Let us turn again this morning
to Paul's first letter to Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 4. And since a number of you have
joined us since the first session yesterday afternoon, when it
was my privilege to open up the scriptures in your hearing, I
will take just a few minutes this morning to bring into focus
the main threads of thought that we considered since, in a very
real sense, the four messages which I am privileged to have
are an organic whole. I hope that each one is in some
measure complete in itself, but there is a true sense in which
they form one organic whole, and since the truth of God has
this interrelatedness, I like the mentality that caused our
Puritan forefathers to write bodies of divinity. They saw
this, that every facet of God's truth was organically tied to
other facets of that truth, and It's only as we see that wholeness
of truth, which we've heard from Dr. Spikeman, even with relationship
to the Christian ministry, that we do begin to truly understand
it. I stated at the outset of our
study yesterday that 1 Timothy 4, verses 12 through 16, is in
the realm of practical instruction for the Christian ministry what
a text like Romans 8, 29, and 30 is in the realm of a compact
statement of Christian theology, particularly soteriology. Where in all of Scripture will
you find such a sweeping, comprehensive statement of God's saving purpose
in Christ in so short a space as you find in Romans 8, 29,
and 30? Well, my contention is or assertion that this passage,
1 Timothy 4, 12-16, is a distillation of the directives found in many
other parts of Scripture with reference to the Christian ministry.
So, to master its content, to absorb something of its directive,
to begin to live and walk in its light, is to open up many
other areas of the Scripture as they speak to the subject
of the Christian minister and the responsibilities of his ministry. Our attention is focused particularly
upon verse 16, in which the Apostle Paul charges Timothy with these
words, Take heed to thyself and to thy teaching, or to the doctrine,
continue in them, for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself
and them that hear thee." Consider very briefly the three main areas
of thought that are found in the text. There is this command
to intense watchfulness in two areas, taking to thyself and
to the teaching. There is a charge to persevere
in that particular course, continue in these things. And then there
is this gracious promise that in so doing, God's saving purpose
will come to fruition in the servant of God and then through
the servant of God to those who listen to him. And then we went
back to the command itself and noted, first of all, the inseparability
of the two facets of the command. Paul says to Timothy, you are
not only to pay close attention to yourself, but to your teaching.
Not only to your teaching, but to yourself. And these two areas
of responsibility, God has fused together in an inseparable way. And then we also consider the
inspired relationship of the two facets of this command. We
are to take heed to ourselves, first of all, and then, and only
then, to our teaching. And this is the same perspective
as we find in Acts 20 and verse 28, where the apostle charges
the Ephesian elders in these words, take heed unto yourselves
and unto the flock of God over which the Holy Ghost hath made
you overseers. And then in applying the first
part of the command. You see, we have the broad overview.
We moved in with the zoom lens upon the command, and then we
put it under a microstroke. So that's how we've approached
the text. I suggested that there were three areas in which I would
seek to apply. As those engaged in ministry
to others, we must take heed to ourselves that we ourselves
are in a state of grace. simply because a man is a minister
does not mean he is no longer under obligation to obey 2 Corinthians
13.5. Examine yourselves. Prove yourselves. Know ye not your own selves that
ye are in the faith, or how that Christ is in you, except ye be
reprobate. Because we are ministers, we
are not exempt from the command of Peter to make our calling
and our election sure. And so we looked into the Scriptures
to see how we, as ministers, as those involved in a peculiar
place of privilege and responsibility, are to examine ourselves whether
we are indeed in the faith. Now, so much for the review.
