Eroded Reading/Studies; Humanity

Introduction to Warning Six: Avoiding Mental Burnout from Confined Studies

0:02 The following address was delivered at the 7th Annual Trinity Pastors Conference held at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:12 Since we have had just a half-minute break from the first session in which I briefly gave an overview of where we had been and then addressed the fifth exhortation with reference to warnings to avoid ministerial backsliding and ministerial burnout, we come now to warning number six. And we are now definitely in the area not so much of backsliding but of ministerial burnout. And my admonition is couched in these words. Beware of confining your studies to the reading and thinking necessarily and patently, precipitated by and connected with your regular sermon preparation. I'll run it by again. Beware of confining your studies to the reading and thinking necessarily and patently,

1:31 precipitated by and connected with your regular sermon preparations. Now let me explain the words. There is an underlying assumption in that warning and that is that you both study, read, and think in preparing your sermons. Now I hope those presuppositions are not presumptuous.

2:04 In the admonition, beware of confining your studies to the reading and thinking necessarily and patently precipitated by and connected with your regular sermon preparation, I am assuming that those activities are indeed central to your sermon preparation. And this, of course, will always be true if we take 2 Timothy 2 and verse 15 seriously. Here in this well-known text, the Apostle writes to Timothy and says, the old authorized study, and that is certainly one of the elements of it, and in the older English use of the word may be much broader than our present use and the connotations of study, but the Greek verb is spoudazo, do your utmost. Marshal your energies and expend them to present yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, handling a right or cutting a straight course in the word of truth.

3:29 As a divine workman called upon to proclaim the truth of God, Paul exhorts, Timothy so to give himself to all of the disciplines essential to cutting a straight course in the word of truth, that he shall have no just grounds for shame in the presence of the God whose truth it is, or shame in the presence of the people on whose behalf he is to be a messenger of truth. There are few things that ought to cause grief, greater shame than the thought that I have mishandled the word of the living God through laziness or carelessness. And few things will cause greater shame to a true servant of God than the discovery on the part of his people that he has inaccurately handled the word of God through carelessness and sloppy preparation. And so this text, this text points Timothy and us in the direction of that kind of concentrated endeavor essential to being workmen who have no need to be ashamed,

The Necessity of Wide Reading in Sermon Preparation

4:52 cutting a straight course in the word of truth. And while the application of this differs from culture to culture and linguistic group to linguistic group, and I speak with the knowledge, with some third world brethren with whom I have close ties, and unless they are proficient in English, I've looked at some of their libraries and I've felt both grief and shame at one and the same time. But certainly those of us who have any proficiency in the English language and the wealth of material available to us in terms of everything from more technical commentaries that will help us, to arrive at the precise meaning of words, words in relationship to one another, grammar and syntax, more technical commentaries that help us to understand the background and the ethos represented by a given passage all the way to such commentaries as Matthew Henry and J.C. Ryle with his expository thoughts which are rich and, and fertile grounds for relevant applications of the truth. We have a marvelous legacy at our disposal.

6:14 And I'm assuming that you are men committed to serious thinking, joined to, and often precipitated by, wide reading in conjunction with your regular sermon preparation. When recently preaching through the Gospel of Mark, over the past few days, last few years and i counted them to make sure i wasn't violating one of the very principles i mentioned yesterday and pushing the number up to make an impression there have been basically 15 commentaries that i've consulted almost every time before i've opened my mouth on a lord's day morning to preach on the next paragraph in mark now there are times when the page is read in a given commentary leave me absolutely with nothing useful except to confirm that the position i've taken must be the right one because the one that commentator took was bizarre there are other times other times when a commentary that has not been what i would call a front-rank helper but i've just read it out of the discipline of commitment to read it because the consensus you you I'm assuming that the consensus of other students of the word of god is that it is a worthy commentary

7:42 and lo and behold after reading just as a matter of commitment and principle in that commentator week after week and finding nothing maybe for a month or two one day a marvelous jewel is found hidden away amidst all that verbiage that has on some occasions been the key to a difficult part in the sermon so i'm assuming that the commentator is a worthy commentator and that you men need not be convinced of the necessity of wide responsible reading and thinking in your regular sermon preparation reading and thinking that takes you all the way from the more technical elements of linguistic studies to the more practical and homiletical and applicator or applicatory dimensions of sermon preparation now over the long haul particularly you men who are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are the only ones who are able to do this in the long haul are ones who labor in the word and doctrine in public teaching over the long haul if your mind

