The one thing we do not want and the one thing we need to pray for is we don't want this work to go away. We want it to be strengthened. And I say that because I just went over my fourth year as resident of Owensboro. I was up in Grand Rapids for 32 years. So really quickly after I came here, I went to Newburgh and did a Sunday school series for them. But I could tell when I was in the congregation that This wasn't going to last a long time, and to my sorrow, it was about a year later and that church folded. So our prayer is that God would strengthen you during this interim. And believe me, if you keep applying to Owensboro from the seminary, we have a lot of students who will be more than glad to come here and fill in the interim. I don't typically preach. I usually teach Sunday school, but I think this shall be interesting. So I'm going to ask God's help. You know, we understand that notionally. We're asking for God's help. But as you get along in the Christian life, this is about my 43rd year, you really begin to understand what it means when our Lord says in John 15, apart from me, you can do nothing. Ask God's help upon what I'm going to bring to you this morning. Holy Father, we pray for a gift of unction, as Paul says in Ephesians 6.20, that we would open our mouths boldly with the truth. But we want it to be the truth, and we do not want it to return unto you a void, so we pray for your Holy Spirit that the Word would come with power and won't return unto you but will accomplish that which you we ask for your help in jesus name amen my text is romans chapter 8 5 to 8 this morning and i'll just read it and Wait for a minute for you to get there. For they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the spirit is life and peace. Because a mind of the flesh, or in the King James, a carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. And they that are in the flesh cannot please God. I want to do this in a way I think it's going to be very interesting to you. I have a Facebook page called Thoughts on Christian Experience and Assurance, and it's been an interest of mine. In December, I start my 40th year of narrating Puritan and Reformed books. But the one thing that has really interested me that has a study that has fallen on soft times, you might say, is the study of Christian experience. And this is something that is really I have been drawn to because I had a lengthy awakening and conviction prior to my conversion. It was more like Christian and Pilgrim's progress. I had the burden on the back for a long time. In fact, it was about three and a half years before I really enjoyed any kind of a full assurance of salvation. So between that and my love of American church history, this is why I get the type of letters that I do. And this is about a year and a half ago, but I want to use this man's letter to me and then counsel him hypothetically from the text that I just read to you. So let me read the letter. This is what he wrote. Hello, sir. I am absolutely at the end of myself and I have no one to speak to about it. So I'm contacting you, that's me, as a sort of last ditch effort. I'm 22 years old. I was saved when I was 19 years old after a season of very deep conviction of sin and my crying out to the Lord Jesus Christ to save me. In the following weeks and months I had many experiences of a heavenly and rapturous joy over the salvation in the gospel of Jesus Christ. About six months later, I began working a job at the place that I'm still at today. The work environment was very toxic, hostile, and worldly. Through my own negligence, not realizing the power of indwelling sin, which yet remained in me, I was badly influenced by the godlessness of this environment. and I fell into many grievous sins, worldliness, crudeness, bitterness, and so on. My spiritual state only continued to darken, though now at a much faster rate. I was no longer able to draw near to God in prayer or delight in reading His word. My desires to strive after holiness and glorify God and all I did grew weaker and weaker to the point that they became imperceptible. What I need now, and remember, I'm really shortening this letter because I don't want to tax you with it, but use it as a foundation, Romans 8, 5-8, and he says, what I need to exercise is repentance and faith, but that is the very thing that I am now, listen, incapable of. I find myself greatly backslidden and full of hypocrisy and corruption. I often have very hard thoughts of God that come into my mind, thoughts that only perceive Him as an adversary, as if He has now marked me to be His mortal enemy. The inward anguish and distress is sometimes so insupportable that I can't even put it into words. Amazing, indescribable terrors befall me, unspeakable inward torment and anguish." If you ever read Pilgrim's Progress, does it remind you of maybe the Valley of the Shadow of Death, or the battle with Christian and Apollyon, or the battle in the castle of Giant Despair with hopeful This is what he's describing