That, in a nutshell, is what we covered yesterday. Now I wish
this morning to draw two other lines of consideration under
the general heading of taking heed to ourselves. What does
it mean for me, as a Christian minister, to take heed to myself? Well, it means I not only take
heed to see that I am in a state of grace, but secondly, I am
to take heed that I grow in grace. You'll notice in the words preceding
this, the Apostle Paul says to Timothy, Be diligent in these
things, give thyself wholly to them, that thy progress may be
manifest unto all. Whatever progress is made in
Timothy's hearers through his official ministry, he himself
is to be making progress in grace. And so I would, from this text
and within that perspective, exhort you this morning to take
heed to yourself as a Christian minister, that you yourself grow
in grace. Well, the question is asked,
how does a minister grow in grace? The answer is, he grows in grace
the way anyone grows in grace. And so, in answer to that question,
how do I grow in grace? How am I to take heed to myself
that I grow in the grace that I seek to convey to others through
the ministry of the Word? My answer, and the answer of
Scripture is, first of all, You must assimilate the word of God
as God's word to your own heart as a Christian. In other words,
the word of God must be assimilated, and I don't know a better word
to use. I've wrestled, and I've tried to come up with a better
word. If you find one, please see me afterwards. But I'll use
it, and then I'll qualify it. The word of God must be assimilated
in a devotional and a systematic order. Now, when I use the word
devotional, I do not mean with the disposition that comes to
the scriptures and threads words through the eyes until something
jumps out and fastens itself upon us. I'm not speaking in
that sort of mystical, non-rational approach to the Scriptures. You
may be using your Hebrew and Greek texts, you may be consulting
the commentaries, but I'm speaking of that treatment of the Scriptures
that has no conscious or deliberate reference to my official ministry
to others. I'm speaking of that kind of
dealing with the Scripture that has primary reference to my own
relationship to God as a disciple of Jesus Christ. There is no
passage in the Word of God which states more clearly that the
Scriptures are to have this function in the life of the minister,
and no passage which states it more clearly than the one referred
to in the previous hour, 2 Timothy chapter 3. Will you turn to it,
please, for a moment? In verse 14, the Apostle is charging
Timothy, in the face of declension and unbelief on every hand, to
continue in the things which he has heard. Verse 14, Abide
thou in the things which thou hast learned and been assured
of, knowing of whom thou hast learned then. This is a direct
word to Timothy. And that some obeyed thou, Timothy. has known the sacred writings
of the holy scriptures which are able to make thee, Timothy,
able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus. Timothy, the first function of
scripture in you is to be this precise thing here. Scripture
is to be the instrument of your own salvation. From a child,
you've been acquainted with the holy scriptures which are able
to make thee wise to salvation. Through the scriptures, you've
come to the discovery that God is your creator. You are his
creature. Through the scriptures, Timothy,
you've come to the discovery that you are under moral obligation
to keep the law of your God. Timothy, through the Scriptures,
your conscience has been awakened to that painful awareness that
you've offended this God, that you fell in Adam, and that you
have ratified, as it were, a thousand times, a thousand, over and over
again, that revolt in Eden by your own conscious and willful
sin. Timothy, the function of Scripture
is such that it has brought these discoveries, and then the further
and gracious discovery. that in Jesus Christ sin has
been judged, and all who repent and believe in Christ have forgiveness. Timothy, the function of Scripture
in you as a Christian minister is, first of all, to make you
wise of the salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
But he goes on to say, all Scripture is inspired of God and is also
profitable. You see, it has a further and
a more extensive purpose in you, Timothy. All Scripture is inspired
of God and is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction which is in righteousness. Now notice
verse 17, that, not the people of God, but that the man of God
may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work. And who
is the man of God? Well, I believe by cross-referencing
this passage with verse Timothy 6 and verse 11, we see that it's
a particular term that Paul uses of Timothy. Verse Timothy 6,
11, "...but thou, O man of God, flee these things." So Paul says
to Timothy, The first function of Scripture is the instrument
of your own salvation, but its second and great and perpetual
function in your life, Timothy, it is to be the constant instrument
of your own instruction with regard to doctrine. reproof,
correction, that you as a Christian minister may be complete, that
you as a minister may be furnished unto every good work. Then and
only then does he charge in chapter 4 verse 1, I charge thee in the
sight of God and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and
the dead by his appearing in his kingdom, produce the word.
