The Wanderer

For those friends in, near or able to get to Louisville, Kentucky, in early July next year, may I recommend a three star conference?

The three stars are Bill Hughes, Stu Johnston and Jim Savastio. I will be cavorting along in the rear with the baggage. The conference is The church at the crossroads and will be held at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from Tuesday 5th July through Friday 8th July. All the detail is here.

Pastor Bill Hughes is a true British gentleman. With quiet panache and pastoral penetration he unpicks your soul in the course of his sermons, without histrionics bringing the Word of God powerfully to bear. To hear Pastor Hughes preach is to be taught to preach even as your soul is fed.

Pastor Stu Johnston I first met a good while ago: he was kind enough to drive me to an airport when I attended a small conference in his neck of the wood. A very gentle, gracious man with a great heart, Pastor Johnston preaches with an understated profundity.

Pastor Jim Savastio is an old family and church friend. We tried to wreck him some time in the eighties when he stayed in my parents’ home for a summer as a pastoral intern, but failed properly to derail him. Jim has a gift for illustration and for getting on well with people. He is an easy man to love, largely because of his love for others, and that makes him an easy man to hear.

I do not yet know what these three men will be preaching on, but – God helping them – their hearers will be in for a treat. I am looking forward to their preaching, and would encourage you to get there if you can.

Have you ever needed a champion? Perhaps you have faced an enemy against whom you have had no defences, or been oppressed and cruelly treated and have had no protection. You have been in danger but had no strength to fight; or trapped, with no way of escape. You have needed someone to stand on your behalf, someone to defend you and deliver you, strong to save you and protect you. You have needed a champion.

In truth, every one of us needs a champion in the truest and deepest sense. Mankind has an enemy, Satan. He is cruel, oppressing us in sin and misery, and we have no strength to defeat our pride, our anger, our lust, our loneliness, our shame, our grief, and our bitterness: we are enslaved, enchained. We are in danger, and he is dragging us down to the Pit. We are trapped in the dominion of darkness. We are fearfully exposed to punishment for our sins as those who have followed him.

This was true from the beginning, when Adam our father sold himself to Satan and cut himself off from God. But even then, God was full of mercy, and there at the dawn of time he stepped in and promised a champion to defeat our Adversary, a great victory at grave cost to himself:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen 3.15)

And then the world waited, looking for God’s champion. And, over time, more was revealed.

To Abraham, God promised a seed through whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed (Gen 12.3). Jacob identified Judah as the royal tribe from whom the sceptre should not depart, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes (Gen 49.10). Balaam, impelled by the Spirit of God, looked into the distant future:

I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near; a Star shall come out of Jacob; a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and batter the brow of Moab, and destroy all the sons of tumult. (Num 24.17)

The Lord promised David that – after his death – he would establish the throne of the kingdom of David’s son forever (2Sam 7.12-16). Isaiah spoke of a God-given sign: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Is 7.14). He spoke of the response of the nations to this Servant of God:

Arise, shine; for your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the Lord will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you.
The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.
Lift up your eyes all around, and see:
They all gather together, they come to you;
Your sons shall come from afar,
And your daughters shall be nursed at your side.
Then you shall see and become radiant,
And your heart shall swell with joy;
Because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you,
The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to you.
The multitude of camels shall cover your land,
The dromedaries of Midian and Ephah;
All those from Sheba shall come;
They shall bring gold and incense,
And they shall proclaim the praises of the Lord.
All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together to you,
The rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you;
They shall ascend with acceptance on my altar,
And I will glorify the house of my glory. (Is 60.1-7)

Jeremiah spoke of a coming day and a coming King and Priest from the house of David:

‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: In those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David a Branch of righteousness; he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’ For thus says the Lord: ‘David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel; nor shall the priests, the Levites, lack a man to offer burnt offerings before me, to kindle grain offerings, and to sacrifice continually.’ (Jer 33.14-18)

Then there is Micah, who speaks of one who is himself eternal and yet comes forth out of Bethlehem to rule, shepherding the people of God (Mic 5.2).

Over time, the pens of prophecy sketch a portrait of increasing depth and detail, and a picture of the champion slowly emerges.

And still the earth was waiting.

And then, one night in Bethlehem, all the lines of promise converged in a child who was born of a virgin, the eternal Son of the Most High, and a true man; he was of Abraham’s seed, Judah’s line, and David’s house; he was the King of the Jews and the Gentiles bowed before him. In this Jesus, declared by angels to be Christ the Lord, all the threads of promise twisted into a single cord. Truly, Bethlehem, “the hopes and fears of all the years / Are met in thee tonight.” God’s champion has arrived on the stage of the world. It is worth noting that before he has drawn breath for many days, the malevolence of his enemy is unleashed against him in the slaughter of the infants: battle is joined!