in this letter. The pit of hell. Amazing and describable tears befell me. Unspeakable inward torments and anguish. I wish that I had never existed because I see no hope of recovery. God is permanently against me. My heart just keeps hardening. My mind and understanding grow darker and darker." Well, in a bygone day, those type of letters were common. And I would say as late as 1860, most of the correspondence that you had from good Reformed Presbyterian pastors and others, certain Baptist pastors and so on, would be able to answer that and be able to write it intelligently that if they published a work for generations, it would be very, very edifying and people would be drawn to it. But I've been doing this type of study for 40 years and even before if you count part of my awakening and this type of study of Christian experience and the doldrums and the depression and the fears that this man is under. We don't study those things as we ought but you would think in a church with a seminary like ours has that this type of study would be interesting. But it's always been something I really enjoyed study. Though it seems very depressing, there are certain elements that you hear from one person's letter to me, to another, or over the phone, or on my Facebook page called Thoughts on Christian Experience and Assurance of Salvation. And if you enjoy studies like this on Christian experience, I'm doing a podcast right now, Our Seminary in Owensboro. Sam Waldron is a president. By the way, I brought up Sam Waldron's name. We were in Grand Rapids for 32 years. Sam Waldron married Betty and I, so we go way back. I've known of his name since 1985. But it's always been very interesting to try to see the commonalities of these letters to me and try to get to the bottom of it. But I want to do it this morning by just three points from this text. And I'm only going to lay down the foundation, but it is a very, very important foundation. I'll tell you why in a minute. And I will build, if I am to counsel somebody like this by building on to the foundation I'm laying before you this morning. And that is, we'll start with this fact. Man, as he comes into this world, has two basic problems that absolutely have to be resolved or he will be miserable throughout all eternity. And number one is he has a bad record in the heaven. and he has a corrupt, bad heart upon the earth. Both of these things have to be taken care of. Now, Paul in this epistle, I would say from Romans 3, 23 to about 8, 4, is dealing with the doctrine of justification and how a man may be right in a judicial sense before God. That's called justification. But he's got another problem, and that is his innate corruption, which he inherited because of the imputation of Adam to his posterity. And it's the new birth, which is the answer to that, also called synonymously regeneration, that I can assure you, as somebody that has studied church history for For many, many years I've taught American Church history in a small setting. I love the stories of the revivals. In fact, one of the revivals I've taught on four different times happened just 90 miles south of us in Logan County, Kentucky. And it was a great revival of 1800 they called it. So I studied these things out and I'm very enamored with how do you counsel people that are under this kind of awakening. But the doctrine of the new birth, the doctrine of regeneration is not properly emphasized in our day. And that's why you have things like the controversy over lordship salvation, because they take the fruits of the new birth, and the new birth is the answer to the corruption of the heart, and I talk to you as an audience trying to instruct you that the new birth or regeneration is going to have spiritual fruit. It's going to manifest itself in the fruit of the Spirit. It's going to manifest itself in the life of prayer, devotion to God, reading the Scriptures, and so on. But if I talk about a duty to assist us in our sanctification, I'm not talking about cause and effect. I'm not telling you that the Bible commands you to do these things so that you will be justified. That's already settled. But you do these things as a means to the end of your perseverance to the end, which flows out of the doctrine of the new birth. And what I notice more and more is some of the heretics that are coming in, like Norman Thomas Wright and T. Wright, even some of the stuff that Doug Wilson says does not have a healthy foundation of the new birth. But the thing I want to zero in on is verse 7. And the reason is, Hypothetically, we want to see if we can help this guy out, because in the beginning of his letter, he's explaining very clearly the fruits of the new birth, and that by the end of this letter, he is saying that God is his enemy, God is against him. And when I was teaching on my podcast, and I used this example, I said, well, you're not consistent here. What are you saying? That he that has begun a good work in you will not perform it until the day of Christ Jesus. But