We've got some loose ends to try to tie together here, so I want to encourage you to get a copy of the outline. I want to wrap up some things about the creation and providence, and then hopefully get into chapter 6 and 7, which deal with the fall of man, and then the covenants which God has established, all of which are expressions of the eternal covenant, which was established between the Father and the Son, the end of which, the goal of which, is the redemption of the people. And hopefully we'll at least be able to begin some of that today, maybe, maybe not. I want to pick up a couple of things and make some comments about them, because I think they're real important for us to consider. The first of them, there is this phrase in the confession, this is chapter 4, section 2. This phrase that comes right out of the scriptures, as much of the language of the confession does. It's in the first sentence, after God had made all other creatures, He created man, male and female, with a reasonable and immortal souls, in due with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness after His own image. And the phrase that I want to look at, I want us to consider for a few minutes, is this phrase, man is male and female, and I want to read Genesis 1, just a couple of verses. And set the creation of the man and the woman in the context of creation. I'm going to read Genesis 1 starting at verse 21. Just prior to that, in verses 18 to 20, God observes that it isn't good for the man to be alone. Again, so we have this in mind, Genesis 1 is a description of the creative activity of God, where God, in the course of these six days, creates all things, and I'm sorry, I mean, I've got to do Genesis 1 before we do Genesis 2, and at the end of the sixth day, as the supreme illustration of His creative activity, the crowning point of His creative activity, He creates the man and the woman. So you read Genesis 1, 26 and following, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the year, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. The created man in his own image, in the image of God, He created him, male and female, He created them, then God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the year, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Now, there's a great deal of concern, justified concern, in our culture among Christians about the institution of marriage, and an awful lot that has been written regarding the relationship of husband and wife in the context of the institution of marriage, and a whole lot of ink spilled, particularly over or out of Ephesians 5 and the admonition that husbands are to submit to wives, no, no, no, no, no. Could I hear some amen's that wives are to submit to husbands and husbands are to love their wives, and lots of conversation and lots of ink spilled over questions of headship, Paul and Corinthians, does that the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church, and there's a lot of wrestling that continues to go on over the exact nature of this relationship between the husband and the wife, and what does it mean that the husband is the head, and the wife is to submit, and the husband is to love his wife, and all of that kind of thing. Well, I always think that it's a very great mistake to consider those passages apart from the context of creation, of how God has created the man and the woman. Now those are important issues, and they need to be addressed and dealt with. I'm not going to get into that stuff today, okay? We don't have time to do that. I did a class a year ago called Great Expectations in the first two or three weeks. I spent a lot of time talking about Genesis and Ephesians and all of that stuff. So if you want, well, probably there's a poor attempt at explaining it all, you can go get those tapes. If you want a better attempt, I can suggest some other resources, but I want for us to understand a couple of things which flow out of this creation narrative and which impact it seems to me very significantly our understanding of the relationship of the man and the woman, the husband and the wife. And the first of those things is that the male and the female, the man and the woman together are the image bearer of God, okay? God creates the man and the woman as male and female and image bearers, all right? The man is the image bearer of God, the female, the woman is the image bearer of God, the man and the woman together are the image bearer of God. There's a lot of mystery in this, okay? There is a sense in which the man and the woman in their relationship together give expression to things which are true of God as a triune, multi-personal God, which an individual person does not give expression to, okay? The man and the woman in their relationship together give expression to certain things about God that an individual in isolation does not express. We said in talking about the character of God that God is triune, three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, existing as one God. You can differentiate the persons in the Godhead, but there is this essential unity so that you don't separate the Father from the Son or the Father and Son from the Spirit. There is this essential unity. They are one God in