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The Most Disobeyed Verse in the Bible?

An admission is in order: this post’s title has a fair amount of tongue in its cheek. Countless texts compete for the title’s reward. I mean for the title’s cheekiness to provoke examination—particularly among pastors.

“What Verse,” You Say?

The text I have in mind is Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Its twin is Ephesians 5:19, where Paul commands being filled in the Spirit, which means—in part—”addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.”

For this post, I’m leaving aside historical arguments that “hymns and spiritual songs” are also references to biblical psalms. I’m not urging exclusive psalmody, but I am arguing for inclusive psalmody. I am simply stating, on the basis of Colossians 3:16 and Ephesians 5:19, that God expects His churches to sing the psalms from His word. What do you think? Is that a fair declaration? I believe so.

Yet, how many evangelical churches today sing the Psalms?

The Lay of the Land

I recently saw a pastor of a massive and influential church say, “Let the Psalter the be the soundtrack of your life.” However, ne’er is a psalm sung in his church’s gathered worship.

The pastor’s declaration and his church’s reality reveal two things I see in evangelical churches today.

First, we have seen a genuine resurgence of devotion to the Psalms. Praise the Lord! I first began to notice this when, in 2008, Union University (a Baptist institution, mind you) hosted a conference on psalm-singing. A few years later, B&H (a Baptist press, mind you) published the addresses as Forgotten Songs: Reclaiming the Psalms for Christian Worship. As is often the case, developments in the academy take a few years to seep into ordinary churches. The much-voiced call for restoring lament in the church’s life (e.g., Rejoicing in Lament) is a consequence of the revived focus on the psalms. So too is Donald Whitney’s work Praying the Bible, which exhorts Christians, “when you pray, pray a passage of Scripture, particularly a psalm.”

Second, precious few churches today sing the Psalms in corporate worship. I’m optimistic that more and more churches will start singing psalms. My experience and observation are that precious few churches are doing so at the moment.

I live in a bastion of the Bible-belt. “Evangelical” churches occupy many corners in my community. There are three mega-churches within five minutes of my home and another dozen smaller congregations. You’d never expect to sing a psalm at any of them on a Sunday.

Lest you think I’m only pointing the finger at other ecclesiastical traditions, let me turn it back on myself. The church I pastor is a member of the PCA. More than anything else, Redeemer’s identity in the presbytery and community is that of a traditional-liturgical church. Any person who knows anything about the history of Presbyterian worship knows that psalm-singing is among our most distinctive features. I attended Redeemer consistently for eight months before being called as senior minister. Although it had a history of sporadic psalm-singing in the past, we never sang a psalm over those eight months. I wonder many Presbyterian churches today likewise have forgotten our biblically-informed tradition.

One of the first adjustments I made to our worship at Redeemer was reintroducing the Psalms for singing. We now sing at least one psalm every week, and it is a delight to hear God’s people sing God’s word.

A Sad Irony

In our zeal against exclusive psalmody, perhaps we have inadvertently promoted exclusive hymnody—or as one brother I know put it, “exclusive chorusody.”

Too many of our churches today are ignoring God’s hymnbook, which has been at the heart of every major branch of Christianity’s worship tradition. Let us repent of loving to sing our words more than God’s words. Let us pray for the ample and regular singing of psalms—along with Scripturally-sound hymns—in our gathered worship services.

Resourcing Recovery and Reform

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian church. With its recovery will come unsuspected power.” John Chrysostom, that golden-mouthed preacher, asked,

Do you wish to be happy? Do you want to know how to spend the day truly blessed? I offer you a drink that is spiritual. This is not a drink for drunkenness that would cut off even meaningful speech. This does not cause us to babble. It does not disturb our vision. Here it is: Learn to sing Psalms! Then you will see pleasure indeed. Those who have learned to sing with the psalms are easily filled with the Holy Spirit.

Every gospel pastor longs for Christ’s word to dwell deeply in his church. Every pastor prays for Christ’s spirit to fill the church. Singing psalms is one of God’s ordained means for both blessings to grow in your congregation.

Here are some resources pastors can use for further study:1

Some shorter pieces encouraging the singing of Psalms in corporate worship:

  • Terry Johnson’s essay in honor of James Montgomery Boice, “Restoring Psalm Singing to Our Worship” in Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship demonstrates that even the Presbyterians can have difficulty using the Psalter in worship. Johnson’s concern for Bible-saturated worship is commendable to the People of the Book.
  • Old Testament scholar Gordon Wenham answers the question of his chapter titled “What Are We Doing Singing the Psalms?” in his book The Psalter Reclaimed: Praying and Praising with the Psalms. In a few short pages, he ranges over the Bible, church history, speech-act theory, and finally back to the Psalms themselves as he attempts to coax the Christian reader into a psalm-singing frame of mind.

——————————————-

  1. The comments on each resource are adapted from Ray Van Neste’s Read, Pray, Sing. ↩
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A Summary of Reformed Piety

Every Christian tradition has unique facets to its spirituality. The one I belong to, Reformed Presbyterianism, has long emphasized the centrality of piety in the Christian life. Consider the subtitle to John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: Containing the Whole Sum of Piety. It was said of John Owen, the Prince of the Puritans, that “his aim in life was to promote holiness.”

What is It?

How might we summarize the nature of Reformed Piety? Sinclair Ferguson says the Reformed view emphasizes two central features: “Jesus Christ himself is our sanctification or holiness (1 Cor. 1:30); and it is through union with Christ that sanctification is accomplished in us.” Ferguson further writes that Reformed spirituality concentrates on the Spirit because “union with Christ is the purpose and one of the foci of the ministry of the Spirit.”