what we have to understand is what this word enmity in Romans 8-7 means and what are the fruits of it. And so before the new birth, the enmity is total, it is complete, and that is that a person who has not been born again All of his inclinations, his volitions, and his affections are sinful because they never aim at the glory of God and they cannot have any holy affection in them until he is born again. And people have to understand how total that enmity is in a man by nature so that he will understand the doctrine of innate total inability. The inability is a moral inability. And I'll use an illustration of Greg Nichols. I thought of this again. Pastor Nichols was a teacher with Pastor Waldron way back. Trinity Ministerial Academy in Montville, New Jersey in the 70s up till 1997. And Pastor Waldron and Greg Nichols taught together when we had a School of Theology in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But this illustration helps. Somebody was to come up to me and I dropped a feather on the floor and I said, could you pick that up for me? He could very easily do it physically. But what if this guy hated me so much that he would like to take my life? The enmity is inveterate against me and it is such a hostility that it makes him incapable because he hates me so much to be able to pick up the feather and hand it to me. He can't do anything to me for me because of his hostility towards me. Well that's the enmity of the heart to God. God commands and he could go through the actions but in the meantime he's hostile to God so none of his actions for God have any holy affections or any proper aim. But what I need to get to next is we need to discuss how does the enmity of the heart, how does it manifest itself in somebody who's sitting in a church like this and they maintain a profession of being Christians, but they're self-deceived. In other words, they are still at bottom, at enmity against God, they are still hostile to God, but they've now become professing Christians. Well, why does that help in the case of this man named Daniel? For me to be able to help him as I'm reasoning through this letter, I have to establish that he isn't just a hypocrite. that he has, in fact, been born again. And if he has been born again, the result will be, Romans 6, 14, sin shall no longer have dominion over him. But how would it manifest itself if you were sitting in this congregation, and maybe you were brought forth in baptism, you made a public profession in front of the people of this church, but at bottom, you were still unregenerate. And the first way it would show itself is you would leave off praying in your prayer closet. You would not have a delight to pray to God, and you would excuse it in different ways. But at bottom, if you're a hypocrite and you're still at enmity against Him, there is no heart, there is no Abba Father, there is no grace and supplication, Zechariah 12, 10. So by secret degrees and perceptible to maybe yourself and certainly to the people around you, you will leave off praying but to assist somebody like this I have to help them to see so you don't pray anymore you have no desire to read your bible anymore there are the things that have dwindled in your life you're in a state of backsliding or spiritual declension is it just a temporary thing or at bottom it's a reason that you have left off praying to God is because you have no heart for him You are still at enmity against him. In fact, you must be born again. The governing disposition, we call it, the mind, will, and affections need to be changed, and that is by the new birth that is the answer to the innate corruption of our hearts. And there is a sermon, and I narrate sermons, so any of these that I mention to you, I will have narrated. I started in December of 1985. It was a ministry to the blind. It was done on cassettes. I sent it down to Venice, Florida, where the chapel library was in. Now it's in Pensacola, and it's called Mount Zion Baptist Church and the Chapel Library. But I started narrating them because I got these materials. I had just left Trinity Baptist Church in Montbell, New Jersey in 1985. I went back home to my hometown of Montana and I got these materials. I'm kind of digging through and it says that blind patrons of the Chapel Library say that we can't get these materials in braille, would you have people step up that would want to narrate them for us? And of course I volunteered because I always wanted to see really good books be narrated very well and made available to the public. Now we have audible.com and so on, but I've got Right now about 2,200 titles that you can find if you go to sermonaudio.com and do a search on the narrated Puritan. But this sermon by Jonathan Edwards is called Hypocrites Deficient in the Duty of Prayer. And the thing that he's trying to establish is if you are a hypocrite in the church and you have a false conversion, at first you may start a life of secret prayer out of mercenary motives. I've just been converted from hell, you