three persons, and they exist together as a triune personal unity. They exist together in perfect felicity. That's a great word. Anybody know what felicity means? Happiness. They exist together in perfect happiness. There is a perfect interdependence. There is a perfect and mutual joy and delight. There is perfect communication, perfect love, perfect singularity of purpose, okay? All of those things are true of the Godhead, and the man and the woman, the husband and the wife in their relationship together give expression at some level to the multi-personal nature of God, okay? And a person in isolation because he is one person or she is one person in isolation can't give expression to those things. That's the first thing, okay? Man in the image of God or male in the image of God, female in the image of God, male and female together give expression to the being and character of God, obviously at the level of the creature, right? The second thing is the man and the woman, the male and the female are equals before God. They stand before God as equal, okay? I cannot stress this point enough, and here's a distinction that we want to make. We said, number one, that the man and the woman, male and female, to give expression at the level of the creature, they don't exhaust this reality, okay? They don't exhaust this reality, but the man and the woman, the male and the female, together in their relationship, give expression to the multi-personal nature of the one God in a way that an individual does not, all right? The second thing that we want to recognize, and it flows out of this, is that there is an equality of persons between the man and the woman, okay? There is an equality here. Now, just as it's true in the Trinity, there is a subordination with respect to relationship and function, okay? You see that in the Trinity. You see a subordination with respect to relationship and function, okay? What does Jesus say? When he talks about why it is that he's come, he came to see, can say, that which was lost, okay? But he comes to do whose purpose, to do whose will? His father's will and purpose, okay? He is in subjection to his father. He does all the father's will, okay? Is there any sensual unity between the father and the son? Yes, there is. But is there some subordination with respect to relationship and function? Yes, there is. Does the subordination in and of itself, is there anything about subordination which reduces the essence of who the son is? No. No. The Holy Spirit comes to do whose bidding and the fathers. The Holy Spirit comes to do the bidding of the father and the son, okay? And yet the Holy Spirit is touching his essential, touching his being. The Holy Spirit is God, okay? So there is an equality of persons in the Godhead, all right? There may be a distinction and even a subordination with respect to relationship and function, but there is an essential unity and an equality of persons, okay? Whatever it is, when Paul talks about wives submitting to husbands and husbands being the head of the wife, whatever it is that the apostles talking about there, however we understand subordination, we have to remember that we are dealing with an equality of persons. We are not dealing with cattle here, okay? I said to somebody this last week, there are so many things to be said about this, but I said to somebody last week, because I was hearing some of these things from this guy that made me real nervous, okay? You know, there is stuff about leadership and headship and subordination, submission of the wife. It's still important, I think, to point out in the Ephesians thing, that the husband is not commanded to get his wife to submit. Now pastors can get members to submit, okay? Walking late in the first word you hear is amen, okay? That's not the command of Ephesians 5, what is a man commanded to do? He's commanded to love his wife as Christ, love the church, and when Christ acts in his capacity as the head of the church, what does he do? He redeems her, he loves her as a bride, he protects her and defends her, and does all of the things that are necessary to ensure her safety and well-being because she is surprised by him, okay? I said I wouldn't go to talk about that stuff, but I am, okay? I forgot what I was talking about, anyway, there is an equality of persons, there may be, and there is, within the Trinity, there is a distinction of function, and there is a subordination of the son of the father and of the spirit to the father and the son, and that subordination with respect to relationship and function does not in any way diminish the essential nature of the son and the spirit, okay, all right? And then the third thing that you see in Genesis 3 is that it is the man and the woman together who are commissioned just to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. They are commissioned together to subdue the earth and to rule over everything, okay? And so they are co-regions, they are co-regions. Now, you know, you never speculate about how things come into practice or come to be in the world, you know? It really is a funny, puzzling sort of thing to me, this is an inversion of things I think, but it is a funny and puzzling thing to me that in the game of chess, the