Now I confess, brethren, that
if I could have my way, I would not stand here to preach this
morning, but rather sit with you as together we sought to
pray in and pray back to God the word that he has spoken so
powerfully to our hearts. In the previous hour, sometimes
one of the best preparations for preaching is preaching. Sometimes
it's one of the worst, because if God has enabled you to hold
up your heart to the impress of his word, and that word has
come and seized your mind and your affections, it's so difficult
to shake loose that seizure and to try to move mind and heart
and affections in the direction of the subject assigned. And
I feel torn on the one hand between the material that I've sought
prayerfully to prepare for this hour and the pressure of that
word which has come to us in the power and grace of the Spirit
through God's servant in the previous hour. Yet our hope is
that God is bigger and greater than even the structure and chemistry
of our minds and hearts, and he delights to help the needy
And so let us just for a moment ask God by His grace without
in any way having an erosion of the impress of the previous
hour that we may as it were for the minutes assigned to us this
morning suspend that impress to feel fresh impressions of
the word and that God will then bring them together in our hearts
that we may find much profit in the days to come through both
of the ministries that the Lord has brought to us. Let us pray. Our Father, we do feel so keenly
that we have the treasure in earthen vessels, and we acknowledge
that our finite minds and our finite spirits are so limited
in their capacity And we unashamedly acknowledge that your word has
come to us, not in word only, but in power and in the Holy
Ghost. And we desire to give to you
all of the responses of confession, of penitence, of earnest entreaty,
holy longing and aspirations which that word has provoked
in our hearts. And yet we've come to this hour
when we must now once more seek to give ourselves to you as you
speak to us in the Scriptures. Help me, help your servants,
that we together, O Lord, may receive the full impress of your
word to us in this hour, not at the expense of relinquishing
the impress of the previous hour. Help us, O Lord, in our weakness
we cry. In our helplessness we plead,
come to us. For the sake of your dear son
we plead. Amen. Now the assigned subject for
this hour in this closing session of the conference is a minister's
heartaches and triumphs. Obviously, the subject is general
and broad enough to warrant a rather lengthy series of sermons, a
series in which we could profitably look at the manifold heartaches
and triumphs of the servants of God as recorded in Holy Scripture,
tracing them through the life history of such men as Moses,
various of the prophets, and on into the New Testament the
Apostles and supremely our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And even when we had done all
of that, I'm sure we would not touch upon all the heartaches
of the servants of God, for the Scripture reminds us in Proverbs
14 and verse 10 that the heart knows its own bitterness. and
that there are ministerial heartaches that are known only to the individual
servant of Christ and to his Lord. Now if there is any single
text in the Word of God which shows this paradoxical conjunction
of ministerial heartache and triumph as the constant experience
of a true minister It's that fascinating statement out of
the beginning of 2 Corinthians 6 and verse 10, 2 Corinthians
6, 10a, where the apostle, in speaking of the various characteristics
of himself and his colleagues, by which they commended themselves
as true ministers of God, verse 4, in everything, commending
ourselves as ministers of God, and then he gives this tremendous
list, and in the midst of that list he writes, verse 10, as
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Here the apostle indicates the
reality and the constancy of heartache and triumph as the
mark of a true minister. As sorrowful, that is, a continuous
state of being sorrowful, and yet, with that, ever rejoicing,
so that as we address the subject of the heartaches and the triumphs
of the ministry or a minister's heartaches and triumphs, we must
not view them as states that are separate from one another,
but rather in the light of this text as the concurrent experience
of every true minister of God. Viewed from one dimension of
the inner actings of his mind and spirit, He is a man who is
continually sorrowful, and yet, viewed from another dimension,
he is a man who is ever rejoicing and exulting in his God. And what I propose to do in our
time together this morning is to attempt to set before you,
first of all, some major causes of ministerial heartache in a
true servant of Christ, and then we'll look at the major antidotes
to that heartache, or the major causes of triumph and exaltation
in a true minister of Christ. And I emphasize true minister
of Christ, for there are many ministerial heartaches which
are indicative of a man being something less than a true minister
of Christ. There's the heartache of a bent
and wounded, unmortified ego, which many a preacher carries
with him all his days. If only the Church would recognize
his greatness, he could then be happy. Or there is the illegitimate
grief and pain of feeling that one is simply not received what
he deserves at the hands of others when the whole concept of deserved
must never enter the mind of a servant of Christ. But I'm
concerned to address those heartaches which are part and parcel of
the experience of a true minister of Christ, one who in spite of
all of his remaining sin and in the full face of the reality
that no grace has come to its fullest expression and to its
most mature blossoming in the heart of any servant of Christ
yet, they are the heartaches that are his heartaches because
he is a true man of God. One of the old writers has said