But this is only a beginning; it is not an ending. We have looked only at a few brief promises concerning only his birth. There are countless others that speak of his living, dying, rising, reigning and returning. He has come to stand for his people, to oppose their enemy and defeat him utterly, to set us free from his cruel reign and to restore us to God.

This is not mere coincidence; it is far too complex for that. It is not fantasy; it is far too well-attested for that. This is promise and fulfilment.

Come to Bethlehem. What do you see? An excuse for a temporary bout of niceness? A chance for a get-together, perhaps a family gathering or a party of some kind? A bit of token spirituality for the festive season? A reason to try a little harder this year?

Or do you see a weak infant who is the infinitely mighty God? The eternal Lord a few days born? A ruler, though despised? A king born into a carpenter’s home? A poor baby who is a crowned warrior?

Behold your champion, the Saviour sent from God to deliver and defend from sin, death and hell. Any other Jesus is both false and useless, a lie and a vanity. But this Jesus is a Saviour for you, and if you will take him and trust him as God makes him known, then you will be saved, delivered from Satan’s clutches and miseries as you bow, and worship, and adore, and believe with Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men, and with all those who have been redeemed by his holy life and sacrificial death, keeping company with angels in the praises of the Redeemer.

Commit your eternal soul to the care of God’s champion: his Son, born in the city of David, a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.

Carl Trueman finds an atheist who gets the truth and demands of the gospel better than many professing Christians:

We unbelievers are entitled to regard the Bible as magnificent literature. More is demanded from the faithful. Yet these days, even some soi-disant Christians would claim that the miraculous elements of the New Testament are only metaphors. To me, that is agnostic slop. Faith is more than literature. Faith is an epiphany of abasement, ardour and rigour, in the hope of grace, redemption and joy. But there is an entrance fee. If you do not believe in the literal truth of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, you are not a Christian.

Whenever we consider the glories of the incarnation – whether at the end of December or at any other time – we do well to consider that this is not a matter of taste and inclination, but of truth and conviction. Jesus is Immanuel – God with us – and that is simply not negotiable.

David Murray helpfully suggests some issues to address when parenting teenagers. I think that the conclusion is helpful, because it focuses not on the children’s desires but on the parent’s priorities and principles:

I’ve set out three tensions, and that’s what they are. They are not three choices; it’s not that we and our children must choose family instead of friends, parents instead of possessions, and education instead of entertainment. Every parent-child relationship will have both elements of these three equations to one degree or another. The problem is when the balance of them falls on the wrong side consistently and excessively.

The “world” whispers (and sometimes shouts), “Unless you focus primarily on friends, possessions, and entertainment, you will lose your children’s love!” The Bible says otherwise.

How much we need to cry, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” And one of the ways He helps us is by driving us away from our own wisdom and strength, and towards prayer for Gospel power to change our children’s hearts.

This is not a battle we win once, but a battle we have to fight every day. Often we drift imperceptibly into imbalances, and we have to suddenly and painfully re-balance. Maybe reading this will at least help you to recognize the nature of the battle. And that’s often more than half the battle.

Read it all.

William Carey, writing to John Ryland to give some report of his experience and background, laments the following:

I am convinced that some sins have always attended me, as if they made a part of my constitution; among these I reckon pride, or rather vanity,—an evil which I have detected frequently, but have never been free from to this day. Indolence in divine things is constitutional: few people can think what necessity I am constantly under of summoning all my resolution to engage in any thing which God has commanded. This makes me peculiarly unfit for the ministry, and much more so for the office of a missionary. I now doubt seriously, whether persons of such a constitution should be engaged in the Christian ministry. This, and what I am going to mention, fill me with continued guilt. A want of character and firmness has always predominated in me. I have not resolution enough to reprove sin, to introduce serious and evangelical conversation in carnal company, especially among the great, to whom I have sometimes access. I sometimes labor with myself long, and at last cannot prevail sufficiently to break silence; or, if I introduce a subject, want resolution to keep it up, if the company do not show a readiness thereto.

Eustace Carey, Memoir of William Carey D.D., 37-38

If him, how much more you or me?

The blokes over at the Gospel Coalition are discussing the topic of pulpit plagiarism (Carson and Wilson thus far). (And Keller.) (And Perman.)