king has no power and the queen has all power. And the king is this defenseless thing that's got to be protected by rooks and puns and who has, and the queen has the most power in protecting, now that's an inversion of things, I believe, I really do believe that's a distortion and an inversion and those roles in the game of chess are reversed in the creation. Whether it is the responsibility of the king to protect and defend and ensure the well-being of the whole environment, that's what he's supposed to do, that's in my judgment, that's what headship and leadership are all about, okay? That's what headship and leadership are all about. But the other interesting thing is if you look at a chess board, what do you have there? You have co-regency, what do you have in a monarchy? You have co-regency. That to me is a residual sort of a thing from the creation. The king and the queen together are co-regents. They are together commissioned to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, to subdue the earth and to rule over things together. And when you come to chapter two, the necessity of this co-regency is sort of born out where God looks at the man as he is in the garden and says it's not good for the man to be alone. And so he will make a helper for him and that's Genesis 2.18. The term helper really means an associate or he can be translated and associate, all right? Be translated associate. This term, by the way, is used in the Psalms of God. When the Psalms says God is the helper of Israel, the helper of Israel. So what you have in Genesis 2, first of all, is this recognition to which I will gladly say, amen, it is not good for the man to be alone, okay? Not good for this man to be alone, okay? God before the fall looks at the man as he is alone in the garden and says it's not like God did anything wrong. He doesn't, he doesn't wake up one morning and realize he made a mistake and he needs to add something, communicate or do something that he didn't do before. You understand this is for our benefit fellows? This is here for our benefit, for us to understand as macho as we think we are and as individualistic as we would like to believe that we can be the fact of the matter is, it is not good for us to be alone and we are incomplete. There is a sense in which there is an incompleteness that has to be compensated for by one who is like the man, okay? Now this comment that I heard when I was talking to this guy the other day, I'm starting to hear some of this stuff about headship and leadership and this kind of thing and I said, you need to read Genesis 1 and 2 because your wife is not a commodity to be managed. That is not what headship is about, okay? It's not about management and managing something else in your household. It's about relationships, okay? It's about relationships and your function as the head of the household is to be in your garden, what Adam was to be in his garden. The defender and protector and the one who creates the environment. I said, I've thought about this a lot over the last year and some of you who have thought about this as well. Maybe I'm wrong in drawing this connection. It's very significant to me, very significant to me, that this discussion of the creation of the man and the creation of the woman as associate for the man who completes him and there is a mutual completion that goes on to be sure. It's very significant to me that that conversation all occurs in the context of gardening, in the context of a garden where things have to be nurtured and cared for and protected and defended against the intrusion of aliens, okay? And I said to this guy, in my judgment, headship and leadership mean you have a responsibility to protect and defend, to guard, to ensure the safety and the well-being of the occupants of the garden. And the other thing it means is as a gardener, you have a responsibility for cultivating, for creating the environment in which the persons in your garden can flourish, can flourish. That's what Adam's duty was in the garden. It was to cultivate and it was to kill and it was to feed and to water and nourish everything. And then God gives in this family, what's he thinking about all day? He's thinking about rose bushes and petunias and he's thinking about cucumbers and pumpkins and he's thinking about snakes who might invade the garden, okay? And then he comes into his relationship with his wife and by extension his children and there's a transfer, you see, there's a connection between these two worlds. The world of gardening and the world of his family. And the same kind of thing is to go on, that's what we're to be about, okay? It seems to me as husband's fathers. Now, I can't talk about this anymore because we've got to press on, but I've unloaded my stuff, at least in broad general strokes, about what I think marriage and family are. If you want to talk with me about this further, that's great, if you want to get the tapes, that's great, but I'll tell you something guys, if we would forget about this headship leadership stuff and focus more on protecting, defending and nurturing all of the controversy over headship and leadership would vanish like a fog after the sun comes up. It would just disappear, okay? End of sermon, let's