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Renewing Your Mind
Renewing Assurance
00:26:23
Our assurance of salvation can increase or diminish over time. Why does this happen? And what should we do about it? Today, Joel Beeke considers reasons why a Christian may lose a sense of assurance and how it can be renewed. Request Assurance of...
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As backsliding begins with the neglect of genuine prayer and dependency on the Spirit, revival of assurance begins with renewed prayer, confession and forsaking of sin, and a longing cry of the heart that the Holy Spirit not be taken from us.
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Sometimes, if we feel distant from God, we know why. We're aware that we've been gradually backsliding, neglecting spiritual disciplines that we once delighted. But what if, as far as you can tell, you're not backsliding? How should you respond then? How do we, regardless of the circumstances, renew our assurance? Thank you for being with us for this Tuesday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. We're spending most of this week considering the important and practical subject of assurance. Joel Beeke is our guest teacher and. And he is examining the Bible and the Westminster Confession of Faith to help us think about assurance. Well, yesterday he considered how to cultivate assurance. Today he looks at further reasons you may lack assurance and how to renew it. Here's Dr. Beeke.
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In this lecture on assurance of faith. We want to begin by reading from Psalm 51, verses 8 through 12. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. The Westminster confessions, famous chapter 18 on assurance of Faith reads as True believers may have the assurance of their salvation. Divers ways shaken, that is, different ways shaken up, diminished and intermittent, as by negligence in preserving of it by falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieveth the Spirit by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering, even such as fear him to walk in darkness and have no light. Yet are they never utterly destitute of that seed of God and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may in due time be revived, and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utterance despair. If you've listened carefully to that paragraph, you understand how beautifully every word of this paragraph is worked out in a pastoral way from the Puritan perspective. So what they're speaking about here is first of all, two different causes for an unreachable Assurance. The first is causes in the believer. That's the most common reason why we don't get assurance. The causes in us, our sin, our backsliding. That is the number one problem, and that includes negligence and preserving assurance by exercise, by falling into some special sin or yielding to some sudden temptation. Anthony Burgess said that assurance may be hindered, even lost, for many reasons. He gives you three of them. Number one, assurance can be diminished when we deeply feel the guilt of sin, for then we tend to look upon God as one who will take vengeance rather than forgive us. Number two, Satan hates assurance, and he'll do everything he can to keep doubts and fears alive within us. And number three, most commonly, most commonly, the hypocrisy of our hearts and the carelessness of our living hinders assurance. 1 John 2, 15, 16 warns us that those who love the world with all its lust, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life, will perish with the world unless they repent and return. Return from backsliding. As common as it is dreadful, backsliding is a God dishonoring, Christ, rejecting Spirit, grieving law, trampling gospel, abusing sin. I want to repeat that because this is serious business. Backsliding is a God dishonoring, Christ, rejecting spirit, grieving law, trampling gospel, abusing sin. And so what the Puritans are saying is the most common way we lose assurance is that we backslide. And that often begins with a loss of interest in and enjoyment of secret prayer. And what begins inside of us then continues to penetrate other decaying interests in the soul, so that we then pull away from our private study of the Scriptures, at least for the most part. We get a waning interest in the preached word. We seem less committed to fellowshipping with believers, we're less quick to confess Christ. We start to lose our evangelistic passion for the lost, and an inward coldness to all the spiritual disciplines begins to creep into our souls, and the world begins to seem more attractive again. And the Spirit of its age and the world adds fizz to the coke or the soda of backsliding that does huge damage to our spiritual health. We become spiritually lazy, sloppy, selfish, being more selfish than serving, failing to embrace God's fatherly and sovereign providences, and then tolerating unmortified sin that is not repented, of using entertainment that stains and hardens the heart, yielding to temptation, succumbing to patterns of disobedience, failing to examine ourselves rightly. And ultimately backsliding leads to a kind of double Life that no longer earnestly fights against growing inner corruption and even flirts with and engages in secret sins, long thought, dead and buried. You see all of this whole process, of this wretched sin of backsliding, it robs us of assurance. It beats back assurance. Burgess says when we backslide, we chase away our assurance. And then he makes this profound comment. Nothing will darken your soul more than a dull, lazy, negligent walk of life. A believer who's living close to God, who's not backsliding, is more afraid to fall than a backslider is. Because a backslider, he's not worried about falling. He's not even aware that he is falling. Thomas