Blessed are the Peacemakers

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus famously proclaims, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God" (Matthew 5:9, ESV). In the wake of all that occurred last night in Ferguson, it seems to be quite the appropriate message for us today.

When Jesus spoke of peacemakers, he no doubt had in mind the concept of shalom (Hebrew for "peace"). What we need to keep in mind though is what exactly is encapsulated in shalom. Cornelius Plantinga states the following: 

"The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, whole ness and delight -- a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as it's Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be."

So while it is right for us to be against rioting, arson and looting, it is not enough for our peacemaking to end there. We must also be against systemic injustice, racism, division and oppression. We must realize that it is not enough to try to KEEP peace, especially when true peace doesn't actually exist. We must strive to MAKE peace. 

We need to humbly admit that our point of view just might not always be the point of view of ultimate truth. We must demonstrate empathy before leaping right to judgment. When we can't understand how there could be any logical explanation for a person's actions, that should cause us to wonder if there's a piece of the puzzle we don't see or at least don't fully understand. This involves great deals of listening before speaking; patiently asking for explanation instead of quickly offering criticism; humbly asking God to give us the vision to see where peace needs to be made, the wisdom to know how we should respond, and the courage to follow through with action.

Peacemaking is hard work. It is at times painful. It is always costly. It certainly was for Jesus, the true Son of God, the ultimate peacemaker. He, at ultimate cost to himself, not only KEPT peace, but MADE peace. May we prayerfully and humbly seek to follow his example.

"For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility." (Ephesians 2:14-16, ESV)

New Sermon Series on the Book of Ruth

Beginning this Sunday I will be preaching a series entitled Divine Faithfulness: The Book of Ruth. I can't wait, as Ruth is one of my favorite books of the Bible. As Sinclair Ferguson writes,

The book of Ruth is not a work of deep theological reasoning like Paul's epistle to the Romans, yet it is full of theology. It is not a magnificent symphony on the work of Christ like the Gospel of John, yet it ultimately points to the coming of Christ. It is not full of vivid apocalyptic imagery like the book of Revelation, yet it traces the details of God's working in the unfolding of the events of history. It is not basic instruction about the kingdom of God like the Sermon on the Mount, yet it contains important lessons about life in the kingdom.

If you live in the Flint area, we'd love to have you join us at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings this fall as we examine this Old Testament treasure of a book. Audio of sermons in the series will be posted on our website as well.

Great Book Deal

Westminster Seminary Bookstore has a great deal running on the Contours of Christian Theology series. If you purchase the set by April 27, you can get them for 55% off ($80, as opposed to the cover price of $176), This is an excellent series as the endorsements below testify. If you don't want to buy the whole set, but would like to get a few of the books, they are also on special individually through Wednesday for 45-50% off the cover price.
 

A Word for Preachers...Ferguson on the Preacher's Heart

"There is a widespread need for (preaching that produces inner prostration of the hearts of listeners). We have an equal need as preachers to catch the vision for it in an overly pragmatic and programmatic society that believes it is possible to live the Christian life without either the exposing of our own hearts or the accompanying prostration of ourselves before the majesty of God on high.

"It is just here that one notices a striking contrast between the biblical exposition one finds in the steady preaching of John Calvin in the sixteenth century and preaching in our own day. It is clearly signaled by the words with which he ended virtually every one of his thousands of sermons: 'And now let us bow down before the majesty of our gracious God...' Reformed biblical exposition elevates God and abases man. By contrast, much modern preaching seems to have the goal of making man feel great, even if God Himself has to bow down.

"So a leading characteristic of preaching of to their heart will be the humbling, indeed, prostration of hearts before the majesty of god on high. This is simultaneously the true ecstasy of the Christian, and therein lies the paradox of grace: the way down is always the way up.

"But if, through the preaching of the gospel, we want to see people prostrated with mingled awe and joy before God, the essential prerequisite is that we ourselves be prostrated before him. John Owen's words still ring true even after three and a half centuries: ' a man preacheth that sermon only 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.'"

