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Fathers and Brethren, shall we
begin our time together singing to His praise from Psalm 90 verses
1 through 7, which is printed out on the bulletin that has
been circulated, Psalm 90 verses 1 through 7. And let us stand as we sing these
words to God's praise. Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling
place. Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,
mm. Thou hast been our dwelling place
in generations all, Before thou ever hast brought forth the mountains
great or small. Wherever thou hast formed the
earth and all the world abroad, be thou from everlasting art
to everlasting God. Thou dost undo destruction, and
that is mortal turn. And unto them Thou say'st again,
Ye sons of men, return. because a thousand years appear
no more before thy sight than yesterday when it is past, or
than a watch by night. As with an overflowing flood,
Thou cariest them away. They, like a sea-bar, like the
grass That grows at morn, are they. At morn it flourishes and
grows, cut down at e'en the fade. For by thine anger we're consumed,
thy wrath makes us afraid. Please remain standing, brethren,
as we go to the throne of grace. Our Heavenly Father, we are most
unworthy that we should come into Thy glorious and exalted
presence all the more, O God, because we are sinners, alienated
by wicked works in our minds and rebels against all that is
good and holy. And yet, Lord, you are in Christ,
reconciling the world to yourself, not imputing our trespasses unto
us. Oh God, we have been drawn near,
and we are now no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens
with the saints and of the household of God. Lord, why, why should
we be the recipients of such boundless favor? And yet it is
because of the man of thy right hand, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lord, we come now, grateful that we may assemble and give our
attention to the things that are heavenly and eternal in character. Forgive us our many sins and
bless us abundantly. Lord in heaven, we ask now that
the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart may
be acceptable in thy sight. Oh Lord, our strength and our
Redeemer. Amen. You may be seated. We'll read from Holy Scripture
from Paul's letter to the Galatians chapter one. Galatians chapter one. He that has ears to hear, let
him hear what the Holy Spirit says unto the churches. Paul, an apostle, not of man,
neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who
raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which are with
me unto the churches of Galatia, Grace be to you and peace from
God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself
for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world
according to the will of God and our Father. To whom be glory
forever and ever. Amen. I marvel that you are so
soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ
unto another gospel, which is not another. But there be some
that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though
we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than
that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now
again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that
ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade
men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For
if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
but I certify or assure you, brethren, that the gospel which
was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it
of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of
Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my conversation
or conduct in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond
measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it. and profited
in the Jews' religion above many my equals and my own nation,
being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who
separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace
to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the
heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. Either
went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me,
but I went into Arabia and returned again unto Damascus. Then after
three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him
15 days. But other of the apostles saw
I none, save James the Lord's brother. Now, the things which
I write unto you, behold, before God I lie not. Afterwards I came
into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and was unknown by face
unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ. But they had
heard only that he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth
the faith which once he destroyed. And they glorified God in me.
Amen. A man does not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
God. Fathers and brothers, first of
all, before we get into the marrow of the message this evening,
You'll notice in the information that has been provided that this
message is actually from a brother, Reverend Douglas Gebby, who many
of you know personally. He has been here many times.
