Comfort, Comfort Ye My People
Doctrinal Preaching and the Peace Which Comes From Gospel Truth
Howdy,
Pray y’all have had a blessed week filled with joy, thanksgiving, and grace. It is a grand time of the year, not only as we rest in the everlasting goodness of our Lord, but look forward to the good fortune that awaits us in His providence in the year to come. At Bethany we will be starting a new morning sermon series on January 5th. Our 2025 is going to focus on the great truths of the faith and we are rightly going to start with the Great Shema of Deuteronomy 6:3-6. Being able to understand who God is and who He is cannot be forgotten if we are going to know how to live in a world gone mad. There is great comfort available for the Christian in remembering these ideas.
In our time this week in the Westminster Directory for Public Worship as we close our thinking on the doctrine of preaching and its place in our life the DPW kind of repeats itself in keeping the minister in mind to what his real duty is in the pulpit. Meditating on what is below is a good way for all of us to give weight to what happens on the Lord’s Day, and benefit from it. Let’s read:
In applying comfort, whether general against all temptations, or particular against some special troubles or terrors, he is to carefully answer such objections as a troubled heart and afflicted spirit may suggest to the contrary. It is also sometimes requisite to give some notes of trial, (which is very profitable, especially when performed by able and experienced ministers, with circumspection and prudence, and the signs clearly grounded on the holy scripture,) whereby the hearers may be able to examine themselves whether they have attained those graces, and performed those duties, to which he exhorteth, or be guilty of the sin reprehended, and in danger of the judgments threatened, or are such to whom the consolations propounded do belong; that accordingly they may be quickened and excited to duty, humbled for their wants and sins, affected with their danger, and strengthened with comfort, as their condition, upon examination, shall require.
And, as he needeth not always to prosecute every doctrine which lies in his text, so is he wisely to make choice of such uses, as, by his residence and conversing with his flock, he findeth most needful and seasonable; and, amongst these, such as may most draw their souls to Christ, the fountain of light, holiness, and comfort.
This method is not prescribed as necessary for every man, or upon every text; but only recommended, as being found by experience to be very much blessed of God, and very helpful for the people’s understandings and memories.
Sometimes we can get it in our head that people back in the day, especially way back in the day, didn’t really care about people’s feelings. That they were cold, deep inside their books, and brought the word of God to bear on their sheep like the orphan master in Oliver!. Yet, if you look carefully at this whole chapter, but especially the opening paragraph all you see are men concerned about the comfort of other men’s souls, their hearts, and their relationship with Jesus Christ, who is altogether lovely. Take note of the language of care, special, trouble, and prudence. Those are not the words of people who are only worried about a knowledge by which they can merely gauge orthodoxy. Reformed preaching can, however, be like that. Where it is heady, overwhelming in its points, subpoints, and sub, subpoints. The DPW is wanting to encourage preachers to be mindful of the power they have in their preaching to mold hearts and give peace to the souls of their hearers. The cool thing about it is that you don’t have to give up the harder edges of truth in order to do that. A mistake that is sometimes made by evangelicals is they get wishy-washy about Biblical testimonies because, like some of the letters of Paul, they are hard to understand. But even when Peter says that he only is concerned that some may twist what the apostle has to say, not that we are to ourselves stay in the shallow waters of milk. Hard sayings can sometimes be the very soft words we need to hear in the moment.
There is also a keen way that the directory nurtures the preaching of the gospel in a local church in that it reminds the pastor to be pastoring. Visitation and finding out what’s going on in the lives of God’s covenant people is the only way he can know what, when, and the reason for certain passages to be preached at certain times. And even when a text is chosen for another purpose being wise to the situation can allow any text of the Bible to be the right thing at the right time. This also is accomplished because ultimately at the end of the day the application of the preached word is not even really up to the minister himself. We firmly believe in the power and work of the Holy Spirit in the relevance of a particular portion of the Scriptures in a way I myself for instance never intended. I cannot tell you the number of times a person has come up to me after worship, or even has texted me or emailed me later in the week and testified how something I said in a sermon moved their heart, or convicted them of something that was not in my purview as I sat and wrote the tenor and tone of the preaching. We cannot underestimate what God does and this is ever more the reason it is good for all men tasked with proclaiming His word to trust in Him and in His purpose to take care of His people, even through the weakness of men.
In closing, the DPW today, and in the last several weeks, has been very helpful to me to keep my soul in line with what the Lord would have me to do and to be as one tasked with this duty each and every Sunday. One thing I do value in this work is your prayers. Prayers that I would be faithful to the Word, that I would not stray to the right or to the left in preparation and delivery, and that I myself might be humbled and convicted by the word of truth. Oftentimes the person who needs to hear what I am saying the most, is standing right behind the pulpit.
Another thought for the morning:
https://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/luther-on-preaching-comfort/
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church