Whole books have been written on Reformed spirituality. Joel Beeke’s Puritan Reformed Spirituality is one of the best. An entire series highlights the various contours of such piety as modeled in the writings of mighty saints of old. The most succinct definition of Presbyterian holiness comes from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which defines sanctification as “the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”

If we wanted to point to a passage of Scripture that captures the essence of Reformed piety, I submit that few verses are more compact—yet gloriously complex—as 2 Corinthians 7:1. There Paul says, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”

Five Points for Spirituality

Reformed piety feasts on God’s covenant promises. In his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith, B. B. Warfield said, “The architectonic principle of the Westminster Confession is supplied by the schematization of the Federal theology, which had obtained by this time in Britain, as on the Continent, a dominant position as the most commodious mode of presenting the corpus of Reformed doctrine.” Translation for 21st-century Christians: Reformed theology is covenant theology. Therefore, Reformed piety is a promise-driven and promise-dependent piety.

We confess that God’s relation to mankind is covenantal. We speak of the Covenants of Redemption, Works, and Grace. The whole system concentrates, as it must, on Jesus Christ. Sinclair Ferguson summarizes this point: “God’s covenant with his people is not only found in Jesus Christ; it is Jesus Christ. The new covenant, the final covenant, the covenant in which is experienced the fullness of God’s promise ‘I will be your God and you will be my people’ is made in him. In him all the (covenant) promises of God find their ‘yes!’ So when we rightly speak of ‘Christ and the covenant,’ this is ultimately the same as speaking of the ‘Christ who is the covenant.’”

When Paul says “Since we have these promises . . .” he has in mind the covenant promises of 2 Corinthians 6:16–18. There Paul writes,

We are the temple of the living God; as God said,

“I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them,
    and I will be their God,
    and they shall be my people.
Therefore go out from their midst,
    and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
    then I will welcome you,
and I will be a father to you,
    and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.”

No feature of our spirituality is without the spiritual food of God’s covenant promises. Since God has given them to us, we have love, hope, comfort, assurance, and strength. Few things are as sweet as God’s promises toward His children. They are solid meat and sweet honey for the soul. They are “precious and very great promises” and through them we “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4).

You need only survey Puritan manuals on sanctification to see the priority of God’s promises for growing in Christ. Consider Andrew Gray’s “Great and Precious Promises,” Edward Leigh’s A Treatise of the Divine Promises, or William Spurstowe’s The Wells of Salvation Opened: Or, A Treatise Discovering the nature, preciousness, usefulness of Gospel-Promises, and Rules for the right application of them.

Reformed piety revels in God’s electing love. Paul says, “Since we have these promises, beloved . . .” The language of love is Pauline shorthand for God’s electing grace (see Rom. 9:25, 11:28; Eph. 1:6, 5:1; Col. 1:13, 3:12). Paul’s love for the Corinthians comes from God’s gracious adoption of them into His family.

J. I. Packer, in his classic Knowing God, said, “Adoption has been little regarded in Christian history. Apart from two last-century books, now scarcely know, there has been no evangelical writing on it, nor has there been at any time since the Reformation.” Admittedly, much 19th-century theology downplayed the glory of adoption into God’s family. Yet, Joel Beeke has demonstrated how pervasive adoption was for Puritan piety in his work, Heirs with Christ: The Puritan on Adoption. The Westminster assembly defined adoption as “an act of the free grace of God, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the Spirit of his Son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises, and fellow-heirs with Christ in glory” (LC, 74).

What peace and comfort, experience of God’s love, liberty and readiness, as well as victory over Satan come from meditation on our adoption in Christ. William Perkins, the father of the Puritans, offered several marks that signify one’s welcome into God’s family:

  • “An earnest and hearty desire in all things to further the glory of God.”
  • “A care and readiness to resign ourselves in subjection to God, to be ruled by his word and spirit, in thought, word, and deed.”
  • “A sincere endeavor to do his will in all things with cheerfulness, making conscience of everything we know to be evil.”
  • “Upright walking in man’s lawful calling, and yet still faith to rely upon God’s providence, being well pleased with God’s sending whatsoever it is.”
  • “Every day to humble a man’s self before God for his offenses, seeking his favour in Christ unfainedly, and so daily renewing his faith and repentance.”
  • “A continual combat between the flesh and the spirit, corruption haling and drawing one way, and grace resisting the same and drawing another way.”

Reformed piety engages in mortification. Paul exhorts the Corinthians to put off sin by saying, “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit.” A spiritual slaying of sin is vital for growth in Christ. No individual has more renown in teaching on the necessity of mortification than John Owen. In his classic work On the Mortification of Sin in Believers, Owen says Christ has poured out His Spirit to “bring the cross of Christ into our hearts with its sin-killing power.” The Spirit’s centrality in mortification is a vital point. If a believer tries to kill sin in his own power, he will find himself in a losing battle. Owen says forcefully, “Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, to the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.”

Reformed piety, then, has always emphasized the necessity of dying to sin (e.g., WSC 35). Cooperating with the Spirit, we must kill sin or sin will be killing us. Mortification, Owen wrote, must happen “every day, and in every duty.” Holy violence must mark our piety. We cannot coddle our bosom sins, nor be lazy towards our lusts. Mortification of sin means three essential things:

  1. A habitual weakening of the sin.
  2. A constant fight and contention against the sin.
  3. An increasing degree of success in killing the sin.

Reformed piety emphasizes sanctification in head, heart, and hand. The Shorter Catechism defines sanctification as God’s work of grace in renewing “the whole man after the image of Christ.” Heidelberg Catechism 115 says we need God’s law “so that we may never stop striving, and never stop praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, to be renewed more and more after God’s image, until after this life we reach our goal: perfection.” In the language of 2 Corinthians 7:1, we are to bring holiness “to completion.”

By His Spirit, Christ forms and fashions His people into His very image—see Ephesians 4:24 and Colossians 3:10.

As such, Reformed piety is after the thorough godliness. Such spirituality emanates the holiness of Christ. We prioritize holiness precisely because our Lord does (see 1 Pet. 1:15–16).

When Robert Murray M’Cheyne lay in bed with a fever that would take his life, a letter was delivered and placed on his desk. It went unopened until after M’Cheyne’s death. The writer penned, “I hope you will pardon a stranger for addressing you a few lines. I heard you preach last Sabbath evening, and it pleased God to bless that sermon to my soul. It was not so much what you said, as your manner of speaking, that struck me. I saw in you a beauty in holiness that I never saw before.”

