- 4:16of the Westminster Confession until you're blue in the face.
- 4:19You can win the argument. You can win the argument.
- 4:21You can be intellectually stimulated by the logic of the
- 4:24atonement. But you know the Bible is clear.
- 4:28Even the demons believe in tremble.
- 4:30Understanding the truth is not the same as loving the truth.
- 4:34So the devil has excellent speculative understanding.
- 4:36The best He knows God is powerful.
- 4:38He knows Jesus is the Son of God.
- 4:40He probably has a better systematic theology in his head
- 4:43than any of us. But his will, his heart, is set
- 4:47implacably against God. So Edwards is saying true
- 4:50conversion is a renovation of the will, the governing center
- 4:54of the human being. So the mind might be affected.
- 4:56In fact, Edward says, the mind is affected as a consequence,
- 5:00but the root has to be the heart, the will.
- 5:02Yes, the light comes into the mind, but if it doesn't heat the
- 5:05heart and move the will, it's not saving grace.
- 5:08It's just information. Now moving to the next point.
- 5:12In this section, Edwards talks about trouble of mind.
- 5:15This is fascinating because we often think of the Puritans as,
- 5:18you know, wanting people to be troubled.
- 5:19But Edwards puts a huge caveat here.
- 5:22He says the trouble must be reasonable.
- 5:24This is one of my favorite points in this whole text, he
- 5:27says. The trouble must be founded on
- 5:29reasonable, solid consideration, a solid sense and conviction of
- 5:33truth as of things as they are. Indeed, as things are indeed.
- 5:38I love that phrase. It implies that the Sinner is
- 5:41actually objectively in a terrible state, and realizing it
- 5:44is just. It's just sanity.
- 5:47It's sanity. That's exactly it.
- 5:48If you are standing on train tracks and a high speed train is
- 5:50coming, fear is the most rational response you can
- 5:53possibly have. Right.
- 5:54You'd be insane not to be afraid.
- 5:55Panic is reasonable. Edwards argues that true
- 5:58conviction of sin is not an irrational panic attack.
- 6:01It is not, as he puts it, operating very much by pangs and
- 6:04sudden passions, freaks and frights.
- 6:06Freaks and frights. I love that phrasing.
- 6:09It sounds like he's describing a a haunted house reaction versus
- 6:14a courtroom verdict. That's the perfect analogy.
- 6:16A freak or a flight is capricious.
- 6:19It's unstable. It comes and goes.
- 6:21Today I'm terrified of hell because I had a bad dream.
- 6:24Tomorrow I've forgotten all about it and I'm fine.
- 6:26It's event based, not reality based.
- 6:28Yes, Edwards says. True trouble of mind is solid.
- 6:32It's based on a conviction of truth.
- 6:35You see the holiness of God. You see your own sin for what it
- 6:37is, and you realize logically and spiritually I am in deep
- 6:41trouble. It is a rational response to the
- 6:44reality of God's holiness and man's condition.
- 6:46It is good to hear that reaffirmed faith is not anti
- 6:49intellectual. It's hyper real.
- 6:52It is seeing reality clearly for the very first time.
- 6:54Absolutely. If you are not troubled by your
- 6:56sin, you're the one who's being irrational.
- 6:58That is the Reformed position. You're living in a fantasy
- 7:00world. This leads us naturally into the
- 7:02second segment, which is the nature of conviction.
- 7:08OK, so if the trouble is reasonable, what are we supposed
- 7:11to be troubled about? It was gets very specific here,
- 7:14he says. The conviction must be that
- 7:16their state appears terrible on the account of those things
- 7:20where in its dreadfulness indeed consists.
- 7:22He's digging deeper. He's asking why are you scared?
- 7:26What is the object of your fear? Are you scared just because you
- 7:28don't want to go to a bad place, a place of punishment?
- 7:31Or are you scared because you have offended a specific being?
- 7:35Edwards says The conviction must be of guilt in offending and
- 7:38affronting so great a God. He describes God as one that so
- 7:42hates sin and is so set against it to punish it.
- 7:45This is a God centered view of conviction.
- 7:47It's not just I messed up and I feel shameful.
