God's Simple Gospel

Isn't it great that the Gospel is the only message that can deal with the spiritual and eternal problems of people of any condition or status in life?  It is shallow enough for a child to paddle in but deep enough for an elephant to swim in - I think it was Dr Leon L. Morris who made this point in the introductory section of his commentary on John's Gospel.

But how true!  And how insightful!  Fallen man tends always to make the Gospel a complicated and complex thing.  He wishes to adorn it with 'all kinds of everything.'  He wants it to become so deep that a child cannot grasp it. 

But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is essentially simple - it can be understood by the merest child.  Thank God that is true.  No one would ever be saved were it not true that sinners like us can actually understand enough of it to commit ourselves to it.  It is simple; but it is not simplistic - whatever that means.  Its profundity can be put across in simple enough terms and language.

So let us preach this Gospel will all directness, leaving asside all those dry academic niceties that keep some people in jobs.  Let us preach this soul-saving message in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Manse Widows

This has always been a problem in the church and especially for dedicated ministers of the Gospel.  It is profoundly gratifying to know that there are men who have given themselves to the work of the ministry, and who see themselves as preachers of the Gospel.  It is refreshing to see their zeal and determination to preach Christ and Him crucified.

But this comes at a price!  If a minister is single, such as the late Rev. Dr John Stott and Rev Dick Lucas in London and the late Rev William Still in Aberdeen were, then there is no big problem. These were single men who had the freedom to exercise their ministries as they saw fit.  They had no family responsibilities to restrict how they developed their ministries.  They were single men and they would live and work as single men.

But the married minister does not have that freedom.  He has voluntarily taken on additional responsibilities so he now has his wife and family to give adequate time to.  He is a married man who cannot now live as if he were a single man. When he married he voluntarily undertook to live from hence forth as a married man.  For a married man to live as a single man is unfaithfulness to Christ however else he might chose to describe it.

The married man's priorities are:  First to Christ; second to his wife and family, and thirdly to his work in the church.  His wife and family always come in between his relationship to Christ and to His church. This is necessarily the case.

I remember listening (as a young assistant minister) with bated breath to a church Moderator who was by this time into his sixties, confessing with brokenness to the fact that he put the church before his family and as a result lost his family.  He was elected Moderator because he was seen as a good church man.  But for him it was a very hollow honour; what can make up for losing your family for Christ when you put the church before Christ!

What a warning this was.  I had to fight against the temptation to put the church before my family, and most importantly before Christ in my life.  My role was to set a good example to church members and my fellow Christians.  If another Christian is having difficulties in his marriage and he comes to you for counsel, and the problem is that he is not spending enough time with his wife and family, what can you say to him?  How can you, with any credibility, say to this man that he has a responsibility to his wife and family when you, yourself, are defaulting in this very way.

'Manse widows' are usually found where a husband is dedicated to the service of Christ and where that same man is not fulfilling his marriage vows in the way he would expect others to do.  There must surely be a ministry to 'manse widows' who feel lonely, not valued, and overlooked.  These very special women will wonder why their husbands are prepared to give more time with other people than they are prepared to spend with them.

There needs to be a radical overhaul of ministry when this kind of thing occurs. That is not to suggest or imply that the church has got it wrong with respect to full-time ministry.  It is to admit, however, that ministers sometimes get it wrong when it comes to apportioning their time between work and home life.

The Rule of Faith and Practice

What a great encouragement it is to realise that there are at least some evangelical and reformed minsters who not only believe but seek to implement the reformation principle of the final authority of Scripture in every aspect of church life.  And they do exist, even in Northern Ireland.  While there are many men who take the reformed evangelical tag, not all of them seek to submit everything in church life to the touch stone of Scripture. "To the Word and to the testimony" is not really in their vocabulary at all.  And their church life demonstrates little or no evidence that this is their practice.

How often we see how local church leaders try to pressurise the minister of the Gospel into applying increasingly lower standards to church life, and all in a bid to increase numbers in the congregation.  And how frequently it is that these church leaders try to squeeze the minister into their narrow and at times worldly mould.

But thank God for those good men who are prepared to stand up and proclaim the authority of Scripture in the church of Christ.  This is an urgently needed emphasis in the church today.  Men try to implement all their schemes in order to attract the world into the church of Christ, and they do this under the pretext of evangelisation.  In reality, they want to be able to boast of their numbers and activities.  They multiply organisations and in so doing bring division into church families and therefore into the church itself.  Many churches have become caterers; they want to cater for every special interest group within its bounds.  All age groups must be catered for, both (or all) genders, all needs.

But as it clearly the case in the biblical church, the greatest responsibility of the Christian Church is to be the proclaimer of the Gospel of saving grace in Christ Jesus alone.  No other body has been given this responsibility, none.  This is the church's unique domain and calling - to preach the word (Gk. keruxov tov logov, 2 Tim.4:2).  Acts 2:42 details the practice of the infant church in Jerusalem, and they were all exclusively spiritual activities. 

Once the church gets into all kinds of entertainment-type activities, she has departed from the clear mandate of Acts 2:42.  The moment she becomes, or tries to become, 'all things to all men,' in the sense of trying to run something for everyone, she has diluted her energies by so doing.

The most pressing need for the church today is a return to the full and final authority of Christ in His Church.  She must again submit herself to Christ's Lordship in all things.  She must yield herself totally to her Lord and Saviour, a surrender that must become part and parcel of her activity and life.  It is not sufficient just to renew a covenant of some kind if there is not a hearty response to the terms of the covenant.  There must also be a constant drive for increasing submission to Christ as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures.  The church today must prostrate herself before God's Throne, seek His forgiveness for her coldness and unfaithfulness, and reconsecrate herself to Him in all things.  She must be the church and not an mere  institution.  The life of Christ her Lord must not only be confessed but demonstrated in and through her life. 