The Danger of Confined Studies: Mental Dullness and Burnout

8:44 continually goes down on those paths marked out by the duties of formal and specific sermon preparation you will most likely begin to develop a kind of mental dullness leading to intellectual burnout this in turn will begin to manifest itself in a lack of that element of creativity that is essential in sermon preparation and even an increasing reluctance for hard study in other words if all of the paths of curious reading as that you walk over week after week month after month afterap själ all of the paths of various reading as that you walk over week after week month in labor for preparation or in preparation for public ministry imperceptibly you will build up a growing aversion at the very site of those paths because they have been paths marked by blood sweat and toil and at times tears you've known what it is to say lord i believe this next paragraph

10:01 is the inspired inerrant word of life for me i don't have a graph or not at least i've so carnal to feel that way on more than one occasion so when i'm in connection with that passage and with the tools and the helps and crying to god for the illuminating ministry of the spirit i'm in the orbit of my most exhausting arduous mental labors now yes there are times along the path in the midst of the most arduous labors you're surprised with a refreshing insight that gets you shouting happy and you marvel you're being paid to do this i know that but there are many times when you say lord there must be an easier way to make a living than doing this if you're really serious with the word of god now my point is that i have found personally and in my interaction with my fellow ministers that one can enter a period of burnout by confining one's reading to those disciplines connected with sermon preparation

Remedy 1: Establish Periods for General Reading

11:23 the mind needs to row into broader fields to seek out paths of serious reflection other than those marked out by specific sermon preparation so what is the remedy then to this kind of mental burnout burnout which comes when one's reading and deepest thinking is done only in connection with specific sermon preparation well let me suggest a fourfold remedy number one establish periods in your weekly schedule for general reading establish periods in your weekly schedule for general reading now you see i'm assuming you live by schedule that you do not fly your ministerial plane by the seat of your pants that is with no flight plan with no compass with no chart bulk that you are a man who lives within the framework of a reasonably framed and reasonably flexible schedule and one of the great problems is being overly ambitious i'm not talking about scheduling in eight ten twelve fourteen hours

12:49 For general reading, yes, I know Edwards studied from such to such, but your name ain't Edwards. See, that's where you've got to come back. Be careful when you read biography.

13:00 And I hope, I hope you will not have someone write of you as has had to be written of Edwards had he been more amongst his people. He perhaps would have had more of their affections and confidence in a season of crisis and not been so cruelly treated by them. But establish, if only, one or two hours to start with, start modestly, but block out in your calendar and guard as jealously as you would a commitment for a counseling session with a distressed sheep, that on Tuesday afternoon from 4 to 5.30, I am going to do some general reading that has no patent, present, known connection with any preparation of any sermon that I see on the horizon of my ministry. That is a ministerial responsibility. Block out that and guard it jealously. Don't allow any whim to take you away from it.

13:58 Hopefully you can establish more than that. But just to give an example. Establish periods in the weekly schedule for general reading. For with most of us who are active working pastors, our growth and health, mentally, is by gradual, modest, acquisitions over the long haul.

14:23 Not by large acquisitions in shorter periods. It is the gradual, modest acquisitions over the long haul that enable us to keep our mental freshness. Exercising the mind in other areas other than those with sermon preparation are like a good walk in the fresh air in the midst of sermon preparation. How many times have I, after spending a whole morning wrestling with a passage and feeling I've hit the wall as far as the breakthrough into seeing how to organize it and how to handle it sermonically, it's while I've been out running and the heartbeat increases and more oxygen is being pumped into the capillaries and into the brain that suddenly, the whole thing falls into place. And I'm tempted to cut my run short to get home and write it all down. Well, the same thing in principle is what happens in these periods of general reading, not directly connected with sermon preparation. You're not even thinking about sermon preparation but the mind in being utterly relaxed, sometimes in that very posture, lo and behold, something will flash into the mind

Remedy 2: Broad and Varied General Reading

15:51 and that creative element comes. Secondly, establish a pattern of general reading which is broad and varied if not deep and concentrated. Establish a pattern of general reading which is broad and varied if not deep and concentrated. Read everything from systematic theology to Reader's Digest so that your mind is not only grasped and grappling with the great pivots of God's truth and continually receiving fresh light and understanding, but also you've learned a few humorous incidents that'll make you laugh. Sometimes a laugh in the middle of the day is the best tonic for a weary mind. That's why I'm so glad my study overlooks my backyard where we have everything from big fat groundhogs to rabbits to all kinds of birds. I find at times just concentrating on the wildlife, in my backyard, enables my mind to gain resilience.

