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Psalm 91: Under the Shadow of the Almighty

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Introduction

According to a tradition among the Jews, if a psalm is not attributed to anyone, then the credit should go to the author of the previous psalm. There is no basis for being dogmatic about it, but this would mean that Psalm 91 was composed by Moses. The reason this is suggestive is that the theme of this psalm fits the experience of Israel in the wilderness in remarkable ways. In addition, it is quite striking that the devil quotes from this psalm when Jesus was on His way to being the victorious Israel, during His temptation of 40 “years” in the wilderness.

The Text

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: My God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler . . .” (Psalm 91:1–16).

Summary of the Text

The shadow of the Almighty is a safe place to dwell (v. 1), and ultimately it is the only safe place to dwell. But do not assume that this is obvious to a carnal mind; it is a secret place. But also remember—“The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant” (Ps. 25:14). Fear God, and He will show you that secret. The Lord Himself is the final fortress; to be in that fortress is to trust Him (v. 2). Like a rabbit to his hole, like a bird to his thicket, we take to the Lord. What will He deliver us from? From the snare of the fowler—that is, from any devious enemies, and from the deadly pestilence (v. 3). Then comes a striking metaphor, an astonishing one. We will be safe under His feathers, under His wing. Think of yourself living on the mercy seat; the wings of the cherubim are emblematic of His wings. And His truth will be our armor (v. 4). There is no need to fear night terrors, or arrows in the day (v. 5)—whether epidemics by night, or wasting destruction by day (v. 6). The reference to arrows here is probably still referring to pestilence. When thousands are falling all around you, as they did back in Egypt, and then again a few times in the wilderness, there is yet no need to fear (v. 7). You will see with your own eyes what happens to the wicked (v. 8). Because you have made the Lord your refuge and place of habitation, the plague cannot touch you (vv. 9-10). As God had His saints marked in the book of Ezekiel, and in Revelation, so you also are marked. You dwell under the protection of the cloud and fire. Why is this? Because God will order His angels to protect you there (vv. 11-12). You will trample lions underfoot, along with adders, young lions and dragons (v. 13). So God promises to deliver the one who truly loves Him, the one who knows His name (v. 14). When He calls, His God will answer (v. 15). God will honor Him with long life, and will show Him His salvation (v. 16).

The Devil’s Exegesis

Now this is the psalm that Satan quoted to Jesus in the course of tempting Him. He cited vv. 11-12 while tempting Jesus to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the Temple. He was saying, in effect, that if “You manifest Yourself in a dramatic act of power, then these verses will apply. God will keep You from falling down and dashing Your foot on a stone.” But the reply from Jesus was telling:

“And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matt. 4:6-7).

Jesus was not saying that the devil shouldn’t be tempting Him, the Lord Jesus. (Although that is also true.) Rather, He was saying that if He, Jesus, did what the devil was suggesting, then He, Jesus, would be tempting the Lord His God. Jesus was submitting Himself to the authority of Scripture. But why would it be tempting God to throw Himself off the height of the Temple?

The Lord was a more honest exegete than the devil, which should not be surprising to us. But let us not just assume it. Can we see that honesty in the text? Three things jump out. The first is what Jesus said in reply. He said He would in fact be testing or tempting God if He were to do this thing, which should make us look for the makings of that sin in the text. And that leads to the second point, which is that the promise was that God’s angel would protect Him in all His ways, and the context shows that these are the ways that God assigned or appointed. If the Most High is your habitation, “thereshall no evil befall thee” (vv. 9-10). The promise was not that one couldn’t dash his foot against a stone—whatever he might be doing. No. This is a promise that holds under the feathers. This is a Word that holds under the shadow of the Almighty.

