No Substitute

Well, I am attempting to finish week 2 of my class Preaching and Preachers. The reading has been tough to accomplish due to softball games I played this week. Our church team actually won the mini-tournament, but then again, there were only four teams.

Let me share with you a couple more quotes from John Stott's book Between Two Worlds.

He quotes Matthew Simpson on page 82:

His throne is the pulpit; he stands in Christ's stead; his message is the Word of God; around him are immortal souls; the Saviour, unseen, is beside him; the Holy Spirit broods over the congregation; angels gaze upon the scene, and heaven and hell await the issue. What associations, and what vast responsibilty!"

In an age where preaching seems less and less meaningful and farther apart from our worship, the church seems adrift in a culture that attacks Christians. Where are the shepherds of God that give the much needed food for their sheep? How often have Christians been caught as being "ashamed of the Gospel"?

Stott goes on to say on page 83:

Our worship is poor because our knowledge of God os poor, and our knowledge of God is poor because our preaching is poor. But when the Word of God is expounded in its fulness, and the congregation begin to glimpse the glory of the living God, they bow down in solemn awe and joyful wonder before His throne. It is preaching which accomplishes this, the proclamation of the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God. That is why preaching is unique and irreplaceable.

We live in day that may seem new because of new technology or politics or philosophy or ethics. The problems of man, however, are not new. As Martin Lloyd-Jones says in his book, the form may be new, but the substance is quite old [my paraphrase]. Man has always been a rebel sinner. Man has always since the fall been dead in trespasses and sin. It has always been his need to hear the Gospel and given life by the Spirit of God in every era.

May we as God's people be faithful and not give in to the temptations to alter the Gospel in order to meet what man thinks he needs, but instead with boldness and conviction stand firm in the faith "once for all delivered unto the Saints."