suppose. I'm safe now. And you pray for a while by either natural conviction or impulses that are not of the new birth. You do not have a spirit of grace and supplication that is leading you to cry Abba Father from the heart. You have never been born again. So Edward's premise is, by degrees you will leave off secret prayer. The enmity of the mind in the professing Christian who is a hypocrite, Edwards wrote in this sermon, it is a manner of hypocrites after a while and a great measure to leave off the practice of the duty of secret prayer. We are often taught that the seeming goodness and piety of hypocrites is not of a lasting and persevering nature. He doesn't have a new nature to persevere. He's not crying out to God because he doesn't feel his need of God's help. It is so with respect to their practice of the duty of prayer in particular, and especially of secret prayer, going into your closet and praying to God in secret. He doesn't really have a desire to do that, and by degrees, he will leave it off. Well, under the awakening, like Christian with a burden on his back, he's under awakening. He had this to stir him up to go to God in prayer. that he was in continual fear of hell. This put him upon crying to God for mercy, but since in his own opinion he is already converted, he has no further business about which to go to God. And although he may keep up the duty of prayer in the outward form a little while, for fear of spoiling his false hope, yet he will find it a dull business to continue in it without necessity. And so by degrees, probably imperceptible to himself, he will let drop the practice of secret prayer. The work of the hypocrite is done when he is converted. He says, well, I'm safe now. I mean, the work is done. And that's what leads to the false way of interpreting want saved, always saved, and the, quote, carnal Christian. Well, they're Christians, but they're walking after the soulish principle, after the carnal principle. Well, the Bible says in the text that we have read, if you walk after the flesh, you will die. You're already dead. And therefore, the remains of the enmity in the Christian is a root of his hidden dwelling sin. John Owen says, We want to get to the next part, though, and I'll apply that to this man. But from what I can tell of this letter, he is agitated. He is anxious that he doesn't enjoy the fellowship with God that he once enjoyed. And he's not going to rest satisfied. That's what he wrote to me as a last-ditch effort. Please, can you help me? I know this isn't right. I had enjoyment with God before and I feel dull and I fear like God is His enemy. Well, that's perceptive. In His case, I don't think it is in fact real. He perceives it this way. perception, and therefore he supposes that he is under the wrath of God. But here's a hint. Complaining of hardness of heart, complaining of a distance away from God, complaining like Paul does in Romans 7, 14 to 25, that which I would, I do not desire, but the evil that I would do, that I practice. There is this struggle going on within, and I see it in these persons that write to me. If he was in fact a hypocrite, if he was going to church, And he was there singing the songs, going out with his buddies, his professing Christian friends, and so on. But he never expressed anything like a fear or how in fact am I doing. What would result is that you wouldn't get a letter like this from somebody who was self-deceived and had continued in his self-deception for a considerable time. Because if he's left off secret prayer By degrees, he will get to the point where he's not even going to call upon God because he has no heart for it. But I see a letter like this and I say, this guy is groaning out to me and he just needs the right person that could understand what he's going through and say, Look, my brother, I don't think your case is as bad as you are representing it to be. It is common with Christians to have these times where they feel that it isn't from God, where it seems like because of the trials you are going through that God is an enemy, He isn't a friend, and the last thing you think of is crying of a father. But I want to go on to the third part of this, and this is where I really think, in an odd way, you wouldn't think at first, if I explain it you'll understand, why a Christian should have hope because he sees the remains of this indwelling sin, okay? It no longer has dominion over him, Romans 6, 14. However, at the root of indwelling sin, and the author, if you have never heard of him, that is so helpful on this, was a Puritan, John Owen, 1616 to 1683, called a treatise on indwelling sin. But you get to chapter 5 of that work, and you realize because sin's nature is always the same, its vigorous strength or whatever is abated by the mortification of it, but sin's very nature, even in the Christian, though it does not have dominion, Its nature is still hostile to God. It is still God's enemy, and God is its enemy, and therefore a person can struggle with his