But most striking thing about this exchange is this, and this is the third point. The devil was trying to get Jesus to “cast Himself down” and “not dash” His foot against a stone. This was a complete diversion—what was the faithful one going to do in this psalm? What is in the next verse? He was going to “cast Himself down” and tread on lions, serpents, and dragons. The point of this passage was not primarily what He was not going to walk on, it was what He was going to walk on. Jesus was not going to be distracted by talk about dashing His foot against a stone when His assigned mission was to dash His foot against a serpent. And we might also reflect on Luke 11:11. There it says that if a son asks for bread He will not be given a stone; if He asks for a fish He will not be given a serpent. How much more will God not give a stone instead of a serpent?

Remember that Christ came to earth in fulfilment of the promise God had made to the serpent in Gen. 3:15. This exchange between Jesus and the devil was a continuation of an earlier conversation. This was not the first time they had met.

“And the Lord God said unto the serpent . . . I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:14–15).

The Faithful One in Christ

So Christ is the only one who ever fulfilled the terms of this psalm perfectly. He is the only one who could without any reservation say, “My God” (v. 2), even from the cross. He was the faithful Son who made the most High His true habitation (v. 9). He had set His love upon His Father (v. 14). He knew the name of God (v. 14). And so God promised to deliver Him (v. 15), and the long life promised was in fact given through the power of an indestructible life (v. 16). And He displayed His understanding of all of this in the wilderness, while being tempted, and on our behalf.

But this is not just about Jesus, over there, detached from us. Those of us who believe in Christ have found that He who found the secret place is the secret place. He who dwelt in the habitation of God is the habitation of God. He who knows the name of God is the name of God. So we are privileged to take refuge in Him, and in Him every last one of these promises is yours as well. Consider how Paul puts it.

“For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us” (2 Cor. 1:19–20).

So then, for you, standing off by yourself in your own name, we have to say that not one of these glorious promises found in Scripture is in any way your possession. You cannot lay claim anything simply because it is in your Bible. Non-Christians can own Bibles. Infidels can walk into a Christian bookstore. The issue is not whether the promise is in your Bible, but rather whether it is in your Christ, to whom the Bible bears faithful witness. If you are Christ’s, if you have surrendered to Him, then Christ is also yours. And if Christ is yours, what follows? All the promises follow, including these.

“Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:19).

“And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen” (Rom. 16:20).

And so we preach Jesus to you, and we preach Jesus to you so that you might be found in Him, and so that you might rejoice in Him, and exult in Him, and find eternal happiness in Him, and—for the glory of His great name—become a race of snake-walkers in Him. Is the devil a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour? You are invited, you are summoned, to walk right over him. This is what living faith in a living Christ will do. It is what it must do.

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Honest With God: Growth in Grace

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Introduction

We are considering the two components of growth in grace. The first is getting rid of impediments to that growth, which is a necessary thing—but preliminary. The second thing is actual growth in grace. This growth in grace is a form of life, and like all life it requires food. Our spiritual life in Christ must be nourished as much as our physical lives require nourishment.

The Text

“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied” (1 Peter 1:2).

“And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:33).

Summary of the Text

We must always remember that the Christian life cannot be reduced to a series of techniques. It is not a thing you can tinker with. In all of the epistles, we receive the benediction of grace and peace. In most of the epistles we receive this grace and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit is usually not mentioned (although He is here in this passage). Why is that? I am following Jonathan Edwards in this, believing that this is because the grace and peace is the Holy Spirit. And so the pious wish that grace and peace be multiplied can be translated into personal terms. This too is related to honesty.

And as we see in the passage from Acts, when God visits a congregation in reformation and revival, He is poured out on everyone—and not just on the religious professionals. Sometimes it comes to the religious professionals last. One time in the nineteenth century, in Cornwall, a man named William Haslam was preaching a sermon entitled “What Think Ye of Christ.” During the sermon he was convicted of his own dry Pharisaism, and the Holy Spirit came on him. Another local minister who happened to be present stood up and shouted, “the Parson is converted!” And so we should yearn for the statement from Acts to be true of us as well—and great grace was upon them all.

