OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THE CREATOR

"But although our mind cannot conceive of God, without rendering some worship
to him, it will not, however, be sufficient simply to hold that he is the only being whom all ought
to worship and adore, unless we are also persuaded that he is the fountain of all goodness, and that
we must seek everything in him, and in none but him. My meaning is: we must be persuaded not
only that as he once formed the world, so he sustains it by his boundless power, governs it by his
wisdom, preserves it by his goodness, in particular, rules the human race with justice and Judgment,
bears with them in mercy, shields them by his protection; but also that not a particle of light, or
wisdom, or justice, or power, or rectitude, or genuine truth, will anywhere be found, which does
not flow from him, and of which he is not the cause; in this way we must learn to expect and ask
all things from him, and thankfully ascribe to him whatever we receive.....For, until
men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by his paternal care, and that he
is the author of all their blessings, so that nought is to be looked for away from him, they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience; nay, unless they place their entire happiness in him, they
will never yield up their whole selves to him in truth and sincerity.....What avails it, in short, to know a God with whom we have nothing to do? The
effect of our knowledge rather ought to be, first, to teach us reverence and fear; and, secondly, to
induce us, under its guidance and teaching, to ask every good thing from him, and, when it is
received, ascribe it to him. For how can the idea of God enter your mind without instantly giving
rise to the thought, that since you are his workmanship, you are bound, by the very law of creation,to submit to his authority?—that your life is due to him?—that whatever you do ought to havereference to him? If so, it undoubtedly follows that your life is sadly corrupted, if it is not framed in obedience to him, since his will ought to be the law of our lives"

Calvin Institutes of Christian Religion

How We Ought to Think about God's Providence by Thomas Boston

1. Beware of drawing an excuse for your sin from the providence of God; for it is most holy, and is in no way any cause of any sin you commit. Every sin is an act of rebellion against God; a breach of his holy law, and deserves his wrath and curse; and therefore cannot be authorized by an infinitely-holy God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity without detestation and abhorrence. Though he has by a permissive decree allowed moral evil to be in the world, yet that has no influence on the sinner to commit it. For it is not the fulfilling of God's decree, which is an absolute secret to every mortal, but the gratification of their own lusts and perverse inclinations, that men intend and mind in the commission of sin.

2. Beware of murmuring and fretting under any dispensations of providence that you meet with; remembering that nothing falls out without a wise and holy providence, which knows best what is fit and proper for you. And in all cases, even in the middle of the most afflicting incidents that happen to you, learn submission to the will of God, as Job did, when he said upon the end of a series of the heaviest calamities that happened to him, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord," Job, 1: 21. In the most distressing case, say with the disciples, "The will of the Lord be done," Acts, 21:14.

3. Beware of anxious cares and fearfulness about your material well-being in the world. This our Lord has cautioned his followers against, . "Take no thought, (that is, anxious and perplexing thought,) saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Never let the fear of man stop you from duty, ; but let your souls learn to trust in God, who guides and superintends all the events and administrations of providence, by whatever hands they are performed.

4. Do not think little of means, seeing God works by them; and he that has appointed the end, orders the means necessary for gaining the end. Do not rely upon means, for they can do nothing without God, . Do not despair if there be no means, for God can work without them, as well as with them; . "I will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen." If the means be unlikely, he can work above them, . "He considered not his own body now dead, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb." If the means be contrary, he can work by contrary means, as he saved Jonah by the whale that devoured him. That fish swallowed up the prophet, but by the direction of providence, it vomited him out upon dry land.

Lastly, Happy is the people whose God is the Lord: for all things shall work together for their good. They may sit secure in exercising faith upon God, come what will. They have good reason for prayer; for God is a prayer-hearing God, and will be inquired of by his people as to all their concerns in the world. And they have ground for the greatest encouragement and comfort in the middle of all the events of providence, seeing they are managed by their covenant God and gracious friend, who will never neglect or overlook his dear people, and whatever concerns them. For he has said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you," .

