Preaching and The Conscience

I am preaching a series of messages through the life of Peter at the moment and it has been a blessing to me to dig into the early stages of his interaction with our Lord.  In the second message, I preached about the Lord changing the name of Peter and spent some time preaching about the necessity of the conscience being struck with the Word of God.  A quote that I wove into the message was from a book that Tony Mansinho sent to me a few weeks ago.  It is the biography of Master Robert Bruce—Minister in the Kirk of Edinburgh by D. C. Macnicol.  Bruce was one of the Scottish Puritans and despite some of their flaws, I have been incredibly blessed for close to thirty years by digging into their writings.  Some time was spent by Macnicol exploring the matter of the conscience of Bruce being smitten by God and the Holy Scriptures.  Here is the quote that I used: 

Shakespeare and Preaching

She was probably in her mid-thirties when I met her.  Professional and articulate would be very good descriptive terms for her.  She had come to the Radiology Department for a CT scan for some diagnostic test that has long since escaped my memory.  Prior to these kinds of tests, I would take a brief medical history and then start an IV for the contrast to be injected during the scan.  Throughout that timeframe, I would be with a patient for about 10-15 minutes or so which gave me an occasion to get to know about their background as well as their medical situation.  When I asked her about her occupation, she told me that she was an English Literature professor who taught all of the Shakespeare classes at one of our local colleges.  Although I greatly enjoy books and have for most of my lifetime, I confessed that I would have some difficulty spending so much time with Shakespeare and all of his works. 

A Lifting Up for the Downcast - William Bridge

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If you are not familiar with the Banner of Truth Trust, you are missing out.  Over the years, I have found that the Banner of Truth does an excellent job with not only the content of their books but the craftsmanship as well.  Their hardbound editions are especially nice, but their paperbacks also hold up well over time.  This is especially true for what they have defined as the Puritan Paperbacks.  I believe there are around 250 separate titles in this series with the pages ranging from generally 100 to as many as 300.  I do not have all of these in my personal library but the ones I do own have always served me well especially when traveling.  Obviously, you can obtain them in digital format, but I still have to confess that I favor actual books themselves given the opportunities to mark up the pages and write in the margins. 

William Bridge has one that the Banner has published on Psalm 42:11 entitled A Lifting Up for the Downcast.  This is a compilation of thirteen sermons on that single verse.  That is one of the hallmarks of the Puritans.  Many of these men were biblical expositors in the truest sense of the word.  They drank deeply from the Scriptures and then mixed in deep meditative thinking over what they had mined out of the Word and preached to their churches.  This series of messages were preached in 1648 to those who were experiencing what we could understand as “spiritual depression.”  I am afraid that the remedy for this generation would be to reach for an anti-depressant or an anxiolytic to provide relief.  However, the Puritans obviously believed that the best remedy for those kinds of maladies was the Word. 

A Prayer Pouring Out of Psalm 119

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I am presently preaching through the stanzas of Psalm 119 and it has been a spiritually enriching exercise.  Today, I am struck by my need to pray through this Psalm as I preach through it.  One of the greatest things about verse-by-verse preaching is its sanctifying effect on the preacher.  What follows come from the handwritten prayer in my journal as I worked through Psalm 119:17-24 (The Trials That Come our Way).  The prayer was motivated by the cross-references that I followed as the sermon notes unfolded.

The Public Reading of Scripture

Quite some time ago, I was studying some of the practices of the ancient apostolic church and ran across some of the writings of Justin Martyr.  In his Apology 1.67, he describes just a portion of what took place in ancient times:

. . . and on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. . .

Book Recommendation—Reformed Preaching by Joel Beeke

This blog is a salute to a pastor that I have yet to meet face-to-face.  Several months ago, I was contacted thru Twitter by Pastor Tony Mansinho who is serving his church, Calvary Apostolic Church, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I am unsure as to how that he found me but he has been an incredible blessing to me because at this point, he has sent me nearly 200 books.  The books that he has sent to me are not your pop Christianity sorts of books that litter the bookshelves of most chain bookstores.  Rather he has sent me some of the richest volumes from the New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT) and OldTestament (NICOT), IVP commentaries, a host of books on preaching, hermeneutics, and even several specialty study Bibles.  Because I love books on preaching, I have benefited tremendously from that genre of books he has sent to me.  I thought that I should do a book review/recommendation on one of the many he has sent.  Obviously as he and I both would affirm that everything we read needs to be done so carefully and with discernment. 

This book is one written by Joel Beeke.  Joel Beeke is a familiar author with me as I have enjoyed his book on spiritual warfare, backsliding, history of the Puritans, and theology of the Puritans.  Beeke is the president of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and the pastor of Heritage Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids.  The book that he has recently written is Reformed Preaching and is part historical and part instructional.  The book is so good that I even found the beginning written endorsements to be good.

When Preaching Becomes Entertainment

If there is a priority focus in my life at this point, it would have to be preaching and teaching the Bible.  In my thoughts there is nothing that is more crucial to the life of a church than a pastor who entirely concentrates on the principle set aside in Acts 6:4—prayer and ministry of the Word.  It is a BIG deal!  There are so many voices that are vying for my ears, my mind, and ultimately my soul and I realize that others are in this same cycle of life as well.  The most important voice we can hear is the one that is rooted in Scripture.  The spiritual health of the minister and the life of the church often rise and fall with the commitment that a man has to this calling of preaching.  It requires discipline to stick with preaching through the Bible week-in and week-out, year after year.  At this point of preaching for almost 30 years, I cannot even scratch the surface of what has taken place within my soul because of the untold hours of Bible study, prayer, reading of books, listening to sermons, meditating on the text, agonizing over the lack of personal skill, and knowing the highs and the lows of sermon delivery.  When we take preaching seriously, we align ourselves with the emphasis that Paul put on preaching in 1 Corinthians 1:17-31.