Reformed piety also places particular emphasis on ministerial holiness. The following passages offer proof:

  • Richard Baxter: “If it be not your daily business to study your own hearts and to subdue corruption and to walk with God, if you make not this a work to which you constantly attend, all will go wrong and you will starve your hearers. . . . We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.”
  • John Owen: “If a man teach uprightly and walk crookedly, more will fall down in the night of his life than he built in the day of his doctrine.”
  • Thomas Wilson: “Our ministry is as our heart is. No man rises much above the level of his own habitual godliness.”
  • Robert Murray M’Cheyne: “Oh! study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this. Your sermon on Sabbath lasts but an hour or two—your life preaches all the week.”
  • Horatius Bonar: “Nearness to Him, intimacy with Him, assimilation to His character—these are the elements of a ministry of power.”
  • Archibald Alexander: “Aim at high attainments in evangelical piety. Nothing so much as this will be a pledge of eminent usefulness.”
  • Samuel Miller: “The true reason, then, why we have so little good and profitable preaching, is that, among those who attempt to perform this service, there is so little deep, warm, heartfelt piety.”

Reformed piety lives in the fear of God. 2 Corinthians 7:1 says we are to pursue holiness “in the fear of God.” One commentator on 2 Corinthians writes, “Only believers fear God truly, since only those who have already begun to enjoy his presence can taste the horror of what it would be like to be without it. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, just as it is the beginning of the passion for holiness among God’s people.”

Fear of God is the meat and marrow of biblical piety. As John Murray declared, “The fear of God is the soul of godliness.” To fear God is to revere and adore His name, desire to please Him, and fear His chastisement. In his first catechism, Calvin writes, “True piety consists in a sincere feeling which loves God as Father as much as it fears and reverences Him as Lord, embraces His righteousness, and dreads offending Him worse than death.”

The more we love God, the more we fear Him, and thus the more we become like Him.

William S. Plumber, a leading nineteenth-century Presbyterian preacher, wrote a wonderful chapter on “The Fear of God” in his work, Vital Godliness: A Treatise on Experimental and Practical Piety. For a good idea of the Nadere Reformatie‘s ideal for fearing God, meditate on Wilhelmus A’Brakel’s sermon on the subject. John Bunyan’s treatise on The Fear of God is a useful entry-point into the Puritan ideal.

Putting It Together

Here then are the five facets of Reformed piety that 2 Corinthians 7:1 captures so beautifully: Reformed piety 1) feasts on God’s covenant promises, 2) revels in God’s electing love, 3) engages in mortification, 4) emphasizes sanctification in head, heart, and hand, and 5) lives in the fear of God.

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Book Notice: Puritan Piety

I’ve met Joel Beeke once. It was at T4G 2010 when he was behind the Reformation Heritage book table. We’ve corresponded on a few occasions in the years since, but I have no reason to think he’d remember me. Yet, few preachers and scholars have influenced me like Dr. Beeke. His sermons and books have indelibly shaped my views on experiential preaching, Reformed piety, and historical theology.

When I saw that Michael Haykin and Paul Smalley had edited a festschrift for Dr. Beeke entitled, Puritan Piety: Essay in Honors of Joel R. Beeke, I was thrilled. The book just came in the mail and looks to be a feast for the soul.

Description

The puritan movement, its leading figures, and the resulting principles were not only pivotal in Church history, but remain greatly influential today. This work looks at the puritan doctrine of piety. Contributors such as Sinclair Ferguson, Michael Haykin, and Mark Jones explore the theology, history, and application of this doctrine, presenting concise biographies of individual Puritans alongside modern heirs who seek to mimic their example. Puritan Piety is written in honour of Joel R. Beeke, inspired by his writings and the passionate piety with which he has strived to live and rightly influence those around him.

Table of Contents

Preface: On Puritans and Piety—Past and Contemporary (Michael A. G. Haykin)

1. Introduction: The Puritan Piety of Joel Beeke (Paul M. Smalley)

Part 1: Reformed Theology and Puritan Piety

2. What is Theology? A Puritan and Reformed Vision of Living to God, through Christ, by the Spirit (Ryan M. McGraw)

3. Christology and Piety in Puritan Thought (Mark Jones)

4. The Kingdom of God in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Paul M. Smalley)

Part 2: Means of Grace and Puritan Piety

5. Calvin the Preacher and the Puritans (Joseph Pipa)

6. The Highway of Holiness: Puritan Moral Reform in the English Revolution (Chad Van Dixhoorn)

7. John Cotton and the Spiritual Value of Psalm-Singing (W. Robert Godfrey)

8. John Owen and the Lord’s Supper (Sinclair B. Ferguson)

9. Principles and Practice for the Household: Thomas Gouge’s Catechesis  ‘with Practical Applications’ (Richard A. Muller)

Part 3: Individual Snapshots of Puritan Piety

10. Daniel Dyke and The Mystery of Self-Deceiving (Randall J. Pederson)

11. Milton’s Sonnet on His Blindness and the Puritan Soul (Leland Ryken)

12. A String of Pearls (Psalm 119): The Biblical Piety of Thomas Manton (J. Stephen Yuille)

Part 4: Later Heirs of Puritan Piety

13. J. C. Philpot and Experimental Calvinism (Robert W. Oliver)

14. Eminent Spirituality and Eminent Usefulness: True Spirituality According to Andrew Fuller (Michael A. G. Haykin)

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As Dying Men

Preaching Jesus Christ is the highest calling in Christendom. It is is the ordinary means by which God awakens cold, crusty, and callous hearts to breathe in the grace of faith. Preaching is the chariot that carries Christ to sinners’ bosoms and breasts. It is the spiritual sword God uses to assault hell’s gates and ruin Satan’s strongholds. The Sun of Righteousness dawns upon the earth to harden clay hearts and melt icy souls whenever His word is heralded. Preaching convicts, illuminates, rebukes, encourages, and enlivens the soul.