17:05 Well, in the same way, it may be in reading an account in a book of church history or a biography that there will be an incident that will greatly refresh your spirit or call you to fresh commitment to the Lord or drive you to your knees or give you fresh confirmation. I remember, you remember my sharing the incident in reading the biography of Jackson by Dabney. I saw the word favorite dogma and tremendous impact upon one's whole mental alertness and alacrity. Read everything from Professor Murray to Pilgrim's Progress.

Remedy 3: Secure Lengthy Periods of Intense General Reading

17:46 Not in one day, not in one week, but establish a reading program that over the course of six months is taking you over the full range of systematic theology to biography, to history, to pastoral concerns, to polemics, to current issues, et cetera. I deal with these things in greater detail in the pastoral theology lectures. They're available again for any of you who desire to get them. Thirdly, as part of this remedy, attempt to secure several lengthy periods of intense and extensive general reading with no conscious reference to sermon preparation. Attempt to secure several lengthy periods and I'm thinking now on a yearly basis of intense and extensive general reading with no conscious reference to sermon preparation. I would not say that the best time to do this is on your vacation because if you turn your vacation into a study break, you're going to have some frowns from your wife and your children, and rightly so, and you will not be receiving the general emotional, mental,

19:13 and psychological refreshment which ought to be given by a vacation. But may I suggest a very practical way that I believe is workable among many of you men. You have deep ties among yourselves in your various geographical areas. May I suggest that you seek to sit your fellow elders or whatever framework exists for making these decisions, sit them down and work through part of this material in your own way and seek to convince them that if they want the best preacher possible, giving them the fruits of his most active mind without mental burnout, it would be beneficial to have at least a two-week back-to-back period when you're going to have a pulpit exchange with a known and trusted fellow minister. And then during those two weeks, all of the time you would normally take for sermon preparation, you take for concentrated, in-depth reading in a specific area. And then on Saturday afternoon or Saturday evening, take some sermons you've preached to your own people, pray them in afresh, go back over the text, make it your own afresh, pray for the Spirit's blessing upon it. And you have a two-week period when the number of hours normally spent

20:42 in regular sermon preparation can be spent by this kind of intense, extensive, general reading in a given area that can, under the blessing of God, bring a deposit of mental alertness, a deposit of general knowledge or specific knowledge in a given area that can be a lifetime companion. For example, suppose you made it your goal that in that two-week period you were going to go through Baxter's recently reprinted directory, pick out all of the areas where you have pastoral concerns and for which you feel terribly incompetent and you're going to immerse yourself in Baxter's directory for two weeks. I spoke with one of the young men who said it still takes him 30 to 40 hours a week to prepare two sermons for the Lord's Day. All right, he's got 80 hours or 60 hours. He could read the whole of Baxter's directory.

21:49 It may mean taking a volume of Owen or a select portion of some of the volumes of Owen and you say, I've just never been able to get into that. Well, that's going to be my goal and I'm going to give myself to that kind of in-depth long-term contact with a great mind and a great soul. And what will happen is that you will not only, if approaching this with true spiritual mindedness, profit intellectually in terms of the knowledge gained, but no one can come into close contact with a great soul and a great mind with any degree of spiritual sense and sensitivity and not absorb some of that impress of the greatness upon his own mind and his own spirit. So it's not only the things we learn specifically from the content of that book, but it is the impress of that man's mind and soul upon our own minds and upon our own souls that will have effects that we cannot measure. Our people may come to us and say, you know, pastor, ever since that pulpit exchange, there's been a freshness in your preaching. There's been an element of imagery and precision of statement that was never there before.

23:13 Are you consciously doing something different? And you say, no. But what happened? You lived for two weeks with a man who had a unique ability to state things with precision.

23:24 And without knowing it, your mind absorbed some of those skills. And now they're finding expression in your preaching to the enrichment of your people and to the increased usefulness of your own labors. It may be that you've never worked through the institutes. And you say, all right, in this two-week period, I'm going to start book one, page one, section one, and I'm going to go clean through the institutes so that for the rest of my life, I will have a feel for the specific areas in the institutes that have relevance to this, to that, or the other.

