I've previously blogged about a couple preachers who have had a huge impact on my life: the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Piper (for more info., please see the links at the end of this post). Because there is a lot of harmful teaching and preaching running rampant, we need to be on constant guard and to test all things. But let's remember, there is nothing new under the sun. The very same thing was happening in the days of the early Church – hence all the warnings in the New Testament for us to guard the Gospel and to be rightly rooted in doctrine, and so on. The devil is constantly prowling; he is seeking to steal, kill, and destroy, and one of his most insidious means of doing so is through deceitful preaching within the visible church. He doesn't come in with a pitchfork and horns, but he comes as an angel of light, taking the truth of God's Word and subtly twisting it, with the intent that we might not enter into and enjoy the life abundantly that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, came to give to His sheep. Remember: Satan is Christ's adversary and the adversary of all who are Christ's. The devil is a wily schemer, and he is a murderer and a liar and the father of lies. The apostle Paul warned us that fierce wolves would rise up within the church, and they would not spare the flock (see Acts 20:29-30). We must take heed to our souls, and we must remember if we are taking garbage in, garbage will inevitably come out! GIGO! Our eternal souls are at stake! Doctrine is not optional, or a throw-away, it is vital to our soul's well-being! We only have so many hours in a day, and we must be wise in what we read, watch, and listen to. We should be seeking to feed our souls with profitable preaching. Throughout the book of Jeremiah, there was a continued lamentation and rebuke that Israel had gone after that worthless things which did not profit (e.g. - Jer. 2:8, 7:8, 12:13, 14:14, 16:19, 23:32), and because of her turning away from the Word of the LORD, Israel ended up in exile for 70 years in Babylon.
Both Dr. Lloyd-Jones and Dr. Piper (as well as all the preachers and teachers I'm drawn to, and whom I recommend to others) preach a felt Christ. Dr. Lloyd-Jones' preaching was spoken of as "logic on fire." These men preach of an experiential/experimental religion (please see here for more on that). By experimental religion I mean religion of the sort where, as God's Holy Spirit sovereignly moves, the doctrines of the Bible are imparted in power to the soul, such as what happened to the disciples on the Emmaus road: "Did not our heart burn within us... ?" Or, consider David's description about the Word of God in this way: that it was sweeter than honey and the honeycomb! There are certain times, as God's sovereign Spirit blows, when religion becomes more than notion, as Joseph Hart penned:
True religion's more than notion,
Something must be known and felt.
These men also both preach from a Reformed perspective, i.e. - Calvinism, or the doctrines of grace, or TULIP (see here). In Calvinism there is a high view of God: the glory and majesty and holiness and sovereignty and beauty of God is emphasized, and along with it, the total depravity and inability of men. Consequently, the most excellent glory of God's love, mercy, and grace in providing salvation – from beginning to ending (foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified! ~ Romans 8:29-30) – to helpless, hopeless, dead, powerless, vile, and worthless sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ is most wonderfully displayed and highly exalted.
Salvation is of the LORD.(Jonah 2:9)
Not to us, O LORD, not to us,
But to Your name give glory,
because of Your mercy,
And because of Your truth.
(Psalm 115:1)
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
For who has known the mind of the LORD?
Or who has become His counselor?
Or who has first given to Him
And it shall be repaid to him?
For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things,
to whom be glory forever. Amen.
(Romans 11:33-36)
For those of you who aren't familiar with Calvinism, in "A Defense of Calvinism," Charles Spurgeon wrote:
I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor.
"If ever it should come to pass,
That sheep of Christ might fall away,
My fickle, feeble soul, alas!
Would fall a thousand times a day."
I've mentioned this to a couple of my friends here – @AmyDoo and @stephensmustang – that for quite a while now, I've been wanting to give you a list of some of the preachers to whom I've been listening (Ah! the iPod – it's a beautiful thing!) – and now, having set forth some of what I value in preaching, tonight I'd like to introduce you to the preaching of Kenneth Stewart, currently the pastor at Glasgow Reformed Presbyterian Church in Glasgow, Scotland.
The following is an excerpt from the latter part of Kenneth Stewart's sermon "Gains and Losses (2)" <http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=319121440382> on Philippians 3:7.
7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
God saved Saul of Tarsus, as he calls himself a chief of sinners. He did that just to show that can be yours too. Yours! That can be your experience. This man was what? Somewhere in his thirties perhaps... but his life was turned upside-down for God, and so can yours be.
Will you not start to live like that, friend? Will you not confess your brokenness and your sin and your hopelessness and helplessness, and come to Christ – that this new life may begin in yourself too. He finds a righteousness.
But the righteousness isn't all he finds. He finds a life as well. He doesn't just get a ticket to heaven – he gets a new type of life to live. That's the point of justification after all. That's the point of being put legally right.... Once we're put legally right, everything else can be sorted out.
The whole purpose of our justification is that sanctification can begin. We start to know God. We just start – and we go on – to know Him better. After all, he says, first of all in verse 9, he wants to be found. This is a reference, I think, to the judgment seat. He wants to be found there, not having his own righteousness, no – which is from the law – but that which is from faith in Christ – the righteousness which is from God by faith.
"That I may know Him," he says. "I don't just want to be set free by Him, I want to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death."
What's he's saying there?
Well, Christ isn't just giving him an inheritance, He's giving him a new life.
What is eternal life? Well, Jesus answers that question in John 17, verse 5: It's to know God, to know the Father, to know the Son – through the Spirit. That is life. That's when life begins. They say life begins at 40, or whatever. It begins when you know God. When you call Him your father in heaven. When a relationship is struck between your Creator and you. That's when life starts. Anything else you live, friend, I don't care how racy it is, how adventurous it is, how exciting it is, it's not life!