that a true Christian is known as much by his sorrows as he
is by his joy. And I'd like to alter the statement
and say that a true minister is known as much by that which
causes him heartache as by that which elicits joy in his heart. And as I attempt to set forth
some of these major causes of ministerial heartache, I have
prayerfully sought to avoid merely projecting my particular causes
of heartache And I've even done a little survey amongst my brethren
in past days, and to my delight, without telling them what my
four major causes of ministerial heartache were, or the ones I
was proposing to deal with, in my survey, they've all come up
with the same four major causes. So I hope we're scratching this
morning where most of you itch. First of all, The heartaches
of a true minister are, number one, the heartache of his own
heart and his present bodily state. The heartache of a true
minister is the heartache of his own heart and his present
bodily state. Now, I include those two things
for the simple reason that in his divine wisdom God is ordained
to apply his redemption in a way that involves with reference
to the inner man the destruction of the dominion of sin on the
threshold of applied grace, but to carry on that work by a slow
and painful process in the mortification of remaining sin, and in fulfillment
of his purpose to conform us to the image of Christ. So in
that sense, a minister stands on exactly the same plane as
all believers. Sin's dominion is broken on the
threshold of imparted grace. But remaining sin is dealt with
by a slow and painful process, and likewise with respect to
the body, with but few exceptions when God may intervene in an
act of divine healing. and does intervene at times in
preaching by an act of divine animation on the very physical
frame of an otherwise weak preacher. God's ordinary method is to allow
the same process of degeneration and weakness leading to the grave
to operate in a minister. as operates in the most godless,
lecherous, foul-mouthed reprobate in the world. This is why the
Scripture tells us that we have the treasure in earthen vessels,
the outward man is decaying. And perhaps the greatest heartache
of a true minister is the heartache that arises from that reality
of redemptive design and purpose The Scripture says we are saved
in hope. What we now have is but the earnest,
both with reference to the inner man and with reference to the
body. And it is this reality that causes
the servant of Christ his greatest heartache. Here he is living
of the gospel, laboring in the Word and in doctrine, living
in constant contact with the most concentrated means of grace
for his own and his people's advancement in grace. And yet
he finds with the passing of the years that he is having to
confess again and again and again the sins of his youth. He had
hoped in his early days of Christian experience and ministerial career
that surely certain patterns that grieved his own heart, areas
in which he was so unlike his savior, with the passing of the
years would somehow see him making at least discernible strides
in the mortification of certain passions. and in various dimensions
of conformity to the image of Christ. And yet if he's honest,
he finds himself in the secret place again and again, crying
out to God in the language of Romans 7, the good that I would,
I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do. I find that when
I would do good, evil is present with me, O wretched man that
I am. And I cannot imagine the apostle,
if he were speaking those words in the presence of God, saying
them merely as a matter of theological statement, O wretched man that
I am, sin yet remains. If we could have pressed our
ear to his place of prayer and heard him when he cried, O wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? There is no heartache to a true
minister like the heartache of his own heart. He can find in
the midst of his most holiest exercises of prayer and of preaching
and of one-to-one ministry some of the most foul and ungodly
thoughts entering into his own mind and arising up from his
own corruptions. If you're a true minister of
Christ, there are many occasions when, if you could, you would.
have run from your pulpit to hide and be alone with God, to
confess some of the very sins that have been suggested to your
mind in the very act of preaching to others. And if you're a true minister
of Christ, my brother, surely then, when I say that the greatest
heartache of a true minister is his own heart, There is within
your deep inner recesses an echo of an Amen. But it's not only
the heartache of our own heart, but joined to it, our present
bodily state. The Apostle indicates this in
2 Corinthians 5 verses 1 to 4, when he speaks of the certainty
of the dismantling of this present dwelling place. and the certainty
of being clothed upon with that eternal habitation, speaking
of the glorified body, notice the language that he uses. He
says, we that are in this present tabernacle, and twice he uses
the word, we groan being burdened. We groan being burdened. And the same language is used
in Romans chapter 8 when he speaks of the yet awaited manifestation
of the sons of God in terms of the glorification of the body. He says, not only does the creation
groan and travail, but even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of the body. You see, one of the mysteries
of growing older is this, that as God increases your capacity
to yearn, and hopefully if your growing in grace increases your
capacity to understand and to feel, there is in this redeemed
humanity, with that greater capacity to feel and to yearn, and with
it a greater appreciation of the glory of Christ in His person
and work, and therefore a greater longing to serve Him, there is
less apparatus with which to serve Him in terms of this physical
body. The outward man is decaying.