24:03 And now what you've done is you've made the institutes a right-hand companion for both your sermon preparation and your pastoral labors. And you'll say, oh, I remember Calvin's section on Christian liberty. Marvelous. I remember that statement that I never scruple about offending Pharisees.

24:20 That's a good section. And then you go back to it. What's happened is you have brought alongside someone who sat on your shelf smiling at you, but mute. Never spoke to you in sermon preparation.

24:32 Never spoke to you in pastoral casuistry. Now he sits there ready to talk to you for the rest of your life. Why? Because you gave two weeks to letting him talk in your ear for a number of hours.

24:49 Now you see, it's that, if you made but one such acquisition a year, what would happen over the period of 20 years? Brethren, we must think in terms of gradual, steady acquisition. Steady acquisition over the long haul. And I don't think this arrangement is unreasonable.

25:09 I never thought of it until preparing for this. And I got thinking of the kind of relationship you fellows have. And I guess it was precipitated by the fact that my own son-in-law wasn't here Sunday night. He was preaching with one of the other graduates.

25:21 Why? Because when that graduate was on vacation, he did a naughty thing. He preached for my son-in-law. And so turnabout was fair play.

Remedy 4: Secure a Weekly Mental Sabbath

25:29 But thinking of that kind of intimate relationship, many of you men sustained to one another, it would be very natural to have a two-week back-to-back pulpit exchange for the express purpose that you will take those hours and give them to in-depth, concentrated reading. And then my fourth suggestion as a remedy is this. Attempt to secure a weekly mental Sabbath for the refreshment of your intellectual faculties. Attempt to secure a weekly mental Sabbath for the refreshment of your intellectual faculties.

26:14 Why do some of you men experience recurring intellectual burnout? It's because you have no intellectual and mental Sabbath. Your mind is being driven to its most intense activities with the approach of the Lord's day. And then on the Lord's day, in the delivery of that which you've prepared in God's presence.

26:39 And then you don't give your mental apparatus a Sabbath. But you drive it in earnest on Monday morning. And then you whip it all the way. It's a little red.

26:58 And you're a cruel master to your mind. And the result is, you then are guilty when you sit down and thanks to Jesus for it. Finally the old mule just rolls over on its side and looks up at you and says, shoot me if you want to, but I ain't going nowhere. What's happened?

27:26 You have been eating your demands upon your intellectual and mental faculties. And it's again interesting how all the old masters address this. The men who understood preaching. Listen to one by the name of Murphy, a Presbyterian minister of another generation and century in Philadelphia.

27:50 I quote him, page 104. We have said that this daily routine we propose is only for five days in the week. He's been giving a broad outline of how to have a schedule within which we perform our ministerial functions. On the Sabbath, and I read this with shame, the minister should have nothing to do with any other mental efforts than those of his public exercises.

28:20 All preparation should be fully made before the Lord's day arrives. On every account the slovenly habit of finishing sermons on the sacred day should be most strenuously avoided. We would also earnestly recommend that Monday be observed as a day of mental and bodily rest. The minister must have his resting day as well as other men, or he'll suffer the consequences.

28:54 His physical constitution demands it. If it is denied, in time he'll break down in health as hundreds are doing. Nor must it be supposed that devoting one day of the week to absolute rest will be a loss of time in the end. No.

29:12 The work of other days will be more vigorous. The physical and mental tone will be kept up, and at the end of the year far more will be accomplished. One day of wakeful energetic work is worth three or four spent in half-dreaming and forcing oneself to unattractive tasks. It seems to me he's visited you, hasn't he?

29:44 And he's right. And all of the old writers on preaching who understood preaching not as a mere mental and physical exercise of the tongue, but in its demands upon the whole redeemed humanity of the preacher who understood that preaching engaged the whole man both in preparation and delivery, almost without exception, and I'm talking about dozens that I've read over the course of the years in having to prepare for the lectures in pastoral theology, almost without exception, they all give this advice. And if in the multitude of counselors there is safety, and this advice does not come from the neophyte with his PhD who's done nothing but sit in the classroom for the past thirteen years and has never preached for one week out of the matrix of pastoral labors. It's written by men who made their mark as preachers, who made their mark as working pastors, and at the end of their days they look back and they say to their younger brethren, younger brethren, this is the course of sustained usefulness. And I say to you, my brothers, the majority of you, my younger brethren in the Lord, some of you, my peers in age,