- 7:50It's I have broken the law of the King of the Universe.
- 7:53It is vertical, not horizontal. That's a great way to put it.
- 7:55You can feel bad because you got caught.
- 7:57You can feel bad because your sin made your life messy and
- 8:00complicated. That's natural remorse.
- 8:02Judas had that. He felt terrible about the
- 8:04consequences. He felt regret, not repentance.
- 8:07Exactly. True spiritual conviction is
- 8:09realizing that God is holy, He hates sin, and you were standing
- 8:13in opposition to Him. It's a dread of the broken
- 8:17relationship with your Creator that's the real terror.
- 8:20And Edwards goes further. He distinguishes between
- 8:23external sin and internal sin. He writes that they must be
- 8:26convinced of sins of heart and life.
- 8:29And he says something very challenging here.
- 8:31He says it's not enough to reflect on wicked practice.
- 8:34One must recognize the wretchedness of the heart
- 8:37itself. This cuts right to the core of
- 8:39the doctrine of total depravity. Most people, even non Christians
- 8:43will admit, yeah I do bad things sometimes or I'm not perfect.
- 8:47That's admitting to sins of life or practice.
- 8:49It's behavioral. It's behavioral.
- 8:50But Edwards says you must be convinced of the sin of the
- 8:53heart. You have to realize that the
- 8:54factory itself is broken, not just a few of the products that
- 8:57come off the line. The problem isn't what you do.
- 9:00The problem is what you are. He actually lists what he calls
- 9:03sinful defects. He mentions living without love
- 9:06to God, without accepting Christ, gratitude to him.
- 9:09These are not things you actively do.
- 9:11These are things you fail to be. That is the killer.
- 9:13It's the sin of omission. On a cosmic scale, you can be a
- 9:16very moral person on the outside.
- 9:18You can pay your taxes, be faithful to your spouse, give to
- 9:22charity, never hurt a soul. You.
- 9:23Can be a good neighbor. A great neighbor.
- 9:25But if you live a single day without a supreme, all consuming
- 9:30love for God, you are committing a sin of the heart.
- 9:33If you lack gratitude for the breath in your lungs, that is a
- 9:36corruption of your nature. Edwards insists that true
- 9:40conviction sees this. It sees that what troubles them
- 9:43be those things wherein the wretchedness has really chiefly
- 9:46consisted. Which is usually the lack of
- 9:48positive holiness, not just the presence of negative action.
- 9:51Precisely. It is realizing I am not just a
- 9:54person who makes mistakes. I'm a person who does not love
- 9:57God as I ought, and that is the root of everything.
- 9:59And this leads to what he calls the sufficiency of self, or
- 10:03rather the insufficiency. He talks about the vanity of
- 10:06their own doings. This is where the text gets
- 10:08very, very reformed. He says the conviction is not
- 10:10just that they have wanderings of mind mixed with some good
- 10:14efforts. Right.
- 10:15This is critical. The natural man, the
- 10:17unregenerate person thinks, well, my prayers were, you know,
- 10:2090% good. I just got distracted for a
- 10:22little bit. Or I did a good deed, but I had
- 10:25a little bit of pride mixed in. There's this idea that we do
- 10:28good things tainted with a little bad.
- 10:30A sort of spiritual accounting, balancing the books.
- 10:33Yes, a Ledger, and we think we're mostly in the black,
- 10:37Edwards says. True conviction shows you that
- 10:39your best duties have no goodness at all.
- 10:42Mixed with the bad, but altogether corrupt.
- 10:44Altogether corrupt. That is a hard phrase for the
- 10:47modern year to hear. It sounds so extreme.
- 10:49It is offensive to the modern year.
- 10:51It's offensive to the natural man, but it's the biblical
- 10:54standard. The prophet Isaiah says our
- 10:57righteous deeds are as filthy rags.
- 11:00Think of it this way. If you pour a glass of pure
- 11:02clean water and put one single drop of cyanide in it, is the
- 11:06water 99% good? No, the whole glass is poison.
- 11:09You can't drink it. The whole glass is poison.