The outward man is decaying. And while there is generated
more spiritual current, the wires over which they run get thinned
with the passing of the years. It's one of God's wonderful ways
to prepare us for heaven. While the inner man is being
renewed day by day, and with it there is this commensurate
decay of the outer man, we know something of the groaning that
arises not only from our remaining sin, but from the present state
of a not yet glorified body. We go to our closets determined
that we're going to wrestle with God on an issue that can't be
settled in a little five-minute exercise of prayer. And we go
with every intention to wrestle through if necessary for hours. Though at times we're very conscious
that our great enemy is the indisposition of remaining sin in the fiery
darts of the devil, there are other times when we're very conscious.
It's this vessel of clay that impedes us and stands in our
way and how we long for the day when we can serve him in his
temple day and night and never grow weary. And you cry out,
Lord, you've given me a heart that wants to serve you with
unflagging zeal day and night. But, oh God, that heart dwells
in a body that is decayed. It's a great heartache to a true
servant of Christ to have to serve God in that temple of clay. Now God has good and wise reasons
for this. Some of them are revealed in
scripture. We don't have time to go into them. Suffice it to
say that one of his major concerns is he wants everyone to know
if anything good ever comes out of the likes of that thing, it
must be of God. We have the treasure in earth
in vessels. Why? That the excellency of the
power may be of God and not of us. Let me ask you, my brother,
is your greatest heartache your own heart and your not yet glorified
body? Or is it when people don't recognize
you? And people don't give you the
praise you think is due to you. And people don't say thank you.
Is that your greatest heartache? If it is, you have work to do
with God. The greatest heartache of every true minister is his
own heart. It was true of the Apostle Paul.
When you read the biographies of men, the fragrance of whose
lives remains with us to this day, McShane and a host of others,
when we are taken into the inner sanctuary of the things that
really cause them heartache, you find this common denominator,
their greatest heartache was their own heart. But then in
the second place, one of the major heartaches of a true minister
is this, the heartache of the spiritual state of many in the
flock of God. the heartache of the spiritual
state of many in the flock of God. As we seek to give ourselves
in self-giving Christ-wrought love to our people, our great
concern in the language of the Apostle Paul is to see Christ
Himself formed in them. And our spiritual travail has
as its ultimate end not primarily the swelling of our ranks, but
that we may see Christ Himself formed in our people. And that's
not done without something akin to birth pangs. And so Paul writes
in Galatians 4.19, My little children of whom I travail again
in birth, till Christ be formed in you. It's nothing short of
a kind of spiritual wrestling unto agony. And so in the latter
part of Colossians 1, Paul speaks of striving, that is, agonizing,
according to his working which worked in him mightily. And what
was the great end in view in that ministerial agony? It was
this, whom we preach, warning every man, teaching every man,
that we may present every man perfect in Christ. Our great
concern for our people in the language of Philippians is that
they would, in the midst of an onlooking world, be blameless
and harmless, sons of God, without rebuke, shining as lights in
the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Now that's the longing
we have for our people. We're not content that they're
simply there at the stated times doing what good, proper, reformed
Christians are supposed to do. We want to see Christ formed
in them. We long to see the fragrance
of Christ like an aura, as it were, about their very being
when we go into their homes and as we have occasion to rub shoulders
with those with whom they are intimate in the world by virtue
of work associations and neighborhood relationships, we long to get
the feedback that they are shining as light, blameless and harmless,
in a real sense, the living validation of our ministry. What do we have in many? In the
language of Scripture, arrested growth. Some who have heard so
much for so long that in the language of Hebrews they ought
to be teaching others and we have to go back and teach them
again the first principles of God. We see moral lapses as Paul
saw with the Corinthians, doctrinal aberrations as we see in the
Galatian church. And then we see dullness and
inconsistency and spiritual lethargy and perhaps one of the greatest
occasions of heartache, and Paul knew it well, disaffection to
the very one who was the instrument of imparting life in the purpose
of God. Paul could say to the Corinthian
I have begotten you through the gospel." And yet he has to go
back and even prove that he's an apostle. He says, I have to
talk like a fool to even give my credentials, even though you
are the living witness of my apostleship. I have to talk like
a fool. So disaffected had they become. And he says of those people,
he said, I'm determined to go on telling you the truth and
being true to your souls, though the more I love you, the less
I be loved. And in that moving passage in
2 Corinthians, he says, our heart is enlarged. It's open to you,
but in your hearts there is a little narrow door, just a little turnstile
that barely lets my hand in, let alone my whole person. Listen
to some of the statements of the Apostle who felt this pain
of the arrested growth the moral lapses, the doctrinal aberrations,