And he would have wished to be here himself, but his wife has
ALS, and she is in the very final stages of that. that terrible
disease, and consequently, in our closing prayer, we'll remember
him and his dear wife and family at the throne of grace. Consequently,
I am reading his paper in his behalf. So if you appreciate
it, by all means, let me know. But if not, please don't shoot
the messenger. Finally, having read through
this in preparation, I think it's fair to say that it is a
paper in more than one sense. Over these two evenings, perhaps
as you know, we are highlighting Professor John Murray of Westminster
Seminary, who was very instrumental in forming and influencing our
small denomination. We have various writings of his
that are outside, which you can pick up. We'd especially encourage
you to get this newer volume if you haven't already. More
recent sermons that he preached in our congregations back in
the 1950s, as well as some free materials as well. So make sure
to stop by if you haven't already. So this address, then, is going
to have some more of a historical and theological character to
it, with attention to Professor Murray's thought. But I trust
that you'll find it not only informative, but edifying, as
well as Christ-exalting. Row unto me, if I preach not
the gospel. In our text, the apostle is under
a constraint to preach the gospel. From our reading, it is clear
that the gospel of Christ and no other gospel which he is constrained
to preach. Professor Murray's relationship
with the congregations which would later make up the Presbyterian
Reformed Church was of one who was constrained to preach the
gospel, and it was the gospel of Christ which he desired to
make known. Murray came to the United States
as a divinity student of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland
to study at Princeton. At that time, there was a Free
Presbyterian, sometimes shorthand FP, congregation in southwestern
Ontario with the Reverend William Matheson as its minister. And
several FP families were associated with the Bloor Street Congregation
in Toronto. During his vacations, Murray
got to know these people. Murray's friendship with Matheson
was what led to his separation from the Free Presbyterian Church
of Scotland, but that is a story for another day. On February
the 19th, 1952, John Murray addressed the alumni of Westminster Theological
Seminary at the annual homecoming on the subject of some necessary
emphases in preaching. It is recorded for us in volume
one of his collected writings. At the outset of his message,
he disclaims any expertise in the subject of preaching, yet
we have ample evidence to disagree with him. We know the content
of his sermons from those in his collected writings and the
volume recently published by Westminster Seminary. We can
hear his voice and delivery from the recordings, high and with
a strong East Sutherland accent. We have an idea of his posture
from anecdote. He was inclined to move about
the pulpit as he preached and to bend his knees in rhythm with
his voice as he drove home a point. The man could preach. In that
address, Murray identifies four emphases. the ministry of judgment,
the free offer of the gospel, self-examination, and the high
demands of Christian calling. Although he speaks of these emphases
in the context of his hearers at Westminster that day in 1952,
they were not on the cutting edge of new academic breakthrough.
These were the staples of the preaching and Christian conversation
which he had known all his life. Hearing them in his own dialect,
in the language of Zion, is what led him to Chesley, Lahalsh,
and Toronto. For the sake of time, we shall
focus on his second emphasis, the free offer of the gospel.
For Murray, the free offer of the gospel can be muted by a
fear of giving sanction to Arminian language and methodology. It
can also be blunted by failing to understand the response which
the message demands. Unfortunately, some of Murray's
own work has added to that fear, whether it be the committee report
itself or the pamphlet which came from it. And some of the
response to that work has certainly muted the gospel offer. while
little attention is paid to Murray's latter article on the atonement
and the free offer of the gospel, found in volume one of his collected
writings, where he reworks many of the passages cited in the
report. Into this situation come the
words of our text, woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. The question has been asked where
the PRC stands on this issue. On the one hand, there is the
connection with Murray, and on the other there is Dr. William
Young, who was for years our most senior minister. Regarding
Young, he had a long relationship with Murray starting in the 1940s. Through Murray, he was introduced
to Matheson and Chesley LaHulche. and to Rondra Campbell, a ruling
elder in Bloor Street, Toronto. Campbell wrote Israel and the
New Covenant, recently reprinted by PNR. He is the maternal grandfather
of Sandy Finlayson of Westminster Theological Seminary. From this
group, Young entered into an environment where the four emphases
mentioned by Murray marked out the preached piety of the people.
These emphases are found in Young's preaching and writing. However,
the gospel which Young was constrained to preach was these emphases
and their interconnectedness. He presented God, sovereign in
his justice and grace. His was an expository ministry
with his applicatory work done in the manner of David Dixon
and Samuel Rutherford. And if one emphasis did stand
out, it was the need for self-examination. Indeed, Young often told the
story of one of the first times he preached at a communion season
in Toronto. He took up the theme of let a
man examine himself and so let him eat. Roddy Campbell took
him aside afterward and said that his message was good insofar
as it went, but that he should have gotten them to examine themselves
as to whether they were in the faith or not, to make their calling
and election sure. William Young was still heeding
that advice over 60 years later and encouraging younger preachers
to heed it too. A reviewer of Reformed Thought,
which is a compilation of Young's writings, made two rather tongue-in-cheek
comments. Having known Bill, as he called
him, for decades, he noted first that a number of the papers in
the collection had begun as family conference addresses. This caused
him to marvel at the intellectual prodigies the PRC had for children. Second, he pointed out that there
was not much room for spontaneity in the Young's theory and practice
of gospel preaching. That lack of spontaneity has
fed into the speculation regarding Young's views on the subject
of the free offer of the gospel. This is strange because he set
them out quite clearly in his minority report at the time.
in the OPC. He was committed to the scriptural
and confessional doctrine of the free offer of the gospel.
He had no problem with the use of anthropomorphic language.