Sinclair Ferguson
Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching

Sinclair Ferguson to Leave First Presbyterian

I know it's probably wrong to have "favorite pastors" that you don't even personally know. Even so, I must admit that Sinclair Ferguson has long been one of my favorite pastors. In seminary I was greatly blessed by such books of his as The Holy Spirit and Children of the Living God...and that was before I was even aware of his incredible accent! A number of years ago he spoke at my denomination's General Assembly and preached the two best sermons I've ever heard at a GA. I subscribe to his podcast through SermonAudio, and am routinely blessed by his preaching from the pulpit of First Presbyterian Church (ARP) in Columbia, South Carolina.

Yesterday I received an email from a friend informing me that Ferguson would be retiring. It contained a link to an article from The Aquila Report that included part of the message he wrote to his congregation. As I read it I was struck (though not surprised) by its pastoral tone and Christ-centeredness. He wrote the following:

I do not really need to remind you of the first thing. Christ alone is our anchor.
Our church is first and, foremost Jesus Christ’s Church. He has built us together
here over the centuries; his servants have come and gone. But he has remained
“ever faithful, ever true.” It is always right and healthy when we love our
pastors—and like my predecessors here I have felt myself to be deeply loved; but
we are here only to point to the Savior whose church we are. I did not anticipate
that the last series of sermons I would preach to you would be from Hebrews (I
wanted to expound Philippians!). But how appropriate that these Sunday
morning we hear the message again and again: See how great Jesus is. Fix your
eyes on him.

I do not really need to remind you of the first thing. Christ alone is our anchor.
Secondly, let us continue to love and encourage one another. I have often said
that I believe the most important picture of the church in the New Testament is
that of a family. More and more I have felt that is what we want to be here at
First Presbyterian. It is certainly here that a chief element in the impact of our
witness will be found in a day when so many natural families have become
dysfunctional. Life as it is meant to be is found in Christ. His grace runs in the
dried up riverbed sin has created in every dimension of life—not least family. So,
in the church, as we often sing,

He wills us be a family, diverse, yet truly one:
O let us give our gifts to God, and so shall his work on earth be done.

The third thing (yes, there would be a third thing!)? Let us continue in prayer
that the Lord will work on among us, and provide for us the ongoing ministry
that will keep us growing in Christ and faithfully serving him into the future.
On Monday night when I went home after breaking the news to our elders,
Dorothy overheard me singing and commented on the words: “Through the love
of God our Savior, all will be well…” “Yes” I said, “but as I was singing the words,
tears were flowing down my cheeks!”

Surely if the heart of a stoic Scot can be melted with love for this congregation,
the capacious heart of the Lord Jesus is filled with a love for us that knows no
bounds, and “all must be well.” I certainly believe that will be so.

Whatever he may choose to do upon his return to Scotland, my prayer is that Sinclair Ferguson might be blessed at least a fraction as much as he has been a blessing to me. If so, he will be mightily blessed indeed!

A Word for Preachers...Ferguson on Preaching to the Heart

"In the last analysis, this is what preaching to the heart is preaching to the heart is intended to produce: inner prostration of the hearts of our listeners through a consciousness of the presence and the glory of God. The result distinguishes authentic biblical preaching from any cheap substitute; it marks the difference between preaching about the Word of God and preaching the Word of God.

"The presence of this threefold openness, then, is most desirable in preaching. When there is the exposition of the Scriptures, an enlarging and opening of the preacher's heart, and the exposing of the hearts of the hearers, then the majesty of the Word of God written will be self-evident and the presence of the Word of God Incarnate will stand forth in all His glory."

Sinclair Ferguson
Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching

The Antidote to Both Legalism and Antinomianism

Below is a video promo from Sinclair Ferguson's book, By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me. The whole video is worth watching, but the 30 seconds from 1:15 to 1:45 especially are pure gold as Ferguson points out,

"Characteristically as Christians, we either fall down on the side of legalism or we fall down on the side of antinomianism. And we've often thought the way to solve legalism is to just have a little touch of antinomianism. Or the way to solve antinomianism is you need more law, whereas when Paul deals with both of those pastoral problems he deals with them essentially in the same way: by pointing us to the grace of God that is in Jesus Christ."

