The Transforming Glory of God

The glory of God has been a theme on which I have been reflecting throughout this year of 2012. I've been re-reading a book which I first read two years ago concerning the glory of Christ. It is called "The Glory of Christ" by the 17th century Puritan minister John Owen.

I highly recommend this book. If you are new to the writings of John Owen, you may wish to get the Banner of Truth version of the book edited by R.J.K. Law to make Owen's 17th century English a bit more readable and understandable to an early 21st century reader.

Here's a quote from that edition about meditating on the Bible to see the glory of Christ in it by faith:

Having come to the light of the knowledge of the glory of Christ from Scripture or by the preaching of the gospel, let us regard it as our duty to meditate frequently on his glory. It is the neglect of meditation that keeps so many Christians in a feeble state, regardless of their privileges. They hear of these things and assent to the truth of them or at least they do not question them. But they never solemnly meditate on them. They think that meditation is above their capabilities, or they are totally ignorant of how to go about it, or they are not too concerned about it, or they treat it as fanaticism. Many cannot meditate because their minds are so cluttered up with earthly things. The mind must be spiritual and holy, freed from all earthly clutter. It must be raised above things below if we wish to meditate on the glory of Christ. So many are stangers to this duty because they do not mortify [put to death] their earthly desires and concerns.

I highly recommend this book. It put me into the mindset of recognizing how central, how marvelous and how transforming is our beholding of the glory of God.

An Interesting Meditation on Numbers 21

During the summer, while doing research for an article, I happened to find an autobiography of one of the individuals who preached in England during the revival which swept the British Isles in the late 1850s and early 1860s. From Death Into Life is the story of William Haslam (1818-1905), an English country parson who, in 1851, was converted during the preaching of a sermon on the topic of conversion. The unusual aspect of this is that the sermon was preached by William Haslam himself. The evidence of his changed heart and mind during that sermon was so obvious that a Methodist preacher in attendance at the service began to cry out "The Parson is converted!"

I wanted to include a brief section of Chapter 34 of the book as it is a meditation on the text of Numbers 21:5-9:

The people spoke against God and Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food." The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So the people came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us." And Moses interceded for the people. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live." And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.

Numbers 21:5-9 NASB

Recounting an incident just prior to his departure from Hayle, St. Johns, Haslam reflected:

A few weeks before leaving Hayle, as I was sitting by the fire one wet afternoon, my eyes fell on a little coloured picture on the mantle-piece, which had been the companion of my journeys for all the twenty years of which I have been writing. It was a quaint mediaeval illustration of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, copied from a valuable manuscript (Book of Prayers) in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

As I looked at the engraving before me, I began to suspect for the first time that there was a design in the arrangement of the figures, and that it was really intended to convey some particular teaching. I took it in my hand and studied it, when I observed that the cross or pole on which the serpent was elevated stood in the centre, dividing two sets of characters, and that there were serpents on one side, and none on the other.

Behind the figure of Moses, is a man standing with his arms crossed on his breast, looking at the brazen serpent. He has evidently obtained life and healing by a look. On the other side, I observed that there were four kinds of persons represented, who were not doing as this healed one did to obtain deliverance.

First, there is one who is kneeling in front of the cross, but he is looking towards Moses, and not at the serpent, and apparently confessing to him as if he were a priest.

Next behind him is one lying on his back, as if he was perfectly safe,though he is evidently in the midst of danger; for a serpent may be seen at his ear, possibly whispering "Peace, peace, when there is no peace."

Still further back from the cross there is a man with a sad face doing a work of mercy, binding up the wounds of a fellow-sufferer, and little suspecting that he himself is involved in the same danger.

Behind them all, on the background, is a valiant man who is doing battle with the serpents, which may be seen rising against him in unabating persistency.

I observed that none of these men were looking at the brazen serpent as they were commanded to do. I cannot describe how excited and interested I became; for I saw in this illustration a picture of my own life. Here was the way of salvation clearly set forth, and four ways which are not the way of salvation, all of which I had tried and found unavailing. This was the silent but speaking testimony of some unknown denizen of a cloister, who lived in the beginning of the fifteenth century, in the days of ignorance and superstition. But not withstanding this darkness,he was brought out into the marvellous light of the Gospel, and has left this interesting record of his experience.