- 11:12Edwards is saying that because our hearts are not perfectly
- 11:14motivated by a pure love for God and a desire for His glory, even
- 11:19our good deeds are tainted with the cyanide of self-interest,
- 11:23pride, or some other sinful defect.
- 11:25They are not done from a right principle.
- 11:28So the person under true conviction realizes I cannot
- 11:31contribute anything to my own salvation.
- 11:33Even my repentance needs to be repented of.
- 11:36My prayers are flawed. My giving is flawed.
- 11:39Correct. It drives them to complete and
- 11:41utter despair of self. If you still think you have a
- 11:45little bit of goodness, a little clean water to offer God to buy
- 11:48His favor, you are not fully convinced of sin yet in the way
- 11:52Edwards is describing. Which sets the stage perfectly
- 11:54for the solution. But before we get to the
- 11:56solution, Edwards forces us to look at the verdict.
- 11:58This is Segment 3, submission to divine justice.
- 12:02This is perhaps the hardest pill to swallow in the entire text.
- 12:04You might be, yeah. Edwards writes that true
- 12:06conviction convinces them of the justice of God in their
- 12:09damnation. This is a hallmark of Edwards
- 12:11Ian theology, and it's deeply rooted in the Puritan tradition.
- 12:15He argues that you cannot truly accept grace until you accept
- 12:19the justice that requires grace. You have to look at your life,
- 12:22your heart, your altogether corrupt nature and say God would
- 12:27be 100% right, 100% just to send me to hell.
- 12:31He even adds in rejecting their prayers, disregarding their
- 12:35sorrowful case and all desires and endeavors after deliverance.
- 12:39That is harsh. I mean, you are crying out for
- 12:42help, you're trying to do better, and you have to admit
- 12:44God does not owe you an answer. He owes us justice, that's all.
- 12:47He does not owe us mercy. If he owed us mercy, it wouldn't
- 12:50be mercy. It would be a wage.
- 12:51It would be something we're entitled to.
- 12:54Edwards wants to strip away any last shred of the idea that God
- 12:57is obligated to save us because we are trying really hard or
- 12:59because we are sad about our condition.
- 13:01So it's a bit eliminating any sense of entitlement before God.
- 13:04Any and all, you come with nothing in your hands.
- 13:06You come as a condemned criminal who agrees with the sentence.
- 13:09He warns against false comforts here.
- 13:11He says this conviction must not be merely an imagination or a
- 13:15melting of affection through some real or supposed instance
- 13:20of divine goodness. Right.
- 13:21This is so relevant. Some people think they're saved
- 13:24because they suddenly felt oh God is so nice, he's so loving,
- 13:27he wouldn't hurt me and they get this warm fuzzy feeling.
- 13:30A feeling of relief. A feeling of relief, yes.
- 13:32But Edward says no. That is bypassing the legal
- 13:36reality of your situation. You have bypassed the conviction
- 13:38of justice. You have to stand before the
- 13:40judge, plead guilty, acknowledge the sentence is fair, and then
- 13:44look for the advocate for Christ.
- 13:47If you skip the guilty part, you don't understand the cross.
- 13:50The cross is not just a demonstration of love, it's a
- 13:52satisfaction of justice. And he says we cannot make
- 13:55excuses. This is the no excuses point.
- 13:59He writes that they must not in the inward thought and habit of
- 14:02their minds, to excuse themselves because of their
- 14:06impotency. This addresses the classic
- 14:07objection, the one you still here today.
- 14:09I can't help it, this is just the way I am.
- 14:11Right. I want to love God but I can't,
- 14:12so it's not my fault. Edwards calls this quarreling
- 14:15with God. It's a subtle form of blame
- 14:18shifting. He gives a specific example
- 14:20that's really piercing. He says that they don't excuse
- 14:23their sleight of Christ and want of love to Him because they
- 14:26can't esteem and love Him. In Reformed theology, we make a
- 14:29distinction between what's called natural inability and
- 14:32moral inability. Natural inability is if God
- 14:36commanded a man with no legs to run a marathon, that would be
- 14:39unjust. He lacks the physical equipment.
- 14:42He can't. He literally cannot.
- 14:44But we do not lack the equipment to love God.