the dullness and inconsistency, the deflections and disaffections
of the people of God. As he anticipated those realities
in the church at Ephesus, you'll remember the language he used
with the Ephesian elders. In Acts chapter 20, knowing that
after his departure some of these very things would occur, verse
29, I know that after my departing, grievous wolves shall enter in
among you. From among your own selves shall
men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples'
notice, not after their opinions, but after them. And I say by
an aside, Calvin, commenting on this passage, says, The mother
of all heresy is unmortified ambition. These perverse men
concoct their theories because they want a following for themselves. As long as Paul was there, they
couldn't have it. He says, I know that after my departure, they'll
seek to do this. Now, anticipating that kind of
defection, How did Paul treat it? Verse 31, Wherefore, be watchful,
remembering that by the space of three years I cease not to
admonish every one night and day with tears. Just the anticipation
of defection broke his heart and opened up his tear ducts. Ministerial heartache. Legitimate
heartache. Philippians 3 and verse 18, with
respect to those who were some of the first Anginomians in the
Apostolic Church, when Paul writes about these who profess to be
the recipients of grace, but who've turned the grace of God
into lasciviousness, he says, verse 18, for many walk of whom
I told you often and tell you now, even weeping." Now either
we accuse the apostle of excessive rhetoric and hyperbole, or we
have reason to believe that the parchment that went to Philippi
had tear stains on it. He said, I tell you now, adverb
of time, even weeping. He sobbed. as his heart was broken
at the thought of the defection from the church members into
antinomianism. Listen to him again in 2 Corinthians
chapter 12. After all the admonition, after
all the encouragement with regard to that matter of the incestuous
man and his restoration dealt with in the earlier chapters,
Paul, after all of that, still has great heartache and fears
that he may have more. Listen to him at the end of chapter
12 of 2 Corinthians verse 20. I fear lest by any means when
I come I should find you not such as I would and such and
should myself be found of you such as you would not. lest by
any means there should be strife, jealousy, wraths, factions, backbitings,
whisperings, swellings, tumults, lest again when I come my God
should humble me before you and I should mourn for many of them
that have sinned heretofore and repented not of the uncleanness
and fornication and lasciviousness which they committed. And then
back to chapter 11 in verse 29, a similar emphasis as he speaks
of the things that marked his ministry. Who is weak and I am
not weak? Who is caused to stumble and
I burn not? Philip Hughes in his excellent
commentary on 2 Corinthians comments on this text The anxiety which
the Apostle experiences for the churches is engendered not by
lack of faith, but by compassion. So sensitive is he to the fortunes
of those who through his ministry have become his spiritual children,
so conscious is he of the responsibility that's been laid upon him for
them as Christ Apostle, that he cannot detach himself from
their lot. It's not merely his sense of
the essential corporateness of the Church of Christ, whereby
the suffering of one member becomes the suffering of all, 1 Corinthians
12, 26. It is not this which alone causes
Paul to be so full of sympathy and fellow feeling for the Corinthians. It is something, if possible,
even deeper, namely compassion. the apostolic pastoral compassion
of identification, the compassion of the parent for the children
he has begotten, of the shepherd for his frail sheep. As Christ's
apostle and minister, he cannot hold himself aloof from his people
as though he belonged to a different or higher order from the ignorant
and erring, but like a true priest, he could bear gently with the
ignorant and erring, for that he himself is compassed with
infirmity. Their weakness is felt as his
weakness. Their frailty, so easily suffering
offense, is his frailty also. The stumbling of one of them
causes him to burn with shame as though it were his own stumbling.
and to burn with indignation against the seducer who has made
one of Christ's little ones to stumble. And so should it be
with every faithful pastor of Christ's flock. He should lovingly
identify himself with those who have been committed to his care,
showing himself deeply anxious for their spiritual well-being.
compassionate with them in their frailties and temptations, and
resisting and resenting everyone who seeks to entice them away
from the purity of their devotion to Christ. You see, to love,
truly to love, is to be perpetually vulnerable. And the heartache
of a true minister grows out of the vulnerability of true
love. Paul could not take the attitude,
well, you win some and lose some, and that bunch at Corinth, they're
a bunch of losers. I'll just take consolation that
I've got some winners at Philippi. He said, no, even in the midst
of all of these things, if I hear of one who has stumbled, I feel
the inner pain and agitation of holy burning. The heartache of a true minister
is not only the heartache of his own heart and his present
bodily state, but it is the heartache of the condition of many within
the flock of God. But then thirdly, the heartache
of a true minister is the heartache of unfulfilled desires for the
salvation of men. the heartache of unfulfilled
desires for the salvation of men. Perhaps there is no passage which
more powerfully states that heartache as it existed in the great apostle
himself than Romans chapter 9. The man who said, sorrowful yet
