“Oh Lord, thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.” Augustine from his Confessions
I have to confess that most of the influences in my life are long dead. One of the reasons I love to read Christian’s from the past is because of the way they knew God and how they expressed what they knew. J.I. Packer once wrote, "The people who know God think great thoughts of God." Oh how it makes me desire to know their God and make that knowledge and experience my own. Augustine of Hippo was one such person.
He was born in 354 in what we know today as Algeria. He was raised by a devout mother named Monica who wept and prayed for him every day. After many years of sinful living he was converted when he was 32 years old and later became the bishop of Hippo in Algeria where he spent the rest of his life till he died in 430.During that time he wrote a book called The Confessions. It is an autobiography of his life on one level. It is the story of a great sinner who became a great saint owing to a great God. On a deeper level, it presents, like no book that I’ve ever read, the Sovereign Joy of God’s Grace. If you’d like to read it for yourself you can find it at any new or used bookstore. You can also find it online at: http://www.ccel.org/a/augustine/confessions/confessions.html
This book has shaped and affected my theology and view of God in the most wonderful of ways. I want to give you some quotes from this book to help you get a sense of this precious and great man’s thought.Augustine describes the all-satisfying supremacy of God over all things. Listen to how he describes what it really means to enjoy, delight in, and truly love God:
"But what do I love when I love my God? . . . Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God."
Few Christians have a handle on the power and joy of God’s grace working in the believer’s life. Legalism, self effort, duty, and works righteousness are prevalent in the church today. We need a high view of God’s commands, a high view of our utter depravity, sinfulness, and inability to obey God’s word, and a high view of God’s sovereign grace that shows us that His commands are not burdensome and that enables us to be able to keep those commands that God has given.
"Give me the grace [O Lord] to do as you command, and command me to do what you will! . . . O holy God . . . when your commands are obeyed, it is from you that we receive the power to obey them."
Few people in the history of the church have surpassed Augustine in portraying the greatness and beauty and desirability of God. He is utterly persuaded by Scripture and experience "that he is happy who possesses God." "You made us for yourself, and our hearts find no rest till they rest in you."
He labored with all his might to make this God of sovereign grace and sovereign joy known and loved in the world.
"You are ever active, yet always at rest. You gather all things to yourself, though you suffer no need. . . . You grieve for wrong, but suffer no pain. You can be angry and yet serene. Your works are varied, but your purpose is one and the same. . . . You welcome those who come to you, though you never lost them. You are never in need yet are glad to gain, never covetous yet you exact a return for your gifts. . . . You release us from our debts, but you lose nothing thereby. You are my God, my Life, my holy Delight, but is this enough to say of you? Can any man say enough when he speaks of you? Yet woe betide those who are silent about you!"
Listen to what Augustine said about God’s sovereign joy and its triumph in his life:
"How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose. . ! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place. . . . O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation."
Augustine challenges me to turn more and more away from the bondage to the pleasures of this world and to pursue the supreme pleasures of God.
"The less you allowed me to find pleasure in anything that was not yourself, the greater, I know, was Your goodness to me."
Oh how easy it is for us to love television and food and sleep and sex and money and human praise just like everybody else. Augustine calls us to repent and fix our faces like flint toward God in prayer:
O Lord, open my eyes to see the sight that in your presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures for evermore (Psalm 16:11).
Striving to know Augustine’s God and His Sovereign Joy,
Pastor Bill
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