Thomas Watson – The Mercies of God Should Humble Us

The mercies of God humble us. ‘Then went King David, and sat before the Lord, and said, Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my father’s house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?’ (). Lord, why is such honour conferred upon me, that I should be king? That I who followed the sheep, should go in and out before Thy people? So says a gracious heart, ‘Lord, what am I, that it should be better with me than others? That I should drink of the fruit of the vine, when others drink, not only a cup of wormwood, but a cup of blood (or suffering to death). What am I, that I should have those mercies which others want, who are better than I? Lord, why is it, that notwithstanding all my unworthiness, a fresh tide of mercy comes in every day?’ The mercies of God make a sinner proud, but a saint humble.

~Thomas Watson~

Apologetic Junkie: There Is No Truth?

Apologetic Junkie: There Is No Truth?: "( Stand to Reason ) Greg Koukl . . .but at least fifteen things have to be true before this statement can even be uttered in English.

Recently, I was asked a question that I get asked a lot. It's a common challenge on the campus. It was offered as I spoke in the lecture hall at Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls. Though it was primarily a Christian group who came from the outside, this was the facility they used. The question is one that is asked all the time on campus.

I was reflecting on that question as I flew back this morning. I started jotting some notes down and was quite surprised at what I came up with in response to this question. They were things I'd been aware of before, but it was interesting the way it all fell together. The question was this, how to deal with somebody who says there is no truth.

Now this is very popular on campus, with deconstructionism and postmodernism, this radical skepticism that's swept the academy. It's this idea that you can't know anything for sure, nothing is set in concrete; everything is influenced by our culture, our upbringing and our suppositions, so it's impossible to get at any objective truth.

I flatly reject such a thing. I think there are a number of things we can count on as being true simply because the opposite is not possible. If we can even utter the sentence, "There is no truth"-- and, of course, we must at least utter the sentence to make the claim-- then several things must be objectively true.

First of all, if someone holds that there is no truth, then there's at least one thing that's true: the statement they just uttered that there is no truth. It's one of those awkward situations for a person making a claim, because there's no way their claim can be true. If it's true, it's false, and if it's false, it's false. Obviously, if the statement "There is no truth" is false, then it's false. But even if it's true that there is no truth, then it's also false, because that becomes a true statement, which nullifies it.

It's called a self-refuting statement. It's as if I said, "I can't speak a word of English." If I said it in English, of course that would be self-refuting. This is one of those statements. Even to utter the statement itself is a statement of truth, and so the statement that there is no truth can't stand. It defeats itself.

But there's more. In order to state the phrase "There is no truth," an individual must exist to ponder the truths of existence. Remember Descartes, sitting around in his oven back in the 18th Century, or thereabouts? He said, "I can doubt everything, but the one thing I can't doubt is the fact that I am doubting." He came up with a dictum: Cogito, ergo sum, or "I think, therefore I am." I must exist if I'm pondering my existence. Someone who states that there is no truth must exist, and so it's true that at least one individual, the one uttering the statement, must exist.

Time must also exist, by the way. Time must exist to express a sequence of words, the sequence being "There is no truth." The word "is" must come after the word "there," and the word "no" after both of them, and one can only come after the other if there's time, with present, past and future. So time must exist as an objectively true thing, because this statement was uttered with words in temporal sequence.

The statement itself is a proposition, so propositions must exist. That's a truth. It contains tokens, words that are tokens of ideas. The concept of truth, the concept of negation expressed in the word "no," must exist as ideas and be true as existants, things that exist.

There has to be the concept of unity, the idea that the four words work together in a sentence, and plurality, the distinction of the four different words. Space must exist to differentiate one word from another, separating the units.

If the statement itself that there is no truth is true, then its opposite must be false. If there is no truth, then it is not the case that there is truth. Therefore, the law of non-contradiction must exist and be true. That statement is also distinguished from all of its contradictions, so the law of identity must be true.

