John the Baptist as a Preacher

John was the connecting link between the Old Testament and the New, the last and greatest of the prophets, the first preacher of the new dispensation.  The character of the man was marked by great originality (though he was much like Elijah) and power.  He was brusque, bold, candid, ready, but modest, devoted, and faithful.  The great fact that he announced was the immediate coming of the promised reign of God: “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  The promised Messiah was now about to arrive, and he himself was but a voice preparing the way of the Lord.  In the greater work and glory of the Coming One, he must be lost to view.  Along with announcing this fact, he had a great duty to enjoin, that of immediate preparation for the kingdom by a sincere and fruitful repentance.  This he enforced by many an apt illustration and example, many a strong and brave application.  His work was fortified and his message of repentance strikingly symbolized in the rite of baptism from which he gets his name.  It had not been uncommon for the older prophets to employ external things as signs, tokens, illustrations of their messages.  John does not seem to have used the synagogues, but to have preached altogether to the crowds in the open air.  In both character and work, he has received the highest possible endorsement, in the encomium of his Lord: “Among them that are born of women, there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist.”

From: A History of Preaching: Volume I: From the Apostolic Fathers to the Great Reformers, AD 70-1572 by Edwin Charles Dargan (London: Hodder & Stoughton/New York: George H. Doran Company, 1905), pp. 21-22.

Edwin Charles Dargan (1852-1930) was Professor of Homiletics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky (1892-1907).  He also served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention (1911-1913).

 

Worship

We must not cease to wonder at the great marvels of our God.  It would be very difficult to draw a line between holy wonder and real worship for, when the soul is overwhelmed with the majesty of God’s glory, though it may not express itself in song or even utter its voice with bowed head in humble prayer, yet, it silently adores. – Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892).  Comment on Luke 2.18, from “Morning and Evening” (January 26, PM)

This is post number 1,500!

 

The Necessity of Preaching

It is not required of the pastor only that he preach now and then at his leisure, but that he lay aside all other employments, though lawful, all other duties in the church, as unto such a constant attention on them as would divert him from his work, that he give himself unto it – that he be, in these things, laboring to the utmost of his ability. – John Owen (1616-1683), English Puritan theologian and biblical scholar

 

On Moralism

If Christ’s righteousness, not your own, has really been imputed to you so that you are totally accepted by the Father as in the Son, then stop trying to cover your badness by being good but, in full confession of your badness and failure, obey in light of your failure and what He has done for you.

One of the most important spiritual disciplines for daily resisting the temptation of moral formation is to open and center the heart with the Spirit on these two realities of full pardon and full acceptance.  Sometimes, our moralism has to do with not really accepting the reality of our full pardon from the condemnation of sin.  In this case, we seek to hide from our sin by being good, for it is too painful to see our sin as it is insofar as we experience guilt as condemnation.  As an antidote to this malady, we must come out of hiding, in prayer, and open deeply to the truth of our sins and how these have been imputed to Christ, that there is no condemnation for those in Christ (Romans 8.1), so that we may open deeply to the Spirit applying forgiveness and love in our experience.

At other times, our moralism is linked to a deep belief that we are unacceptable because of our sins.  I find it very common, in my own life and in those I minister to, that we feel forgiven for particular sins and failure, but we do not feel acceptable.  This explains why many believers do not experience liberation through awareness of sin: they feel forgiven but unacceptable and, thus, they must work harder at being good to become acceptable.  This is the true heart of moralism.

Consequently, in prayer, we must learn to open to the full justification by God and the unbelievable truth that I am not only full pardoned but also fully acceptable to God on the basis of Christ’s merited righteousness that has been imputed to me and not on the basis of what I have done.  Everything else in my culture and in my heart informs me that I am acceptable for what I do.  This is the whole point of Christ’s active obedience in life, such that His merited righteousness would be imputed to me so that, in Christ, I am totally accepted by the Father.

From: “Resisting the Temptation of Moral Formation: Spiritual Formation Grounded in the Cross and Justification” by John Coe, in Sundoulos: The Alumni Magazine of Talbot School of Theology (Winter, 2011), p. 9.