move on. Should we quit? All right, now move from some difficult stuff to some more difficult stuff. Look at chapter 5, section 5. I want to say a couple more things about providence and how providence, and you're going to hear not under the heading of providence, but those of you've not been at worship yet, you're going to hear something about this this morning in a different sort of a way. I want to read section 5 of chapter 5, which deals with providence. And again, just very quickly, where do we begin? We begin in the confession with scripture. The Bible is the Word of God, the only infallible rule in matters of faith and practice, what we're to believe and how we're to live. And then we move on to God. We sort of have to begin here at least experientially because we've got to have some source. You know, we've got to have some repository of information so that we can know the truth about God. And that's what scripture gives us. So we move on to God. And then we talk about the decree of God in chapter 3. And that is God's plan. Chapter 4 is creation, which is God putting the plan together or not putting the plan together, but building according to the plan. And then chapter 5 is providence, which is God's maintaining everything that he's made. We're doing here. Hebrews 1 and 2 upholds all things by the word of his power. Or maybe it's 3. All right. So we're in providence. Now, you remember what we said about this. This is tough stuff, but we're tough in the sense that we wrestle with it. It's not tough in the sense that it makes perfect sense logically. It makes perfect sense that God would have a plan that he would implement that plan and that he would maintain everything that he's built. It makes sense that God who has a plan would work all things after the council of his own will. It makes sense that God who is omnipotent and who is omniscient who knows everything would be the alpha and the omega would know the beginning and the end and all of the dots that connect the beginning to the end. Now, the difficulty, of course, is when we come to difficulty, when we come to pain and anguish and all of the effects and ravages of the fall, and we've talked about some of that, but I want to look at section 5 of chapter 5. This is on the one hand, excruciating and on the other hand, extremely comfortable. Extremely comfortable. Listen to section 5. The most wise, righteous and gracious God duck oftentimes. Now, that's a troubling word in this particular paragraph. Duck oftentimes, leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins or to discover unto them, in that great language, to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts that they may be humbled, and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends. Now, let's lay the groundwork for this. Our big difficulty, of course, is the question, the issue, how does the Titanic strike the iceberg in the first place? That's the big question, that's the trouble. Now, that is a very important question, but if you're on the Titanic, what is the more important question to you? How do I get off? When you're back home in the comfort of your living room before the roaring fire, you can reflect and consider and compile all kinds of data and information to seek to answer the question, how does the Titanic hit the iceberg in the first place? But when you're on the Titanic, the big question is, how do I get off this thing before it goes down? Now folks, that's where we are. We're on the Titanic. I don't know why the Titanic hit the iceberg. I just know it did. And the evidence of the fact that the Titanic hit the iceberg is all around me. It is all around me. I'm getting old, you're getting old. I'm going to die, you're going to die. And all of the things related to that, that's the evidence. The Titanic struck the iceberg. The question is, who's in control now? Who's in charge of all of this difficulty? And that's where this particular section of the confession, it seems to me, provides us with, well, again, tough to wrestle with, it provides us with extraordinary comfort. Who has all of the circumstances of my life in his hands? Who has the difficulty that comes into my life in his hands? Is God, it's another woman looking for a platform, I think. See, too, can play this game. Who has all the difficulties of my life in his hands? God does. Am I exposed in the circumstances of my life? There's a sense in which I am. Is there any sense in which anything comes into my life, which God not only is not in control of, but has not ordained for my well-being? The answer is no. That's what the confession is saying here. Acknowledging the fact that we live in a fallen and broken world where the Titanic has struck the iceberg and things are going down. Number one, the big thing is, God has provided a means of escape, a way to get up to Titanic. But while you're getting off the Titanic, while you're jumping off the boat, swimming in that frigid water, trying to get into a lifeboat, trying to make your way from that lifeboat to a place of safety and security. And that's where we are. We're in these lifeboats surrounded by gale-force winds, cold freezing water, sharks. That's where we live. In the midst of all of that, in the midst