As such, faithful preaching needs the gravity of eternity.

Consider three men of old who modeled such preaching: Richard Baxter, the apostle Paul, and Robert Murray M’Cheyne.

Baxter’s Famous Maxim

Richard Baxter was a Puritan full of fire. Spurgeon said, “If you want to know the art of pleading, read Baxter.” In his autobiography, Spurgeon recounts a conversation with his wife one Sunday evening, in which he said, “I fear I have not been as faithful in my preaching today as I should have been; I have not been as much in earnest after poor souls as God would have me be. . . . Go, dear, to the study, and fetch down Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, and read some of it to me; perhaps that will quicken my sluggish heart.”

Baxter exemplified earnestness in pulpit ministry. While some of his theological convictions are tenuous, what shouldn’t be denied is the fervency and urgency that marked his heralding of Christ. It’s why he (somewhat) famously declared in his Poetical Fragments,

This called me out to work while it was day;
And warn poor Souls to Turn without delay:
Resolving speedily thy Word to preach;
With Ambrose, I at once did Learn and Teach.
Still thinking I had little time to live,
My fervent heart to win men’s Souls did strive.
I Preached, as never sure to preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men!
O how should Preachers Men’s Repenting crave,
Who see how near the Church is to the Grave?
And see that while we Preach and Hear, we Die,
Rapt by swift Time to vast Eternity!

Baxter’s call has good biblical precedent.

Paul’s Fearful Persuasion

In 2 Corinthians 10:11, Paul states, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.” In the previous ten verses, Paul writes about the security of our future in Christ because He is the sovereign judge over all humanity. The time is rapidly approaching when “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Cor. 5:10).

For Paul, preachers need the fear of eternity weighing on their hearts if they are to preach persuasively as Christ’s ambassadors. It’s been somewhat fashionable for some to think that Paul means for “fear” (phobos) to be understood as “reverential awe.” Such a view, however, softens the seriousness of Paul’s mind. As Scott J. Hafemann says, “Nothing less than real fear is involved, since in the context Paul is referring to a strong desire to avoid the negative consequences of Christ’s judgment.”

Expectancy of eternity, then, possesses vital energy for those who herald reconciliation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:18–21).

Preaching the Christ of Eternity

Like Spurgeon after him, Robert Murray M’Cheyne loved the Puritans—especially Richard Baxter. After reading Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, M’Cheyne wrote,

Though Baxter’s lips have long in silence hung,
And death long hush’d that sinner-wakening tongue;
Yet still, though dead, he speaks aloud to us all;
And from the grave still issues forth his, “Call.”
Like some loud angel-voice from Zion Hill,
The mighty echo rolls and rumbles still,
O grant that we, when sleeping in the dust,
May thus speak forth the wisdom of the just.

Baxter’s zeal for souls captured M’Cheyne and caused him to declare in an ordination sermon, “O for a pastor who unites the deep knowledge of Edwards, the vast statements of Owen, and the vehement appeals of Richard Baxter!”

He exhorted Andrew Bonar, “Speak to your people as on the brink of eternity.” To Mrs. Thain, he encouraged, “Live near to God, and so all things will appear to you little in comparison with eternal realities.” The motto with which he sealed most of his letters was, “The Night Cometh.”

M’Cheyne’s longing for eternity gave special fervency to his gospel ministry. He did not expect to live a long life, and so he aimed to “speak very plainly” of Christ. He cried, “Oh, believers, it is the duty of ministers to preach with this solemn day in their eye (Judgment Day)! . . . Would not this take away fear of man? Would not this make us urgent in our preaching? You must either get these souls into Christ, or you will yet see them lying down in everlasting burnings.” Also, the Sabbath was a taste of eternity, and thus eternal business should fill each Lord’s Day activity. He told a ministerial friend,

May your mind be solemnized, my dear friend, by the thought that we are ministers but for at time; that the Master may summon us to retire into silence, or may call us to the temple above; or the midnight cry of the great Bridegroom may break suddenly on our ears. Blessed is the servant that is found waiting! Make all your services tell for eternity; speak what you can look back upon with comfort when you must be silent.

A Missing Note Today?

I might be wrong, of course, but I daresay that the weight of eternity is a significant note missing in modern preaching. John Piper certainly agrees with me.

In his book, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, John Piper examines preachers in various revivals throughout church history. He notices Thomas Chalmers’ blood-earnestness, William Sprague’s seriousness, and Charles Spurgeon’s reverence. He then strikes at modern attempts at preaching, saying most pulpit ministry today will never bring revival. Piper writes, “It is surely a sign of the age that we preachers are far more adept at humor than tears . . . Laughter seems to have replaced repentance as the goal of many preachers.” How sad it is to realize how right he is.

Understanding the urgency of eternity puts Christ-exalting gravity in the place of man-centered levity. May every preaching prepare this week’s sermon with eternal realities before his mind, and so ascend to the sacred desk this Lord’s Day ready to preach as a dying man to dying people.

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For the Raising Up of Holy Men

Andrew Bonar’s Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne is a bonafide spiritual classic.

Consider the following commendations and comments from some of God’s great men:

  • “This is one of the best and most profitable volumes ever published. The memoir of such a man ought surely to be in the hands of every Christian and certainly every preacher of the Gospel.” — C. H. Spurgeon
  • “That wonderful classic.” — W. Robertson Nicoll
  • “I am constantly hearing of the great good that book has been the means of doing.” — Alexander Whyte
  • “That converting and sanctifying biography.” — Bishop Handley Moule
  • Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s biography written by his friend Andrew Bonar is one of my most treasured possessions and has been a companion throughout almost all of my Christian life. M’Cheyne died when he was twenty-nine, but his life story has been for me personally a model of grace, and his ministry pattern a model for service. It is a book every young Christian man should read—more than once.” — Sinclair B. Ferguson

For my own experience, nothing outside of Scripture has done me so much spiritual good as Bonar’s Memoir.