Another Brief Word

As we strive for engagement with the means of grace, we want to make sure that we do not take what was said last week about the reality of remaining sin to discourage us. What is the point? As Christians we are called to the mortification of sin, and there are three kinds of mortification. The first is one that all true Christians have experienced—God has transformed our weed patch into a garden. “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” (Gal. 5:24). The second is what all backslidden Christians are called to. “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col. 3:5). The tense of mortify here indicates that it is to be an “over and done” action. You are digging up big weeds from your garden. You are not permitted to “phase out” the big weeds. The third kind of mortification is daily and ongoing. “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13). This is tending the garden also, but it is the gardener going out every morning at 5 am to pull weeds. And you always find something.

Worship

The last thing I would want to do is upbraid you over not worshiping the Lord when the only reason I could speak to you is that you are here. But I do want to remind you of the importance of weekly worship. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (Heb. 10:25).

This is not a lecture, and you are not coming here for mere data. This is a covenant renewal service, and you are coming here to be strengthened, edified and built up. “For thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified” (1 Cor. 14:17). Paul is constantly after edification. The worship service is a construction zone. There should be spiritual sawdust all over the place. The word for edified there is oikodomeo, a compound word meaning to put the roof on the house. Mark a difference between an emotional blessing, say where you get choked up, say, and edification, where you come out of the service with a wall knocked out and a load of two-by-fours on the lawn.

And remember that the service culminates in the Lord’s Supper, where all the blessings of the entire service (the music, the readings, the preaching) are sealed for us. The relationship between the sermon and the sacrament is not that of paired items that complement each other, like wine and cheese, or ham and eggs. Rather the relationship of preaching (and the whole service) is like cooking and the Lord’s Supper is like . . .  eating. Services with great preaching and no sacrament are like watching celebrity chefs on television. Services with little mini-sermons (for all the mini-Christians) and Big Eucharist are like some kind of raw foods thing. Here’s your bag of carrots.

Read the Word

We are Christians who worship God the Father through the Word. As people of the Word, we are people of the Word. We are to be steeped in the Scriptures. Our lives are to marinate in it.

Consider what the Word says about our relationship to the Word. “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart” (Deut. 6:6). The king was required to copy out God’s law by hand for himself (Dt. 17:18-19). He was to have this Word so that he might learn to fear God. “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Ps. 119:11). Indeed, for a robust understanding of the role of Scripture, meditate on all of Psalm 119. “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Pet. 2:2). When the Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, one of the results was that the people dedicated themselves to the apostles teaching (Acts 2:42).

This is why, incidentally, the Bible Reading Challenge has been such a good thing. Read the Word.

And Pray

The prayers we offer up together on the Lord’s Day are the prayers of this congregation. They are not meant to replace your own prayers. Rather, they help to train and shape your prayers.

“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). “Brethren, pray for us” (1 Thess. 5:25). “Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms” (Jas. 5:13).

For many Christians, private prayer is a great trouble spot. So let me conclude with two bits of counsel on learning how to pray. First, don’t be too proud to learn how to pray by learning to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Let Jesus teach you. That’s what that prayer is for. And second, start taking risks by asking for specific things. That way you will know if the prayer is answered, right?

And don’t forget to offer it all in the name of Jesus.

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Honest With God: Confession of Sin

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Introduction

I would like to spend this week and next addressing honesty with God, and what it means to grow in grace. In brief, there are two elements to growth in grace. The first is the removal of impediments to that growth, which we will address this week, and the second is the presence of that which feeds grace. The first is negative, dealing with sin, and the second is positive, which has to do with the reception of means of grace.

Think of a house plant that has been knocked over, and the pot has been shattered. If the plant is to grow and flourish, it is necessary to repot it . . . but repotting a plant is not the same thing as watching it grow. Repotting is what is happening when sins are confessed. Growth is what happens when the soil is rich, the sunlight plentiful, and water is abundant.