of the brokenness, what the confession is saying is that the difficulties that come into my life are there because God wants them to be there. And even more specifically, the confession talks about manifold temptations being left to manifold temptations and to the corruption of our own hearts. Can anybody relate to this? Okay. Manifold temptations and the corruptions of our hearts aren't their times when it seems that all of the forces of hell have arraid themselves against you. And the temptations that you bolted by would seem to drown you and overwhelm you. Aren't there times mercifully? They don't last? And mercifully, we don't really ever see the entirety of it. Aren't there times when you are given a vision, an insight, a sense of the corruption of your own heart? And you ask yourself, how can I possibly be a Christian? How can I possibly be a Christian and think that thought or do that thing? And the real hell of it is. It isn't just the things that sneak up on you and kind of bite you from behind. It's the premeditation who said besetting sin. It's like I said last week, you think you've lopped the head off the Hydra and boy, you turn around, you think you've gained the victory. I don't know where that language comes from, but it doesn't come from the Bible. The victory, the final victory has been won and will be experienced fully in glory. Have you gained the victory? But every time I think I've gained the victory, the Hydra grows seven more heads. And I just feel like I'm being swallowed up by these snakes. Now the question is, in the midst of that, who's responsible for allowing that stuff to come at us? It is God. It is God. You know what Paul, this is the, it's up there. It's on the first tier of difficult sayings in the Bible. Paul writes to the Thessalonians in the fifth chapter and says, in everything, give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. And in everything, give thanks. Why is it that I can be admonished justifiably, legitimately admonished, to give thanks in everything? Talk to me about it. Why is it that I can give thanks for everything? He's working all things for our best purpose, for our good. Do you believe that? Chris, doing so, giving thanks, is that what you're talking about? Giving thanks in all things would bring him great glory. Why, why does it bring him glory? Because in giving thanks, we would be acknowledging that we trust him. And what else did you say? That he's in charge, that he is who he says he is. What else? His grace and his mercy? Okay. Okay. Because of the cross, we have nothing to fear. Nothing to fear. Because of his blood. Nothing to be afraid of. I wish I could live that way, don't you? I said to somebody, this is sort of freewheeling, I hope that's okay, but it's awfully important that we wrestle with this and get settled in this stuff. I said to somebody a couple of weeks ago who was talking about a besetting sin. I said, in the course of this conversation, she said, I struggle with guilt and I've got all of these wrestling with guilt because of my sin. And I said, well, I can relate to that. Everybody can. I understand that. But there's one sin that's greater than the most magnificent sin you can imagine. And this is, this really is at the heart of the gospel to me. There's one sin that's even greater than the most magnificent sin that you can imagine. And I didn't ask her what her magnificent sin was because I didn't want her to ask me what mine is. What is the sin that is even greater than the most magnificent sin you can imagine? Not believing what? Not believing the gospel? See, when I walk around and carry a lot of guilt around with me and I do it, I'm not, I haven't gained the victory here, okay? When I walk around carry a lot of guilt with me about stuff, what I'm saying, at least at an experiential level is, that I've got to atone for my own sin. And I'm saying by implication that the death of Christ upon a cross is not infinite in value. And there's something I've got to feel or there's something I've got to do or some further repentance that has to characterize my life before I'll be forgiven and accepted by the father and free of this guilt. The real sin, the real struggle in the Christian faith is to believe. I mean, I've got struggles, you know, I want to quit doing this and I want to quit thinking that and all that other stuff, but that's not the real struggle. The real struggle is the struggle to believe the gospel. Believe that God means what He says when He says it and to rest in those truths and particularly the truth of the gospel, the truth that Christ, when He died on the cross, died for me and because He died, the penalty has been paid and the guilt is gone. Now you understand we're distinguishing different kinds of there's that those paying that conviction of the Holy Spirit, which is a good thing that is to drive it back to the cross so that we can be free at the level of conscience.
And what the confession is saying here is in effect, that's why God allows these temptations to come into our lives. That's why God exposes to us the great corruptions in our hearts. Not to destroy us, not to crush us, not to kill us, but to do what? Drive us back to the cross, drive us back to Christ where there is real sweetness to be found, where there is forgiveness to be found. So that we can be separate, maybe not. The answer is no. Is God the author of sin, the answer is no.