In a move of quite unexpected and unusual prescience, I dealt with this issue in a post on ministerial magpies a little while ago.

Or maybe it wasn’t prescience. It could be that they are simply copying me . . .

FURTHER THOUGHT: You might want a preacher to make something fresh; would you ever want him to say something new?

Monmouth  8 8 8. D

Psalm 134
Come, all you saints, and praise the Lord,
Come, every servant of his Word,
Who stand in Yahweh’s house at night!
With lifted hand let praise be given,
He made the earth, he made the heaven,
And he will bless you, grant you light.

©JRW

See all hymns and psalms.

Tim Challies shares a poem (take note: few holds barred) entitled I Looked For Love in Your Eyes, written by a woman whose husband’s soul had been poisoned by pornography. It will make your soul ache and your eyes weep. It may well send you back to the cross of Jesus for the cleansing of our sins and for grace to be pure.

The lady writes:

I saved my best for you.
Other girls may have given themselves away,
But I believed in the dream.
A husband, a wife, united as one forever.

Read the whole of I Looked For Love In Your Eyes. Learn the awful lessons that this poetry of pain teaches, and apply them, for the sake of your souls and your marriages.

Dr Sinclair Ferguson, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina, likes to say, ‘The children breathe in what the parents breathe out.’ In other words, the atmosphere of the home – what we value, how we treat each other, what priority we place on walking with the Lord – is impressed on the hearts and minds of our children.

Kenneth B. Wingate, A Father’s Gift (Banner of Truth, 2009), 119.

So, what are you breathing out? What are your children breathing in? Love for Christ Jesus, and the dynamics of the gospel in every part of life? A kind, loving, gracious spirit?

What about love for, delight in, and commitment to the body of Christ? Are our children breathing in that?

Gene Veith points to a European study (discussed here) suggesting that fathers in particular will have a massive impact on the attitude of their children to the church of Christ. The article is not suggesting that mothers do not need to go to church, and it may be that there lies behind the article some lack of clarity (are they equating mere church attendance with genuine Christianity?) but the implication is clear: the best way to teach our children to love Christ and his church is to love Christ and his church ourselves.

So, fathers and mothers, will you be there tomorrow, as often as you are able, willingly, cheerfully, eagerly, readily making your way to whatever place the saints will gather to meet with God? Will your demeanour and preparations this evening show that you are looking forward eagerly to the Lord’s day and getting everything in place for an early, unhindered start to the day?

May God grant that we breathe out a love for the Head of the church, and his body, and that our children should imbibe it from the heart.

Kevin DeYoung marshalls the prescient G. K. Chesterton to help us fight manger fatigue:

It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue.

I am convinced that if we tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero . . . there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. . . . If Christianity were only a new oriental fashion, it would never be reproached with being an old oriental faith.

Justin Taylor gives us the news that Roger Nicole has gone home to be with Jesus:

December 10, 2010, was the 95th birthday of Roger Nicole, the great Reformed-Baptist theologian.

This evening was his homegoing to be with his Lord. He has completed his earthly race. Having fought the good fight of faith, he entered into the joy of his Master. And undoubtedly he heard the words we all long to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

I came very late to Nicole, reading a festschrift in his honour, The Glory of the Atonement. Since then I have tried to get hold of other things by Nicole, and Justin’s brief biographical sketch contains a helpful list of resources, many of them linked. Subsequently discovering that I could not agree with every element of his theology did not stop me appreciating his clarity, force and insight on several key issues, and his penetrating understanding as a whole.

UPDATE: Mark Dever has a delightful series of reminiscences of Nicole here. It is well worth reading.

“You will be misunderstood,” preachers are told. Thanks, Seth, for that cheering thought on the eve of the Lord’s day!

Seth’s good counsel is “Plan on being misunderstood. Repeat yourself. When in doubt, repeat yourself.”

David Murray (to whom we tip the hat) reminds us:

How much more prayerful should we be in preparing and delivering sermons.

How much more dependent we should be on the Holy Spirit.

How much more thankful we should be when anyone does understand.

To which I would add this prayer.

If you were to choose one phrase to describe yourself, what would it be? One might argue that, for the apostle Paul, it would be this: “a bondservant of Jesus Christ.” He uses it repeatedly to describe his privileged status as a disciple of Jesus, bound to exclusive, absolute, willing obedience. But there was a time when he would have been the last person on earth to embrace and employ such a title. What made “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man” adopt the posture of Christ’s bondservant?