Warning Seven: Hiding Real Humanity Behind Ministerial Office

31:14 and some of you, my fathers in age and experience, your sanctified mind is the grand workshop for your sermonizing. And if it becomes dull through burnout, if it becomes void of fresh raw materials through limited acquisitions or worn out through no rest or refreshment, your people will suffer, you will feel ashamed, you will feel guilt, and you're in the pathway not only to burnout but to backsliding. So my counsel to you is avoid the burnout that limits your reading to that reading done in conjunction with specific sermon preparation. Now in the time that remains I want to take up exhortation number seven. Beware of allowing your official position and functions in the ministry to become a wall behind which to hide your real humanity, to become a wall behind which you hide your real humanity or a cocoon

32:41 within which you lock up your humanity. Beware of allowing your official position and functions of the ministry to become a wall behind which to hide your real humanity or a cocoon within which to lock up your humanity. Now let me explain the idea. The scripture tells us that with regard to the work of the ministry even apostles acknowledge that they have this treasure, this deposit of gospel stewardship.

33:17 We have this treasure in earthen vessels, in clay pots and not a very flattering imagery to be called a clay pot but that's precisely what we are. We have the treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God not. Now if then we carry the treasure in an earthen vessel, what is that earthen vessel? Well, it is frail humanity.

33:56 It is imperfectly sanctified humanity. It is non-glorified humanity both with respect to the spirit and to the body. And one of our problems is that when we begin to take seriously the awesomely high standard that is set for an overseer both with regard to his character and his work, the devil can use our very sensitivity to that standard imperceptibly to make us create a wall behind which we hide that frail humanity or a cocoon within which we shut it up. We take seriously the standard of 1 Timothy 3, blameless. Titus 2.8 In all things showing thyself a pattern of good works.

34:58 1 Timothy 4.12 Be thou an example of the believer in word, in conversation, in love, in faith and purity. That's the standard of character. Then the standard of work.

35:12 Who among us does not tremble when we give ourselves time to meditate on the latter part of Hebrews 13.17? For they watch for your souls as those that shall give an account. They watch as those conscious of a unique accountability to the God who has placed them in the awesome position of rulers in his church.

35:40 Now I say the devil will take our very concern to regard those dimensions of awesome responsibility and standard to get us to think that if we allow expressions of felt weakness, fears, discouragement, struggles and sins, that will erode our people's confidence in us. It will lower a biblical standard of the ministry. And so what we do is we make of the ministry a wall behind which we hide that reality of which we are very perfectly sanctified humanity or worse yet we make of the ministry a cocoon within which we shut up that humanity not allowing it its proper biblical avenues of expression and what does that lead to? A built up current of that unnatural damning up and closing of our humanity. And then there is ministerial burnout and breakdown and other forms of aberration.

37:06 We desire to be models of the grace and power of the gospel of self-control and we think therefore there cannot be any innocent expressions of the human emotions of grief, of joy, of disappointment certainly not publicly yes to my wife and kids. We'll put the wall this side or the other side of the front door of our home but then others go even further and they make a cocoon and they don't even express these things to their most intimate friends and companions. Well what happens? Well because anything which is essentially an attack upon our humanity is not of God. Anything which is an attack upon our humanity is not of God. And so there will be burnout when the current builds up and finally the wires break or there will be unnaturalness there will be outlets contrary to the divinely established outlets which will eventually in many cases create ethical aberrations. Put it in terms of a graphic analogy if wearing the dog collar of your office makes you fundamentally a different human being

Remedy 1: Get Your Theology of Grace in Line with Scripture

38:33 than you are before and after putting your collar on and off you have somehow allowed your ministerial office and function to be a wall behind which you're hiding your humanity or a cocoon within which you're shutting it up. The presence or absence of your collar should not make you a fundamentally different man. Now what then is the remedy to this? Well number one is get your theology of the purposes and dynamics of grace in line with the word of God.

39:10 Get your theology of the purposes and dynamics of redemptive grace in line with the word of God. Redemptive grace has a controversy only with sin not with humanity. Thou shalt call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins. This is why the apex of redemptive grace is the resurrection of the body not merely the perfection of the spirit or the soul at death.