Fuller, a historian puritan, said, fear to fall and assurance to stand are twin sisters. Fear to fall and assurance to stand fear our twin sisters. So the conclusion of 18:4 is clear. Despite the great injury that ensues from backsliding, God's people will persevere. Backsliding is serious, but the Holy Spirit will return and he'll move them to persevere, for their perseverance is secured by their persevering God. No enemy will keep God's people out of heaven, even though we may well keep heaven out of our own hearts too often here in this life by sinning against God. So as serious as backsliding is, if the backslider is a true child of God, the Holy Spirit will deal with him and bring him back. That's what 18.4 is saying. But secondly, there are also causes in God for the withdrawing of assurance. Now, this is more complicated. It's understandable for us that we spoil our own assurance. But the confession speaks of God withdrawing the light of his countenance or some sudden vehement temptation. And there are some people, contemporary writers today, who say the confession has gone beyond the pale of truth here, because God would never do that to his people. Assurance is wings and legs in a man's service to God. It inflames him more to promote God's glory, says Anthony Burgess. And why would God ever hold him back from that? Well, Burgess actually answers this question fivefold. Sometimes he says God withholds assurance from believers for a period of time. First, that we may taste and see how bitter sin is, because when we lose our assurance, we realize what we're missing. Sin becomes very bitter. Second, that God may keep us humble and low in ourselves. Third, that when we have assurance, we may esteem it more and take heed as how not to lose it. And fourth, that we may demonstrate obedience to God and give him greater honor even when we're lacking assurance. And fifth, that we may offer comfort to others in similar distress because we ourselves have known what it is to struggle with assurance. So those are five reasons. Thomas Brooks has a whole other set of reasons, some of which overlapping Burgess, but many of which are not. Now, you need to understand both Burgess and Brooks here, and all the Puritans, for that matter. We need to recognize that the Puritans believe that withdrawal on God's part is not normative. That's the unusual way of losing our assurance. The normative way is it's our fault. But they wanted to be compassionate to real pastoral situations, where certain believers seem to lose their assurance even as they were walking steadily with God, searching the Scriptures, doing all the spiritual disciplines that they're called to do, but for some unexplainable reason, not living in any known sin, their assurance seems to wane. And so, out of compassion to them, the Puritans are grappling with this. What would be the cause? The cause does not appear here to be in the believer. The believer is walking with God, and as he ought to be. He's not backsliding, yet he's lacking assurance. And so the answer they came up with was, God must have his own wise reasons why he sometimes withdraws from his people. And then they found those reasons in Scripture, and so they made a list of them. And so they often went to Isaiah 50, that a child of light sometimes walks in darkness, and that type of thing. So in desertion, they call it divine desertion, divine withdrawal, which often produces the dark night of the soul for a believer, brings them into a kind of spiritual depression, if you will, or in this vehement temptation they speak about, or this delayed assurance. God has his holy reasons. And these lists of Burgess and Brooks are just suggestive. God may have many other reasons that he's not communicating with us. But remember, this is not the norm. This is the exception. We shall know hereafter the reasons why. So what do they mean then, by vehement temptations, sudden or extreme trials, or afflictions? A little while ago I said afflictions in the last lecture can be a means to increase their assurance. But afflictions, when not sanctified by the Holy Spirit, can also be a means to decrease assurance. For example, when the afflicted believer receives no light for his soul and he can't find any of the evidences of the work of God within him, everything appears vague. What should he do? Well, if it appears that he's being deserted by God, and he can't find any work of the Spirit in his soul. He should just flee to the promises of God, said Burgess, and hang his naked soul on those promises. And second, we ought not think it strange that we are subject to manifold temptations, says Peter, and so God will get his glory, and he has our good in view even through the temptation of losing assurance. He will draw men to himself and minister to them also through this affliction. Third, believers therefore should appreciate afflictions rather than reject them, for afflictions are like medicines for us. When we lose assurance, they awaken us to what we've lost, and we cry out to God. And God can use those same afflictions to turn us around and to increase our assurance. So here's what the Westminster divines come up with in other articles as well, which I don't have time to go into here. But they speak of God's fatherly discipline, which teaches us to right walking, as they call it, walking rightly in your godly life. They speak of God's fatherly sovereignty, which teaches dependence. And they speak about his fatherly wisdom because he always does what is best for his own. So, dear believer, if you don't understand why your assurance is going down, if you search your own heart and you say, I'm using all the spiritual disciplines, as far as I know I'm not backsliding, rest in this. Your Father knows best, and he may be exercising fatherly discipline, fatherly sovereignty, fatherly wisdom towards you. Don't