Do you remember that, remember us talking about means and ends and I can't find the section. Somebody helped me, where is the section that talks about God not being the author of sin? 3-1? Yeah, there we go. This is back in chapter 3. I'm on page 30 of the Williamson book. God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away but rather established. Again, this is that stuff that is real, real profound, but what is being said there is that God has ordered what so ever comes to pass. He has ordained the end from the beginning. But he has also established, that's the language that Jews there, he has established secondary causation as a means by which he accomplishes this purpose, which he has ordained from before the foundation of the world. And the distinction is the distinction between ends and means to those ends. Okay, God has a purpose, he has an end or a goal, but he has also established those means, which the confession calls secondary causation, those means by which his purpose is accomplished. Now, they are not the only thing God continues moment to moment, instant to instant, to be ruling and directing, providentially upholding. These means, this is what we said last week, these means don't operate apart from God. The universe and the purpose of God are not a wind up toy, that God sets in motion and then he just sort of watches it all work at a distance. Okay, God continues to uphold all of this by the word of his power, and he is accomplishing his purpose through those means which he has appointed. And the choice of Adam to disobey was for ordained before the foundation of the world, but it was accomplished through this secondary causation, the real choice of Adam. And the mystery is in these two things, the sovereignty of God and the certainty that his purposes are being accomplished, and the real freedom of those whom he has endowed with the ability to make choices. Okay. Yeah, Katie. Okay. Yeah. Can you go ahead? No temptation is overtaking you, except such as coming to you, but God is faithful. You will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. Great. Did you all hear that? You know that passage? First Corinthians 10, 13. Okay. Sometimes it doesn't feel like we're going to be able to bear it, but you know, we're all here. That's the amazing thing. We're still standing. We're still here. And that's testimony to the fact that that promise is a real promise and that God is faithful to it. That we're all here. First Corinthians 10, let me read it. Let me read it. First Corinthians 10, 13. No temptation has overtaken you, except such as is common to man. That means you're not alone. Okay. Other people are struggling with the same stuff. And again, we don't do each other any favors by pretending we're something other than what we are. Okay. We just don't. We don't help each other by these Pharisees and that sort of thing. No temptation has overtaken you such as is common to man. But God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. Okay. Now, what are the what are the purposes in this? Bob, did you have a comment? I saw your hand a minute ago. Yeah. Feel the temptation. That's great. And you picked up on a word that is here. I was about to ask what are the purposes? You know, all of the temptations, all of the insights into the corruption of our own souls that we experience. What is the purpose of all of that? And the first purpose is what? That we be humbled. That we be humbled. Okay. You know, the thing that Jesus was so out really beginning to I guess understand some of this. I don't know why, but the thing that Jesus was so upset with in the Pharisees was what? There's self-righteousness and pride. Self-righteousness and pride. In a confession, identifies this tremendously important work of God that goes on in our souls. We get exposure to who and what we are so that we might not be self-righteous and might not be proud so that we might be humbled. Okay. So we might be humbled. Read the biographies of the great saints in Scripture. Just read them and read them closely and carefully. The difficulties that they endured, the trials of their lives. What were they at the end of their lives? You know, Paul, people have recognized this progression in Paul's letters where he begins in one of his early letters. I got to get all these references so I can really impress you with what I know. He begins by referring to himself as the least of the apostles, but at the end of his life he identifies himself as the chief of sinners. Now, I don't know if there's anything to that or not, but it's an interesting progression through his letters. That by the time he gets to the end, he doesn't think of himself in terms of the other apostles anymore. He thinks of himself now as the greatest of the sinners, the chief of the sinners. And you see that. You see it in Abraham. You see it in David. You see it even in Joseph. You see that in folks' lives. One thing they said was that when you come back to work with him like that, he didn't really insist on trying to explain it to America, that