39:43 The apex of redemptive grace is resurrection day. We the sons of God with our habitation from heaven we the sons of God wait for the full manifestation of our sonship which is what? Resurrection body. Glorification.

40:09 And taking our theology of the purposes and dynamics of grace from the word of God and from such clear principles as these we will see that whatever is essentially human about us grace liberates it increasingly from the effects of sin and then enhances it with the graces of the spirit but it does not destroy it. Grace with what is sinful. And once we get a theology of who and what we are then we will realize Paul was not overstepping his bounds when in 1st Timothy 4 he said those people that come with a theology saying that what is human is essentially evil forbidding to marriages of the sexual union and the heightened and growing of the told intimacy of marriage with advancement in grace they are too car human and earthly and salivating over a juicy steak

41:32 and smiling delightful to be holy so they command to what? Abstain from meats and to marry he says it's demons that concoct that view doctors of demons the demons that control philosophical thought that make matter and human pleasure essentially evil and that's why Paul says grace with what is human only with what is sinful and if we understand that then you see we are liberated in the work of the ministry we don't need to be under this unnatural strain I have my I cannot be a natural man I cannot speak like a natural man I must have a ministerial tone I cannot pray in my normal voice I must have a holy voice I must laugh from my belly and from my toes when I watch monkeys play with one another a cleric laughing at monkeys I tell you I believe God laughed at them in Eden I believe God smiles at them when they cavort in jungles

Remedy 2: Get Examples of Sanctified Humanity from Scripture

43:02 where nobody else can see them but you see if you have this theology that is defective then you will impose and the ministry becomes a wall behind which you hide your true humanity or a cocoon within which you lock it up and the only answer is to get your theology of the purposes and dynamics of redemptive grace in line with the word of God and reject demonic dictums that would drive either to physical asceticism or to emotional and psychological asceticism but then secondly get your examples of sanctified ministerial humanity from the word of God especially the Lord Jesus and the Apostle Paul get your examples of sanctified ministerial humanity from the word of God especially from the Lord Jesus and the great Apostle 1 John 2.6 quickly he that saith he abideth in him ought himself so to walk even as he walks 2 Corinthians 3.18 we all with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord

44:28 are transformed into that image from one stage of glory to another even by the Lord the Spirit and here I heartily recommend brethren that you periodically read Warfield's masterful treatise on the emotional life of our Lord found in the single volume the person and work of Christ marvelous treatise and in our Lord the only perfect ministerial model we see him this sinless humanity follow closely now sinless humanity in ministerial position and function with no wall to hide all the dimensions of that humanity and no cocoon within which it is locked up when he comes to the temple and sees what men have done to a house of prayer he is angry with righteous and holy anger he does not allow it to be pent up saying no holy teacher can be angry put on a stoical face and go in and occasionally nudge a table tweak an ox on his flanks you read in John in the initial cleansing of the temple on the front end of his ministry

45:57 and in the synoptics the second cleansing on the tail end of his ministry and the man who is so full of fury the fury extended to his fingertips when with the scourge it says he drove them out and I remember when preaching through Mark and studying those vigorous verbs oh changers tables they weren't made of light plastic friend rough hewn wood he gets his hands beneath them throws them and the money goes clanking down on the stone floor of the temple he had the appearance of a man on a mission and it was evident in every single cell of his being did he sin? Jesus being grieved for their hardness of heart Mark says looked wrongly looked round about upon them with anger the anger flashed from his eyes when there was disappointment that as an ordinary Palestinian he was not given the ordinary social graces of the washing of his feet and the anointing he knew it was disappointed and even expressed it

47:23 Luke 7 36 is that sinful? when a man feels slighted does it mean he's guilty of sinful self pity to say I have been slighted and I'm grieved if so our Lord sinned because he said to Simon when I came in you didn't give me those graces I took notice of it and I'm now telling you about it then he used it as the occasion to teach a vital lesson did our Lord show spiritual exhilaration? yes Luke tells us that he exalted or rejoiced in the spirit and said Father I thank thee as he contemplated God's discriminating grace and felt fresh impulses of holy joy upon his countenance and then it gave birth to those words of praise when his soul was grieved at the level of the loss of a human friend thereby the grace of God has saved that love all who have been driven by it will be saved not of their sins but of peace God so loved his so beautiful Body that he came