There's at least one sentence that exists, because the person just uttered it. That must be true. There are English words, and grammatical relationships between the words-- subject and predicate. That must be true.

The numbers one through four must exist because there are four different words. So addition must be true, because you add those units up and get the number four. The alphabet exists. Parts of speech exist, like nouns and verbs.

Do you see the point? In order to object by saying "There is no truth," there must be at least 14 things that are true before you can even make the statement. They must, in fact, be necessarily true, given the statement itself. When I say necessarily true, I mean there's no way they can be false, given the statement, "There is no truth," uttered in English. If there's such a statement uttered in English, then all these other things must be true. It's impossible for them not to be true.

That's why radical skepticism like this is not justified. As one thinker put it-- Dallas Willard, a Christian philosopher at U.S.C.-- "If we want to be intellectually honest skeptics, we must be as skeptical about our skepticism as we are about our knowledge." We should take the burden of proof to defend our skepticism instead of simply asserting our skepticism. Anyone can assert skepticism. Whether they can make sense out of their skepticism is a different thing.

That's why just uttering the statement "There is no truth," in itself establishes the truth of many different things. And if we can establish their truth just by uttering such a statement, then it seems to me there are a whole lot of other things we can determine to be true as well, and be certain about.

Therefore, radical skepticism is unjustified.

J.C. Ryle on Sanctification

Repentance towards God, faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ, holiness of life and character, prayerfulness, humility, charity, spiritual-mindedness–these are the only satisfactory proofs that the seed of God’s word is doing its proper work in our souls. Without such proofs, our religion is vain, however high our profession. It is no better than sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Christ has said, “I have chosen you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit” ().

~ J.C. Ryle Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Matthew

Herman Bavinck on The Incomprehensibility of God

“Knowledge of the absolute, accordingly is a contradiction in terms. It indicates that one has knowledge of something that is "absolute," that is, detached, without relation, and is at the same time related to a knowing subject because it is known. Now if this is the structure of thought and we still want to think (about) and know God, we invariably either lower the Absolute to the level of the finite and make God into a personal, limited, human like being;or attempt to transcend all the limitations of space and time, strip our idea of God of all likeness to a finite creature, and end up with a empty abstract idea devoid of value for religion. Indeed,even the idea slips away:under the sway of our thinking the Absolute has been reduced to nothing.Absoluteness and personality,infinity and causality, immutability and communicability, absolute transcendence and likeness to the creature-all these pairs seem irreconcilable in the concept of God. We are caught up in an insoluble antimony. It is as if we are only left with the choice between gross realism and vacuous idealism between a God who is nothing but an enlarged version of a human person and a cold abstraction that freezes and destroys the religion of the heart....To a considerable extent we can assent to and whole heartedly affirm this doctrine of the unknowability of God. Scripture and the church emphatically assert the unsearchable majesty and sovereign highness of God. There is no knowledge of God as he is in himself. We are human and he is the Lord our God. There is no name that fully expresses his being,no definition that captures him. He infinitely transcends our picture of him, our ideas of him, our language concerning him. He is not comparable to any creature. All the nations are accounted by him as less than nothing and vanity. God has no name. He cannot be defined. He can be apprehended;he cannot be comprehended. There is some knowledge but not thorough grasp of God....It is completely incomprehensible to us how God can reveal himself and to some extent make himself known in created beings: eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing. This mystery cannot be comprehended; it can only be gratefully acknowledged.”

herman bavinck reformed dogmatics

John Owen on indwelling sin

"Sin also carries on its war by entangling the affections and drawing them into an alliance against the mind. Grace may be enthroned in the mind, but if sin controls the affections, it has seized a fort from which it will continually assault the soul. Hence, as we shall see, mortification is chiefly directed to take place upon the affections."
— John Owen (Sin and Temptation)