Something of a Backstory

After M’Cheyne’s death in 1843, his close friends were eager to commission a story of his life and ministry. Because he was M’Cheyne’s closest friend and possessed the required gifts to tell the tale, Bonar was chosen to write the memoir. The Great Disruption of 1843 distracted him for a time—from May through September of that year. When Bonar finally put pen to paper, he wrote with determination, finishing the manuscript only three months later. The result was a volume of 648 pages, 166 of which are Bonar’s original biography. The remainder of the work contains M’Cheyne’s letters, sermon, and miscellaneous treatises.

Once it released, the book sailed off the shelves. The Jewish Herald said the Memoir “commanded a sale almost unprecedented in the annals of religious biography.” Andrew Palmer, who wrote a doctoral thesis on Bonar, says, “Though Bonar could have made a great deal of money from the publication of the Memoir, he received only a very moderate sum, and the copyright was originally secured by the remaining members of M’Cheyne’s family.”

One Author’s Experience

One of the more fascinating observations in my studies on M’Cheyne was Andrew Bonar’s experience in writing the Memoir. Here’s what we find in Bonar’s Diary and Letters about his work on the Memoir and its subsequent reception:

  • April 1843: “I am urged to have my Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne ready by the end of the year.”
  • September 30, 1843: “Beginning to write Robert M’Cheyne’s Memoir. This fills up all my leisure time.”
  • December 23, 1843: “Finished my Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne yesterday morning. Praise, praise to the Lord. I have been praying, “Guide me with Thine eye’ I may soon be gone”; but I am glad that the Lord has permitted me to finish this record of His beloved servant. Yet it humbles me. My heart often sinks in me. Just to-night I saw my soul full of nothing but self, and all that comes forth seems a black stream of selfishness.”
  • March 4, 1843: “The Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne is now just about to appear. O that it may be blessed!”
  • March 23, 1843: “It was on this day of the week last year, about sunset, that a messenger came and told me of Robert M’Cheyne’s illness. It makes the day very solemn. I have grown little indeed by that providence, though it seemed sent to us for that intention. Several of us are to observe Monday as a season of special prayer and fasting to ask a blessing on the Memoir and the raising up of many holy men.”
  • January 4, 1845: “Looking back on last year I feel how awfully little has been done for God. My soul has grown very little. My ministry this year has been little blessed. The Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne and my Tract on Baptism seem to me the chief way in which the Lord has been using me this year to any extent.”
  • March 27, 1845: “Received a letter to-day telling me of the blessed effects of Robert M’Cheyne’s Memoir on one in London, in which he refers to the anniversary of his death—the 25th, a day I did not forget. Many tokens have I received of the Lord’s blessing that book. It roused me to thanksgiving, and I began to think that, if I oftener thanked God at the moment, I might oftener hear of His blessing upon my labours. He lets us know in order that we may give praise.”
  • December 18, 1846: “I see that the prayers of so many friends who pray for me are, no doubt, the cause of my getting peculiar help in writing the Memoir and then, the [Commentary on] Leviticus, I have often felt things in study so plainly given me, not at all like the products of my own skill, that this is the way in which I account for them. The Lord sends them because of people praying for me.”
  • May 1, 1853: “After my Communion I heard of blessing upon the Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne in the case of one in Edinburgh.”
  • December 31, 1856: “Encouraged by hearing of a soul awakened through reading Mr. M’Cheyne’s Memoir in
    Guernsey.”
  • November 17, 1860: “Got to-night from Holland a Dutch translation of M’Cheyne’s Memoir. Praise the Lord, O my soul, that thus good is done in foreign lands by that book.”
  • December 31, 1864: “It is now evening, and just at the close of the most memorable year since the death of Robert M’Cheyne (Bonar’s wife died on October 15th). I shall remember this year, in the ages to come, as the year I came in a special sense into the valley of Baca. My heart still fails me as often as I realize my loss. But, Lord, make my beloved wife’s removal as blessed to me as was the death of Robert M’Cheyne to the public through means of his Memoir.”
  • July 13, 1876: “A minister from America cheered me greatly by telling me how M’Cheyne’s Memoir has been used there.”
  • August 2, 1884: “Have heard lately oi two cases in which the Memoir of Robert M’Cheyne has been blessed: one here, another in England.”
  • July 21, 1891: “Heard to-day that Mr. Sinclair, minister of Kenmore, who translated the Memoir of M’Cheyne into Gaelic, received more than one letter telling that it had been blessed to the reader.”

Lessons Learned

It’s striking to see the place the Memoir occupied in Bonar’s life. For nearly a half-century, words of the book and thoughts about the book were close to his mind.

In reading through Bonar’s notes, two simple spiritual lessons came to my mind. First, how often God works through biography. You don’t have to be an expert in church history to know how a religious portrait launched many mighty men and women into Christ’s service. The nineteenth century was an era in which biographies flourished. Our age has so shunned history that many have lost the desire to learn not just from, but also about the old saints. If the trend continues, it will mean poverty in our piety. We need another generations of pastors and scholars whom the Spirit fuels and fills to right Christ-exalting biography.

Second, the great books fly on the wings of prayer. Bonar comments about how a day of fasting and prayer was set aside before the Memoir went out for sale. Prayer for the book didn’t stop; it continued throughout the years. What we need today are books that have prayerful authors and prayerful readers. Let us pray down God’s blessing on the great books. Let us yearn for God to glorify His name and His Son through the expansion of edifying works throughout the world.

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Book Notice: The Prayers of Jesus

Mark Jones, the pastor of Faith Reformed Presbyterian Church in Vancouver, is one of my favorite theologians at work today. His works on Christology occupy a treasured place in my study.

I was thus overjoyed to discover earlier this week that his next work marries two subjects we need to study most often: Christ and prayer.