The Text

“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: But whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Summary of the Text

I have entitled this short series Honesty With God, and such honesty is essential to all true confession. Let us start with the passage from Proverbs. A man who covers his own sins will not prosper. It is striking that this action of covering is positive or negative depending on how it is happening. The word for cover here (ksh) also means to forgive. “Hatred stirreth up strifes: But love covereth [same word] all sins” (Prov. 10:12). Covering is what love does, and covering is what a self-absorbed sinner does on his hell-bent way to “not prospering.” A man does not have the authority to cover (forgive) his own sins. The offense was against God (Ps. 51:4), and so God must forgive. What is God’s way in this? The man who confesses (honesty), the man who forsakes (true repentance) is the man who finds mercy from God.

We find the same element of honesty in the passage from 1 John. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. The word for confess here is homo (meaning the same) and logeo (which means to speak). To confess is to “speak the same thing” that God is saying. We do not engage in any spin control. Note that God is the one who does the forgiving, and God is the one who does the cleansing. We do the acknowledging. So what do we contribute to this process of confession? We contribute the sin, which creates the need for forgiveness, and we contribute the honesty about the sin, which engages the promises of God—promises that ride on the fact that He is faithful, and that He is just.

What Shifts and Evasions Look Like

What are some of the shifts and evasions we employ to keep from doing what God summons us to do? Here are just a few. We justify what we did. What we did was really right, we say. We excuse what we did. It was wrong, but it all happened so fast, and besides, she started it. We hide what we did. Nobody knows about it and nobody is going to know about it. We confess what we did in vague terms. Lord, please forgive me for anything I might have done today. We rename what we did. Everybody makes mistakes. We shrug over what we did. Nobody’s perfect. We give up over what we did. I am going to do it again, so why bother? We barter over what we did. Restitution would be too costly. We pass the buck over what we did. The woman you gave me. We postpone dealing with what we did. I’ll confess it next Sunday. We are overwhelmed by what we did. Nobody could forgive that.

Honest on Our Behalf

Now the problem for us is that we live in a world that is simultaneously corrupt and, more importantly, dishonest about the depth of that corruption. All we have to do is be honest about our sin, the man says. But how? We can no more do that than we can achieve perfection in any other area. And here is the gospel of grace.

Jesus did not just die for you so that the penalty might be paid for the sins you committed. He did do that on the cross, but Scripture teaches us that all of the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us who believe. So you are afraid because you are such an imperfect repenter? Are you discouraged because it is so hard to be honest about things like this? Christ didn’t just die for you, He also repented for you (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:21). From the very beginning of His ministry, He identified with sinners, and He—the sinless one—went through the humiliation of receiving a baptism of repentance. Why would He do that? The man who administered it to Him wondered the same thing.

“And John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?” But Jesus answered and said to him, “Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him” (Matt. 3:14–15, NKJV).

Now He did not repent so that you wouldn’t have to repent. Rather, He repented so that you could learn how to repent, following in His footsteps, freed from all condemnation (Rom. 8:1). Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Let the one who repents, repent in the Lord. Let the one who is learning to walk honestly with God, walk honestly with Him in the honesty of Christ. This is what it means to walk in the light.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

Walking in Christ means walking in the light. Walking in the light means walking honestly. And that means you will always be dealing with your sins in a well-lit area. Christ is that light.

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Calvinism 4.0: Global Grace, Not Global Indulgence

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Introduction

You have heard this stated a number of times before, but it is the kind of truth that all of us need to hear again and again. “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. to write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.” (Philippians 3:1, ESV). And so here it is: Hard teaching creates soft hearts, and soft teaching creates hard hearts. Calvinism is hard doctrine, but it is hard doctrine for the tenderhearted—not hard doctrine to match the hearts.

The Text

“It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Romans 9:12–16).