always rejoicing, One of the dimensions of that perpetual
sorrow is expanded in this passage, Romans 9, 1. I say the truth
in Christ, I do not lie. My conscience bearing witness
with me in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing
pain in my heart. Great sorrow, unceasing pain. For I could wish that I myself
were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen,
according to the flesh, who are the Israelites." And it seems
that the emphasis that comes through in this passage is that
by virtue of the peculiar identification with his fellow countrymen, by
birth and background and looking back upon his past ignorance
and prejudice, there was a dimension of the heartache of unfulfilled
longing for the salvation of his fellow Jews that was unique. I am not saying that it was qualitatively
different from what he knew in his ministry to the Gentiles,
but could it be that it was quantitatively and intensively different? If so, then one of the greatest
heartaches of a true minister is the heartache of unfulfilled
desire for those with whom God has given us peculiar ties. I think of the children who were
lovely, bouncing little toddlers when some of us first came to
our present places of ministry, and we've seen some of them grow
up under the constant instruction of the public means of grace,
under the constant tutelage of a godly home, and yet, to this
day, they remain in their sins. And woe be unto us, brethren,
if we ever get accustomed to that reality. The apostle could
never get accustomed to Jewish impenitence and blindness. caused
one great tear to exist in his heart, and he lived with it,
labored with it, and went to his grave with it. The heartache
of unfulfilled desires for the salvation of men. If Paul is
the great example of it in the New Testament, Then surely Jeremiah
is the great example in the Old Testament, and time will not
permit us to turn to the many passages. Jeremiah 8, 9 and following,
Jeremiah 13, 17 and following, you'll remember his words, O
that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep night and day for the slain of the daughter
of my people. But of course, the supreme example
is our Lord Himself. In Luke 19.41, we read that when
our Lord Jesus, making His way to Jerusalem, came to the brow
where He could look over and see the city, it is said that
beholding it, He wept. And as Warfield points out in
his masterful essay, The Emotional Life of Our Lord, this was not
the restrained weeping in which our Lord is found engaged at
the graveside of Lazarus. This is more that profuse, unrestrained
wail, and Warfield translates it that way. When he beheld the
city, he wailed over it. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how oft
would I have gathered And you would not, my brethren, when
you come to a passage like that, God have mercy on you if your
first desire is to somehow pigeonhole it in some kind of consistent
bracket with the five points. You've missed the point of the
passage. The point of the passage is that
in His holy, sanctified humanity, The human soul of our Lord yearned
for the salvation of men who spurned the overtures of His
grace, and He did not see all of that and retreat to the doctrine
that He understands far better than we understand of the inscrutable
sovereignty of God's purposes of grace in election. beholding
those whom he would have gathered in the overtures of mercy, but
who in their impenitence and refusal would not be gathered,
he wailed over that city, as if he thought of its impending
judgment, and saw with his mind's eyes the dashing of little ones
upon the rocks and the bloodshed and the pillage, and he had a
broken heart in the face of impenitence. And one of the heartaches of
every true minister, though it only faintly reflects that of
our Lord, it is of the same kind, though not degree, the heartache
of unfulfilled desire for the salvation of men. And then the
fourth major heartache of a true minister is this, the heartache
of unfulfilled longings and apparently unanswered prayers." And put
that word in there. The heartache of unfulfilled
longings and apparently unanswered prayers for greater and more
glorious triumphs of Christ in our generation. Our Lord takes natively sinful,
selfish hearts and touches them by grace, and implants in those
hearts large longings for the manifestation of His power, so
that when we come upon a passage such as Isaiah 64, we find that
by grace we can pray those words at least with some degree of
earnestness, O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down
that the mountains might flow down at thy presence. We have
longed and yearned and prayed to see Christ coming forth, riding
to conquer and to conquer, not in judgment but in mercy and
in grace. We've been able to turn to Psalm
44 and pray it through as though it were our own psalm. Oh, Lord,
our fathers have told us, our ears have heard what work you
did in their days. You did this and that and the
other, but now, Lord, you don't go forth with our armies. Everyone
who comes by plucks us. We're an occasion of mockery
and derision. And there has been born in our
hearts a longing that God would give to His Son the glory of
great triumphs of His grace in our own generation. And there
are very few heartaches as deep as the heartache of those desires
unfulfilled and those prayers apparently unanswered. When we see abounding wickedness,
we join the ranks of those who were marked out in Ezekiel's
day. The abominations are described
in chapter 8, and then the man with the ink horn is commissioned
to go through the city and put a mark upon those who sigh and
who cry for the abominations that are done in the land. They
couldn't change the abominations, but they didn't get calloused.