- 14:46We have a mind and a will. We have affections.
- 14:48We love lots of things. Our problem is moral inability.
- 14:51We lack the desire to love God supremely because our nature is
- 14:55corrupt. So we can't, because we won't.
- 14:57Exactly. Our will is in bondage to sin
- 15:00and Edward says you are responsible for that lack of
- 15:02desire. You cannot stand before God and
- 15:04say, well God, I'm just made this way.
- 15:05So let me off the hook. No, the fact that you do not
- 15:08love the most lovable, most beautiful being in the universe
- 15:11is your greatest sin, not your excuse.
- 15:13That is a heavyweight. It feels like he's just pressing
- 15:16and pressing, but it seems like Edwards presses this weight down
- 15:20to crush self righteousness. He crushes it completely.
- 15:23He grinds it to powder because only when you are crushed, only
- 15:27when you see you have no merit, no excuse, and no hope in
- 15:30yourself, can you be built back up on the true foundation, which
- 15:33is Christ alone. Which brings us to segment 4,
- 15:36the danger of spiritual pride. You would think, after all, that
- 15:40crushing pride would not be an issue, but the human heart is,
- 15:44as Calvin said, a factory of idols.
- 15:47And the biggest idol is often the self, even the religious
- 15:50self. Edwards warns against those who
- 15:53look upon their own convictions as great.
- 15:56It is the humble brag of the 18th century, and it's alive and
- 15:59well today. Oh, I was so convicted last
- 16:01night. I wept for days.
- 16:02My sin was so heavy on me, and suddenly you're admiring your
- 16:06own brokenness. You are, in his words, taken
- 16:09with your own humiliation. So insidious you turn your
- 16:12repentance into a work that you're proud of.
- 16:14Look at me, I'm the best repenter in the room.
- 16:16God must be impressed with how bad I feel.
- 16:19And Edwards says if you are looking at your own conviction
- 16:21as a badge of honor or as a qualification for grace, you are
- 16:25missing the entire point. The conviction is meant to point
- 16:28you away from yourself, not deeper into a fascination with
- 16:31your own emotional state. He clarifies the goal here by
- 16:35distinguishing between evangelical and legal work.
- 16:39He says the work must be evangelical.
- 16:41What does he mean by those terms?
- 16:42So legal here refers to the law. A legal conviction is just fear
- 16:47of punishment. It's the criminal who is
- 16:49terrified of the electric chair. He's sorry he got caught and
- 16:52he's scared of the consequence. There's nothing truly righteous
- 16:54in that fear. It's self preservation.
- 16:56Purely evangelical, on the other hand, refers to the evangel, the
- 17:00gospel. An evangelical conviction might
- 17:03begin with that fear, but it moves to a sorrow that is born
- 17:06of having offended a God you are beginning to see as beautiful
- 17:10and worthy. It's a turning toward grace.
- 17:13So. It's the difference between
- 17:14being sorry you broke the rules and being sorry you broke your
- 17:17father's heart. That's a perfect way to put it.
- 17:19Edwards writes that while legal conviction, seeing the things
- 17:23Divine's insisted should be seen, is often part of the
- 17:25process, the main thing is that it leads to an evangelical
- 17:29result. He says we have no warrant from
- 17:32Scripture to insist on a work that is purely legal, wherein
- 17:36was nothing of grace. He's being a good pastor here.
- 17:39He's saying we shouldn't just terrify people for the sake of
- 17:41terror. The terror of the law has a
- 17:43purpose. It's a schoolmaster to drive
- 17:45them to Christ. If you just have a panic attack
- 17:48about hell but never see the beauty of Christ, you have not
- 17:50been saved. You have just been scared.
- 17:52And he mentions that the convictions, whatever their
- 17:55makeup, must be fixed and have a governing influence on the
- 17:58temper of the mind. Yes, back to that theme of
- 18:01permanence and transformation. It changes who you are.
- 18:04It's not a weekend retreat emotional high that's gone by
- 18:06Tuesday morning. It governs your temper.
- 18:09It alters the way you think and react and choose permanently.
- 18:12It sets a new direction for your entire life.