What word? Timothy, that word which has
been, first of all, the constant instrument of your own instruction
and sanctification. To state it a bit differently,
Paul is indicating to Timothy that it is the word of God furnishing
me as a man, which is to take precedence over my work of proclaiming
that word to others. foundational to my job of proclamation
to others is its work of instruction and sanctification in and to
me. Therefore, my charge to you this
morning, my exhortation, My entreaty to those of you who are my fathers,
in age and in experience, is that we must take heed to ourselves,
that we ourselves grow in grace, and we do not grow primarily
in ministering the Word to others unless that ministry is the outworking
and the overflow of the ministry of the Word to our own hearts. Jeremiah said, and I quote from
his prophecy, chapter 15, Thy words were found, and I did what? I did exegete them, and thy words
were unto me the summing substance of my ministerial tasks? No,
no. Jeremiah said, Thy words were
found, and I did keep them. I assimilated them. I took them
into my own being until they became part and parcel of my
own inner life. so that all of my external life
was molded and governed by it. Thy word was found, and I did
eat, or thy words were found, and I did eat them. And thy word
was unto me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart." Since I regard these day sessions
as more or less an exclusive congregation, I'm not ignorant
of the lay folk who are here, some of you ladies, but you'll
forgive me if I'm constrained to direct my remarks more particularly
to the pastors and ministers and students. For five years,
it was my privilege to be engaged in an itinerant ministry going
from church to church in a Bible teaching type ministry and conferences. And all of that ministry was
in evangelical churches. I have never had the problem
of whether or not I should court the favor of those who reject
biblical authority and historic Christianity. They've never flirted
with me, and I have never flirted with them. So it's sort of been
a standoff. And during that time, I would
always attempt, when going into a church, to establish true friendship
with the pastor and remember that I was a guest and behave
myself accordingly. And I would seek to establish
a time when we could get together during the day to pray together,
to share one another's concerns. And after the second or third
day, when we got over all that caginess and trying to impress
one another and the rest, and began to really get down to the
gutsy issues of where we really lived, time after time, I would
ask the pastor a question something like this. What is your pattern? What is your schedule of personal,
devotional reading of the scriptures? By that I mean, going through
the full range of divine revelation in some kind of a systematic
order, whether it's once a year, once every two years, once every
three years, I'm not a stickler for a program, but do you have
a plan in which you have set out to expose your mind and life
and thought and perspective and ambitions and your total concepts
of life and of the ministry to the whole breadth of divine revelation
in a systematic way? What is your plan? Do you know
that in five years being in hundreds of churches, I could count on
two hands the men who had some kind of a plan of systematic
devotional assimilation of the Word of God? And the confession
that came again and again and again, was that the duties of
official minister, all the way from catechizing to communicants'
classes to the preparation of sermons and everything in between,
had so pressed in upon the time and the energies that this book
was no longer an instrument of personal sanctification, it was
almost exclusively the instrument of official ministration to others. Then I began to understand why
those very churches in which these men labored as teaching
elders were filled with unscriptural teaching. Unscriptural practices,
both in church life and in evangelism, were tolerated and never even
questioned. Evangelical traditions that had
gathered around that church, like barnacles on the hull of
an old ship, were there, and nothing was active to break them
off. What was the problem? Well, the
problem in great measure is to be found the answer right here. It's because the mind had cut
certain rocks of thought, and the life then following that
mind, that line, for as a man thinketh in his heart, so is
he. And those areas of thought and practice were unchallenged,
because there was not that systematic, sensitive exposure to the totality
of divine revelation. If all Scripture is profitable
for teaching, then the willful neglect of any part of it means
that there will be great defects in aspects of my teaching. If
all Scripture is profitable, then, for reproof and correction
and instruction in the way of righteousness, to the extent
that I willfully neglect any part of it, there will be defects
in my life that are unreproved, directives that are never seen,
aspects of the life of righteousness never encountered, and if that's
true of me as a man, then those deficiencies are projected upon
my people in my preaching, and amplified many times over. And so I plead with you, my fellow
ministers, and I speak not as someone who sits in an ivory
tower with one of these corporation-type churches with ten full-time ministers,
but as pastor of a smaller church seeking to have a shared ministry
with other elders and deacons who serve in their appropriate
place, as one who seeks to be among his people and have a heart
for his people, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with
those who rejoice. I trust I speak sympathetically.