And though the cause of Jehovah seemed to be in a shambles, They
didn't sit back upon a false pillow made of a misuse of the
doctrine of divine sovereignty and say, God wills it, so be
it, let the whole bunch come under the judgment of God. They
sighed and they cried. That was the problem of dear
old Elijah. In 1 Kings 19.4 there's a phrase
that to my understanding is the key to his dejection, taking
into account the very real factor of the emotional and mental and
psychological drain of the great encounter upon Mount Carmel. But these words are significant. 19.4 of 1 Kings. But he himself went a day's journey
into the wilderness, came and sat under a juniper tree, and
he requested for himself that he might die and said, it is
enough now, O Lord, take away my life. Why? I am not better
than my father. Oh God, I who have been jealous
for your name and for your glory, at the end of all of my labors
and all of my efforts, the end of the day it appears that I'm
no better than my fathers. Things are no different. I've
spent my life for naught. Do you have that heartache this
morning? My dear fellow minister, the heartache of unfulfilled
longing. and apparently unanswered prayers
for the advancement of Christ's glory in our generation. Well,
as I've consulted with my brethren in the ministry, not a few of
them, they have all said these are at least four of the major
heartaches, and I'm sure you could write a list that would
go on until the next conference. There are many others. What then,
very quickly now, what are the triumphs in the midst of that
heartache? What is it that caused the apostle
to write, sorrowful yet, always rejoicing? Let me go back now
and seek to demonstrate the divine antidote which will bring us
into that posture, not to cancel our sorrow, but in the midst
of it, to give us joy in our God. Number one, while suffering
heartache over our remaining sin, and our not yet glorified
bodies, we triumph in the joyful confidence of our ultimate, total
conformity to Jesus Christ. We triumph in the certainty of
our ultimate and total conformity to the image of Christ For hard
on the heels of Paul's agonizing cry, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. And there is now, in the midst
of the reality of remaining sin, the consolation of knowing that
in Christ my justified state is utterly untouched. by my remaining corruption. It
is objective and external to me in the sense that it is holy
in Christ and I am wrapped up in Him. There is no condemnation
to those who are in Christ Jesus. But I must go beyond that and
remind myself that a time is coming when I shall no longer
need to pray, O wretched man that I am. The Scripture speaks
of the spirits of just men made perfect, and I've often meditated
upon what it is that God by the Spirit does upon a human spirit
of one of His own the moment that soul leaves the body and
comes to the consciousness of looking upon the face of Jesus.
God purges from that disembodied spirit every last remaining trace
of sin. That spirit makes its way into
the immediate presence of Christ, which is far better. And we,
as the servants of God in the midst of our groans, need to
remember. As a dear friend of mine has
a plaque in his study, be patient. God isn't finished with me yet.
We ought to have another one, be comforted. God isn't finished
with me yet. One plaque speaks to others to
exercise grace toward us. The other affirms the confidence
that God is yet to work more in us. God isn't finished with
me yet. When he's done with me, I will
be, and if scripture didn't say it, it would almost sound cheeky,
I will be so like Christ that he will be the elder brother.
and all his brethren around him and the whole moral universe
will see the family likeness. He'll be the firstborn among
many brethren. Oh, my dear fellow minister,
when the hellish and horrible ghosts and demons of your own
remaining sin all seem to vie to capture all of your soul,
take comfort! It is not going to be forever.
we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And when
you feel, and the passing years will make you feel it if you
can somehow ignore it at this stage of your life, that the
outward man is decayed, remember this, as we have borne the image
of the earthly, and oh how well we know it, every time the dentist
sticks his drill in the mouth and the doctor sticks his thermometer
in the mouth, We know we've borne the image of the earthly. We
shall bear the image of the heavenly. 1 Corinthians 15, that wonderful
text in Philippians 3, he shall fashion the body of our humiliation
like unto his own glorious body. We that are in this tabernacle
do groan, yes, But He who foreloved us has predestined to bring us
to the image of His Son, and that involves what we are as
a psychosomatic entity, and we shall bear the image of the glorified
Christ, body and spirit. So while you suffer the heartache
over your remaining sins, and your yet unglorified body, my
dear fellow minister, come back again and again to this fundamental
truth. I am not teaching you anything
new. I am simply taking the role of an exhorter, encouraging you
to bring into the midst of your most doleful groan the wonderful
triumph of the certainty that the groaning will cease. And then, with reference to that
second great occasion of heartache, while suffering heartache over
the spiritual state of many in the flock of God, what should
cause us to triumph? Well, we triumph in the joyful
confidence of the ultimate perfection of the Church. We triumph in
the joyful confidence of the ultimate perfection of the Church. We turn to Ephesians 5 and we
meditate upon it. Husbands, love your wives as
Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. Why? What was the great intention
of his heart as he travailed in the agony of Gethsemane and
the deeper and more intense agony of Golgotha? What was the joy
set before him? Here it is. He loved the church. gave Himself for the church in
order that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it with the