The change occured just outside Damascus. Paul was travelling to the city intent upon doing violence to the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and he fell to the ground. Who knows what went through his mind at that moment? What did he expect? No doubt the persecutor believed that he was doing the will of God; perhaps he even anticipated some divine commendation. Instead a voice spoke to the man lying on the earth: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” What a shudder must have gone through the heart of that proud man. There is already a new humility in his confused question: “Who are you, Lord?” Then these words of staggering reality give the crushing answer: “I am Jesus.” We might wonder how Paul survived the shock: that imposter, the cursed Nazarene, is the Lord of glory. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” He had known and perhaps been bested by Stephen, heard his pointed and powerful sermon and seen his face at his death; he had listened to the believing confessions of tortured followers of the Way; he had studied endlessly the testimonies of the Hebrew Scriptures, his treasured scrolls. And now he is confronted and cast down by the very Messiah that he has been anticipating, the very Messiah that he has been persecuting.

No wonder he was “trembling and astonished.” Stripped of all self-righteousness, all self-confidence, his entire world up-ended by this striking moment of divine revelation, he bows his head and asks a question: “Lord, what do you want me to do?”

That question gives us an insight into a humbled heart; it shows us a disciple’s disposition. Certainly there is still much pondering and praying for Paul over the coming hours, but this phrase opens a door by which we can gaze into a bondservant’s soul. Here is the subordination of one’s own will to the will of another. Here is a posture of voluntary humility and ready obedience.

Paul’s response is personal. He is face to face with Christ, and there is no thought of anyone else. His relationship to this Jesus is all that now matters. He is concerned not about what he himself would like to do, what others would have him do, or what others should themselves do. “What do you, Christ Jesus, want me, Saul of Tarsus, to do?” Every other allegiance, legitimate or otherwise, assumes its relative and proper obscurity next to the claims of Christ.

His response is immediate. This may be the most complete and radical change of plan in the history of the world. What the Christ speaks will be the rule of his life from this moment. No other plans or purposes will come into the equation, and nothing will be put off to a more convenient occasion. The risen Lord has declared himself, and instantly this man asks only what is required of him. All Paul’s hopes, schemes and dreams – short, middle and long term – are instantly abandoned, and all he is and has are put at the immediate disposal of the Lord Christ.

His response is unconditional. Paul has no idea what Jesus of Nazareth will ask of him. Who can say what his command will demand? But that is not the issue. The possible answers do not prevent or inhibit the question. The sense of his question implies this: “Anything and everything that you might require I stand ready to give.” This is not some strutting boast, but an unavoidable declaration in the light of who it is that stands before Paul.

His response is voluntary. It is a conscious and willing response. This is a deliberate act of consecration, an offering up of himself with a ready heart. There is no coercion, only felt obligation. This is not an accidental attitude, but a purposeful seeking out of the will of Christ in order to do it.

And so his response is fundamentally active. There is an immediate awareness that this Messiah will require and be entitled to a life lived to the praise of his glory, a life in which everything is given not anaemically but vigorously, not dragged out under duress but poured out exultantly. The living follows the birthing, the doing follows the saving.

And what is the source of this outlook? From where does this disciple’s disposition arise?

It is a believing response to Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Lord and God’s Christ: “I am Jesus.” It is the unparalleled and unparellelable glory of his unalloyed divinity and glorious humanity that has captured Paul’s heart. It is Jesus as the promised Prophet, Priest and King; the Son of David; the one Mediator between God and man; the Redeemer of God’s elect; the Hope of Israel; the Light of nations; the Dayspring from on high; the Lord of lords and King of kings. Paul has opposed him with every fibre of his being, and he has responded with sovereign mercy. When Paul later writes that “he loved me and gave himself for me” he is speaking of this Jesus whom he had persecuted. When the Father sought a Ransomer, a voice like many waters answered, “I will go.” Where angels and men were helpless, the Lord of men and angels gave himself to save his people from their sins. He died for those who were still his enemies. He died for Saul of Tarsus. He died for us.

And the man who sees – even faintly – the person and the work of this Jesus, whom God has made both Lord and Christ, asks this: “Lord, what do you want me to do?”

It is a believing sight of Jesus Christ that liberates us from anaemic, self-satisfied, shallow, take-it-or-leave-it religion. Do not say that if only you could see him as Paul saw him, you would have a different attitude. His glory shines on every page of your Bible, and you lack nothing to enable you to truly perceive him. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is no less glorious and no less gracious than he was on the day when he appeared to Paul. The Scriptures sing of his majesty and speak of his excellence, painting him in all the glorious colours that God has intended us to see in the portrait of his Son, lit up with the shining light of the Holy Spirit. If we have been given eyes to see and hearts to believe, all that is required is that we love greatly as those greatly forgiven by our great God and Saviour, and live accordingly.

