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The Pilgrim Path (7-20-2020)

The Pilgrim Path---Genesis 3: 1—5 (7—20—20)

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden ?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

  1. I. PACKER

Dr. Packer died this past Friday. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. I first heard him speak in person at the Pensacola Theological Institute, McIIwain Memorial Presbyterian Church, around 1983. This was close to the time he published his work, “Keep in Touch with The Spirit.” He was a tireless teacher, writer, theologian, and churchman. He made the hard doctrines accessible to people all over the world. His Ph. D. (Oxford) focused on the Puritan, Richard Baxter (remarkable man himself). Packer may be best known as the author of, “Knowing God” ---but he produced many, many other extraordinary volumes. Here are some of my favorites, which I highly recommend:

Serving the People of God

A Quest for Godliness

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God

“Fundamentalism” and the Word of God

Rediscovering Holiness: Knowing the Fullness of Life with God

Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God

The following quote is from Packer’s work, “Honoring the Written Word of God” ----OH, How I need to hear it ---again and again…

“Whence comes the impulse---common, indeed, to us all---to trust and follow the leading of human reason in religion, rather than be content simply to take God’s word for things? Whence comes the impulse to exalt reason over revelation, and the sense of outrage which is so widely felt when the authority of reason in religion is challenged? Answer: The spirit springs from sin.

To doubt revelation in favor of a private hunch was a sin into which Satan led Eve, and Eve’s children have been committing the same sin ever since. The impulse to indulge oneself in believing something other than what God has said is an expression of the craving to be independent of God, which is the essence of sin. The attempt to know all things, including God, by reason, without reference to revelation, is the form this craving for independence takes in the intellectual realm, just as the attempt to win heaven by works and effort, without grace, is the form it takes in the moral realm. Pride prompts fallen mankind to go about, not merely to establish their own righteousness, but also to manufacture their own wisdom. The quest all along is for self-sufficiency: Our sinful arrogance prompts us to aspire after independence of God in the realm of knowledge. We want to be intellectually autonomous, intellectually self-made men.

The gospel, fundamentally, is a message that tells us it is useless to seek for truth about God by speculation, and it comes to us as a command to stop speculating and to put faith in what God has said, simply on the grounds that he, the God of truth, has said it. The gospel, in other words, repudiates absolutely the authority of reason and demands implicit subjection to God’s revealed truth.”

Lord, help me yield to Scripture. If you have ever read much of John Calvin (the Father of Presbyterianism) you will notice a similar train of thought between the two---reason must be the servant of God’s Holy Word (the flesh loves to come up with excuses).

Jesus my Shepherd is; ‘twas he that loved my soul,

‘Twas he that washed me in his blood, ‘twas he that made me whole;

‘Twas he that sought the lost, that found the wandering sheep,

‘Twas he that brought me to the fold, ‘tis he that still doth keep.

Horatius Bonar, 1843

Grace and Peace in Jesus Christ Our Risen LORD, Pastor Jason