Earnest preaching and earnest conversation

June 29, 2006June 29, 2006 Tony Reinke Banner of Truth, Earnestness, Great Quotes, Hypocritical pastor, M'Cheyne, Pastoral Failure, Pastoral Ministry, Preaching, Pupit Seriousness

When I think of being earnest in the pulpit many quotes from preachers come to mind (see the quotes here by John Angell James). But what about earnestness during a one-on-one lunch or breakfast meeting? This is where I must learn more about earnestness and feel the same weight as when I climb behind the pulpit. If what people see inside and outside the pulpit are inconsistent, our preaching loses authority. If we are to be earnest in the pulpit we must be earnest outside the pulpit as well. This is the great warning from the life of M’Cheyne:

“Whatever be said in the pulpit men will not much regard, though they may feel it at the time, if the minister does not say the same in private, with equal earnestness, in speaking with his people face to face; and it must be in our moments of most familiar intercourse with them, that we are thus to put the seal to all we say in public. Familiar moments are the times when the things that are most closely twined round the heart are brought out to view; and shall we forbear … We must not only speak faithfully to our people in our sermons, but live faithfully for them too. Perhaps it may be found that the reason why many who preach the gospel fully and in all earnestness are not owned of God in the conversion of souls, is to be found in their defective exhibition of grace in these easy moments of life … It was noticed long ago that men will give you leave [permission] to preach against their sins as much as you will, if you will but be easy with them when you have done, and talk as they do, and live as they live. How much otherwise was it with Mr. M’Cheyne, all who knew him are witnesses.”

Andrew Bonar, Memoir & Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne (Banner of Truth: 1844/2004), p. 74

Personal sin and pastoral motive

June 28, 2006June 28, 2006 Tony Reinke Anthony Burgess, C.J. Mahaney, Great Quotes, Humility, Pastoral Sin, Sin, Sovereign Grace Ministries

Over 350 years ago a Christian named Anthony Burgess wrote a powerful book entitled Spiritual Refining, volume 2. It’s a book about the deceitfulness of sin (Jer. 17:9). I like it so much I began re-typesetting and updating the references. (So far the first three chapters are available here, more to come as time allows).

In it Burgess challenges his readers to take time to be still, and learn what is in their own hearts. This is how he put it,

“… the deceitfulness of the heart appears in those frequent and many commands to search the heart, to try it, ransack it and get to the bottom of it. Now if the heart was plain and open, if it had no depths, no secret windings, why would we need all these commands? You are commanded to make a private search as if for thieves and spies in your own heart. How often are these exhortations: ‘Let us test and examine our ways’ (Lam. 3:40); ‘Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith … test yourselves’ (2 Cor. 13:5). A mining expert is careful to bring gold to the touchstone to see whether it is good or bad, so also Psalm 4:4, ‘ponder in your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.’ Dig into the heart and sweep it out with diligence just as the woman took a candle and swept her entire house to find her lost silver coin (Luke 15:8-10). Oh, the lusts and corruptions of the heart that do not appear at first but only appear after the second or third search. The lusts of your heart may lie in your heart like Achan’s wedge of gold, covered in earth and hid among other stuff (Jos. 7:21). You may live forty or more years and yet be a great stranger to your own heart, not knowing what sins lie there and what corruptions prevail over you. Therefore, Scripture presents as the first initial and preparative work of all commands to search our hearts. We must take time to be still, with much meditation and quietness making analysis and search into our hearts that those snakes and worms which lie underground may be brought to light. But how this duty is neglected! … To understand the motions of the planets and not of your own heart, or to know the natures and operations of herbs and plants, or to measure the dimensions of oceans but not study the depth and length and breadth of your own heart, is but a barren knowledge. We may say, ‘physician, heal yourself,’ ‘astronomer, measure your own heart,’ ‘philosopher, understand your own nature.’”