What does it mean? It is not a call to some extravagant but ultimately empty gesture allegedly made for the sake of the kingdom, or some energetic but perhaps pointless demonstration of wrong-headed zeal. It may or may not demand a radical change of direction. It may or may not be a call to a sacrifice of which you have not before dreamed.

But – whatever else it requires – it will demand a change of attitude and call you to a different spirit. It means that you begin to ask not what you must do for Christ, but what you can do. It means a readiness to serve God wherever and whenever he may call us, whether that is where we are now or somewhere else where he would have us to be. It means that we bow the knee before Jesus, God’s Lord and Christ, and make a personal, immediate, unconditional, voluntary and active response, asking, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” It means being ready to follow him, whatever the answer, and ready to serve him, whatever the cost. That is a disciple’s disposition.

This article first appeared at Reformation21.

I’m not discouraged, depressed, or dulled in my affections for Christ and His Word. My love for this calling and the task to shepherd God’s people has not waned at all, it only grows. I have very little to be discouraged about and so much to be thankful for. So, what is going on? I seem to be experiencing a common, yet often undiagnosed reality for pastors laboring in the day-to-day grind of ministry. It is that slow, subtle process over a long period of time where you continue to add to your plate (or others add for you) without taking anything away from it. All of a sudden, you feel like all you do is work so hard to keep all the balls in the air as you juggle them, thinking if one falls…disaster. As a result, you feel like a dear pastor friend of mine described it to me this past week, “I feel like I am doing so much, that I am doing nothing well.”

I think most pastors can identify with Brian Croft’s honest and humble words. There is plenty of transparency here, giving a profitable window into his own heart, with good advice for seeing this coming where you can and responding to it when you can’t.

Kevin DeYoung has a couple of very stimulating posts about the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy in the person and work of the Lord Christ here and here. They are well worth pondering.

William Bridge points out that felt emotion is not simply to trump grounded conviction in the matter of our worship:

Objection: But what need of ordinances, for I enjoy God most in private; when I go unto God alone, when I am all alone in prayer I enjoy God more than I do under the public ordinances, and therefore what need of them?

Answer: Do you enjoy more of God in private; what, more than ever you did in public? Where wert thou then converted? Wert thou not converted under the public ministry? Ordinarily men are converted by the public ministry; and now you have some good affections in private, doth that good affection that you have in private arise to a higher enjoyment of God than your first conversion to God? Do you think that a little affection or drawing out of the heart in private, doth arise to a higher enjoyment of God than your first turning to him? This cannot be. Is it not an easy thing for a man to think that God is most enjoyed when his heart is most affected? It is possible a man’s heart may be more affected when God is less enjoyed; such is the deceit of our hearts. God is most enjoyed where God is most served. But, now, suppose God were more enjoyed in private than under public ordinances, I do but suppose it, yet were this no reason why a man should lay by the public ordinances: for you are sometimes in your closet at prayer, and there you enjoy God; sometimes you are below at dinner and supper, and you have some enjoyments of God there. But, I pray, tell me, whether do you enjoy God more at your ordinary dinner and supper or in your closet in prayer? Surely I enjoy God more in my closet in prayer. And is this a reason why you should never dine and sup again? Yet, notwithstanding, how do people reason thus: I enjoy God more in private, therefore I must lay by the public.

William Bridge, “Vindication of Ordinances” in Works, 4:141-42.

HT: RBF.

Robert Bruce, the disciple of John Knox and Andrew Melville, died at Kinnaird on July 27th, 1631. He had come to breakfast and his younger daughter sat by his side. As he mused in silence, suddenly he cried, ‘Hold, daughter, hold; my Master calleth me.’ He asked that the Bible should be brought, but his sight failed him and he could not read. ‘Cast me up the eighth of Romans,’ cried he, and he repeated much of the latter portion of this Scripture till he came to the last two verses: ‘I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ ‘Set my finger on these words,’ said the blind, dying man; ‘God be with you, my children. I have breakfasted with you, and shall sup with my Lord Jesus this night. I die believing these words.’

Marcus L. Loane, The Hope of Glory (Waco, 1968), page 160.

It is worth remembering that we do not get to die like this if we do not pursue the call to live like this.

HT: Ray Ortlund.

