88b) Spiritual Experience #2

Driving home: I believe that one of our chief sins and the parent of all other evils in the real world, particularly Christian ministry together, is to be found in the low state of godliness of the life of God in our own souls.

Martin quotes C.J. Brown's 1844 sermon, 'Ministerial Guilt,' to establish that a minister's chief sin and parent of all other evils is a low state of godliness in his own soul, emphasizing the need for personal spiritual vitality.

Well, here I'm going to hide behind the quality control of the men of the past. And the first is a quotation from a sermon preached on the subject of ministerial guilt on May 21, 1844 at the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland by a servant of Christ by the name of C.J. Brown.

3:01 - 3:25 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin extensively references John Owen, who argues that pastors must have personal experience with spiritual trials like desertion, temptation, and blasphemous thoughts to…

Martin quotes John Owen (Vol. 16, p. 85) to illustrate that pastors must be able to comfort, relieve, and refresh those tempted and disconsolate, requiring a personal sense of infirmities and experience with spiritual struggles.

Yet no human author that I've consulted more accurately and more extensively addresses this than does Owen. And I've sought to give you a number of references and I'll not quote from all of them. Let me just give you the heads and a little taste to whet your appetite.

8:02 - 8:19 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin extensively references John Owen, who argues that pastors must have personal experience with spiritual trials like desertion, temptation, and blasphemous thoughts to…

Martin describes a minister who is a 'stranger' to desertion or blasphemous thoughts, sitting with 'incredulity' when a sheep shares such struggles, illustrating the inability to shepherd without personal experience.

And then he talks about the children of God who grow through periods of desertion, the buffetings of Satan, the injection of blasphemous thoughts. And he says, how can a man minister to such sheep if he's a stranger to those things in his own experience? He will sit there with a look of incredulity upon his face saying, what in the world are you talking about? A sense of desertion.

9:34 - 9:59 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray to have dealings with God that will match the struggles and dealings with God of the rank and file of your people, acquiring sufficient experience to be a confident shepherd.

Martin imagines Owen examining a pastoral candidate, concluding that if the candidate lacks experiential understanding of sin and grace, Owen would advise them to pray for dealings with God that match their people's struggles, emphasizing the necessity of personal experience.

In other words if Owen were sitting down on an eldership to examine whether or not a judgment should be made by the church as to your fitness or mine to assume the pastoral office he'd probe us to see if there was at least a modicum of that deposit of understanding wrought in the crucible of our own Christian experience of the workings of sin and grace. And if it were not there if Owen sensed we were sincere but simply untaught I think he'd lay his hand upon the shoulder and say now son you pray to have dealings with God at least that will match the struggles and the dealings with God of the r...

12:47 - 13:53 Read in full sermon

Driving home: We wrong them and we mock their struggles if we preach our gospel in abstraction from the hard facts of their experience.

Martin quotes James Stewart's book on preaching (p. 29) to illustrate that a minister's greatest safeguard is awareness of the congregation's 'hungry demand for reality,' which shames anything 'shoddy, secondhand, or artificial' in the pulpit.

I'll bypass them but let me give you this quote from James Stewart's book on preaching, page 29. It is one of the mightiest safeguards of a man's ministry to be aware of that hungry demand for reality breaking inarticulately from the hearts of those to whom he ministers. For that cry puts everything shoddy, secondhand, or artificial to shame. You don't need to be eloquent or clever or sensational or skilled in dialectic but you must be real.

14:11 - 14:47 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin quotes Samuel Miller, who questions how a minister can guide others in spiritual things if he only knows the theory of religion. Miller argues that a minister must be able…

Martin quotes Samuel Miller's 'An Able and Faithful Ministry' (pp. 4-5) to illustrate the impossibility of a man who knows only the theory of religion being a practical guide in spiritual things, unable to sympathize or comfort without personal experience.

and we have a larger and larger stock I'm not saying put the experience of a fifty year old man in a man in his thirties no, but I am saying if there is not a modicum of experiential acquaintance with the fundamental struggles of the soul of the average believer as he seeks to go on with God and live in the real world how in the world can we be received through Christ to perfect them when we are out of touch with the things that form the nuts and bolts of their life, utterly impossible Bridges addresses it page 27 and 28 in his Christian ministry I will not take the time to quote it but I will...

17:44 - 19:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Settle it as an honoring axiom that God will use trials and difficulties, beyond academic curriculum, to prepare you for ministry.

Martin uses the analogy of God 'beating up' on potential servants through trials and difficulties, explaining that this is God's way of preparing them experientially for ministry, even if it means lower grades in academic pursuits.

Christian experience experience that will be no stranger to the fundamental evidence of the great issues of sin and grace as they operate in the soul of the people of God so brethren if that is so and you have come here for quote ministerial preparation settle it as an honoring axiom God is going to beat up on you on a lot of ways that have nothing to do with the curriculum of Trinity Ministerial Academy you cry to God Lord make me an able minister of the new covenant and God will start answering in ways that may be very surprising and very painful ways that may frustrate you from getting what...

20:40 - 22:08 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not make God's dealings with any other man the pattern of his dealings with you, but expect God to try you in some area to make you a minister.