prayer time. He can struggle with his devotional time, with a fellowship and so on, but it isn't because he is not born again. He is feeling that warring in his members, which very nature is to disincline him to keep him from having fellowship with God. That is true of a Christian. A Christian can have those times, but it isn't the ascendancy. It no longer has dominion over him. It's the remains of indwelling sin. So John Owen says, it expresses itself in aversion. Okay, you get up in the morning, oh man, I feel so disinclined to read the Bible and pray, and I just got up, but I just don't seem to have the heart of it. That's the remains of indwelling sin showing its ugly head. It expresses itself in aversion, lukewarmness. There is in sin an aversion to God and everything of God as we have in part discovered in handling the enmity itself. And so he says, all in disposition to spiritual duty. Man, I don't feel inclined to it. But it's a temporary thing. By evening, he could be doing a lot better. All carnality or formality in duty, it all springs from this root. So this is chapters 4 and 5 of Treatise on Indwelling Sin. And by the way, as I said, if I mention a title here, I've narrated it. And I've narrated all 17 chapters of that book that came out in the 17th century twice. And as I narrate, I've been narrating John Owen so long it put it into a more modern English as I go. because a lot of people say that's too difficult, I can't read John Owen. Well, I try to narrate that with this in mind so that if you listen to his unequaled counsel on this subject, you'll be able to understand it. So my site on Sermon Audio is called The Narrated Puritan, if you do a search at sermonaudio.com. And on our Man of God podcast, my narrations are once a week on Wednesday. But I just feel so important, it's so important to get these things out there because they're very, very helpful. There are Christians that do have these struggles like this man is talking about. And they haven't the proper instruction and so they say, I don't know if God's my father, I still view him as an enemy. One of the greatest hindrances to really live in the Christian life is not to perceive God as a covenant God and as your father. If you always picture God as a judge, like he's going to thump on you because of your failings and so on, it will dry up the springs of your affections towards him. But the sad thing is, is that this type of class is so seldom taught on. Well, that came out in 2022, that letter to me. But to show it isn't singular, and I wanted to show you a copy of this book that I use in my teaching on Christian experience and assurance called Samuel Pike and Samuel Hayward's Cases of Conscience, 1755. And I finally got somebody to at least give it to us in Kindle format, EPUB format, and PDF format, because I said, Well, here's the history behind it. Between 1755 and 1859, this book called Cases of Conscience was never out of print. That's the demand that they had for these in a bygone day. From 1860 until 1969, that book was never reprinted except for in 69 they did a paperback copy of volume one and it had no audience. And yet I teach these classes and I say, who wouldn't be interested in this? I'll give you just one question. these people would write a letter and it would come to one of two pastors in London and they would get together on a Wednesday night. They would read the letters and they had prepared an answer for them. And there's almost, it's so excellent and hardly equaled in the English language. But to show that this man's case is not unique, I'm going to read a letter that was written to these men. And if you want to know the result of that, it was like the second, Lesson I taught this week. I'm going through the practical works of John I went on a mortification of sin, but listen to this is 1754 it got published in 1755 I'm about to bring it to a close But I thought that this would be interesting to show how similar these things are remember the first letter was 2022 This is about 1754 reverend sir I am a person who has for some years been a professed follower of Jesus I have had a place in his house, enjoyed great privileges, and of advantages above any, sitting under a sound, faithful, and tender minister. But under these means of fruitfulness, alas, I seem barren and unprofitable. I am afraid I go backward in religion and make advances in sin. And what is worse, my heart is so hard that I don't mourn over these spiritual declensions as I should. Therefore, I fear that I'm not properly affected by them. No sooner does a temptation offer itself than I fall in with it. So that I often think whether my refraining from gross immoralities is not more for a lack of temptations than from a real hatred of them and a love of holiness. And yet I hope, I sincerely strive and pray and resolve against sin and Christ's strength, being convinced that I have no strength sufficient of my own. But how can I sincerely do this and fall so frequently? I attend on gospel ordinances, but