(HT: Dane Ortlund)

Sinclair Ferguson on the Praying Church

The other day Ligonier posted a portion of a 2008 interview with Sinclair Ferguson. In it Ferguson discussed what most troubled him about the Church in our day. I found his words instructive and convicting.

Again there is the lack of prayer and of the Church praying. This is to me the most alarming, for this reason: we have built apparently strong, large, successful, active churches. But many of our churches never meet as a congregation for prayer. I mean never! What does that indicate we are saying about the life of the Church as a fellowship? By contrast, the mark of a truly apostolic spirit in the church is that that we give ourselves to prayer and the Word together (Acts 6:4). No wonder “the Word of God continued to increase and the number of the disciples multiplied” (Acts 6:7). If this is so, it should not surprise us that while many churches see growth, it is often simply reconfiguration of numbers, not of conversion. I greatly wish that our churches would learn to keep the main things central, that we would learn to be true Churches, vibrant fellowships of prayer, Gospel ministry and teaching, genuine mutual love. At the end of the day, such a Church simply needs to “be” for visitors who come to sense that this is a new order of reality altogether and are drawn to Christ.

A Word for Preachers...Sinclair Ferguson on Preaching to the Heart

"In the last analysis, preaching to the heart is preaching Christ in a way that reminds people of Christ, but also manifests Christ to them, and draws them to Him. If, among other things, preaching is (as Phillips Brooks' famous description claims) 'the bringing of truth through personality,' then the personalities of the preachers of the cross must be marked by the cross. So we are called to be cruciformed (shaped by the cross), Christophers (bearing the Christ of the cross), and Christplacarders (setting Christ and Him crucified on display, c.f. Gal. 3:1) in our preaching as we 'try to persuade men' (2 Cor. 5:11).

"Perhaps such preaching of Christ is less common than we assume. If so, it is because we do not yet know Him nearly well enough.

"Let us then resolve, above all other ambitions, to know Him, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10). Let is also be determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2), so that, as we preach to the heart, God Himself will speak to His people heart to heart."

Sinclair Ferguson
Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching

Philadelphia Conference...The Gospel: What? Why? How?

Each year the Alliance for Confessing Evangelicals hosts the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology in multiple locations. This year the conference will be held March 23-25 in Grand Rapids and April 20-22 in Philadelphia, and it promises to be a wonderful time of instruction and fellowship.

The theme of the conference is The Gospel: What? Why? How? and speakers will include Sinclair Ferguson, Richard Phillips, Ligon Duncan and others. You can click here to register for the Grand Rapids event, or can click here to register for Philadelphia.

Below is the schedule for this year's conferences:

Friday

Preconference:
8:00 a.m. Pre-Conference Registration
9:15 a.m. Devotional: A Minister of the Gospel Eph. 3:7-9, Richard Phillips
9:45 a.m. The Necessity of Gospel Preaching – Romans 10:13-17, Harry Reeder
10:45 a.m. Coffee Break
11:00 a.m. The Profile of Gospel Preaching – I Cor. 2: 1-5, Harry Reeder
12:00 p.m. Lunch (at local restaurants)
1:30 p.m. The Man, The Message & The Method of Gospel Preaching – II Tim 2:14-4:8, Harry Reeder
2:30 p.m. Question & Answer: Harry Reeder and Richard Phillips
3:15 p.m. End of Pre-Conference

Conference:
7:00 pm The Gospel of Great Joy - Luke 2:10-12, Sinclair Ferguson

Saturday

8:00 a.m. Late Registration
9:00 a.m. The Gospel Remedy for Bad News – Romans 3:21-26, Harry Reeder
10:00 a.m. The Gospel Power of God – Romans 1:16, Sinclair Ferguson
11:00 a.m. Question and Answer Session
12:00 p.m. Lunch (at local restaurants)
2:00 p.m. The Gospel Preaching of the Cross – 1 Corinthians 1:17, Ligon Duncan
3:15-4:30 p.m. Seminars - Please choose one

