Nothing remains the same. Everything is
degenerating. Our lives are but a vapor and then we are gone. Even the
gene pool is degenerating. The process of death is like a scourge. The
only hope we have is that God continues to sustain life as we know it.
And in this sense we do not know what is going to happen from one day to
another. The only thing we can depend on is God speaking what does not
exist into a new moment of existence. But who has known the mind of God?
Who has been His counselor? We would like to think that there is some
natural forces in place that are consistently working in sustaining this
universe. But the truth is that how we view ourselves in what we depend
upon is how we see the impossibility of these events to be the same
from one day to another. Faith is believing in things not seen. In this
sense how we view the world is different from one moment to another. We
are in the independence of God.
How can a true description of
rest be understood? I mean in terms of the tension of powers. With God
there is no force against His power. I mean from our perspective we may
think that for every force there is an opposite, But with God there is
only one flow into all things. Rest is in God. In this way we are living
in a universe of these forces but we exist in God experiencing His
flow. That is we are under some kind of imagination when we are
restless.
This is why His presence is beyond this earth
experience. Now there is this tension in our natural experience. But God
goes beyond our understanding. In Gods presence we are drawn out of
ourselves. We are drawn out of the tension of the natural laws of this
universe. We are here but we are resting there.
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5514
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
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on: February 15, 2009, 02:26:13 PM
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I need to make some points about Ps. 32.
Now
this Psalm is in line with the rest of the pertinent Psalms. The main
focus of this psalm is the difference between one who does not stand in
the unfailing love of God and the one who has woes. Now these are the
description of who is the blessed of Ps. 1 and the chaff. There is a
clear difference between one who has his sins covered and one who is
guilty. Now just like in all the penitent psalms there is an illusion to
guilt. A deed or some attitude. Now as long as there is sin on this
earth then we are going to be guilty. What makes us stand in
righteousness is not our own covering but His covering by His death.
Check any reformer on this Psalm. This psalm is not a sinister psalm to
relieve some kind of special season of discipline. Every saint will go
through the discipline of sin. Every saint is being disciplined for sin.
Sin
is the transgression of the law. It is not only a transgression about
things we do but its a transgression of the righteous standard of living
with loving Him with all of our hearts. What is the remedy? Just to
confess our sins. Will it be heavier if we fail to confess a sin? No.
The obligation to confess our sins does not remove our sins. Our sins
are covered by Christ. Thats what the Psalm is saying. We are happy
because we are covered. We want to confess our sins. Sin brings the
weight of guilt. We confess our sins and the weight is lifted.
Now
the wicked do not enjoy full forgiveness. Their way is hard and filled
with woes. They do not have Christ forgiveness. We rejoice in Him, that
is we sing Psalms of protection to Him because of His covering of our
sins. Not our confession.
We are forgiven by having fellowship
with the Father and the Son. When we sing Psalms we know the Father in a
special way. The righteous always find God. The righteous hide in God.
Not the sinless.But those who are covered.
This is the process.
We are weighted down by the guilt of our sins. We sometimes feel our
sins are more than the hairs of our heads. So we come to Him thanking
Him for His forgiveness. For if He would mark our sins then we could not
stand. But His attitude toward us is that He is always pleased with us
because of Christ righteousness. Every one goes through the process of
guilt. I mean if you do something wrong then there is guilt. But the
guilt is not taken care of in the confession, it was taken care of by
Christ. Confession is for our own good.
When we have a weight
then we can rejoice in Him because He is all we need to be our hiding
place. He is more than able to find our rest in from our guilt and
shame. But the wicked cannot find that. They are like the mule. I mean
just because you are circumscized does not mean you are covered. A
righteous man may struggle with more sin than a wicked man. But the
difference is that the righteous man enjoys Gods grace through
forgiveness. We are in God, we enjoy His unfailing love. That is His
attitude toward us about our sins.
What i am saying is that you
cant isolate a Psalm but you got to take a Psalm in context. Especially
with the local and far context of all of the psalms. Its like you have
pressure points. Then you have the rest of your nerves. Now if you hit
the wrong pressure points then you create a problem that is not in line
with the rest of scripture. Well the pressure points are explained in
the impenitent psalms. The stress is that a saint is a sinner, he
struggles with the guilt of his sins, confession is what he always does
because he lives before God. Now the confession is not related to Gods
unfailing love. Never never never. Gods love never changes. A man hates
the same as he stands in relation to Christ. He enjoys love by the work
of Christ, as to His decrees from eternity. Guilt and sin are not the
main problem. There are battles to be won. There is living in this world
that causes so much of the pain and suffering of a saint. These
protections are from Gods pre ordained decrees. We can trust God that He
is always speaking on our behalf even tho we feel the weight of our
guilt.