I fear it is to little purpose, being cold and lifeless under it all. I hear the love of Jesus sweetly displayed, but this icy, frozen heart is not melted. These languid and lifeless affections are not raised to nor fixed upon the divine Redeemer. I cannot call Him my Redeemer, lest I deceive my own soul, and yet I dare not say I have no part in Him, lest I be ungrateful and deny His work. Thus I am an astray. But this I must say that I desire to call the glorious Savior my Lord and my God." Well, as you can suppose as they answered that, they said, these are the groaning very consistent with being a Christian. You will have times like this and it's amazing that a letter written in 1754 could be so similar to what I get in 2022, but I have a computer with a number of them. I was going through my old emails and I probably should put some of these things together because I think they would be helpful to someone. But it is a thing to be desired that we have the full assurance to know that He that has begun a good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. And then when we get into this frame, And in a worse frame, Christian in the castle of the giant despair with hopeful, you know, I mean, he was thinking about taking his life. That's how it can get that bad for Christians in this kind of depression. And I will preface this by saying there are Christians that are so affected by bodily infirmities that you cannot even help them. And the Puritans used to understand this a lot better. In a day, it was called spiritual melancholy, but it had such a different meaning than an hour, a day. But trust me that man's physical condition and his disease can affect his spiritual well-being. And I have narrated a number of things to that extent, but so that I don't overstay my welcome, I want to encourage you with this. If you want to maintain joy, and if you want to maintain vigor and strength, You have to keep up on these things. Whenever sin rears its ugly head and would have you do that, which you know your conscience won't allow, if you allow it to go on that way, you will lose your peace and your joy. I've often wondered, because I went through this myself, I'm an introspective person, How do you wage war with the enemy of our souls if you don't even know if you are Christ's soldier or not? The first thing you want to establish is that the foundation is properly built. It is not built on the sand. And the second thing is we have to understand the nature of God's promises. So one thing that we have to get us through, and believe me, brethren, I believe bad days are coming on our country. This country has trampled under feet so much light. First of all, in Massachusetts, you had congregational Puritans, John Cotton, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, and so on. But I moved down here from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was there 32 years. And just what I saw in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 32 years was cause of concern. You know, our major Christian publishing companies were all in Grand Rapids. We had Baker Publishing, we had Eerdmans, we had Zundervan, and we had Kriegel. And now we have Heritage Books, which is Puritan Theological Seminary, where Dr. Beeke is the president. And I got there at a good time. I was a letter carrier for Krieger Bookstore. I went through all, got all these used books and so on. I'm wondering if Grand Rapids and Holland, which was a Dutch Calvinistic settlement in the early 1800s, if we may not have, in fact, thrown off more light in Grand Rapids than they had in Massachusetts. It's pretty sad when the college is named after John Calvin, and then you hear in the news that it's now one of the most gay-affirming colleges in this country. And I say, oh, Lord, how long? But this should be our frame. Ezekiel 9, verse 4. Let us be marked by those who sigh and cry for the abomination of the Lamb. You know what's interesting about that? There is a mark put upon the people that sigh and cry. And there is another mark put upon people who follow the beast. And we want to be those that mark. God can see the mark. It doesn't have to be a number. God can see into your heart, and He knows who in this country is crying out to Him, Lord! have mercy on this land. And what we want to see is revival again. What happened in 1800 in Logan County, Kentucky is sorely amazing and yet we've forgotten this history. 20,000 people and their coaches and so on came from Tennessee and all over Kentucky to a land that was so savage in those days. They called this place Rogue's Gallery because that's where all of the Infidels, the thieves, and the criminals came to that part of Kentucky. And in June of 1800, God brought up a man. He came from North Carolina named James McGrady. And revival came to Logan County, Kentucky. And I say, it's got to be our prayer that it comes again. Lord, you have done this before in this state of Kentucky. Please, oh God, do it again. With that, I'll close, brother.