48:50 to the cross he took notice if his cross of peace was the preventing of the pharmaceutical from creating and in the myriads of divine holy frustration oh unbelieving faithless generation how long shall i bear with you is it sinful to express disappointment and frustration when you've had spiritual hopes and they are dashed not fulfilled if it is notion if my disciples see me expressing holy frustration they will reason back to their theology that god's decrees and purposes and somehow be frustrated i'm amazed how some people bleed so many portions of the gospels of their obvious meaning because they can never never get out of their heads that god is nowhere

50:04 near as fastidious as they are about leaving his truth vulnerable to those who might twist it to some unholy end so when jesus says i would have gathered you i doesn't mean what it says yes it does mean what it says in his holy humanity he would have gathered to all of that city to himself but he says he would not same one who kneels and says i finished the work you gave me to do all that you gave to me i've given eternal life to them don't allow your cannon the so-called human logic to believe the word of god of its obvious meaning be prepared to live not with the irrational what the contradictory but the super rational because we're in realms that exceed the poultry powers of human mind fully to comprehend but get your examples of sanctified ministerial humanity from the word of god particular jesus jesus anger disappointment joy brokenness of heart holy frustration acknowledgment of the need of compassion of companionship

51:30 watch with me one hour could you not watch with me one hour go to the life of paul the great apostle he's not ashamed to say i live with a constant agitation of two contrary principles at work within my breast thank god for romans 7 14 to the end he lays it out the quint generations you look upon me and think i've got my act together in every you don't know the half of the story the good that i would i do not the evil that i would i do shit man that i am he expresses loneliness god who comforts those who are cast down comforted us by the coming of titus he says without were fightings within were fears i love that text in psalm 56 the man who had gone out to battle and slain his tens of thousands says what time my knees are knocking i will trust in thee what time i david if you let people know that you're afraid why your enemy is not with you what time i am afraid i will put my trust in thee oh my brethren the remedy for all of this false

Conclusion: The Dangers of Hiding Humanity and the Freedom of the Gospel

52:59 wall making and cocoon making is not only to get our theology of the purposes and the dynamics of grace from the word of god grace with sin not humanity is to get our examples of sanctified ministerial humanity from the word of god particularly the lord jesus christ and i close with this statement for our time is gone while fully acknowledging that the legitimate expressions of our real humanity will cut the channels dictated by our native temperament will be disciplined by legitimate cultural mores and never expressed in an unseemly way for love does not behave itself unseemly yet yet yet friend from the td realism and locked up in a cocoon of ministerial office and function and if you live that way you betray a fundamental truth of the gospel whom the sun sets free is free indeed free not only from the dominion of sin but free to become a full human being

54:28 you place torturous strains on yourself and that may be why some of you are on a state in a state of burnout and dullness you put insuperable barriers between yourself and the ordinary mortals to whom you minister because by the wall as a fellow who shouts where they shout and if you want to have a ministry that has no real rapport a felt affinity of imperfectly sanctified humanity the affinity of a fellow struggler than just high real humanity behind your clerical wall and shut it up in your clerical cocoon and though people may think you are marveled from a distance they'll never come and pour their heart out and tell you their troubles because you are something other than they brethren may god lay these things upon our hearts and give us discernment lest we experience ministerial backsliding and in this area particularly burnout because we simply refuse to be what we are

55:55 HUMAN BEINGS imperfectly sanctified on our way to being glorified let's pray our father we are so thankful that we need not be ashamed of our humanity we are ashamed of our sins we would grieve and more to fresh over what we are in virtue of our original union with Adam, in virtue of what we were from the moment of our conception, in virtue of what we yet are because of our indwelling sin, we would not treat lightly, O God, these things that are so offensive to you. But, O help us, help us to appreciate all that you've made us as men. And as your grace is restoring the original image and will one day bring us into perfect conformity to your beloved Son, teach us how to be exemplary ministers of the gospel without any unnatural walls or cocoons that would squelch sanctified humanity in all of its legitimate expressions. Help us in these matters we've considered,

57:18 in this hour, that many of your servants will be wonderfully preserved from the backsliding and the burnout that have slain their thousands. Hear our prayer. Be with us as we now go to the lunchroom and have the opportunity of being refreshed with food and drink and fellowship one with another and continue to pour out of your grace upon us in these remaining hours. We ask.

57:48 In Jesus' name. Amen.