despair. Soon your Heavenly Father's face will shine in favor upon you again, because his face is only temporarily seemingly turned away from you. But he really loves you with an unspeakable love. And the reason why it's only temporarily turned away from you is because it was fully and really turned away from His Son on the Cross. For the first time since eternity passed, Christ was forsaken that you would never be forsaken of God, and therefore don't despair. He will visit you again with his assuring love. His face will shine on you and revive your assurance for his glory and your good. Now how then does assurance get revived? According to the Westminster Confession, the difficulty of coming up to assurance does not negate the germ of faith in the Christian. The believer 18.4 says is never destitute of God's saving work, despite his failure to see it. So the grace and essence of faith which abides with a believer, even though he's blind to the actions and practices of faith and can't see that in himself. The grace and essence of faith can never die, not even in backsliding. That root is still in the soul. And so, as backsliding begins with the neglect of genuine prayer and dependency on the Spirit, revival of assurance begins with renewed prayer, confession and forsaking of sin and a longing cry of the heart that the Holy Spirit not be taken from us. That's why I read to you Psalm 51:11 12. What happens in revival of assurance is that we return from our backsliding, we repent before God, God resumes his more active work in our soul, and we experience something like the poem, the beautiful poem of William Cooper. O for a closer walk with God A calm and heavenly frame, a light to shine upon the road that leads me to the Lamb? Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul refreshing view of Jesus and his Word? What peaceful hours I once enjoyed. How sweet their memories still. But they have left an aching void the world can never fill. Return, O holy dove Return, sweet messenger of rest. I hate the sins that made thee mourn and drove thee from my breast the dearest idol I have known. Whate' er that idol be, help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee. So shall my walk be close with God, calm and serene My frame so purer light shall mark the road that leads me to the Lamb. What is Cooper saying? He's saying that assurance is received the same way it was obtained the first time. And Burgess maps out how that should be done. It's the message to the Church of Ephesus. Remember, return, repent and do the first works. Believers should review their lives, confess their backsliding, humbly, cast themselves upon their covenant, keeping God and his gracious promises in Christ once again. They should use the means of grace again, pursue holiness again, exercise tender watchfulness again, and take heed of grieving or quenching the spirit. We don't hear much about these things today from many pulpits, do we? When's the last time you heard a sermon on watchfulness of your own soul? This was big in the Puritan. Be watchful. Don't let things slip. Use the means, revive assurance. As Thomas Shepard said, be always converting and always converted. Become more humble, more sensible of sin, more near to Christ Jesus. Then your heart may be more sure of your salvation as well. So in summary, if you are a believer who has lost much or even all of your assurance, do not despair. Keep running the race set before you, laying aside sin looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith. He will send His Spirit at His time to restore you. You may have lost your assurance, but you've not lost your sonship, nor have you lost the Spirit's commitment to continue working in you. Even your awareness of your loss. Is his work already in you, beginning to bring you back? And don't forget, you may have lost momentarily your temporal spiritual happiness, but you've not lost your guaranteed eternal happiness. Your loss is recoverable. If Job and David could recover their loss of assurance, why shouldn't you? And above all remember that your loss here is only for a short time. Soon you will have perfect assurance and perfect enjoyment of God forever in the eternal celestial city. So wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.
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And how we long for that eternal celestial city, don't we? You're listening to Renewing youg Mind and that was Joel Beeke from his series Assurance of Faith. The question of assurance is so common. I do hope that you take the time to begin at the beginning and work through this entire 11 part series. Dr. Beke is thoughtful and systematic as he provides this thorough overview of assurance, coming at it from many different aspects. When you donate today at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800.435.4343, we'll send you the series on DVD and unlock the messages and study guide in the free Ligonier app. Our assurance as believers can increase or diminish over time, so it can be so helpful to have already thought deeply about what the Bible says before a dark night of the soul arrives. Perhaps consider if there's someone in your life who would be greatly helped by a study like this. Request the Assurance of faith series on DVD and digitally when you give a gift at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast Show Notes. And if you live outside of the US and Canada, you can access the messages and study guide when you show your support@renewingyourmind.org global. Thank you for your regular support to help take the truth of the Gospel around the world through the outreach of Renewing your mind. What is the role of the Holy Spirit when it comes to your assurance of faith as a Christian? Don't miss Wednesday's episode here on Renewing your Mind.
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Sam.