Like him, I also had fought with serpents, for I began in my own strength to combat with sin, and strove by my own resolutions to overcome. From this, I went on to do good works, and works of mercy, in the vain hope of thus obtaining the same for myself. Then, I relied in the Church for salvation, as God's appointed ark of safety; but not feeling secure, I took another step beyond, and sought forgiveness through the power of the priest. This I found was as ineffectual as all my previous efforts. At last, I was brought (by the Spirit of God) as a wounded and dying sinner, to look at the Crucified One. Then (as I have related), I found pardon and peace. Ever since it has been my joy and privilege (like Moses pointing to the serpent) to cry, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). "I have determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified;" that is, to tell only of the person and office of Jesus Christ our Lord.

As you may have guessed, the photograph above is that of William Haslam.

The Link Between Prayer and Meditation

Recently, I have been re-reading "Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life" by Donald Whitney. It made a great impact on my Christian life when I first read it ten years ago. It contains a great number of reminders to develop our faith through biblically-based disciplines such as fasting, observing silence and solitude, journaling, etc. In my current re-reading, I have paid particular attention to his chapter on the discipline of prayer. The chapter is a good overview of the reasons and motivations for prayer. One apsect of prayer which Whitney covers and which I haven't seen covered elsewhere is the linkage between meditation and prayer.

First, some definitions are in order. In our multi-cultural and multi-religion society, we might think about meditation in its eastern religious sense in which meditation is the emptying of one's mind. My intended sense here is not the eastern religions' sense but one which follows a biblical pattern. It is the thoughtful pondering of Scripture. It is the process by which we think through the implications of biblical truths and how they apply to our lives.

Psalm 119 is the quintessential call to biblical meditation. Being the longest chapter of the Bible with 176 verses, it explicitly calls us to meditate in six separate verses:

Verse 15: I will meditate on Your precepts And regard Your ways.

Verse 23:Even though princes sit and talk against me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes.

Verse 27: Make me understand the way of Your precepts, So I will meditate on Your wonders.

Verse 48: And I shall lift up my hands to Your commandments, Which I love; And I will meditate on Your statutes.

Verse 78: May the arrogant be ashamed, for they subvert me with a lie; But I shall meditate on Your precepts.

Verse 148: My eyes anticipate the night watches, That I may meditate on Your word.

The 17th century English Puritan Thomas Watson noted in his typical colorful style:
Meditate upon what you read.-- "I will meditate in thy precepts" (Ps. 119:15). The Hebrew word [for] "meditate" signifies, "to be intense in the mind." In meditation there must be a fixing of the thoughts upon the object: the Virgin Mary "pondered" those things, &c. (see Luke 2:19). Meditation is the concoction of scripture: reading and meditation must, like Castor and Pollux appear together. Meditation without reading is erroneous; reading without meditation is barren. The bee sucks the flower, then works it in the hive, and so turns it to honey: by reading we suck the flower of the word, by meditation we work it in the hive of our mind, and so it turns to profit. Meditation is the bellows [an airpump to heat up fires] of the affections: "While I was musing the fire burned" (Ps. 39:3). The reason we come away so cold from reading the word is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation. (How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit)

What Whitney shows us in his writings is that there is natural connection between Bible reading, meditation and prayer. He quotes from Thomas Manton (1620-1677), a contemporary of Thomas Watson, to demonstrate this link:

Meditation is a middle sort of duty between the word and prayer, and hath respect to both. The word feedeth meditation, and meditation feedeth prayer. These duties must always go hand in hand; meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer. To hear and not to meditate is unfruitful. We may hear and hear, but it is like putting a thing into a bag with holes…It is rashness to pray and not to meditate. What we take in by the word we digest by meditation and let out by prayer. These three duties must be ordered that one may not jostle out the other. Men are barren, dry and sapless in their prayers for want of exercising themselves in holy thoughts.

Whitney also quotes from the 19th century man of faith, George Muller, a man who ran an English orphanage in Bristol, caring for thousands of orphans, who never solicited the needed funding from others but prayed and trusted that God would supply the need. (And God did). Muller wrote:

Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer after having dressed in the morning. Now, I saw that the most important thing was to give myself to the reading of God's Word, and to meditation upon it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word of God, whilst meditating on it, my heart might be brought into experimental (experiential) communion with the Lord.

I began therefore to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning, early in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words of the Lord's blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching as it were into every verse t get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word, ot for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.

Biblical meditation has become something of a lost art among Christians today. Yet, it can provide us with a solid framework on which to base our prayers and give us a focus when our natural tendency is to mentally drift off or become easily distracted. Those who walked these ancient paths with the Lord have a timely lesson for us today.

This is what the LORD says: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls." (Jeremiah 6:16a NASB)