Book Review: R.C. Sproul. The Holiness of God.

The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul is a classic in Reformed devotional literature. I would heartily recommend this work to all thoughtful Christians who are pursuing the glory of God.

The purpose of this work is to reignite a passion for worship and service of God fueled by a love for His full majesty and divine worth. In this book, Sproul masterfully shakes the reader out of his complacency by reminding him of God's utter power, absolute Lordship, and incomparable purity.

In each chapter, Sproul smashes the brittle world of generic evangelicalism with the hammer of biblical authority. When much of the evangelical world is trying desperately to cast God as either an unimposing grandfatherly figure, a divine butler waiting to assist needy persons, or a motivational guru intent on building our self esteem, Sproul has instead reminded us that such flippancy is entirely inappropriate to Biblical worship.

In chapter after chapter, Sproul sets out to prove that "the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" (Deuteronomy 4:24, cf. Hebrews 12:29) and is still the same God who struck down Uzzah for touching the ark (2 Samuel 6:7), and Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire (Leviticus 10).

Of course, Sproul does not want to create unmitigated fear in the believer's heart, but rather to reveal the ultimate reason why Christ had to die on the cross as an atoning propitiation for our sins: God's holiness demanded the cross since sin is "cosmic treason" against His authority, Lordship, and purity.

Sproul's chapter on Martin Luther's insanity is particularly masterful. Here, he shows how "insane" Luther really was: he saw the holiness of God and his own frailty in comparison more clearly than most. Sproul intends to show that what appears to be mental brokenness on the part of the great German Reformer was actually his ability to retain a far more accurate spiritual perception of the transcendence of God.

Thankfully, Luther was driven to the cross of grace. So too should we be driven to the foot of the cross by the impending wonder of God's holiness.


Matthew Everhard is the Senior Pastor of Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brooksville, Florida. Please consider following on Twitter at @matt_everhard.

Book Review: The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne. By Andrew A. Bonar.

Every once in a while, I finish a book that, the very act of finishing the last page, makes me feel that I have just lost a dear friend. This is especially true for me in biographies wherein the protagonist dies an early and untimely death.

Such was the case of the biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813-1843) by his contemporary Andrew A. Bonar. At the end of the book, at M'Cheyne's early death at age 30, I found my own soul crying out to God in grief for a lost friend.

M'Cheyne a young Presbyterian pastor in the town of Dundee, Scotland seems to have been one of those rare souls who continually lived in the conscious, joyful presence of God. His own kindred spirit, Andrew Bonar, does an admirable job of capturing the essence of a young pastor who seemed to have had two passions above all things: a zeal for personal holiness and devotion, and an unquenchable desire to save souls.

Clearly the author (Bonar) wrote this work as a eulogy for the life of a close friend. In that sense, it is far from objective. Picking up this work for the first time, the reader must realize that these pages were written to memorialize a man dearly loved by the author. It was not meant to be an evenhanded critique of M'Cheyne's successes and failures as a minister. The author, therefore, is not concerned to set out in public view the many shortcomings that M'Cheyne saw resident within his own soul.

Having said that, the biography itself is a stirring first-hand recollection of one of nineteenth century Scotland's most fire-baptized preachers. As M'Cheyne's closest mortal friend, Bonar was privileged to have access to many of his personal affects. Within this book, the reader finds an equal mixture of quotations from M'Cheyne's extant letters, poetry, journal entries, sermon manuscripts, and no short supply of his more lively verbal quotations.

Bonar stirringly traces the life of his protagonist from his birth, to his immense grief at his brother's death as a young man, to his ordination in the church of Scotland, to his charge in the Dundee church, to his evangelistic mission to Israel to preach the gospel to the Jews, to his participation in the revival fires of Scotland, and finally to the stirring account of his death.

The reader is constantly refreshed in his own walk with the Lord as we hear M'Cheyne preach passionately to his own people both from the pulpit and by house-to-house interviews. One gripping event was moving to this reviewer (himself a pastor): when M'Cheyne and Bonar returned from their life's great mission-adventure to Israel, M'Cheyne found that the interim pastor had been used of God to spark a revival in the church he himself loved so dearly. Rather than fight a deadly jealousy within his own soul that God had so used another man, M'Cheyne praised God knowing that the salvation of his people's souls is infinitely more valuable than his own reputation as a preacher. 

Throughout, M'Cheyne is imminently quotable, and many of his gems are so striking to the reader so that he is forced to put the book down and engage in prayer himself:

• "I fear the love of applause...May God keep me from preaching myself instead of Christ crucified." 
• "Rose early to seek God and found Him whom my soul loveth. Who would not rise early to meet such great company!...They that sow in tears shall reap in joy."
• "Never see the face of man till you have seen His face who is our life, our all." 
• "It has always been my aim, and it is my prayer, to have no plans with regard to myself, well assured that I am, that the place where the Savior sees fit to place me must ever be the best place for me." 
• "I see a man cannot be a faithful minister until he preaches Christ for Christ's sake--until he gives up striving to attract people to himself, and seeks only to attract them to Christ. Lord give me this!"