we had almost a period of this idea of repentance. Paul speaks for a great extent that works with repentance. Especially seconds that repentance can talk with us. But as God has told us, I'm not sure if I'm going to have to walk around with him. But there is a significant trail of repentance in this idea of repentance and the tremendously poor condition of man. The comment was that the idea of repentance has been virtually disappeared from our vocabulary and certainly from our experience in recent decades or centuries or whatever. What is repentance? What is it? What do you have to do before you can turn? You have to acknowledge that's got to be the first part of the thing. I mean, you hear me say this. We don't do ourselves any favor if we fail to acknowledge what is true about us. You hear me say, the good news will never be good news until you face squarely the bad news. When you really look at the bad news, then the good news becomes supremely good. And that's why the repentant person, the truly repentant person, is the happiest person on the face of the earth. The sort of repentance where you walk around with ashes and self-flagulation and that kind of stuff. That's not repentance. That's self-righteousness. That's trying to earn your salvation by your repentance. Repentance is acknowledging what is true about me, staring at squarely in the face and then turning to the cross and embracing the fullness and sufficiency of the cross. That that makes me the happy camper. That's why the truly humble, the truly repentant person is going to be in some sense, some measure, to some real extent, is going to be the happiest person you'll ever meet. Because the repentant person having faced this sin has also turned to the cross and has found liberation at the level of the conscience where God speaks peace to me and because God speaks peace to me, I'm at peace. But that is the first thing this is to affect is a humility among us. What else is it supposed to do, according to Section 5? I mean, I put humbling us at the top of the list because I think that's where it should be. There is in these temptations and difficulties, these exposures to the corruptions of our souls, there is God disciplining and correcting his children. Through that. And it is, it is not punishment. We need to understand that. We need to understand that punishment is a punitive thing. It has to do with law and the violation of law, but discipline or chastisement or correctment, correction, that is a fatherly thing. That is what the father does for his children. Being chastised for your sins is being corrected by the father who loves you. To discover under them the hidden strength of the corruptions of their hearts. And again, you love that language, to discover under them. It is God who has to do this discovery for us because we're disinclined to do it ourselves and incapable of doing it ourselves. It is really the spirit's work who in an ongoing way in the life of the Christian opens this stuff up to us so that we can see it. What else does it do? Raises us to a more close and constant dependence upon God. That is again, being exposed to your sins, seeing your sin turning from your sin and turning to the cross, growing in your dependence upon the cross and upon God himself. And to make them more watchful against future occasions of sin. Even though there are those times, lots of time too many times, when we do things in a premeditated way, part of the design in this is that God, as we're exposed to the corruptions of our hearts, as we're exposed to our own sin and temptation, it creates some radar for us. So that we're more... Ideally, you watch out for things. You stay away from things. You avoid things that otherwise would have that effect upon you and cause great distress to your soul. But the point in this, all of this, is that this all comes under the heading of the providence of God. That this is one of the things that God does for His people as a providential God who loves His people so that all of these benefits might accrue to them and be theirs. Okay, we got to stop. Fall in covenant next week, okay? 6, 7, and maybe 8. Any closing thoughts or questions? Defraint. Just the things you're removing are just then displayed, the however, as pastoral as it is, we want it. Don't want to say that the West mystery is a virtue. Is lacking in that, yeah. Right. And you just made it. All right, let me pray for us. Father, give us the help that we need as we go through our lives, the help that we need to rest in you to trust you to believe you. We are sorry for our sin of unbelief. We know that it is wrong. And we are glad to confess that even that sin, the sin of unbelief is not too big for Jesus, not too big for his cross, not too big for the spirit. And so we trust that even in this, even when we're unbelieving, we'll repent of that, face it squarely and believe that the work of Christ for us is big enough to wash it all away. And then believe that the spirit is great enough to increase faith in us so that we believe the gospel when we need it, when we hear it, when we speak it. Lord grant your spirit to those ends we pray. And be with us as we come to worship. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.