Summary of the Text

When Rebekah went to an oracle about the conflict that was happening in her womb, she was told that, of the twins, the older would serve the younger (v. 12; Gen. 25:23). This was reinforced centuries later, at the other end of the Old Testament, when Malachi said that God loved Jacob, but hated Esau (v. 13; Mal. 1:2-3). Keep in mind that Jacob here refers to the Jews, and Esau refers to the nation of Edom. But to take this up to a larger scale doesn’t really solve any of our ruffled feather problems. If you were a devotee of free will, would you feel better if somebody told you that God had only predestined that the airliner would crash, not that the passengers would? Now when we are told that God loved Jacob and hated Esau, our natural (fleshly) reaction is to charge God with unrighteousness. And so Paul raises the question. Is there unrighteousness with God (v. 14)? It cannot be. God forbid. And what is the reason given for denying unrighteousness with God? The reason is what God said to Moses when Moses begged to see His glory (Ex. 33:19). God will be gracious to whom He pleases. He will be merciful to whom He pleases (v. 15). Grace is grace, and mercy is mercy. Neither of them can be earned or merited—not a scintilla of merit anywhere in it. So then, we come to the hard conclusion that, rightly understood, hard grace creates tender hearts. But in order to be hard grace, it must be not dependent upon the will of man, or the running of man, but rather upon the mercy of God (v. 16).

No, Really, Not a Scintilla

The heart of man can manufacture merit—something that he can use to argue that God is required to show mercy—out of virtually anything. It is our knock-off of creatio ex nihilo. One of our favorite arguments arises from any mercy shown to others. Because our hearts are naturally envious, this argument seems compelling to us. What God gives to one, He must give the same thing to all others. But grace, by definition, cannot be demanded. For any reason.

Suppose there were two men on death row, and both of them richly deserve to be there. Each one was about as foul as a human being can get. Now also suppose that the governor pardons one of them, and does so for good reason. But that good reason has nothing to do with the worthiness of the one pardoned. It was dirty dozen mission or something. Now here is the question. Has the governor in any way wronged the convict that he did not pardon? Is that convict getting anything but what he deserves? He is getting nothing but justice, while the other is getting nothing but mercy. And mercy to one does not create any obligation within God toward the other. It is not of him who wills, or of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

Hard Grace

We do not insist on this because we have an emotional need that somebody be damned. Rather, we insist upon it because we want to remember that grace is infinite grace. When God saved me, and when God saved you, He was under absolutely no external obligation to do so. Our need was not His obligation. Our need was made up of our rebellion, our selfishness, our pettiness, our insolence, and our pride. In short, God could have refused to save you, He could have passed you by as He has passed by many others, and He would not have been an iota less gracious. His infinite holiness would not have been diminished at all if the number of the elect had been diminished by one. Subtract me from that throng in front of the throne of God, and the saints would still be able to sing, “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Rev. 7:10). Walk through that multitude, and you will not be able to find one person who deserves to be there.

Nature and Extent

Why emphasize this? Before we consider the extent of God’s grace, we have to anchor the nature of grace in our hearts and minds. That is because if we do not do this, we will draw false and destructive inferences about grace from the glorious extent of it. This is a filthy, undeserving, rebellious and insolent world—and it will be gloriously saved.

“All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: And all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee” (Ps. 22:27).

“The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, Until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Ps. 110:1).

“For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, As the waters cover the sea.” (Hab. 2:14).

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).

“And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust” (Rom. 15:12).

And all of it grace, all of it mercy, all of it Christ.

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Calvinism 4.0: Calvinism and Deuteronomic Grace

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Introduction

One of the great challenges in Scripture is the challenge of rightly handling the blessings of God. The Giver gives His gifts, and the recipients receive them gratefully. But it is not long before what was initially accepted as sheer grace grows slowly into what is falsely assumed to be an entitlement. We take grace for granted, and so it is that this grace corrodes slowly into something else. And as we look over the pages of Scripture, we can see that this is an error we fall into for two cents.

As Cotton Mather once put it, “Faithfulness begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.” Or as Scripture states it, “Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked.” And so remember, as we consider these things, that there is more than one kind of wealth—there is spiritual wealth also. And the same kind of things can happen in that realm as well.

The Text

“When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end; And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day” (Deut. 8:10–18).