washing of water with the Word, in order that He might present
the church to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle
or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. It is certain that one day the
Lord Jesus will present his church perfect, as surely as he died
outside the city walls of Jerusalem. He died to present His church
perfect, and He shall see of the travail of His soul and be
satisfied, not only in bringing all of His elect into the beginning
stages of grace and redemption applied, but to the consummate
glory of redemption applied. And it is nothing less than the
presentation to Himself of a perfected church. We need, dear brethren,
in the midst of the defections, in the midst of the lapses, not
retreat from all of the trench warfare of admonition and discipline,
for that's what it is at the pastoral level, discipline and
admonition and warning. It's the trench warfare from
which many ministers run in spiritual cowardice. No, we must be prepared
to engage in it with the rule of Scripture, but when our hearts
would be overwhelmed to the point of breaking, we need to remind
ourselves it's not always going to be this way. Take encouragement from the great
doctrine of the ultimate perfection of the Church as you behold the arrested growth and the other
deflections amongst your people. Then thirdly, while suffering
heartache, while suffering heartache over the unsaved, who remain
unsaved in the midst of intimate associations, triumph, triumph
in the joyful confidence that God is pleased with your proclamation
of the gospel of His Son. even when it doesn't prove effectual
to men's salvation. There's a wonderful passage that
addresses this very issue in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, and
it ties in so beautifully with what we heard in the previous
hour. If our preaching is pervasively Christ-centered and breathes
of the fragrance of Christ and Him crucified, This is what that
preaching is to God, regardless of its effect in men. Verse 14
of 2 Corinthians 2, But thanks be unto God, who always leads
us in triumph in Christ, and makes manifest through us the
savour of His knowledge in every place. For we are a sweet savour
of Christ unto God. in them that are saved and in
them that are perishing. To the one a saver from death
unto death, to the other a saver from life unto life. And I know
that many believe that they see in this passage at least the
backdrop of the imagery of a triumphal entry of a Roman army. And I'm
not going to go into that, for I'm not really certain that that's
what we have here. But certainly this much is clear
from the text. Paul says we are always triumphant,
and he says it in the full knowledge that he's not always successful.
As we count success when we preach the gospel and we entreat men,
what are we doing? We're not playing games. We do
long that they shall be reconciled to Christ. When we plead and
command and exhort and entreat that they should stack arms and
abandon their refuge of lies and cast off their self-righteousness
and throw themselves upon the mercy of God in Christ, we're
dead in earnest. And if everyone did it, we would
not say, oh, wait a minute, that isn't what I was hoping for.
No, that's what we yearn for. But in the full realization that
God's purpose is to call to himself a people, Paul says, we are always
triumphant, always triumphant. And the great concern of the
apostle was that God, as it were, as he sniffed the preaching of
Paul, would smell the fragrance of Jesus and smile. My son has
done all that I commissioned him to do. My servant is telling
the world about my Son, and when I smell the fragrance of the
proclamation of my Son, it's sweet to my nostrils. We are
a sweet savor of Christ unto God. Now, as far as men are concerned,
That savor of the proclamation of Christ for some is unto life,
others unto death. But here is our comfort. We are
ultimately answerable to God. If we come before Him and He
says, Well done, good and faithful servant. You gave me the joy
of smelling the sweetness of the savor of my Son as you preached. Then to hear His well done will
be all that we could live for. You see that balance in our Lord? His weeping over Jerusalem was
real. His yearning was real. And yet
in John 17, there is a wonderful calmness as he says, I've accomplished
the work you gave me to do. I've given eternal life to as
many as you have given me. You see that beautiful tension
in Matthew's Gospel, the eleventh chapter, the woes upon the impenitent
sinners of Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum. Woe, woe, woe,
woe! And yet the text says, at that
season, he rejoiced in spirit. Sorrowful! Woe to Capernaum! Woe to Bethsaida! Woe to Chorazin! And the woes were real! And they
were suffused with pathos and brokenness. And yet it says,
at that season, at that season, He exalted in spirit and said,
I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. Sorrowful,
yet always rejoicing. My brethren, in the midst of
the legitimate heartache of having to minister to unsaved people,
who remain in their sins in spite of all your prayers and your
pleading. Rejoice in the confidence that
God is pleased when you go right on preaching His Son. And remember,
since one sows and another waters, and only God gives the increase,
the last chapter may not have been written for many of them.
We must sow in hope. though others may reap, we're
content to fill our place in the purpose of God. And then
finally, while grieving that we've not seen all that we had
hoped to see and all that we have prayed that we would see
of the triumphs of Christ, what is our consolation? We're to
exalt and to triumph in these two great truths. Number one,
God's purpose in the world is being fulfilled in spite of what
we see, and God's purpose for the universe will yet be fulfilled
as He has promised in His Word. God's purpose in our own generation
is being fulfilled, and we dare not presume to be wiser than
God in that excellent collection of sermons by B.B. Warfield.