Life begins when you know your Creator, and you enter into a relationship with Him. Anything less than that is not life at all.
That I may know Him. He says, "Yes, that's what I want. . .
What is it to mean to know? Well, to know is not just to know intellectually, but to know in the heart. He wants to know Christ as a person. He wants to know more and more of who Christ is and what He has done for him. A righteousness and a life.
And you'll notice that he describes that especially in verse 10 in these terms: knowing Christ consists in knowing the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.
That I may know Him. "Yes," he says, "that's what I want." You know that's what I want too. I hope I want it enough. I hope I want it as passionately as Paul wanted it: to know Christ. Do you? Do you want to know Christ better, deeper? If you do, you'll want to know the power of His resurrection. What is that?
Well, simply the power He gives by virtue of His resurrection. It doesn't mean the power that actually raised Him from the dead, but the power He possesses as the resurrected Lord, a power that He sends into your life by the Holy Spirit. It doesn't feel like electricity. It doesn't crackle like that. It's not that kind of power. It's not that kind of dynamism. It's a spiritual power, it's a spiritual power that carries with it all things needful for life and godliness (Second Peter, chapter 1). That's what you want. In other words, you want what He gives you in terms of knowledge, understanding, judgment, peace, love, joy, discernment. You want that kind of spiritual power coursing through your spiritual veins. You want that. The power of His resurrection. It's a way of saying that God has so much to give. That Christ has so much to give you. He can give you so much of that love for others. So much of that compassion for a fallen world. So much desire to make a difference. He can give you so much love that you will overflow with that love, and so much joy and peace. You want it!
I want to know that Christ, and I want to know that resurrection power in me, filling me through His Holy Spirit . Yes, he says, that's what I want to know. I want to know that Christ, and I want to know Him with that fullness.
Some of you tonight want this, not because you've never had it, but because you've tasted some of it. And when you taste a bit of it, and you remember what the taste is like, you really want it. Sometimes in our foolishness, we do forget it. But just like life, you know, sometimes a smell takes you back. Sometimes just a word takes you back. Sometimes something is said and done, and you'll remember, "Yes, yes, that's what a Christ-centered life was like."
Where have you left that behind, friend?
Where? When? Why?
For what husks did you exchange it?
For what rubbish did you let it go?
What was it amongst the things that you cast away ages ago, what was it that you suddenly rediscovered and polished down and was so worth it?
Do you remember the day when every magazine was trash, every newspaper was a waste of time?
Is it not something of that you need back, and something of that I need back too?
Aw, it's all right to come out with the arguments that says these things are lawful. Ahhh... You can be killed off by lawful things. Your life can be destroyed by a multitude of lawful things.
Do you understand that? The cake remains the same size. There are 24 hours in day. You cram it up with as much lawful stuff as you like, and you've got nothing left for Christ. Not a thing. And your soul will be a damp squib, and you'll do next to nothing for the Lord. But what you could do – if you started to be a bit more severe on yourself like that.
And it's not as though it's torture. That's no hair shirt. No! That's no hair shirt, and that's no whip, and that's no lash. Because you'll discover that to give yourself back to Christ will bring you the joy and the love and peace and the exhilaration and the sense of accomplishing something for Himself. That' s life. That's life: that I may know Him, he says, and the power of His resurrection - pray for that power, and he says, the fellowship of HIs sufferings, I want that too.
Now, to be honest, I've wrestled with this expression quite often, "I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings." But after thinking about it, I still feel what I've essentially always felt about it. It's just means that there is a special fellowship with Christ, even in the midst of suffering. There's always fellowship with Christ, but in suffering for Him, He'll see to it that you'll get it too. In fact, He'll see that you'll don't just get it also, you'll get it especially in the midst of sufferings. Don't be afraid of them. Walk into them for Christ's sake, and you'll be lifted up in the midst of them.
From the Christians who suffered in the Roman catacombs, in the amphitheaters, right down to the Christians who have suffered in China recently, and elsewhere, across the Muslim world; right through the martyrs of the Reformation, and Scotland itself, you'll discover that if you suffer for Christ, He won't be far away from you. Paul says, "I want that," he says. "I don't choose suffering, I'm not gonna to walk into them," he says, "but I've discovered that in the midst of them, there's a sweetness in the presence of Christ."
. . .
Get Christ, friend. Get Christ for your soul, because nothing's to be compared with Him.
squib - a small firework that burns with a hissing sound before exploding.
damp squib (plural damp squibs)
A firework that fails to go off, due to wetting.
(idiomatic, by extension) Anything that doesn’t work properly, or fails to come up to expectations.
Origin of the phrase "damp squib"
While most modern squibs used by professionals are insulated from moisture, older uninsulated squibs needed to be kept dry in order to ignite, thus a "damp squib" was literally one that failed to perform because it got wet. Often misheard as "damp squid", the phrase "damp squib" has since come into general use to mean anything that fails to meet expectations. The word "squib" has come to take on a similar meaning even when used alone, as a synonym for dud.
Does the Lord Jesus Christ consider your soul a damp squib?
Matthew 5
13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
14 “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
34 “Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? 35 It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
More about life and life abundantly through the Lord Jesus Christ:
More about Kenneth Stewart:
More about Martyn Lloyd-Jones:
More about John Piper:
More about my credo for blogging and doctrine...
Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.
Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Prodigal_Son_tending_the_Swine.jpg / CC BY-SA 3.0 / {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}
Information about squib and damp squib found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squib_(explosive) / CC BY-SA 3.0
Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Box_of_squibs.jpg / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Public Domain
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