I know something of the pressures, I know something of all of those
influences that would undercut this, but I plead with to pay
heed to yourself, that you yourself grow in grace, and you cannot
grow in grace if you neglect that most fundamental discipline
of growth in grace, that discipline that you lay upon your own people
time after time, one which, sad to say so often, we ourselves
as ministers tragically neglect. The results of that constant
exposure to the Word as a Christian, and not as a Christian minister,
it is this that will keep us fresh in our relationship to
Christ Himself. You remember the record in the
24th chapter of the Gospel of Luke? These two who were walking
with heavy hearts, and in a short time their testimony was, did
not our heart burn within us? And what brought the burning
heart? come time of a coat-of-many-colors ecstatic experience? No. Was it that they heard the flutter
of angels' wings and the song of angel voices? No. Did not
our hearts burn when He opened unto us the Scriptures? When
He opened unto us the Scriptures and showed them in the Scriptures
the things concerning Himself? And, oh, dear fellow ministers,
when that fragrance of present living intimacy with Christ is
heard from our ministries, first of all, the sensitive souls in
the assembly are aware of it. And our orthodoxy goes on impeccable. No one could find fault with
it. We continue to make those house
calls. We continue to counsel the distressed
and give direction to the awakened. And it isn't long before the
less discerning begin to sense that there's perhaps in some
of us a harshness that begins to enter the preaching. It's
a lot easier to be negative and censorious with a heart that
has lost the fragrance of the presence of Christ. It's hard.
It's very hard, unless you're a play actor, to set forth the
glories of God in the face of Christ when you're not beholding
that. And that there would be that
constant fragrance of Christ, as Paul says, we are a sweet
savor of Christ unto God, even in those who retract the message,
in them that perish, yes, as well as in them that are saved.
But it's the fragrance of Christ that exudes from our ministries.
And where is that fragrance to be kept? There in that secret
place, taking heed to ourselves, feeding us on the Word as God's
Word to our own hearts. Not only will this serve to keep
us fresh in our relationship to Christ, it will keep the great
doctrines of the faith a living thing, because we see them in
connection to their Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. Rinse the
most precious doctrine loose from Him, and it becomes a harsh
and a cold thing. But see it in relationship to
Him. And in your ministry, show to
your people how He is the psalm in substance, the lodestone of
all truth. And then the doctrines live and
catch fire and cause hearts to be ravished as they reflect the
glory of Christ. It is this alone, in the third
place, that will keep from imbalance in our ministries. One of the
tragedies of the Fall is the mental imbalance it has produced.
I've often wondered what would Adam's mind have been like had
it come to full development without the curse of sin, one great manifestation
of which is this matter of mental imbalance. To have a mind of
exploring God's universe without any imbalance, but holding all
things in their proper tension and in proper relationship to
one another. Well, you see, when this imbalance is carried over
into our ministries, we are not rightly representing our God.
And what can keep us from this? Well, one of the great means
is that constant exposure to the Word of God. May I introduce
a biographical note here? Some people, in fact often, I'm
asked, how did you come to your present theological conviction,
so that without embarrassment you would say that you stand
in the tradition of Reformed theology and thinking? And my
basic answer is, the Word of God drove me there. How well
I can remember in my systematic reading through the New Testament,
trying to come to the Word with a virgin mind, asking God that
I might approach that as a disciple, not as a master standing above
it, but as a subject sitting beneath its authority and its
power. And I'd come and read my reading in Matthew to Matthew
11, and I'd read those words of Jesus, I thank Thee, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, Thou hast hid, Thou hast revealed,
even so, Father, it please Thee. As I'd meditate upon that, I'd
say, you know, that sounds like what some of those people who
are called Calvinists talk about, divine sovereignty, in the work
of illumination. And so I'd think, and I'd meditate,
and I'd say, but I can't fathom that. And so I'd finish up Matthew,
and be reading along, and then I'd come into a passage like
John 6. No man can come to me except the Father which hath
sent me draw him. And I said, that seems to say
that man doesn't even have the ability to get to the remedy,
let alone make the remedy. You're bad off when you can't
even get to the doctor. You're bad off when you need
the doctor, but when you can't even get to the doctor to get
what you need, unless you're drunk! Then I'd say, ah, but
that has some frightening implications, and so I'd sort of push it under
the rug, but it wasn't long before I was in John 10. And I'd read
the words of our Lord. I said, ye cannot leave because
ye are not my sheep! I lay down my life for the sheep."