The Prayers of Jesus:
Listening to and Learning from Our Savior

Here’s how Crossway describes the book:

How should Christians pray? There is no greater example than Jesus Christ himself, whose prayer life while on earth reveals a pattern of seeking God’s help that believers can emulate. Written in a devotional tone, this book reflects on the content and structure of Jesus’s prayers, showing just how important prayer was to him during his earthly ministry. Drawing on wisdom from church history and offering practical steps for prayer in each chapter, this book teaches readers why, how, and what to pray, helping them follow in Jesus’s footsteps and imitate his example when it comes to relating to our heavenly Father.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

An Introduction to Our Praying Lord

1. Jesus Prayed From His Mother’s Breasts (Psalm 22:9–10)

2. Jesus Prayed “Abba! Father” (John 17:1)

3. Jesus Prayed in Secret (Luke 5:16)

4. Jesus Prayed the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13)

5. Jesus Prayed Joyfully in the Spirit (Luke 10:21)

6. Jesus Prayed Knowing He Will Be Heard (John 11:41–42)

7. Jesus Prayed for His Father’s Glory (John 12:27–28)

8. Jesus Prayed for His Own Glory (John 17:1)

9. Jesus Prayed Concerning Eternal Life (John 17:1–2)

10. Jesus Prayed For Us to Know God and Himself (John 17:3)

11. Christ Prayed For the Glory He Had Before the World Existed (John 17:4–5)

12. Jesus Prayed Concerning God’s Self–Disclosure (John 17:6–8)

13. Jesus Prayed For the Elect to Glorify Him (John 17:9–10)

14. Christ Prayed the Father to Protect the Church (John 17:11–12)

15. Jesus Prayed For His Disciples To Be Joyful (John 17:13)

16. Jesus Prayed for His Disciples in the World (John 17:14–16)

17. Jesus Prayed For His Disciples to Be Sanctified (John 17:17–19)

18. Jesus Prayed For Church Unity (John 17:20–21)

19. Jesus Prayed For Us To Receive His Glory (John 17:22–23)

20. Jesus Prayed for His People To Be With Him (John 17:24)

21. Jesus Prayed With Confidence (John 17:25–26)

22. Jesus Prayed in Great Distress (Mark 14:32–34)

23. Jesus Prayed For Deliverance (Mark 14:35–36)

24. Jesus Prayed For His Enemies (Luke 23:34)

25. Jesus Prayed With A Loud Cry (Mark 15:34)

26. Jesus Prayed His Final Prayer (Luke 23:46)

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Perils in Pastoral Ministry

Sunday’s coming. The Lord’s Day is on the way. And Christ’s preachers must be ready. We must gird up the loins, go, and proclaim Christ from behind the sacred desk.

It’s my regular practice to spend time every Friday and Saturday reading something that stirs my soul for Christ and for preaching His beauty. Today it was a chapter from J. W. Jowett’s book, The Preacher: His Life and Work. The selection is titled “The Perils of the Preacher.”

Before I summarize them, let’s get to know the old man a bit.

A Grave Preacher

blrudgbgkkgrhgookjqejllmvowobjikfzeqq_35After hearing the great Dr. Fairbairn preach, Jowett told his students at Airedale College, “Gentlemen, I will tell you what I have observed this morning: behind that sermon there was a man.” Although The Preacher provides scant autobiographical information, I always have same sense in reading Jowett’s work—there is gravity in his message.

Jowett was born in 1863 in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Like many great ministers before him, Jowett initially resolved to study law. God soon called him into the gospel ministry. He went on to train at Edinburgh and Oxford before assuming his first pastoral position at St. James Church in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The church held over 1,000 seats, and none were empty during Jowett’s ministry.

In 1911 he became the pastor at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. John Bishop says,

The church was crowded long before the hour of Jowett’s first service. Reporters crowded the side galleries, expecting to find a sensational preacher with dazzling oratory and catchy sermon topics on current events. Instead they found a shy, quiet little man, bald-headed and with a cropped white moustache, who spoke in a calm, simple manner.

He was at Fifth Avenue when he delivered the Lyman Beecher lectures on a pastor’s life and ministry. He stayed in New York until 1918 when he was called to succeed G. Campbell Morgan at Westminster Chapel in London. It was his last pastoral post, as he died in 1923.

The Preacher’s Perils

So, then, what are some common perils threatening pastors? Jowett mentions four.

  1. Deadening familiarity with the sublime. “I think this is one of the most insidious, and perhaps the predominant peril in a preacher’s life. A man my live in mountain country, and lose all sense of the heights. . . . The preacher lives almost every hour in sight of the immensities and the eternities—the awful sovereignty of God, and the glorious, yet cloud-capped mysteries of redeeming grace. But here is the possible tragedy: he may live in constant sight of these tremendous presences and may cease to see them.”
  2. Deadening familiarity with the commonplace. “There is an equally subtle peril of our becoming dead to the bleeding tragedies of common life.” Jowett mentions several things, but focuses mostly on a deadened sense of the tragedy of death. “Familiarity may be deadly, and we may be dead men in the usually disturbing presences of sorrow, and pain, and death. The pathetic may cease to melt us, the tragic may cease to shock us. We may lose our power to weep.”
  3. Possible perversion of our emotional life. “The preaching of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ demands and creates in the preacher a certain power worthy of emotion, and this very emotion becomes the center of new ministerial danger. . . . That is to say, the evangelical preacher, with his constant business in great facts and verities that sway the feelings, may become the victim of nervous depression, and in his nervous impoverishment his moral defences may be relaxed, the enemy may leap within his gates, and his spirit may be imprisoned in dark and carnal bondage.”
  4. The perilous gravitation of the world. “I say you meet that danger everywhere, but nowhere will you meet it in a more insidious and persistent fashion that in the Christian ministry. [Worldliness]  is round about us like a malaria, and we may become susceptible to its contagion.” “In the perilous gravitation of worldliness there is more than an illicit spirit of compromise: there is what I will call the fascination of the glittering.” “We may become more intent on full pews than on redeemed souls.“

Jowett’s remedy to such pitfalls is proper: a renewed commitment to Christ through the means of grace. “We must,” Jowett declares, “assiduously attend to the culture of our souls. We must sternly and systematically make time for prayer, and for the devotional reading of the Word of God. We must appoint private seasons for the deliberate and personal appropriation of the Divine Word, for self-examination.”