M'Cheyne was a man whose doctrine was solidly rooted in the Confession of his Presbyterian tradition. He openly confesses his love for the Westminster Confession of Faith and its doctrine while at the same time cherishing the very presence of Christ alone in the "secret" places of his study. As a divine, M'Cheyne preached with full vigor both the electing grace of predestination, and the responsibility of man to repent and believe the Gospel. His doctrine of election, therefore, did not quench his zeal for evangelism. (It never should, of course).

Impact
Two things will be of lasting worth to me having read this biography.

First of all, in the waning pages of his biography, Bonar includes an unfinished manuscript of M'Cheyne's own pen called "Reformation." Here, the young pastor wrote out his own guidelines for seeking personal holiness, especially through the God-ordained means of confession of sin. These short pages are a masterpiece of self-reflection, mortification of the flesh, renunciation of the world, and the grace of repentance. He begins, "I am persuaded that I shall obtain the highest amount of personal happiness, I shall do most for God's glory and the good of man...by maintaining a conscience always washed in Christ's blood." Anyone who seriously pursues holiness would do well to put into practice the recommendations with which M'Cheyne charges himself.

 Secondly, among his poems, "Jehovah Tzidkenu" must surely be his greatest. Here, he writes of the obstinacy of the human heart, the free grace of God in Christ, and the treasure of salvation. He writes,

I once was a stranger to grace and to God,
I knew not my danger, and felt not my load;
Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree,
Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me.

I oft read with pleasure, to sooth or engage,
Isaiah´s wild measure and John´s simple page;
But e´en when they pictured the blood sprinkled tree
Jehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me.

Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll,
I wept when the waters went over His soul;
Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree
Jehovah Tsidkenu"”´twas nothing to me.

When free grace awoke me, by light from on high,
Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die;
No refuge, no safety in self could I see"”
Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be.

My terrors all vanished before the sweet name;
My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came
To drink at the fountain, life giving and free"”
Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me.

Jehovah Tsidkenu! my treasure and boast,
Jehovah Tsidkenu! I ne´er can be lost;
In thee I shall conquer by flood and by field,
My cable, my anchor, my breast-plate and shield!

Even treading the valley, the shadow of death,
This "watchword" shall rally my faltering breath;
For while from life´s fever my God sets me free,
Jehovah Tsidkenu, my death song shall be.

Matthew Everhard is the Senior Pastor of Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brooksville, Florida. Follow on Twitter @matt_everhard.

Christianity: "Everywhere Spoken Against"

When the Apostle Paul finally made it to the city of Rome in Acts 28:14, it probably wasn't what he had imagined. He came in the chains of a prisoner.

At Rome, Paul and Luke found a small enclave of Christians. But it was the Jews, to whom Paul always brought the Gospel first, who had an unusual report: "We have received no letters from Judea about you, and none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you. But we desire to hear from you what your views are, for with regard to this sect [i.e. Christianity] we know that everywhere it is spoken against" (Acts 28:21-22, emphasis added).

Why is this true? Why is Christianity "everywhere spoken against"? How is it possible that a message consisting of  (1) a loving God (2) who sent His son to die for our sins (3) and forgives us by grace, while (4) giving us His Holy Spirit to live lives of love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness--can be the subject of such sustained, organized, and vitriolic resistance?

At least three factors explain this ubiquitous resistance to the Gospel.

First we remember that the Gospel is an attack, a direct assault really, against the spiritual forces of evil. Every sinner that is freed from sin by the Gospel is a slave freed from the clutches of the enemy. As it happens, most masters don't let their slaves go easily. Satan kicks and screams against every one of his captives who are loosed.

Secondly, remember the very nature of the Gospel itself. The Gospel is only good news when the "bad news" is first heeded. The "bad news" of course is that we are totally depraved sinners, hopeless to save ourselves outside of the grace of Christ (cf. Romans 3:10-18). As it turns out, many people don't like to be told that they are sinners! The Gospel itself begins with the offense of declaring the truth about our own human nature.

Finally, our lives of committed obedience are also offensive. Sure, we cannot live perfect this side of Heaven, even in the redemptive grace of Christ. Our opponents are quick to remind us of our many failures. But the very fact that we even pursue holiness is a stick-poke in the eye to those who have no such motive as grace. Our desire to live as holy persons, pursuing the life of our Master, will always be an offense to those still captive to sin.

As long as these three factors are still true--and they will be until Christ returns--we can expect that "everywhere Christianity will be spoken against."

Matthew Everhard is the Senior Pastor of Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Brooksville, Florida.