There's an explicit statement that he did not lay down his
life for everyone. In the same context, he says, I lay down
my life for the sheep, and you're not my sheep. Other sheep I have. I have. He's already got them.
Them also I hope to bring, if everybody's faithful. No, them
also I want. I must bring the certainty of
Christ's redemptive purposes. Well, you see, I'd put it under
the rug and try to forget it, but it wasn't long before I was
in John 17. Thou hast given him authority over all flesh, that
he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And it brought the issue up again.
Well, then I'd push it under, and then I'd come to some of
those statements in Acts. They believed through grace.
As many as were ordained to eternal life believed. And I'd push it
under the rug, and then I was in Romans. And I'd get into Romans
9, and that really used to drive me up a tree. Because the very
objections I found rising in my heart were the very ones the
apostle anticipated. So I said, it must be that I'm
drawing the right conclusions from his premises because I'm
coming up with the same objections. And so I ran to some of the commentators.
to have them quiet me down and take away this disturbance. And
I said, well, if what they say is true, that this is just a
vague national election in which divine selectivity doesn't touch
individuals on the basis of sovereignty, but on the basis of something
else, why, then, the objections are cleared away. So that can't
be the right interpretation. If you're understanding Paul's
line of thought, you'll come up with the objections he anticipated. Well, then, I'd push it under
the rug, and I could go on. Because it isn't long before
you find yourself in Ephesians 1. You see what happened? I could never come to the place
where I said, look, I reject that position, I have nothing
to do with it, it's a closed issue, because God was constantly
reopening the issue by his word. At the same time, at the same
time, I can remember thinking to myself, look, if I ever come
to embrace what is called Calvinism, I know one thing. I'm not going
to embrace those things in such a way that I sit on my backside
doing nothing because God's on His throne, because I find that
same apostle who in Romans 9 speaks of that free, unbounded, sovereign
selectivity of God in Romans 10, speaking of His evangelistic
passion, opening up that very ninth chapter with the source
of a broken heart, saying, I have continual headaches, and my prayer
to God for Israel is they might be saved. And so I said, well,
Whatever Paul believed about those things, it didn't kill
his evangelistic passion, it didn't kill his spirit of prayer,
it didn't kill his desire to see the gospel explained. So
if I ever can embrace that, I know I must embrace it in such a way
that rather than cutting the nerve of compassion and evangelistic
zeal, it ought to sustain and feed the very life of those activities. Brethren, I give you in a few
minutes that brief a biographical intimation of what I'm trying
to get across when I say that systematic exposure to the world
is what will keep from imbalance, and I've only taken one facet
of doctrine, and there are many other areas, some of the things
Mr. Swyton has been speaking about. I've sat here with a broken
heart saying, but Lord, why should there have to be an institute
in Toronto to call the churches attention to the fact that Christ
claims expense to all of life? If we believe 2 Timothy 3.16,
that it is a sufficient rule for faith in practice And if
God's means of discipling us in the total life of righteousness,
then rightly absorbed by God's servants and proclaimed in its
free and unbounded authority, would not these issues be left
upon the consciences of the people of God, proving the authoritarian
ministry of the Word? How can a man honestly be bringing
his life to the touchstone of Scripture and be indifferent
to his conduct in the realm of his social contacts and his contacts
and his business associates, the education of his children?