He did have a problem with whether the term desire is employed after
the manner of man or whether it is to be understood literally
as implying an emotion in God. He had a question regarding whether
God desires the repentance and salvation of the reprobate sinner
qua reprobate, or whether God's desire refers to the connection
between the repentance and the salvation of sinners qua sinners. And it troubled him greatly that
God's desires might be viewed as standing unreconciled with
his decrees. He did not have a problem with
the doctrine itself, but with what might be said to be behind
the doctrine. In this, William Young was not
unlike free church theologian William Cunningham. In Cunningham's
day, the question was the relation of the atonement to the free
offer of the gospel. The first question which Cunningham
addresses is whether an unlimited atonement is necessary in order
to offer to men, without exception, pardon and acceptance, and to
invite them to come to Christ. He answers this by pointing out
that at no time does scripture, either by precept or example,
present the gospel in terms of a universal atonement, yet by
precept and example, we are commanded to preach the gospel to every
creature, unless, says Cunningham, we should venture to act upon
the principle of refusing to obey God's commands until we
understand all the reasons and grounds for them. Our first caveat,
woe unto me if I preach not the gospel, for if I preach not the
gospel, I disobey the clear commission of Christ. The second question which Cunningham
addresses is that of the conduct of God in having salvation offered
indiscriminately to all without having made provision for the
salvation of all, either actually or hypothetically. He says, quote,
the position of our opponents is in substance this, that it
was not possible for God, because not consistent with integrity
and uprightness, to address such offers and invitations to men
indiscriminately, unless an atonement, which is indispensable to salvation,
had been presented and accepted on behalf of all men of each
individual of the human race. This position bears very manifestly
the character of unwarranted presumption and assumes our capacity
of fully comprehending and estimating the eternal purposes of the divine
mind, the inmost grounds and reasons of the divine procedure.
It cannot be proved because there is really not any clear and certain
medium of probation or testing that God, by offering to men
indiscriminately, without distinction or exception through Christ,
pardon and acceptance, contradicts the doctrine which he has revealed
to us in his own word as to a limitation. not in the intrinsic sufficiency,
but in the intended destination of the atonement. And, unless
this can be clearly and conclusively proved, we are bound to believe
that they are consistent with each other, though we may not
be able to perceive and develop this consistency, and of course,
to reject the argument of our opponents as untenable. When
we carefully analyze all that is really implied in what God
says and does, or authorizes and requires us to say and do
in this matter, we can find much that is fitted to show positively
that God does not, in offering pardon to men indiscriminately,
act inconsistently or deceptively, though it is not true that the
atonement was universal. and it is easy to prove that
he does no injustice to anyone. Since all who believe what he
has revealed to them and who do what he has given them sufficient
motives or reasons for doing will certainly obtain salvation."
End quote. To illustrate this point, Roger
Nicole takes up the idea of a newspaper advertisement. Say an advert
appears in a newspaper stating that for a specified period,
a certain department store will sell the model of washing machine
described in both photograph and text for 70% off the manufacturer's
recommended retail price. First, if there are 300,000 copies
of the newspaper printed, how many washing machines must the
store have in its warehouse for this to be a sincere offer? Second,
is the offer insincere if some readers do not have the money
to buy the washing machine, even at the reduced price, or will
not be in town during the specified period? Surely, for the offer
to be sincere, all that is required is that anyone who comes to the
store during the specified period with the correct payment and
asks for that model of washing machine receives one in exchange
for the payment. Our second caveat. Whether it
be Arminian, Emeraldian, Calvinistic, or Hyper-Calvinistic, woe to
anyone who obscures Christ behind a display of their own supposed
orthodoxy. Free Church Alexander Stewart
of Cromartie enters a third caveat. Quote, beware of confounding
promises and invitations, two very distinct things, and addressed
to different classes. Invitations are to sinners, the
promises to saints only. He is, of course, referring to
the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith, where it
defines the covenant of grace in these terms. Quote, Man, by
his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant,
that is the covenant of works, the Lord was pleased to make
a second, commonly called the covenant of grace. wherein he
freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ,
requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising
to give unto all those that are ordained unto life his Holy Spirit,
to make them willing and able to believe." Alexander Henderson put it this
way in 1638, the promises of the gospel, the new covenant
are twofold. there are conditional promises.
Quote, if we believe and repent, we shall have salvation. Quote,
there are also absolute promises, and it is only that makes the
evangelical promises to be so far beyond the legal, that he
shall infuse these conditions of faith and repentance in us. End quote. Gospel offers or invitations
take the form of a conditional promise, which is a general call. Gospel promises are absolute,
unconditional promises which are kept in effectual calling.