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| 5517
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
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on: February 15, 2009, 12:25:55 PM
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I have been praying Davids prayers for a long
time. Now then we are not in a position to decide if we are going to
flee from Him. Because He has given us the grace to fight with weapons
that will not fail. And even tho we are tempted to flee, God has a
purpose in leading us as men who stand in grace in our fleeing. He will
judge the world by our cries in wandering.
And i to have prayed
the prayer of Jonah for many yrs. Jonah had a good reason to flee from
Nineveh. And even tho like the Moses who killed the Egyptian and wanted
to rescue the Israelites from Egyptian, it was not Gods time for Moses
to have the power of a leader of Israel. So Moses fled and was sustained
by God in the wilderness until God called Him to bring judgement on
Egypt.
So Jonah was afraid of the wickedness of the Ninevehs.
Fear will cause a man to find his comfort in Gods providence. And it
will cause a saint to cry out against the wickedness of his day and
against the people who crush and oppress Gods people. Jonah did not wish
any of this on his people. Thats why he had reason to confess his sins
and yet knew of Gods unfailing love. It did not affect his confidence.
He was truely a man who stood in for Gods people. Just like Jesus went
into the grave to save His elect, Jonah went into the protection of the
whale to save Gods elect. For Jonah had a heart for bringing the
Ninevites to faith, but he had to withstand the threats of the self
righteous, and the works of the devil through the world in order to see
Gods people prosper in that wicked society. Jonah did not wish to be
self serving against Gods people so that just like Jesus, he withstood
the self righteous and the mockers in order to bring salvation to His
elect.
But Jonah had been scorned so bad in his life that he had
come to the end of fighting with the schemes of the wicked. It broke his
heart. Even the people who surrounded him had offered him thorns and
thistles for his gracious gifts. Jonah had come to a place where he had
been scorned even by the so called company of the righteous. Just like
they offered Jesus the bitter herbs after they had hung Him there in all
of the suffering, so Jonah had come to that place where men had given
him bitterness for his righteous longing. So Jonah was taught that Gods
elect would come to faith in Nineveh and the wicked and self righteous
would not harm him. God brought Jonah to the resurrection power of
proclamation in bringing him out of the deep. Yes we too find that the
waters come up to our heads. We too endure the scoffing and ridicule of
wicked men. We too lack the confidence to speak against that societies
sins. But God will bring us to the place where our message will be
saving and condemning against the wicked and self righteous. Just like
Jonah did not attribute evil on Gods people but he was willing to go to
the depths in order to see the salvation of the elect, so too we have
been given that kind of grace.
These are evil days my friends.
We are so so confused. This is Jonahs cry. Jonah is in my bones like
David. Dont speak evil of him. I love Jonah. Jonah has taught me to take
the arrows intended for his elect.
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5518
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Forums / Theology Forum / Re: Romans and the Flesh Monster.
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on: February 15, 2009, 09:59:38 AM
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Heres the standard. No matter how you are
treated you cannot take revenge in the form of words, of looks, in
trying to argue your position in front of others. You must be like
Christ who looked at Judas and said go do your evil deed. It was in the
plan of God.
Now this is impossible if you do not believe in the
absolute sovereignty of God. And if you do not think that God is the
only one who can rite a situation then you do not believe that the means
are important. If you do not believe that the means are important,
vital to any given problem then the only other alternative is to turn to
man. Men who are professional schemers. The world of mans philosophies
is in force, bait and switch, spying, telling lies etc. It really does
matter what you believe because mens hearts are evil and they are not
just all free wills. Mens hearts must be changed in the mind. God is the
only one who can change a mans ways. We are to avoid the arts of tongue
destruction. God not only wants to be the one who gets the glory for
the beginning of renewal, but He is going to get all the glory for
moving a man to a new conversion.His change is always toward His ends .
Period.
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Read it over and think about it. Now come to the other side.
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