He can't be indifferent to that. Why? Because he comes into his
heathens and he reads powers. Rear your children in the chastening
and the admonition of the Lord. The nourishing of my children
is to be in the context of the sovereignty of God and the revelation
of His Word. I can't just read that and say,
oh well, I'll give them a few devotions and I'll give them
their Sunday school class and then I'm done. No. Now, don't
take the pragmatic approach. Christian schools aren't around
my neighborhood, therefore I won't be concerned about it. No! You
don't determine your foodie by circumstances. You're determined
by the Word. You say, God, here's my responsibility? Will you lay a responsibility
upon me and not give me the means to discharge it? Would you in
your gracious, pliantess desire to obey you? Give me life upon
the path of obedience, and then not make it possible for me to
obey? And so, as a Christian father, You
take seriously these things and then you begin to see the implications
for your people. And what's been the key to it?
That constant exposure to the Word in the secret place with
God. Keeping the freshness and the
fragrance in your relationship to Christ. Causing the doctrines
of the Word to live. Keeping from imbalance in short. It is this discipline of secret,
devotional, consistent, systematic exposure to the whole spectrum
of divine revelation that provides the soil of an anointed ministry. The truths that have burnt their
way into your heart in the secret place are the truths which, coming
from your heart, look as living holes, will burn their way into
the hearts of your hearers. The truths that have torn through
your own heart like a gleaming plowshare will be mighty in your
hands to tear through the hearts of others. The truths that have
distilled like dew upon your own parched spirit will be the
truths that will distill like dew upon the parched spirits
of your people. Take heed to yourselves, brethren,
that you yourselves grow in grace, and you cannot grow in grace
there is that exposure to the Word. Then, secondly, there must
be the maintenance of the spirit and the habit of secret prayer. And I've chosen my words carefully.
If we will take heed to ourselves, that we ourselves grow in grace,
not only by exposure to the Word, but the maintenance of the spirit
and the habit of secret prayer. One of the great mysteries of
biblical revelation is that somehow the fullness of grace that is
stored up in Christ is conveyed into the heart of a believer,
bound up with the whimperings of that poor, helpless child
of God. The precipitation of the graces
of Christ brought through and by the Spirit are bound up in
the prayers of the people of God. Philippians 119. I know
Paul says this will turn to my salvation through your prayer
and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. If ye being
evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more
shall the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who
ask him? And so it is here, in the maintenance
of the spirit and the habit of secret prayer, that all of the
taproots of an anointed ministry are to be found. It is here that
our own sins are constantly exposed. Psalm 91, Thou hast set our sins
before Thee, our secret sins, in the light of Thy countenance.
You can strut and swagger around feeling like you've made it until
you get into the secret place. And you begin to engage in true
prayer, meditation upon the greatness, the grandeur, the majesty, the
holiness of that One who calls Himself the High and the Lofty
One who inhabits eternity. And you begin to sense something
of that uncleanness, those specific sins that have gathered around
you and almost imperceptibly attach themselves to you until
you go into the secret place. It's there in the secret place
that true perspective is both gained and maintained. Psalm
73, the psalmist is looking out and everything just seems upside
down. He says, what's the sense of being a godly man in an ungodly
age? Look at that old wicked crooked
man down the street, chomping on his big fat cigars, crooked
as can be, easy life, long vacations, peaceful death. Look at the child
of God over here, afflicted day after day, can't pay his bills,
can't make ends meet, kid's sick, wife in the hospital. He said,
doesn't make sense. He said, until, until I went
in to the sanctuary of God. Then he got his perspective straight
again. The New Testament counterpart is 2 Corinthians 4.18. While
we look not on the things that are seen, Paul says, but on the
things that are not seen. For the things that are seen
are ample, but the things that are not seen are eternal. What is a preacher who doesn't
have that perspective before him? You don't get a fair deal
in the ministry. If you think you're going to
get it, young men, forget it. Go into something else. Forget it. God gives you some measure of
a servant's spirit, and you burn the midnight oil in order to
come up with substantial substance for your people, served up attractively
and orderly. You seek to present that, Herman,
as a spiritual sacrifice unto God in the presence of His people.