Martin references Luther's three things that make a minister: the Bible, prayer, and suffering (or trials), to illustrate the indispensable role of personal hardship in ministerial formation.

it's the only way and God knows don't make God's dealings with any other man the pattern of his dealings with you I was talking with one of the brethren earlier asked how his wife has adjusted emotionally in the rest of the area she has made a wonderful adjustment to try you in that area because other men have been severely tried in that area but I can say with equal confidence my brother God will drop you down in the frying pan in some other area because that's how God makes ministers do you remember what Luther said what was these three things that made a minister the Bible, prayer and suffe...

22:08 - 23:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not make God's dealings with any other man the pattern of his dealings with you, but expect God to try you in some area to make you a minister.

Martin uses the metaphor of God 'pouring into your soul the cross section of the experience of a hundred people' to explain how trials equip a minister with the experiential knowledge to minister to diverse needs.

it's the only way and God knows don't make God's dealings with any other man the pattern of his dealings with you I was talking with one of the brethren earlier asked how his wife has adjusted emotionally in the rest of the area she has made a wonderful adjustment to try you in that area because other men have been severely tried in that area but I can say with equal confidence my brother God will drop you down in the frying pan in some other area because that's how God makes ministers do you remember what Luther said what was these three things that made a minister the Bible, prayer and suffe...

22:08 - 23:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not make God's dealings with any other man the pattern of his dealings with you, but expect God to try you in some area to make you a minister.

Martin shares a personal anecdote about God leading him by a 'winding path' that was lonely and emotionally difficult, but which he later recognized as God's wise preparation for ministering to distressed souls.

it's the only way and God knows don't make God's dealings with any other man the pattern of his dealings with you I was talking with one of the brethren earlier asked how his wife has adjusted emotionally in the rest of the area she has made a wonderful adjustment to try you in that area because other men have been severely tried in that area but I can say with equal confidence my brother God will drop you down in the frying pan in some other area because that's how God makes ministers do you remember what Luther said what was these three things that made a minister the Bible, prayer and suffe...

22:08 - 23:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Ensure you are safely back from the line where people can justly accuse you of being a proud, self-confident, cocky young creature, cultivating internal humility.

Paul's experience with the 'messenger of Satan' (2 Corinthians 12) is used as an example of God's method for keeping even a mature saint humble and dependent, preventing pride from abundant revelations.

it is all of God and all of grace and what have I that I did not receive who gave me life in my mother's womb who put the genes together in such a way that I should be a normal human being who laid hold of me in grace who opened my eyes what have I that I did not receive nothing but if you received it why do you glory as though you had not received it anything of the remnants of pride and self-trust is an indication that we've moved away from the experimental acknowledgement of the right answer to those simple questions and so if God's going to place you as his servant into the ministry an abl...

29:27 - 30:55 Read in full sermon

Driving home: if anything should mark a man in the pulpit regardless of his native temperament people can look and say there's a man to whom the world of spiritual reality is real it's stamped upon his eyeballs it breathes and throbs …

Martin quotes Bridges (p. 178) to illustrate that ministry is 'a work of faith' that must be sustained by active, persevering exercise of this principle, bringing cheerfulness and relieving anxiety by casting oneself on God.

we will get through them this fourth aspect of what I'm calling this necessity for an enlarged balanced tested Christian experience is what I've described as a measure of sustained and vigorous faith in the great realities of the unseen world and again I was fishing for words trying to explain that faith is not just one grace among many in the soul it is the pivotal grace without faith Hebrews 11 6 it is impossible to please him for we walk by faith and not by sight and then the crucial text and I've listed it for you 2 Corinthians 4 13 and I commend you Warfield's sermon on this I believed th...

33:53 - 35:22 Read in full sermon

Driving home: if anything should mark a man in the pulpit regardless of his native temperament people can look and say there's a man to whom the world of spiritual reality is real it's stamped upon his eyeballs it breathes and throbs …

Martin quotes a servant of God from Cecil's Remains, who states 'faith is the master spring of a minister,' illustrating the singular focus on Christ's ability to save from hell, with 'no fourth idea' being contemptible.

and such working is not in vain in the Lord and then he goes on to say daily experience reminds us of the extreme difficulty of maintaining spiritual perceptions of eternal things he has stated that eternal realities are the focus of faith but the pressures of life constantly pull us away from that and then he quotes another servant of God who said faith is the master spring of a minister hell is before me and thousands of souls are shut up there in everlasting agonies Jesus Christ stands forth to save men from rushing into this bottomless abyss and to proclaim his ability and his love I want ...

38:18 - 39:45 Read in full sermon

Driving home: if anything should mark a man in the pulpit regardless of his native temperament people can look and say there's a man to whom the world of spiritual reality is real it's stamped upon his eyeballs it breathes and throbs …

Martin uses the metaphor of a minister 'buried beneath the mound of the things that can be seen and felt and touched' to illustrate the failure of a minister who lacks faith in unseen realities, contrasting him with one whose 'eye is constantly piercing through the veil.'

in those great realities if a man's chronic problem is chronic despondency born of unbelief the church has got enough struggling saints crippled as they are Mr. Fearings and Mr. Ready to Hawks without having one in the pulpit brethren if anything should mark a man in the pulpit regardless of his native temperament people can look and say there's a man to whom the world of spiritual reality is real it's stamped upon his eyeballs it breathes and throbs through his preaching regardless of the peculiarities of that preaching in a world where everything is a man and fused their souls to the realm o...

39:45 - 41:12 Read in full sermon