Happy Birthday, Robert Murray M'Cheyne

300 years ago today, Robert Murray M'Cheyne was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. M'Cheyne is most famous for the Bible-reading program he developed and for his applicatory preaching. Eric J. Alexander writes of him in What is Biblical Preaching?, 'He seemed, as his preaching progressed, to advance upon you until he was standing inside your heart, applying the Word of God to all your life.'

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote of him in his wonderful book, Preachers & Preaching,

You remember what was said of the saintly Robert Murray McCheyne of Scotland in the last century. It is said that when he appeared in the pulpit, even before he had uttered a single word, people would begin to weep silently. Why? Because of this very element of seriousness. The very sight of the man gave the impression that he had come from the presence of God and that he was to deliver a message from God to them. That is what had such an effect upon the people even before he had opened his mouth. We forget this at our peril, and at great cost to our listener.  

Below is a talk that John Piper gave on M'Cheyne at the 2011 Desiring God Pastor's Conference. Check it out if you get the chance, and thank God for the presence and example of such ministers as Robert Murray M'Cheyne.

A Word for Preachers...Alexander on the Key to Applicatory Preaching

"I am told that someone said of Robert Murray McCheyne of Dundee, 'He seemed, as his preaching progressed, to advance upon you until he was standing inside your heart, applying the Word of God to all your life.'

"My own increasing conviction is that this application begins at our own door. I think the secret of applicatory preaching is that we must apply to ourselves the Word of God while we are meditating upon it, while we are studying it. We must do this before we ever begin to think about applying it to other people.

"John Owen wrote, 'A man preacheth that sermon well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. If the Word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.' And again, 'He who doth not feed on and digest and thrive by what he preaches and prepares for his people, may give them poison as far as he knows,   for unless he finds the power of it in his own heart, he cannot have any ground of confidence that it will have power in the hearts of others.'"

Eric J. Alexander
What is Biblical Preaching?

A Word for Preachers...Alexander on the Unction of God

"When the unction of God is upon the preacher of his Word, people will go away saying, not 'What a great preacher!' but rather, ' Truly, God is in this place! How great and glorious he is!'"

Eric J. Alexander
What is Biblical Preaching?

A Word for Preachers...Alexander on the Authority of Scripture

"(O)utside Holy Scripture, we have no authoritative Word from God. With the eroding of confidence in the authority of Scripture in our own generation, it is not at all surprising that there has been an evacuation of authority from the pulpit. The decline in preaching is almost inevitably a result of such an absence of conviction concerning the authority of Scripture. The history of the Christian church bears ample and sad testimony to this connection.

"The whole cast of a truly biblical ministry will be a concern that people should recognize our only interest is not in selling our own line, or persuading people of our own opinion, or seeking that they might adopt our own view on a particular issue, but in humbly, obediently, and openly seeking to deal with what Holy Scripture says, opening it up and making it plain. The task has never been more clearly illustrated than in the ministry of Nehemiah in Nehemiah 8 where the people are met together under the Word of God. The ministry which the Levites fulfilled was to 'read from the book of the the Law of God, making it clear and giving meaning so that the people could understand what was being read' (Neh. 8:8)."

Eric J. Alexander
What is Biblical Preaching?

A Word for Preachers...Alexander on Preaching as Primarily Spiritual

Left to ourselves, we may do many things with a congregation. We may move them emotionally. We may attract them to ourselves personally, producing great loyalty. We may persuade them intellectually. We may educate them in a broad spectrum of Christian truth. But the one thing we can never do, left to ourselves, is to regenerate them spiritually and change them into the image of Jesus Christ, to bear his moral glory in their character. While that is the great calling of the church of Christ, it is essentially God’s work and not ours.

So it is possible to be homiletically brilliant, verbally fluent, theologically profound, biblically accurate and orthodox, and spiritually useless. That frightens me. I hope it frightens you, too.

Eric J. Alexander
What is Biblical Preaching?

A Word for Preachers...Eric Alexander on Prayer's Role in Preaching

"So there is a world of difference between true biblical preaching and an academic lecture or a rhetorical performance. We are utterly dependent on the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. Thank God, he uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are (1 Cor. 1:28). This is why it is absolutely essential to marry prayer to the ministry of the Word. In our ministries prayer is not supplemental; it is fundamental.

"Of course we subscribe to the principal that this work is God's work, not ours.' We subscribe to that because we are biblical Evangelicals, but the logical corollary of that statement is that prayer is a fundamental issue in the ministry of the Word, as in every part of our labor, and not, as we tend to make it, a supplemental matter."

Eric J. Alexander
What is Biblical Preaching?

A Word for Preachers...J.W. Alexander on the Value of the Preacher's Office

"I fear none of us apprehend as we ought to do the value of the preacher's office. Our young men do not gird themselves for it with the spirit of those who are on the eve of a great conflict; nor do they prepare as those who are to lay their hands upon the strings of the mightiest passions, and stir up to their depths the ocean of human feelings."

James W. Alexander
Thoughts on Preaching: Contributions to Homiletics

A Word for Preachers...Eric Alexander on Preaching and Shepherding

"It is by faithful ministry of the Word of God that true pastoral care comes. We are to pastor biblically and to preach pastorally. It is significant that the apostle Paul describes himself in various roles in that one ministry: he is not only a herald of the gospel, and a custodian of the truth, and an expositor of Scripture; he is also a father to his children, a travailing mother who goes through the pain of bearing them, and a gentle nursemaid who learns loving patience with them. All of these things ought to be visible in a truly biblical preaching ministry, because it is from Scripture that the pastoral model comes. This of course is just to say that we can never be detached from the people to whom we are ministering. A lecturer may be, but a preacher never can be."

Eric Alexander
What is Biblical Preaching?

A Word for Preachers...Alexander on Scripture and Authority

"However, we must never forget that exousia (the Greek word for "authority") is a New Testament concept, behind which lies the fact that the ultimate authority belongs to God, and that he mediates that authority through his Word.  So the true picture in the New Testament is not that of a congregation under the authority of the preacher: but of both preacher and congregation under the authority of God's written Word.  Indeed, it seems to me that the fundamental place of preaching in the church is simply a corollary of the fundamental place of Scripture in the church.  If you erode the latter, you will certainly erode the former.  Church history has consistently demonstrated this.  To be logical and consistent, if we say that Scripture is fundamental to the church's life and continuance, then it is the exposition of Scripture which is fundamental to the church's pattern of activity."

Eric Alexander