- 18:15Let's pivot to what this looks like when it turns positive.
- 18:18This is segment 5, the object of affection.
- 18:20We're moving from fear and conviction to sorrow and love.
- 18:25Edwards talks about proper mourning for sin.
- 18:27He says the heart becomes tender.
- 18:30Tenderness is a keyword for Edwards.
- 18:31It's an echo of Ezekiel's prophecy that God will remove
- 18:35the Stony heart and give a heart of flesh.
- 18:37The heart becomes sensitive to sin in a new way.
- 18:40How so? Sin becomes a burden.
- 18:42It becomes an object of dread. But it's not just dread of the
- 18:45consequence of hell. It's dread of the thing itself.
- 18:48You begin to hate the sin. It's like realizing you have
- 18:51cancer. You hate the disease itself, not
- 18:53just the fact that the chemotherapy will be unpleasant.
- 18:56You hate what it is and what it does to you.
- 18:58And he talks about but why God is admirable to this person with
- 19:01a new tender heart. And this is pure Edwards.
- 19:04He says it must be on account of the beauty of their moral
- 19:07perfection. This is the litmus test for true
- 19:10love, for true spiritual affection.
- 19:13He asks, why do you love God? Do you love God because he is
- 19:17powerful? Well, a dictator is powerful.
- 19:19That's just fear. Do you love him because he gives
- 19:21you stuff? A vending machine gives you
- 19:23stuff. That's just self-interest.
- 19:25It's utilitarian. It's totally utilitarian,
- 19:27Edwards says. The Saints, the true believers,
- 19:30love God because he is holy. They see a beauty in his moral
- 19:33perfection. They love His justice, his
- 19:36wisdom, His goodness, his truthfulness for what those
- 19:39things are in and of themselves. So if you take away the
- 19:42benefits, if you take away heaven, you take away the
- 19:44blessings on earth, is God still beautiful to you?
- 19:47That's his view of the question He's forcing.
- 19:49Precisely. If God were not your savior, if
- 19:52he had chosen not to save you, would you still admire his
- 19:54character? Would you still say he is a good
- 19:57and righteous king? A true convert says yes.
- 20:00They love the very nature of God, not just the perks of
- 20:02knowing God. And this applies to Christ as
- 20:04well. Edwards writes about the
- 20:06sufficiency of Christ. He says we must discern a sense
- 20:09of that divine, supreme, and spiritual Excellency of Christ
- 20:13wherein this sufficiency fundamentally consists.
- 20:16That's a mouthful. It is, but it's so important.
- 20:19Let's break it down. A lot of people treat Christ's
- 20:22sufficiency like a life raft. I'm drowning in my sin.
- 20:26This log will float, so I'm going to grab the log.
- 20:28I don't care about the log itself.
- 20:30It's grain, it's type of wood. I just care that it floats and
- 20:33saves me. Again, utilitarian.
- 20:34Yes, Edward says that it's not saving faith.
- 20:37Saving faith looks at Christ and says he is sufficient to save me
- 20:41because He is the glorious, divine, perfect Son of God.
- 20:44You trust his ability to save because you admire His nature.
- 20:48You see His Excellency first, and from that you derive
- 20:51confidence in his sufficiency. So the foundation of your
- 20:55satisfaction in Christ is the site of His Excellency, not just
- 20:58the relief of your personal safety.
- 21:00It is the difference between using Christ and adoring Christ,
- 21:03and only those who adore Him truly trust Him for salvation.
- 21:06That is a crucial distinction. Now Edwards moves to the
- 21:09evidence. How do we know this is real in
- 21:10the long run? Segment 6 True joy and the
- 21:14evidence of practice. He contrasts the superficial
- 21:17pangs with true experiences. He uses string of words here,
- 21:21solid, substantial, deep in rot into the frame and temper of
- 21:25their minds. He is looking for stability and
- 21:27depth. In rot is a beautiful old word.
- 21:31It means it is woven into the very fabric of your being.
- 21:34It's not a patch that's been sewn on the outside.
- 21:36Is the threat of the garment now.
- 21:37It's part of your very constitution.
