The Happy Threads of Divine Providence

Today’s blog is personal. I hope you will indulge me while I explain a certain happy providence that has brought a smile to my face here recently.

Sixty-one years ago this month (October, 1951) my dad, then age 22, preached a week of special meetings in a small town in northern Wisconsin. The church was newly being pastored by my dad’s best friend since high school, George Cable. Dad and George were ordained by Dr. B. Myron Cedarholm there in that church just a month previously (September), the weekend before my dad and mom were married. If you know me well you’ve likely heard me remark that my dad’s ministry was one that was unusually effective and blessed, and it was so from the very beginning. Several people came to Christ that week. One man in particular was named Dwight Duncan, a successful farmer in the area who, invited to come to those meetings, came to Christ and then raised his family for Christ, became a pillar in the church there, serving as a deacon I think until his death in the late 1990s, and remained a good friend of the Zaspel family. I recall staying at his farm as a boy in the mid 1960s. He was a bit older than my parents, and he became close with my dad’s parents also, etc. The Duncans were dear family friends. My last memory of Dwight Duncan was shortly before he died — I was home visiting my parents when Dwight phoned dad just to thank him for coming to Camp Douglas, Wisconsin, to preach the gospel so long ago.

Okay, you get the picture. There has long been a real soft spot in Zaspel hearts for Dwight Duncan and family, even though as the years have progressed the contact has been increasingly slim.

Fast forward to Lansdale, PA, 2012.  The students at Calvary Baptist Seminary are required to seek out a professor for personal mentoring — anything and everything from theology to marriage to spiritual life, etc.  When carried out conscientiously, at least, it’s a wonderful program. At my first meeting with a student here recently, over lunch, just to get better acquainted, I asked him where he was from. When he told me Wisconsin, I asked where. He replied, “Oh, a small town you’ve never heard of. Camp Douglas.” “Yeah,” I said, I think I know something about Camp Douglas.” As I began to mention my connections he of course was surprised, to say the least. Then I asked him if he happened to know the Duncan family. You can imagine my delight as he told me that Dwight Duncan was his great-grandfather. So of course now his grandmother (Dwight’s daughter) and my mother are enjoying the connection also, etc. Looking back on our lunch I feel a bit guilty — there wasn’t much “mentoring” going on, but there was a lot of tracing out our family connections!

So, sixty-one years ago this month a man came to Christ through my dad’s preaching ministry. Now that man’s great-grandson is one of my students. I hope you understand the smile that I’ve been wearing here lately!

I suspect that one of the joys of heaven will be the tracing of the many happy threads of divine providence.

Quenching the Spirit

In 1 Thessalonians 5:19 the Lord gives us a command through his inspired apostle that I have often found fascinating. In most translations the verse reads, “Do not quench the Spirit.” In our NIV it reads more colorfully, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.” I find this verse fascinating not simply because of what it commands but also because of what it implies.

We understand that this New Covenant age is the age of the Spirit’s abundant work. The Spirit of God has come to “indwell” God’s people in full measure, and he works in us in many different ways. He is “the Spirit of sonship” in that he ministers to us a confident sense of God’s fatherly love to us and an assurance that we belong to him as his children. He gifts us for service. He “leads” us into practical godliness and cultivates in us “the fruit of the Spirit” — those virtues of Christlikeness that God requires of us. And of course it was the Holy Spirit who brought us to faith at the very outset of our Christian experience. In all this the Spirit of God works sovereignly and powerfully. We would be nothing without him. We would not grow in grace, we would not serve God, we would have no assurance, and we would not even trust in Christ in the first place. What a blessed and vital role he serves in our salvation!

Yet God tells us that we should not “quench” him. We should not “put out his fire,” as it were. The plain implication is that by our sin we may stifle the Spirit’s effectiveness in us. We may by our sin hinder the work which he has come to do in us and for us.

In regeneration God acts sovereignly, and he acts alone. He works within us to bring us to life and to faith in Christ. We believe, but only in response to his initial and powerful work in us. We call this “irresistible grace,” simply because God’s calling proves irresistible in bringing about our willing conversion. In John 3, in his discussion with Nicodemus, Jesus spoke just this way — the Spirit is like the wind that blows effectually wherever he wants!

But in the process of growth in grace, a certain cooperation is required on our part. Everywhere in the New Testament we are called to “yield” ourselves to God, to submit to his leading and promptings to godliness. “Walk in the Spirit,” we are commanded. “Be filled with the Spirit.” We must work with Him in the cultivation of godliness, and only as we do will we know the fullness of his blessing. “Trust and obey,” we sing, “for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus.” We must trust and obey. And if we do not, God’s Spirit may be quenched and his effectiveness stifled.

Still further, the apostle Paul in this passage (1 Thess. 5: 11ff) is speaking to the church corporately, and there is just the hint that his warning is not to be understood merely on an individual level. His caution to the church is that by their sin — in context: by their thanklessness, their prayerlessness, their lack of appreciation for those who lead them, their lack of concern for the public ministry of the Word of God, and so on — they may quench the Spirit’s work among them.  What otherwise might have been accomplished among them has been shut out by their sin.

This, then, is just one of those passages that warns us of the effects of our sin. Our sin carries with it consequences both for us and for those around us. Like Achan in the book of Joshua, whose sin halted the progress of Israel’s army and brought the death of many, our sin can drastically hinder the Spirit’s work among us and hold back the blessing we might otherwise realize.

For God’s sake, for our own sake’s, for the sake of one another, and for the sake of our corporate advance of the gospel, let us be careful to walk in the Spirit and see to it that His work among us will not be hindered.

Who is Jesus?

In Matthew chapter 16 Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But who do you say I am?” Jesus asked. And so Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.”

I am sure that when people of Jesus’ day said that they thought he was John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah, they meant to be generous and complimentary. After all, it was an honorable thing to be numbered among the great prophets! Jesus Himself said that John the Baptist was the greatest of the prophets. To be identified with them would be an honor indeed.

Not surprisingly, then, when we ask people today the same question — “Who is Jesus?” — similar answers are often given. Some may say he was a prophet like the other prophets, with some differences perhaps. They may say he was a great teacher. Or they may place him in a respectable category of religious leaders such a Mohammed, Budah, Confucious. We often hear that he was a man like other men — a man with superior qualities in significant areas, of course, but in the final analysis, a man on the level of other men.

What is significant is that these answers, as respectful as they may have seemed, did not satisfy our Lord. Not until Peter acknowledged Jesus as the Divine Messiah was the question answered well enough. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!”

 In his comments on this passage Matthew Henry observes, simply, that it is entirely possible to have an honorable opinion of the Lord Jesus which is nonetheless wrong. An honorable opinion that is not honorable enough. Not until, like Peter, we acknowledge Jesus’ uniqueness and recognize Him as the Lord from Heaven do we give Him the honor and reverence that is due Him.