There are many possible regrets. Yet, when I recently sat down for coffee with a dear friend and faithful, seasoned pastor, he had but one regret that stood out among the rest. It wasn’t a regret on how faithful he had preached. It wasn’t a regret in regard to wishing he had visited more widows than he did. It wasn’t a regret that he had not shared the gospel more. Make no mistake. Their will be regrets for all of us who are pastors. If there aren’t, we think too highly of ourselves and the quality of work we have done. There is and will always be some level of these regrets in all pastors, including my friend. Yet, there was one regret that stood out. One regret that I saw hurt and burdened him more than any other.

Want to know? Read on at Brian Croft’s blog.

. . . the true doctrine [of the call to gospel ministry] is that no man, whether young or old, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, should presume to dispense the mysteries of Christ without the strongest of all possible reasons for doing so – the imperative, invincible call of God. No one is to show cause why he ought not to be a minister; he is to show cause why he should be a minister. His call to the sacred profession is not the absence of a call to any other pursuit; it is direct, immediate, powerful, to this very department of labor. He is not here because he can be nowhere else, but he is nowhere else because he must be here.

James Henley Thornwell, “The Call of the Minister,” The Collected Writings (Richmond, 1873), IV:25. Italics original.

via The Call – Ray Ortlund.

A Minister’s Burden

What contradictions meet
In ministers’ employ!
It is a bitter sweet,
A sorrow full of joy:
No other post affords a place
For equal honor or disgrace.

Who can describe the pain
Which faithful preachers feel,
Constrained to speak in vain,
To hearts as hard as steel?
Or who can tell the pleasures felt,
When stubborn hearts begin to melt?

The Savior’s dying love,
The soul’s amazing worth,
Their utmost efforts move,
And draw their bowels forth;
They pray and strive, the rest departs,
Till Christ be formed in sinners’ hearts.

If some small hope appears,
They still are not content,
But with a jealous fear,
They watch for the event:
Too oft they find their hopes deceived.
Then how their inmost souls are grieved!

But when their pains succeed,
And from the tender blade
The ripening ears proceed,
Their toils are overpaid:
No harvest-joy can equal theirs,
To find the fruit of all their cares.

On what has now been sown,
Thy blessing, Lord, bestow;
The power is Thine alone,
To make it spring and grow:
Do Thou the gracious harvest raise,
And Thou alone shalt have the praise.

John Newton

via Founders Ministries.

Ray Ortlund relies on Gardiner Spring to press home the pastor’s dependence on the prayers of his people, reminding us that the failures and victories of pastors are also the failures of those who fail to pray or the victories of those who plead for the blessing:

And who and what are ministers themselves? Frail men, fallible, sinning men, exposed to every snare, to temptation in every form; and from the very post of observation they occupy, the fairer mark for the fiery darts of the foe. They are no mean victims the great Adversary is seeking, when he would wound and cripple Christ’s ministers. One such victim is worth more to the kingdom of darkness than a score of common men; and on this very account, the temptations are probably more subtle and severe than those encountered by ordinary Christians. If this subtle Deceiver fails to destroy them, he artfully aims at neutralizing their influence by quenching the fervor of their piety, lulling them into negligence, and doing all in his power to render their work irksome. How perilous the condition of that minister then, whose heart is not encouraged, whose hands are not strengthened, and who is not upheld by the prayers of his people! It is not in his own closet and on his own knees alone that he finds security and comfort and ennobling, humbling and purifying thoughts and joys; but it is when his people also seek them in his behalf that he becomes a better and happier man and a more useful minister of the everlasting gospel.

Gardiner Spring, The Power of the Pulpit (Edinburgh, 1986), pages 223-224.

So, here we are again:

Yes, this morning the whole country seems to be under the snow. We have three or four inches here.

This is an opportunity to show what Christians are made of.

Do you have neighbours – especially the vulnerable, like widows, single mums, young families, wheelchair-bound, or the like – whose paths and drives might need clearing? Who might appreciate a few provisions? Who would be grateful for a check-up to make sure that they are OK, and perhaps a friendly token of food or some other expression of care?

Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. (James 1:27)

Once the widders and others are covered, what about the rest? Why not help the able-bodied and the fit, the hale and the hearty? Show that you follow the one who “went about doing good” and called us to follow him:

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. (Galatians 6:9-10)

So, let us get out of our beds, off our backsides, into the streets, and show gospel love to our fellow men, and so demonstrate that our Saviour changes a man’s heart, and in doing so let us win a hearing for the good news.