Summary of the Text

When you have eaten and are full, the initial response is good (v. 10). That is the response of blessing the Lord on account of His kindness to us. But then the warning is given—beware that you do not forget the Lord (v. 11). This forgetfulness is defined as forgetting His Word, in not keeping His commandments, judgments and statutes (v. 11).

When things go well for a time, it is then that the heart is lifted up. It is then that the heart gets fat and sassy (vv. 12-14). The first thing they forgot was the law of God. The second thing they forgot, as listed here, is all the deliverances of God (vv. 14-16). They forgot the word of God, and they forgot the interventions of God. So instead of seeing the blessings as a gift from the hand of God, the recipient starts to think that it all came from his own hand (v. 17). But God is the one who enables us to do anything. He enables us to accumulate the goods that establish His covenant (v. 18), but we see from the preceding that these goods also provide the temptation to veer away from His covenant.

Deuteronomic Grace

We should remember all of this with particular application to the doctrines of grace that we have been considering. In all of church history, the Puritan and Reformed stream of the Christian Church has received, in wonderful ways, the Deuteronomic blessings that Scripture promises—pressed down, shaken, and running over. And the Reformed, and those with a Calvinistic heritage, have also been most prone to the sin warned against here.

This is a covenantal sin, and I am afraid that the Protestant West is guilty, guilty, guilty. “How have we forgotten?” someone might say. We defend ourselves against the charge that we have forgotten His great grace to us by maintaining that we don’t remember anything. Some defense.

The Ultimate Oxymoron

Where does this slow slide into ingratitude begin? When your goods are multiplied, when your stuff is abundant, then it is easy for your heart to be lifted up. And when your heart is lifted up, you become the ultimate oxymoron—the proud Calvinist, proud of the fact that he understands so well that we can take pride in nothing.

Remember the proud Pharisee in the Temple, the one who went home unjustified. And what did he say that resulted in him going home unjustified? What he said was actually one of the five solas — “I thank thee, God, that I am not like other men” (Luke 18:11).

But what do you have that you did not receive as a gift? And if as a gift, then why do you boast as though it were not (1 Cor. 4:7)?

Remembering the Contrast

“But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: Thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; Then he forsook God which made him, And lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation” (Deut. 32:13–15). But the contrast that Scripture sets before us, over against waxing fat and kicking, is not waxing skinny and just sitting there. No, not at all. “Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things;” (Deut. 28:47). The fatal contrast is between those who possess and forget and those who possess and remember.

Dance With the One What Brung Ya

As we consider the various movements and revivals and stirrings that have characterized church history, one of the most notable things about them concerns the men who were instrumental in bringing these things about. I would lay long odds against any of them—I am talking about men like Wycliff, Calvin, Luther, Tyndale, Knox, et al.—being able to land a job in any of the institutions named after them. What is this pattern? Why does it happen this way?

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers” (Matt. 23:29–32).

When a ministry starts, the visionary has a world to gain, and he sees the world to be obtained. There are many who catch the vision, and who are inspired to come with him. But there are others who join up because they have nothing better to do, and nothing really to lose. David was walking by faith, but some of the outcasts who joined him at the Cave of Adullam were muttering about other issues (1 Sam. 22:2).

When there starts to be some measure of success, when they are finally getting somewhere, those who had nothing to lose . . . now have something to lose. They have built up a cozy respectability for themselves, and no need to go rocking the boat, sonny. Consider what happened to the apostle Paul, on more than one occasion (2 Tim. 1:15; 2 Tim. 4:10; Phil. 1:13–17).

And here we come to the point. The great adversary of Calvinism is not Arminianism. The great adversary of Calvinism is Mammon, and it has to be said that the Calvinist work ethic (related to all the things we have been considered) is one of the greatest engines for the production of Mammon that the world has ever seen.

As so the choice is what it has always been—Christ and His gifts, or chasing Christless gifts in the wilderness.

“And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (1 Cor. 10:4–5).

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