Brothers of the pulpit, if we do not take heed of our doctrine and practice, we will fall into a perilous condition. And Jowett warns what that will mean:

Our characters will lose their spirituality. We shall lack that fine fragrance which makes people know that we dwell in ‘the King’s gardens.’ There will be no heavenly air about our spirits. . . . We are wordy, but not mighty. We are eloquent, but do not persuade. We are reasonable, but we do not convince. We preach much, but we accomplish little. We teach, but we do not woo. We make a ‘show of power,’ but men do not move.

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Persevere in the Precious

Over the last month, Jeremiah has been one of the four books in my Bible reading plan. Jeremiah’s ministry has long captivated my attention and affection. I think it’s because there are some pronounced similarities between his life and mine (and many more dissimilarities, of course). There was a magnificent and undeniable call to the ministry. Big dreams and ambitions flowed from the start. But over the years, the disappointments quickly come to outweigh the delights. There’s also an introspective nature that can cause us to forget the Lord’s work.

How true it is that an inward-looking Spirit can rob one of joy in God’s service.

A Groaning Conscience

I’ve long thought that Spurgeon was something like a modern-era Jeremiah. He knew great highs in ministry, but melancholy was a most-familiar friend. One would assume that the “Prince of Preachers” stepped down from the sacred desk each with glad confidence, but his experience was different. He once said of his world-famous preaching ministry, “It is a long time since I preached a sermon I was satisfied with. You cannot hear my groanings when I go home, Sunday after Sunday, and wish that I could learn to preach somehow or other; wish that I could discover the way to touch your hearts and your consciences.” If you are anything like me, you offer a weary, “Hear, hear,” to such sentiment.

What then are we to do in such a situation? How might we respond when the demands of ministry are like a wet blanket on joy in Christ? We find an answer in one scene from the life of Jeremiah—especially one verse: Jeremiah 15:18.

When Ministry Breaks Your Heart

Let’s remember the context. Jeremiah had reluctantly taken up God’s commission to be His mouthpiece around 627 BC, about five years before King Josiah’s famous reforms. There are two overarching matters worth remembering about his prophetic ministry:

  1. It’s length. The book represents Jeremiah’s forty-plus years in the Lord’s service. The words we find in chapter 15 are not the words of a novice. They are the soul-cries of a man who has ministered for around twenty years.
  2. It’s difficulty. Jeremiah is known as “The Weeping Prophet” for a reason. He experienced the siege and fall of Jerusalem, and Judah’s subsequent exile. He knew profound opposition, discouragement, and affliction.

It’s the second point that I want to meditate. In Jeremiah 15, we find the prophet entering what is likely his third decade of ministry. And he’s discouraged. He’s asked if there is any hope for Judah (14:19). He’s pained by the Lord’s subsequent promise of unrelenting judgment upon Judah in 15:1–9, and so he complains to the Lord in 15:10–18. Jeremiah recalls the original delight of his ordination, so much so that he says in 15:16, “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.”

Years of toil and trouble had taken such delight, however. Jeremiah was so pained in ministry that he goes so far to accuse God of having deceived him (15:18). Ministerial sorrows cannot only rob the pastor of joy but can also remove his hope.

How God Breaks Our Complaints

For weeks now, I’ve meditated on 15:19, which represents God’s answer to Jeremiah’s ministerial complaint. Notice what God says, “If you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them.”

When God calls us to the gospel ministry, He calls us to an office full of difficulty. Sometimes that difficulty is bearing the burden of grief, as church members suffer and pass on to glory. Sometimes the challenge is unrepentant sinners whose iniquity poisons the body. Sometimes the difficulty is obstinate sheep who continuously demand a surprising amount of attention. Other times it’s the difficulty of constant criticism. These are all in addition to the regular disappointments we encounter: apathy toward the means of grace, complacency toward Christ, and the continual struggle for unity.

The Enemy will tempt us to respond to such difficulty with many sins, perhaps none more consistent than anger and self-pity. Anger looks outward in sin. Self-pity looks inward in sin. Jeremiah commits both trespasses in chapter 15.

Let’s notice two things about 15:19. First, notice the conditions: “If you return . . . If you utter what is precious.” The answer to Jeremiah’s despair that has resulted in anger and self-pity is repentance and renewed obedience. Pastor, could it be that you need to hear the same conditions today? Are you on the brink of preaching this coming Lord’s Day with a spirit of anger or wounded complaint?

Second, notice the promises: “. . . you shall stand before me . . . you shall be as my mouth.” The first promise is one of God’s presence, while the second assures God’s minister of power. What kindnesses from the King!

If we are to minister Christ’s gospel to His people and our community, we will need God’s presence and power—we will need God’s Spirit. According to this text, a Spirit-wrought ministry is one that thrives on repentance and obedience.

A Precious Ministry

One of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century was Octavius Winslow. He was full of Christ and experiential wisdom. When Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle opened in 1861 none other than Winslow was found preaching behind its pulpit. His most famous work is probably the volume, The Precious Things of God. In it, Winslow meditates on twelve topics the Scriptures declare to be precious:

  1. The Preciousness of Christ
  2. The Preciousness of Faith
  3. The Preciousness of Trial
  4. The Preciousness of God’s Thoughts
  5. The Preciousness of the Divine Promises
  6. The Preciousness of Christ’s Blood
  7. The Precious Anointing
  8. The Preciousness of God’s Children
  9. The Preciousness of God’s Word
  10. The Preciousness of Prayer
  11. The Preciousness of Christ’s Sympathy with our Infirmities
  12. The Death of the Saints Precious

Do these twelve precious things of God saturate your preaching and pastoring?

God tells Jeremiah to “utter what is precious.” The prophet must take out the vile and worthless complaints from his mouth, iso thathe might be once again God’s mouthpiece. Oh, how convicting this is to me. My capability to complain too often drowns my delight in Christ. May the sweet nectar of God’s preciousness be my drink more than the bitter dregs of anger and self-pity.