John Coe is Director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

 

On Modernism

Fifty years ago, Protestant modernism, in its classic expression, was already, in many places, fifty years old and more.  Everywhere, it seemed to be arriving at a vigorous maturity which enabled it to capture, one after another, the propaganda centers of the evangelical enterprise.  There was little outward evidence that modernism was suffering from a congenital sickness so that, in another fifty years, it would be acknowledged, even by some of its former champions now aligned both on theological right and left, as a dead viewpoint, and that some scholars would insist it survived only where there was an ideological culture lag or where professors and pastors were ready to die for the old party line, at whatever cost.

Walter Marshall Horton has singled out the period 1850-1914 as “the great age of liberalism.”  The latter date was not intended to indicate that the first World War ended the strenuous struggle which modernism waged against evangelical Protestantism.  Surely, the career of that Baptist champion of Fundamentalism, W. B. Riley, testified that classic liberalism, even in the years of its decline, has accumulated to itself a powerful ecclesiastical machine strong enough to bend many a theological effort into conformity.  But, the first World War wrote into history, in bold letters, what the subsequent course of events has served only to italicize, that the optimistic assimilation of man and history to God, which stood at the center of the classic liberal outlook,  stood discredited by realistic interpretations of the sociological drift of our era.  Even within the so-called empirical approach, which Fundamentalism insisted, with one eye on biblical theology, was never “empirical enough,” it became increasingly difficult for liberal theology to demonstrate man’s direct moral continuity with the divine.  Nothing is clearer than that, since the first World War, classic modernism has fought a series of delaying tactics which, by 1950, had been unable to offset the conviction that its theological system is an undesirable formulation which, at all events, must be superseded.  The theology of modernism, remarkably enough, has been unmasked as profoundly unscientific.

From: The Drift of Western Thought: The W. B. Riley Memorial Lectures for 1951 by Carl F. H. Henry (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1951), pp. 127-128.

 

The State of Things

The present situation within the main Scottish Presbyterian churches regarding the [Westminster] Confession is unambiguous.  The Free Church, the Free Presbyterian Church, the Associated Presbyterian churches, and the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) all subscribe the Confession of Faith simpliciter.  The Confession remains the Church of Scotland’s subordinate standard of faith de jure, but is de facto ignored: mentioned in passing at ordinations, but rarely, if ever, examined – far less taught.

From: “The Erosion of Calvinist Orthodoxy” by Ian Hamilton, in The Westminster Confession Into the 21st Century: Essays in Remembrance of the 350th Anniversary of the Westminster Assembly: Volume 2, J. Ligon Duncan, III, editor (Fearn: Mentor, 2004), p. 178.

 

For the Lord’s Day (210)

For, by works of the law, no human being will be justified in His sight since, through the law, comes the knowledge of sin.  (Romans 3.20)

 

On Peace

Peace, we may safely conclude, was intended, by our Lord, to be the keynote to the Christian ministry.  That same peace which was so continually on the lips of the Master was to be the grand subject of the teaching of His disciples.  Peace between God and man through the precious blood of atonement, peace between man and man through the infusion of grace and charity – to spread such peace as this was to be the work of the church.  Any religion – like that of Mahomet, who made converts with the sword – is not from above but from beneath.  Any form of Christianity which burns men at the stake in order to promote its own success carries about with it the stamp of an apostasy.  That is the truest and best religion which does most to spread real, true peace. – J. C. Ryle (1816-1900).  Comment on John 20.19-23.

 

On Inward Peace

We see, in Peter’s tears, the close connection between unhappiness and departure from God.  It is a merciful arrangement of God that, in one sense, holiness shall always be its own reward.  A heavy heart and an uneasy conscience, a clouded hope and an abundant crop of doubts will always be the consequences of backsliding and inconsistency.  The words of Solomon describe the experience of many an inconsistent child of God: “The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways” (Proverbs 14.14).  Let it be a settled principle in our religion that, if we love inward peace, we must walk closely with God. – J. C. Ryle (1816-1900), commenting on Matthew 26.69-75.

 

On Acts 10.23-33

It was a marvelously comprehensive message, a precis of the good news according to Peter which Mark would later record more fully in his Gospel, and which Luke incorporated into his.  Focusing on Jesus, Peter presented Him as a historical person, in and through whom God was savingly at work, who now offered, to believers, salvation and escape from judgment.  Thus, history, theology, and gospel were again combined, as in other apostolic sermons.  As Cornelius, his family, relatives, friends, and servants listened, their hearts were opened to grasp and believe Peter’s message, and so to repent and believe in Jesus. – John R. W. Stott (1921-2011)