And what do you get for it? Some old saint in the back row. Someone else takes a statement
totally out of context and gets miffed with you. And somebody
else does not. And you begin to say, what in
the world's the use of all this? Unless you're living in the secret
place remembering who you're doing it for, you'll get sour,
my friend. And you'll be another one of those joining the ranks
of the has-beens. It's there in the secret place
that the motives are kept straight. Do I yet seek to please men?
Is there any secret place that you reaffirm that you're in the
ministry by divine call and commission, and the one thing that matters
is His approval, His eyes upon me? I charge, St. Paul says, in the sight of God
and of Christ Jesus, who can judge the living and the dead,
preach the word, be insinuated, out of season, Timothy, ever
keep before you the God who has commissioned you, the God before
whom you stand. Keep that perspective. And I
say it's impossible to keep it unless there is the habit and
the spirit of secret prayer. It's there in that place that
those carking cares that bleed away your mental and spiritual
energies are rolled upon your God, and your weaknesses exchange
for His strength. For even the youth shall fail,
the young men become weary, but they that wait upon the Lord
shall exchange their strength, shall renew their strength. They
shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not
be weary. They shall walk and not faint.
They, the duck, go through the form of mouthing some words called
prayer, so that you can put a little stab on their conscience, that
you, quote, have your devotions. No, no. They that wait upon the
Lord, those that truly engage God in prayer, they are the ones
who find themselves mounting up with wings as eagles, running
and not becoming weary. walking and not fainting. I commend you for your careful
and repeated study of the section in Charles Bridges' classic work
on the Christian ministry, on the minister's secret prayer. It's the best statement I know
in all of English literature that I've encountered treating
this very discipline, and in the interest of time I must leave
it. But then there was a third facet of growing that is so essential,
particularly for the Christian minister. It's true of all saints,
but in a special way of the Christian minister. If we ourselves would
grow in grace, we must not only systematically assimilate the
word to ourselves, secondly, maintain the spirit and the habit
of secret prayer, but there must be the maintenance of a tender,
blood-washed conscience at any cost. the maintenance of a tender,
blood-washed conscience at any cost. Tender as opposed to hardened
and seared, blood-washed as opposed to defiled and condemning. Look at the Apostle's statement
in Acts 24, 16. Standing in the presence With Ananias and Felix, the Apostle Paul says in Acts
24, 16, "...herein I also exercise myself to have a conscious void
of offense toward God and men always." Now, this word exercise
is the very word from which we get our English word, ascetic.
It's a transliteration from the Greek word. What is an ascetic? One who subjects himself to rigorous
discipline. Herein Paul says, do I asceticize
myself? I subject myself to this conscious
spiritual discipline, and I do it, he says, constantly, and
it's clearly defined, to have always a conscious void of offense
to God, void of offense to man. That is, to be able to look up
at any moment unblushing into the face of my God than whatever
would cause me to blush immediately having recourse to the cleansing
of Christ's blood. And to be able to look out uncondemned
into the face of my fellow man and know that if men hate me,
it's for the truth's sake and for the truth's sake alone. I submit to you that there is
no powerful searching ministry in the pulpit of any duration
unless a man is maintaining a tender, blood-washed conscience. And
the place of conscience in the Christian life is almost completely
overlooked in our day, but it holds a central place in New
Testament teaching. For Paul says to Timothy, the
ending of the charge is this. I'm charging you that you should
get after these people teaching false doctrine, but the end in
view is this. The end of the charge is love
out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfamed. Later on,
in 2 Timothy 1, he indicates that the first step to apostasy
is casting off faith and a good conscience. Then men make shipwreck
of the faith. Oh, my dear brothers in the ministry,
take heed to yourself that you keep a tender, blood-washed conscience
at any cost. A conscience born of offense
to God. That you're employing yourself,
expending your time and your energies under the consciousness
that you're accountable to God. For the dangers of the ministry
are great. There's no time clock for you to punch. That person
that sits in the pew, who wakes up some morning and says, well,
I just don't feel like being with it. He pays for it, my friend. The pine clock shows up at the
end of the week 37 hours instead of 40. But you can wake up in
the morning and say, well, I just want to sort of feel in it. Sit around and read the newspaper.