- 21:39And the central desire of this new nature, the main thing this
- 21:42person now wants, Edwards puts it in capital letters.
- 21:45In the text Holiness, he says they long after Holiness.
- 21:49Not happiness as the world defines it.
- 21:51Holiness, though in Reformed theology true and lasting
- 21:54happiness is found only in holiness.
- 21:56But the conscious driving desire of the convert is to be like
- 21:59Christ, to be pure, to obey God. And he notes that true spiritual
- 22:03experiences should increase this longing, not satisfy it.
- 22:07That is so counterintuitive to some forms of modern
- 22:10spirituality. You might think I had a great
- 22:13spiritual experience at that conference.
- 22:15Now I'm full, I'm satisfied I've arrived.
- 22:17Edward says no. If you truly taste the bread of
- 22:21heaven, you want more of it. If your experience makes you
- 22:24complacent and self satisfied, it was not from God.
- 22:28True grace creates a holy hunger for more grace.
- 22:32It makes you a spiritual addict in a good way.
- 22:34You want more of God, not less. Exactly.
- 22:37The closer you get to the fire, the more you realize how cold
- 22:40you were and the more you want to get even closer.
- 22:42He gets very practical about the cost of this new desire.
- 22:45He suggests specific inquiries for self examination.
- 22:49He asked about their willingness to bear the cross, sell all for
- 22:52Christ, choosing their portion in heaven.
- 22:54He's testing the value system. These are the terms of
- 22:56discipleship from the Gospels. Sell all.
- 22:59Are you willing to lose your reputation for Christ, your
- 23:02money, your comfort, your political tribe?
- 23:04If the answer is no, I just want Jesus to make my life easier and
- 23:07more successful, then you fail the test.
- 23:09And what about choosing their portion in heaven?
- 23:12That means you are content to wait for your ultimate reward.
- 23:15You do not demand your best life now.
- 23:18You understand you're a Pilgrim and your true home, your true
- 23:21inheritance, is in the future. You're willing to suffer now for
- 23:25glory later. And then the ultimate proof
- 23:29practice. He asked if the experience has a
- 23:31respect to practice. Does it make them think more of
- 23:34practice? Does it make past I'll practice
- 23:37look dreadful? This is the Reformed doctrine of
- 23:40sanctification in a nutshell. Justification is by faith alone,
- 23:44but the faith that justifies is never alone.
- 23:47It inevitably produces works of obedience.
- 23:50Edwards asks. Does this spiritual experience
- 23:52you had lead to fixed and strong resolutions to obey God's
- 23:56commands? He has a fascinating phrase to
- 23:58that the resolutions must be attended with fear and jealousy
- 24:01of their own hearts. That's an interesting addition.
- 24:03It's. Brilliant.
- 24:04It can expect humility. You resolve to obey, but you do
- 24:07not trust your own strength to do it.
- 24:08You are jealous over your heart. You watch it like a hawk because
- 24:11you know, even as a Christian it is prone to wander.
- 24:13So it's not a self confident I'll do better.
- 24:16No, it's a dependent. By God's grace, I resolve to do
- 24:19better, and I must be vigilant over my own lingering
- 24:22corruption. A person who makes bold
- 24:24resolutions without watching their heart is arrogant and
- 24:27setting themselves up for a fall.
- 24:29That person who watches their heart but makes no resolutions
- 24:31to obey is lazy and disobedient. Edwards wants both resolution
- 24:37and vigilance. We're coming to the final
- 24:39segment, Segment 7, the final tests.
- 24:42This is where Edwards gets into the psychology, you can say of
- 24:45the believer first, what he calls the audience test, he says
- 24:49to check how they tell their experiences.
- 24:51This is devastatingly practical and so applicable to our social
- 24:55media age, he says, To watch for an air that suggests they expect
- 24:58to be admired and applauded. Is the story being told for
- 25:01God's glory or for their own? And he says to watch their
- 25:04reaction if you don't admire them.
- 25:05He says to look if they are disappointed, if they fail of
- 25:08discerning and you something of that nature, and shocked and
- 25:10displeased that they discover the contrary.
- 25:12This is the litmus test for spiritual pride.