That will be a most costly business.  She will have to deal with the unbelievers within her membership if she is to be submissive to Christ as Lord.  She must ensure that her elders are godly men, and not, as so many are, filthy-mouthed, cursing and swearing blasphemers, not a few womanisers, and some extremely poor role models for the new generation.  She must look again at her ministry and ascertain who is and who is not preaching the Gospel with power and faithfulness.  A man may be an evangelical by profession but if his preaching is not a passionate presentation of Christ in all His saving fulness; if it does not plead with sinners to come to Him Who alone can save them; if it does not 'nail sinners to their pews' as they listen to the preaching, then they must be asked to re-train as preachers, or at least promise to conduct a deep assessment of their preaching ministry - its content and its approach - with their peers in the ministry who are preachers, and even bringing in outside specialists who have proved themselves as preachers of the Gospel.  Ministers who are mere time-servers - and there are many - must be encouraged to leave the ministry or take early retirement, and not allowed to become Sunday supplies for the rest of their lives.

The ministry needs a radical shake-up if it is to 'cut the ice' in today's decadent world.  The church be seen to be different from the world, not like it - as many are becoming.

Be Careful!

We must be very careful about making assumptions about a man and about what he believes that might well proved to be false.  I made the assumption that Dr Lloyd-Jones actually believed in 'limited atonement' in the early years of my ministry concerning Lloyd-Jones.  How wrong I was.  In fact, - and this is some confession for a Presbyterian – as a young minister, I rejected Calvin’s commentaries because they were not Calvinistic enough for me – as I then understood the term!  I am now wondering how many Presbyterians and other reformed men read Calvin’s commentaries and especially his sermons!  What a treat is in for you, and, my, what soul-delighting gems you’ll find in the great reformer’s sermons.  Also, we must only go as far as Scripture and no further; and stick to the plain meaning of the text.  This characterised DLMJ and his great mentor John Calvin.  Allow the Scripture to speak out its own message, and don’t try to improve on it by adding to what it teaches the thoughts of men, as reflected in their theological systems, however good. 

For further information on Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, please click here, and here.

Theological Compromise Robs Churches of God's Blessing

I have often thought about getting hold of the reports that senior churchmen in one of the Protestant denominations in Northern Ireland (who were given a year to go round the congregations, inter alia), gave when they finished their year, and read and study these reports to find out what the spiritual state of the churches really was - in their view. Having been and listened to about fourteen of these reports over the years, I would have to conclude that that church is in very good heart, is spiritually alive, has prayer meetings, good work being done, made up of good people, God’s work progressing steadily, and so on.   

Having listened to such reports, I could not reconcile what these church leaders were saying with what I and many other ministers were experiencing on the ground.  The annual meeting of that denomination was told very good news about life within and around that denomination, yet there were fundamental theological problems, such as, the acceptance of theological pluralism, the honouring of men and women ministers who held theologically liberal views and preached accordingly; there were all kinds of mix-ups with ecumenism, fraternising with Romanism on a frequent basis, the institutional cover-up of serious wrong-doing, and all emerging from a determined opposition to the Gospel and to Gospel preaching ministers in many places.  Yet, the annual reports spoke of how healthy the churches were spiritually speaking.  Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones gives such an attitude as the reason why revival has been withheld from many churches today.   

And, and here’s the irony, the churches that are furthest away from Scripture are the very churches that need the reviving power of God’s Holy Spirit more than the “purer” churches, whatever and wherever they are!  It is these very churches that claim how spiritual they are, how faithful they are to the Gospel, and how much work is being done for God's glory amongst them.  And these churches that make such unfounded claims are the churches that are being deprived of God's blessing - blessing that He is longing to pour out upon them.  They are also the most likely churches to be revived by God when His time comes to pour out His Spirit again.  DMLJ longed for this to happen in his day, but felt very disappointed that he had not experienced revival at the end of his ministry as he had done in Sandfields in the 1930s. 

The Churches are MUCH TOO HEALTHY

Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones  was greatly concerned about the state of the Christian Church, especially her very low spiritual temperature.  He was concerned about the lack of fire in the preaching, the absence of any real sense of the Holy Spirit in the services.  While on holiday and worshipping in churches on a Sunday, he would be quite unimpressed at what passed for worship and preaching.  He often wondered why, when so many were praying and pleading for revival, as he did throughout his ministry, that it did not come.  When asked what he considered the reason was for God’s denial of revival in his time, his answer was literally shocking. He said, “The reason why God has not sent revival to the churches today is because they are much too healthy.”  Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  ... I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”[1]   Too many churches today, the Doctor would argue, and say with the Laodicean church, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing.”  But our Lord answered them directly, “[you] do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked.”[2]  Does this not describe the churches in our land today?

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[1]   Mt.9:12, 13.

[2]   Rev.3:17.

No Revival!

Do you know the surest way to deprive God’s church of the blessings of a Holy Spirit revival?  It’s this: just go on believing that your church is the nearest thing to a truly Scriptural church that there is, and go on telling the people you meet this same message.  In this way you can guarantee no revival blessing for your church.  

But if this is your honest belief, then please do not pray for revival for your church, for it doesn’t need it; rather ask God to revive your very needy, impure, unfaithful, compromised neighbouring churches instead!