Or go in and flip on the TV and watch the morning show or something
else. And conscience smites you, or you're being true to your
task and then you begin to rationalize. Yeah, but the Lord knows you've
got to unbend the bow, you know. Didn't Jesus Christ come apart
and rest awhile? You can even, as we heard this
morning, find a text to justify your action. Sure you can. Begin to pick up literature.
You know, you shouldn't be looking at it. But then you rationalize
it. Well, you know, if I'm going to be a minister who has that
ring of contemporaneity that the preacher talked about, and
if I'm going to articulate to the times You know, how can I
speak to my kids about the pop hedonism unless I pick up Playboy
once in a while and read it? Oh, it's virtue when you do it,
of course. It's not that there's a lecherous something in you
that's being fed. Oh, no. Conscience! And you begin to rationalize. My friend, you're in a dangerous
place, and you prostitute the ministry when you try to preach
out of that context. Why is there so little searching
application that is maiming the people to the pews in our churches
and consenting them with the Word of the living God? I'll
tell you why. It's because preachers are preaching
out of the context of a defiled conscience, and they can't be
searching with their people because they cease to be searching with
themselves. And so they preach these innocuous
bland, anemic, saccharine, homiletical beast that bother no one, blaspheme
no one, but keep the machinery going. And so people say, preaching
is irrelevant to our age, and they're running after everything
under the sun. When God is ordained by the foolishness
of the same priests to gather out His elect by speaking the
truth, He loves to build up the body of Christ into all things. Unless we would degrade preaching
to a profane, elocutionary art, we cannot think of effective
preaching apart from these inner disciplines out of which true
preaching grows. blood-washed conscience. That's
why Paul could stand and face men as he could, fearlessly. Why? A conscience void of offense
to God and to man. That means when you look down
at your wife and your kids on Sunday, you can look them straight
in the eye and know that if nobody else respects what you say, your
wife and your kids are forced to say, that man lives what he
preaches. That means you'll have to humble
yourself with your own children. When you've disciplined them
in anger instead of in principle, you've got to get on your knees
with your own kids and say to them, as I've had to do so many
times, will you forgive Daddy? You deserve to spank him. But
Daddy's spirit was not right. Will you forgive your Daddy?
And pray with your children. So when you stand to preach Sunday
morning, you can look your own children in the eye with a conscious
void of offense. Look your own life in the eye.
I find it the greatest test as to whether or not this text is
having its right influence upon me. Conscience, void of offense to
God, void of offense to man, a tender, expertly instructed,
blood-washed conscience. Brethren, take heed to yourself. Take heed to yourself, that you
yourself grow in grace, and you grow the way every Christian
grows. And I submit that these are three
of the irreducible minimum of what it means to grow in grace.
Perhaps the best thing that could happen to many of you here at
this institute would be that in the midst of the busy schedule
you find some place to get alone with God and sit down and start
talking to yourself and then start talking to the Lord and
start reconstructing your list of priorities and stop fooling
yourself. We all can cultivate the unholy
art of puttering, and then convince ourselves we're busy in the Lord's
work. Oh, may God have mercy upon us, that as we ourselves
grow in grace, then there will be, perhaps imperceptible to
us but not to our people, a freshness, an unction, a breath of heaven,
a power of penetration in our ministries that perhaps some
of us have never known. And if we've known in the past,
it's been a long time since it's been there. What is your first
and great responsibility? Take heed to yourself. Not selfishly. Because it's only
as you do this that you will save those that hear you. This is not some kind of an inverted
self-love. No, no. It's as we do this that
we truly serve our people. And I know of no clearer evidence
that the devil knows this than the fact that he fights this
more than anything else in the life of a minister. He's a strategist. He knows where to strike significant
blows. And why is it that he strikes
continually and incessantly at this area of the life? Because
he knows that it's the key to the blessing and power in all
the rest. May God help us to take heed. to ourselves, that we are in
a state of grace, that we ourselves grow in grace, and time did not
permit to touch on the third aspect, perhaps we'll deal with
it this afternoon, that we ourselves are manifesting the power of
grace.