May the Lord help us all to be faithful ministers of that which is precious.

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A Subtle and Dangerous Snare

If we are ever to see a revival in our nation, it will begin with a revival of real gospel ministry. Pastoral paradigms built on pragmatism must fall, and in their place, we will see a renewed passion for prayer and piety. The kind of preaching that the Spirit blesses (and the heraldic ministry that ushers in revival) is that which is saturated in prayer and comes from the mouth of a man consumed with holy love for Christ. Before he ever considers strategic vision, administrative planning, and staffing structure, God’s man must be a man of God—in doctrine and devotion.

Should God grant me many years in ministry, I want to see this kind of renewal visit our ministers. But such a renewal comes with a perennial peril.

Learning a Vital Lesson

As I’ve studied Robert Murray M’Cheyne over the last few years, one of the more noticeable lessons his life teaches is the full-orbed nature of pastoral piety. We need to understand this totality of holiness in two ways. First, for M’Cheyne, piety begins with love for Christ. It then flowers into every area of spirituality: devotion to prayer, God’s Word, the Lord’s Day, evangelism, friendship in the church, dependence on the Spirit, and “unfeigned humility.” Secondly, we must see that an earnest pursuit of piety is a dangerous one. We can make much of godliness—it’s necessity and nature—that people overestimate our actual holiness. It’s one thing to be a holy man, but it’s entirely different to be known, even famed, for holiness.

M’Cheyne was such a minister.

The Snare Exposed

M’Cheyne once wrote, “I earnestly long for more grace and personal holiness, and more usefulness.” Nothing communicates M’Cheyne’s longing more than his Reformation.

Written in late 1842 or early 1843, it is his ten-page resolution for personal holiness. In the first section, he concentrated on “Personal Reformation,” saying,

I am persuaded that I shall obtain the highest amount of present happiness, I shall do most for God’s glory and the good of man, and I shall have the fullest reward in eternity, by maintaining a conscience always washed in Christ’s blood, by being filled with the Holy Spirit at all times, and by attaining the most entire likeness to Christ in mind, will, and heart, that it is possible for a redeemed sinner to attain to in this world.

M’Cheyne proceeded to delineate a scheme for personal holiness that would enable him to live in increasing communion with Christ. The plan included strategies for confessing sin, reading Scripture, applying Christ to the conscience, being filled with the Spirit, growing in humility, fleeing temptation, meditating on heaven, as well as studying specific Christological subjects.

His devotion to Christ was so renown that almost every epigram after his death referred to him as “the saintly ministry” or “the godly pastor” of St. Peter’s. His friend and biographer, Andrew Bonar, made an astute observation on a common pitfall in pastoral piety:

An experienced servant of God has said, that, while popularity is a snare that few are not caught by, a more subtle and dangerous snare is to be famed for holiness. The fame of being a godly man is a great a snare as the fame of being learned or eloquent. It is possible to attend with scrupulous anxiety even to secret habits of devotion, in order to get a name for holiness. If any were exposed to this snare in his day, Mr. M’Cheyne was the person. Yet nothing was more certain than that, to the very last, he was ever discovering, and successfully resisting, the deceitful tendencies of his own heart, and a tempting devil. Two things he seems never to have ceased from—the cultivation of personal holiness, and the most anxious efforts to save souls.

Examine Yourself

Ever since I first read it, these two sentences in the quote above have been a constant warning: “The fame of being a godly man is a great a snare as the fame of being learned or eloquent. It is possible to attend with scrupulous anxiety even to secret habits of devotion, in order to get a name for holiness.”

I’m not known as a holy man. But I recognize how easy it is to devote oneself to the means of grace and forget that your real motivation is selfish to the core: “I make much of such devotion so people will make much of my devotion.” Thus, the pastor’s pursuit is only in service of self, not the Savior. The Spirit won’t revive His church with such a man.

Pastors then must be wary of their motives in pursuing piety. They must resist the praise of men, and live only for the smiles of God. They must recognize how the devil schemes, even in our noble endeavors, and live for Christ’s honor alone.

True holiness is noticeable. Vital godliness leaves a mark. Paul’s teaching to Timothy demands it: “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 4:15–16).

So, yes, let’s pursue personal holiness with extraordinary vigor. But test your motives. Make sure they aren’t, at the root, just a scheme “to get a name for holiness.”

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Danger Lurks Near The Sacred Desk

Temptations fly at preachers as mosquitos swarm in a swamp. Archibald Alexander knew this well. To read his teachings on pastoral ministry is to read not only expert wisdom, but also experienced wisdom. No novice teacher can pen the paragraphs below.

The pulpit is perhaps, the severest ordeal of piety in the world. The man in secret might have felt humbled, on account of his sins, and seriously concerned for the salvation of his fellowmen; but when he rises in the pulpit, and hundreds of eyes are fixed on him, and multitudes are observing his performance, he can with difficult avoid feeling his attention drawn to himself, and a strong desire to acquit himself as to meet public expectation, and at any rate to rise above contempt.

And if a man has acquired already some degree of popularity, he naturally feels a strong desire to preserve the reputation which he has acquired. And these thoughts relating to his own dear popularity, may so get possession of his mind, that with every word which he utters, and every gesture which he makes, the thought may involuntarily occur, ‘How will this be received?’ Or, perhaps, in a form more hateful, ‘that is well spoken’—’that will be admired’—or ‘that will instruct the audience.’

And if he preaches with liberty, and some degree of eloquence, self-complacency is apt to arise in the mind. The deceitfulness and deep depravity of the human heart, never appears more evidently than in the pulpit. If all the thoughts which pass thro’ the preachers mind were exposed in their naked deformity to the view of the people, how would he be ashamed and confounded!

May the Lord enable His preachers to know true humility and vital piety in the pulpit. May the Lord protect us from seeking man’s praise. May He give us hearts that long to proclaim Christ alone.