1. The Gospel in the Contemporary Evangelical Churches, Ligon Duncan
2. A Gospel Reformation: Then and Now, Robert Godfrey (MI)
3. Getting the Gospel Out, Liam Goligher (PA)
4. The Full Gospel: Justification and Sanctification, Richard Phillips

4:30 p.m. Dinner (at local restaurants)
6:30 p.m. Sacred Concert
7:00 p.m. The Gospel Message of Christ – Mark 1:14-15, Robert Godfrey (MI); Liam Goligher (PA)

Sunday

AM Worship - The Gospel Ministry of Reconciliation – 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Ligon Duncan

The Ten Commandments of Preaching

The most recent edition of the theological journal Themelios has an article by one of my favorite pastors, Sinclair Ferguson. In it he offers Ten Commandments for preachers. Ferguson elaborates on each of them, and if you're a preacher, you would do well to click here and take a couple minutes to see what he has to say. But if you only have a second, here is the list of the Commandments by themselves:

1. Know your Bible better.
2. Be a man of prayer.
3. Do not lose sight of Christ.
4. Be deeply trinitarian.
5. Use your imagination.
6. Speak much of sin and grace.
7. Use the “plain style.”
8. Find your own voice.
9. Learn how to transition.
10. Love your people.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

A Word for Preachers...Ferguson on Imperatives and Indicatives

"The great gospel imperatives to holiness are ever rooted in indicatives of grace that are able to sustain the weight of those imperatives. The Apostles do not make the mistake that’s often made in Christian ministry. [For the Apostles] the indicatives are more powerful than the imperatives in gospel preaching. So often in our preaching our indicatives are not strong enough, great enough, holy enough, or gracious enough to sustain the power of the imperatives. And so our teaching on holiness becomes a whip or a rod to beat our people’s backs because we’ve looked at the New Testament and that’s all we ourselves have seen.

"We’ve seen our own failure and we’ve seen the imperatives to holiness and we’ve lost sight of the great indicatives of the gospel that sustain those imperatives. Woven into the warp and woof of the New Testament’s exposition of what it means for us to be holy is the great groundwork that the self-existent, thrice holy, triune God has — in Himself, by Himself and for Himself — committed Himself and all three Persons of His being to bringing about the holiness of His own people. This is the Father’s purpose, the Son’s purchase and the Spirit’s ministry."

Sinclair Ferguson

(HT: OFI)

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

    
"When people observe our lives, they ought to be able to see the character of God in us, because as his children, we are those in whom his image has already begun to be restored."
 
Sinclair Ferguson

You Are the Salt of the Earth

In 2011 I've had the pleasure of teaching an adult Sunday School class on The Sermon on the Mount.  One of my favorite parts of teaching is all the learning that I get to do.  In my preparations for class, I try to glean insights from a number of scholars who are far more learned than I am (there's no shortage!).  To this end I have loved studying a number of fine commentaries on The Sermon on the Mount (Carson, Doriani, Ferguson, Stott) in addition to commentaries on Matthew from my two favorite sets by Calvin and Hendriksen.

Another commentary on Matthew that was recently introduced to me by a friend is Frederick Dale Bruner's Matthew: A Commentary. Volume 1: The Christbook, Matthew 1-12.  I've only had the commentary for a couple weeks and I can't speak to all of Bruner's theology.  What I can say though, is I have already been richly blessed by the devotional nature of his writing and some of the insights he offers on Matthew 5.  Included in this would be the following words I came across today preparing for this week's lesson on being "the salt of the earth":

"Blessing is given to believers so that they will be blessings -- to the world (cf. especially the seminal promise of Gen 12:1-3: "I will bless you and make you a blessing; and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed"); salt is made salt in order to be salty in food.  We are put on notice that while it is from nothing (gratis) that we have been made salt, it is not for nothing (frustra).  We are to live for other people.  Christians, we learn here for the first time explicitly, are in danger if they do not live as Christians.  This is what is meant by the warning's sad conclusion, "It is absolutely useless except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."  Here is deserved persecution.  In the world this "persecution" often takes the form of simple contempt or of complete disinterest."

May we always remember how very blessed we are to have found favor in the eyes of God in spite of our sin. And may we also remember that we, like Abraham, are blessed that we might be a blessing.