Surely, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). It has been said of Sovereign Grace Ministries founder and leader, C.J. Mahaney that he is known for teaching his people to always be suspicious of their own hearts. We would do well to search the depths and remain suspicious of our own pastoral motives.

Church discipline

June 27, 2006 Tony Reinke Banner of Truth, Biblically Faithful, Church discipline, Great Quotes, Hard decisions, M'Cheyne, Obedience to Scripture, Pastoral Failure, Pastoral Ministry, Pupit Seriousness, Shepherding, Sin

“When I first entered upon the work of the ministry among you, I was exceedingly ignorant of the vast importance of church discipline. I thought that my great and almost only work was to pray and preach. I saw your souls to be so precious, and the time so short, that I devoted all my time, and care, and strength, to labor in word and doctrine. When cases of discipline were brought before me and the elders, I regarded them with something like abhorrence. It was a duty I shrank from; and I may truly say it nearly drove me from the work of the ministry among you altogether. But it pleased God, who teaches His servants in another way than man teaches, to bless some of the cases of discipline to the manifest and undeniable conversion of the souls of those under our care; and from that hour a new light broke in upon my mind, and I saw that if preaching be an ordinance of Christ, so is church discipline. I now feel very deeply persuaded that both are of God – that two keys are committed to us by Christ: the one the key of doctrine, by means of which we unlock the treasures of the Bible; the other the key of discipline, by which we open or shut the way to the sealing ordinances of the faith. Both are Christ’s gift, and neither is to be resigned without sin.”

– Robert Murray M’Cheyne in Andrew Bonar, Memoir & Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne (Banner of Truth: 1844/2004), p. 73.

See Matthew 18:15-20 (clearly defined steps of church discipline), 1 Cor. 5:4-5 with 5:9-13; 2 Cor. 7:8-12 (the fruit of godly confrontation); 1 Tim. 1:18-20; Tit. 3:9-11 (notice the difference between church discipline and dealing with the divisive man); Rev. 2:1-7 (notice how a disciplining and discerning church can still lack in passionate love for Christ).

Why do we study? Why do we preach?

June 26, 2006 Tony Reinke Banner of Truth, Great Quotes, Humility, Pastoral Ministry, Pastoral Sin, Preacher's study, Preaching, Pride, Reading, Self-promotion

“Hard studies, much knowledge, and excellent preaching, if the ends be not right, is but more glorious hypocritical sinning. The saying of Bernard is commonly known: ‘Some desire to know merely for the sake of knowing, and that is shameful curiosity. Some desire to know that they may sell their knowledge, and that too is shameful. Some desire to know for reputation’s sake, and that is shameful vanity. But there are some who desire to know that they may edify others, and that is praiseworthy; and there are some who desire to know that they themselves may be edified, and that is wise.’”

– Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (Banner of Truth: 1656/1997) pp. 111-112

Manifestations of Christ

June 23, 2006June 23, 2006 Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, Christ manifest, Communion with God, Cross of Christ, Experiential preaching, Gospel, Great Quotes, Manifestations

I’m amazed at Spurgeon when it comes to beholding the glory of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Spurgeon (and many of the saints before him) recognized that there were times in the Christian life, times so focused upon obedience and service, that the saint experienced special manifestations of Christ's glory. Now these were not separate from Scripture but built upon Scripture and not some extra-biblical conversation with a ghostly figure. Nor were they mere emotional rides but were the powerful demonstrations of the truth of God's Word in personal experience. Here is how Spurgeon explains this in a sermon on John 14:22:

"I have had for a long while a manifestation of his sufferings in Gethsemane; I have been for months musing on his agonies; I think I have even eaten the bitter herbs that grow there, and drank of that black brook Kedron. I have sometimes gone up stairs alone, to put myself in the very posture Jesus Christ was in and I thought I could sympathize with him in his sufferings. Methought; saw the sweat of blood falling down to the ground; I had so sweet a view of my Savior in his agonies, I hope that one day I may be able to accompany him still further, and see him on Calvary, and hear his death-shriek ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ Some of you, I know, have seen Jesus with the eye of faith quite as plainly as if you had seen him with your natural eyes. You could see your Savior hanging on the cross. You thought you saw the very crown of thorns on his head, and the drops of blood streaming down his face; you heard his cry; you saw his bleeding side; you beheld the nails, and before long you could have gone and pulled them out, and wrapped him up in linen and spices, and carried his body, and washed it with tears and anointed it with precious ointment … If I were to go much farther, I should be accused of fanaticism, and so it may be; but yet I will believe and must believe that there are seasons when the Christian lives next door to heaven. … There have been seasons of ecstatic joy, when I have climbed the highest mountains, and I have caught some sweet whisper from the throne. Have you had such manifestations? I will not condemn you if you have not: but I believe most Christians have them, and if they are much in duty and much in suffering they will have them. It is not given to all to have that portion, but to some it is, and such men know what religion means … Seek, my brethren such spiritual manifestations, if you have never experienced them; and if ye have been privileged to enjoy them, seek more of them … God bless you, and lead you to seek these manifestations constantly! Amen."

– Charles Haddon Spurgeon, sermon #29, June 10, 1855, The New Park Street Pulpit, 1:224-225

Spurgeon was clear: These were not the experience of salvation and not all who taste salvation will taste these experiences. But if you read the saints of old you will find one common denominator between them – those who lived fully for God experienced that which verifies the biblical promise that, "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). Spurgeon teaches us to long for deeper graces and to never grow content with the Cross. The church is starving because, he writes, "God has sent very few preachers who would preach up these spiritual things and the church has been getting lower and lower" (p. 228).

Preaching with freshness

June 22, 2006June 23, 2006 Tony Reinke Biblically Faithful, Boldness, C.H. Spurgeon, Communion with God, Earnestness, Fresh preaching, Great Quotes, Imagination, Pastoral Failure, Preaching, Preaching Legacy

“My soul – never be satisfied within a shadowy Christ. … I cannot know Christ through another person’s brains. I cannot love him with another man’s heart, and I cannot see him with another man’s eyes. … I am so afraid of living in a second-hand religion. God forbid that I should get a biographical experience. Lord save us from having borrowed communion. No, I must know him myself. O God, let me not be deceived in this. I must know him without fancy or proxy; I must know him on my own account.”

This quote from Charles Spurgeon is a reminder that we must know and press close to Christ ourselves. Some of the darkest periods of church history, where the shroud of monotony covered the pulpit came at a time when preachers lived off a second-hand, borrowed communion.

Anyways, during the Middle Ages, the deadness of the churches can certainly be tied to a failed pulpit. Most noticeable was a failure of preachers to stand for God’s Word with conviction and freshness enforced with genuine godliness of character. We are reminded of the impotence of the church when God’s preachers do not preach from the freshness of personal communion with Himself but rather simply copy and regurgitate what was given by others. The result is borrowed communion and dead preaching:

“We have already had occasion to speak of the low character of the clergy during this epoch [the medieval period leading up to the Reformation]. Much ignorance, immorality, luxury and ambition [or a desire for rank], laziness, avarice, and other evil things have to be charged to their account. And this of course was at once both the cause and evidence of decay in the pulpit. For in all times the character of the preacher either enforces or enfeebles his preaching. And where the average of character is bad, no matter how noble the exceptions may be, the average of preaching will necessarily be low. Where there is a lack of true piety and conviction in the preacher the pulpit work tends to become empty, formal, frigid and without moving effect. And this is the character of much of the preaching of that age.”

“Always one of the signs of degenerate preaching – as of any literary production – is a slavish dependence upon others, past or present, a want of independence, originality, freshness. Copyists and imitators are found in every age, it is true, but when the masters belong chiefly to a former generation and the small followers mostly abound, the fall is great.”