- 25:16If I tell you about my great encounter with God and you just
- 25:19nod and say that's nice, praise God, and I walk away offended or
- 25:22disappointed. Because I didn't say wow, you
- 25:24are so spiritual. Exactly.
- 25:26If I get offended, that means I wasn't telling you for God's
- 25:29glory. I was telling you so you would
- 25:30think I'm a spiritual superstar. True grace is self forgetful.
- 25:35It points the camera away from the self and toward God.
- 25:38It doesn't demand an audience or applause.
- 25:41Finally, the origin of joy. We touched on this earlier, but
- 25:44he hammers at home. At the very end, he asks this
- 25:47crucial question, is the joy truly and properly joy in God
- 25:53and in Christ, or whether it been holy joy in themselves?
- 25:57And he lists the traps. Joy in their own excellencies,
- 25:59joy in their experiences, being proud of how spiritual their
- 26:02experience was. And this next one is the
- 26:04trickiest joy in what God has done for them or what He has
- 26:08promised He will do for them. Wait, hold on, joy in what God
- 26:11has promised he will do for them?
- 26:12Isn't that hope? Is Edwards really saying we
- 26:15should not be happy about God's promises like the promise of
- 26:17heaven? He is making a very subtle but
- 26:19critical distinction. It's about the ultimate object
- 26:23of the joy. If my joy is only I'm going to
- 26:25get a mansion in streets of gold and I won't suffer anymore, that
- 26:28is ultimately a form of self love.
- 26:30The joy is in the benefit to me. But if my joy is I will be with
- 26:34Christ and I will see Him face to face and I will be free from
- 26:37sin so I can glorify Him perfectly, then the object of
- 26:40the joy is God Himself. He warns against being affected
- 26:44with their own discoveries. It is the difference between
- 26:46enjoying the breathtaking view of the Grand Canyon and enjoying
- 26:50the fact that you are the one seeing the Grand Canyon and how
- 26:53profound that makes you feel. Ah, I see.
- 26:55It's meta joy. It's being joyful about your own
- 26:57joyfulness. Correct.
- 26:59Edwards wants us to get out of our own heads and be captivated
- 27:02by the divine good itself. The object of our affection must
- 27:05be external to us. God is the sun, we are just the
- 27:08ones getting warm. He's saying.
- 27:09Don't fall in love with the feeling of your own warmth, fall
- 27:12in love with the sun that produces it.
- 27:14That brings us to the end of the text.
- 27:16So let's summarize this deep dive.
- 27:18Edwards has taken us through an incredibly rigorous examination.
- 27:21He has stripped away imagination, speculative
- 27:24understanding, emotional pangs, self righteousness, and
- 27:27self-centered joy. He has He has left us with the
- 27:30bare metal of the renewed will, a will that sees the truth of
- 27:34its condition, admits its guilt, accepts God's justice, comes to
- 27:39love God's holiness for its own sake, longs for practical
- 27:42obedience, and finds its ultimate primary joy in God
- 27:45alone, not in itself or its benefits.
- 27:48It puts the modern I felt a shivered during the third
- 27:50worship song standard to shame, does it not?
- 27:53It certainly does. These are, as the publishers
- 27:55note said in the original work, words of the wise.
- 27:58They're a safeguard against a presumptuous easy confidence.
- 28:01And for pastors, this is an essential guide for the care of
- 28:04souls. We cannot comfort people into
- 28:06hell by validating false experiences or offering cheap
- 28:09grace. That is a sobering.
- 28:11Thought it is, it's a weighty responsibility.
- 28:13So here's a thought to leave you with as you're thinking through
- 28:16all this. If we applied Edwards's final
- 28:19distinction, the one between joy and God and joy in what God does
- 28:22for me, to our modern church culture, how much of our worship
- 28:28songs, our prayers, and our testimonies would stand that
- 28:32test? Are we singing about His beauty,
- 28:35or are we just singing about our breakthrough?
- 28:37Are we praying for His will to be done or for our lives to be
- 28:40easier? The searching question.
- 28:42A question well worth asking. Thank you for listening to
- 28:44Reformed Thinking. We will see you next time.