And if you're not familiar with this, may I urge you to obtain
it. It has some of the most helpful
materials for the man of God struggling on in the work of
God. The opening sermon is entitled, The Cause of God, and it's on
God's dealings with the prophet Elijah and his dejection. And
Warfield closes the sermon with this exhortation. We close then
with a word of warning and one of encouragement. The word of
warning We must not identify our cause with God's cause, our
methods with God's methods, and our hopes with God's purposes. That, he said, was Elijah's problem. He identified his cause with
God's cause. His method, the method of fire
and judgment with God's method, our hopes With God's purposes,
the word of encouragement, God's cause is never in danger. What
he has begun in the soul or in the world, he will complete unto
the end. I believe there is an element,
may I call it a spiritual yet carnal petulance in some of God's
servants, It's spiritual in that it does indeed grow from a longing
to see Christ's name praised. We do sigh and cry when we see
abominations on every hand. We long to see something of Christ's
scepter touching the general fabric of morals and ethics and
labor perspectives and political perspectives and in international
politics. We long to see biblical principles
at least respected and honored. And that's a spiritual desire.
But when God is not pleased to grant
us that desire, there's a carnal petulance that almost says, God,
you've cheated us. You created the desire, and yet
you haven't done what my prayers have demanded that you do. And
that was the problem, Warfield says with Elijah. Sure he was
jealous for the Lord of hosts, and rightly so. But when that
jealousy frames the perspective that says God's cause can only
advance in the way that I think it ought to advance, we have
fallen into a carnal petulance. And I plead with you, my brethren,
don't increase your legitimate heartaches by the added heartache
of pouting because God doesn't do His work His way before your
eyes. And so in the midst of that legitimate
grief, that we long that Christ shall have a greater manifestation
of His glory. Remember, God's purpose in our
generation is being fulfilled. And remember that ultimately,
even if God should pour out of His Spirit and do ten thousand
fold more than we've ever seen, I see nothing in my Bible that
says things will ever be such that our great longing will be
anything other than for the new heavens and the new earth. Peter
says, we looking for a new heavens and a new earth wherein dwells
righteousness. And whatever our eschatological
views may be, may they never delude us into thinking that
there's going to be a time when we're in the majority and are
anything other than pilgrims. It is at the return of our Lord
that his enemies will be crushed when he comes in flaming fire
to take vengeance on his enemies and to purify the earth. And
there we shall know what we long to see and know now. And I have
found it very salutary at times when I found a juniper tree beginning
to grow up on my back. Because it seems that the longings
and the yearnings are so unfulfilled, I find it salutory to look down
at the ground and every step I take to say every square inch
on which I now walk. is going to experience the purging
fires of our returning Lord. And on every square inch there
will dwell nothing but righteousness. Everyone who walks on every square
inch will be confirmed in righteousness forever. Every interaction will
be nothing but righteousness. Every thought, every motive,
every word. And I tell you, my brethren,
if that doesn't put some fresh nerve into your step, nothing
will. We're not on a fool's errand. We're committed to the purposes
of a God who has determined that the new heavens and the new earth
shall indeed be ushered in at the return of the Lord Jesus.
We're an odd bunch, we preachers, aren't we? In many ways. Some
of us a little more odd than others. But we simply find ourselves
in the company of the great apostle, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. You see, a true minister can
never be dominated by levity. He never can be dominated by
levity. He should be a cheerful man,
a happy man in Christ. But it's a very, very, very sad
thing when gatherings of ministers are predominated or are dominated
by levity, jocularity. in their casual interaction,
and it's worse yet when that's imported into the pulpit. When men become stand-up comics
and they say something funny and get a good response, they
ride the crest of it, say something a little more funny, until they
and the men are utterly carried away. And I've been at preacher's
conferences where I had all I could do to keep in my seat from rising
up and saying, what in the name of God does this have to do with
being a true minister? In our holiest moments there
is never joy unmixed without some tinge of sorrow, sorrowful,
yet always rejoicing. The heartaches and the triumphs
of a true minister, may they be ours as we seek to use whatever
remaining time is given to us to serve him who loved us and
gave himself for us. Let us pray. Our Father, how we thank you
for the pattern of our Lord Jesus, man of sorrows, acquainted with
grief, and yet praying that his joy might be in us and that our
joy might be full. We thank you for the example
of the great apostles, sorrowful yet always rejoicing, O make
us like our Savior. Enlarge our narrow and shriveled
hearts. O God, that we may not only be
men whose heads are clear and who perceive with accuracy your
truth, but whose hearts are large, who are willing to live that
life of constant vulnerability because we live the life of love
in the power of the Spirit. Oh God, bring us back again and
again to those truths which you have deposited in your word to
keep us from being swallowed up with grief that would paralyze
us, with discouragement that would neutralize all meaningful
service. Oh, may we be strengthened in
the knowledge of these truths that we've meditated upon this
morning. Hear our cry. And minister grace,
we pray, especially to any of your servants who has come to
this conference on the verge of feeling there's no use to
go on. Lord Jesus, take, we pray, the
bruised reed and the smoking flax and gently deal with such
and bring restorative grace. Amen.