So, we return to our text, woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. That is a simple, unconfounded
gospel. To sinners, we present the conditional
promise. To professing believers, we ask,
do you have those things absolutely promised to God's own? So we
return to Murray's four emphases. First, the preaching of judgment
with a clear statement of the glory of God. Second, the free
offer of the gospel. Third, self-examination, the
call to which is found in the epistles of Peter, Paul, and
John. Fourth, there are the high demands
of Christian vocation. Here, Murray takes up two points. The first is that we follow the
thou shalt nots of God, not those of men. He writes more on the
subject of liberty of conscience in his commentary on Romans and
in volume four of his collected writings. The second is that
there is more to the Christian life than thou shalt not. He
speaks of an expulsive power which replaces the negated behavior
with positive virtue. Crossway has recently put out
an edition of Thomas Chalmers' The Expulsive Power of a New
Affection, which expands upon that theme. Our fourth caveat, woe unto me
if I preach less than this life-transforming gospel. Finally, Murray speaks
of the faith to which this preaching is the required response. He
says, quote, what is the primary act of faith? It is not the acceptance
of certain propositions, although it cannot exist apart from the
belief of the propositions of the gospel. Faith is essentially
an entrustment to Christ as Lord and Savior. It is self-commitment to Him.
It is not the belief that we have been saved, not even the
belief that Christ died for us, but the commitment of ourselves
to Christ as unsaved, lost, helpless, and undone, in order that we
might be saved." End quote. For whosoever shall call upon
the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call
on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they
believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they
hear without a preacher? Woe unto me if I preach not the
gospel. Amen. Well, let us respond, fathers
and brethren, singing from Psalm 102, the second version, verses
11 to 15, on the back of your bulletins. My days are like a shade all
way. Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,
ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,
ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,
ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,
ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,
ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,
ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta,
ta, ta, ta, ta and I am withered away, much like unto the fading
grass. But thou, O Lord, shalt still
endure From change and all mutation free, And to all generations
sure, Shall thy remembrance ever be. Thou shalt arise and mercy yet,
Thou to Mount Zion shalt extend. Her time for favor which was
set, Behold, it's now come to an end. Thy saints take pleasure
in her stones, her very dust to them Let us close in prayer. Please
remain standing. Oh God, we wonder and are in
awe at the mystery of the Gospel, that Christ has been openly crucified,
as it were, before us, that He has been lifted up from the earth
and draws all men unto Him. Lord, we wonder that such a gracious
welcome to rebels should be offered, that whosoever believes should
not perish, but have everlasting life. We know, O God, that thou
art the potter, and we are the clay, and it is pleased thee,
God, to make of the same lump one a vessel unto glory, and
the other unto wrath and judgment. Even as the ancient word was
proclaimed, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. So Lord,
we bow down before the high mystery of the decree of election and
predestination, thanking Thee that Thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. But we
also rejoice that it has pleased you by the promiscuous preaching
of the gospel to bring in each and every one who have been predestined
to everlasting life. God, may that burden be upon
each and every one of us who have been solemnly called and
set apart into the holy office of the gospel, that we would
preach the gospel. that we would set it forth to
wretched sinners to command them and to reason and to plead with
them to come to Christ and to repent and to take Him as their
own and to give comfort unto those, Lord, who have by faith
laid hold of the promises Gracious one, please also remember our
dear brother, Douglas Gebby, and his dear wife, Karen, this
saint who is drawing near to everlasting glory. Please come
near her bedside, we pray. Be unto her a little sanctuary. Grant, O God, that much peace
may be given to Douglas and to his family. And that, Lord, that you would
manifest the beauty and the glory of Christ's cross and resurrection
in them and through them. And we pray, O God, that we all
would rejoice in the hope of everlasting life and minister
the same comfort to those who are heavy of heart and yet place
their faith in Christ. Remember us now, O God, and send
us with your blessing, and we pray that the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ would be lifted high. Heavenly Father, for his
sake we pray these things. Amen. You are dismissed.
Woe Unto Me if I Preach Not the Gospel
Series NAPARC
This address was to have been given by me at the 2023 meeting of NAPARC, hosted by the PRC in Rhode Island. I was unable to attend. My thanks to the Rev. Michael Ives for reading it in my place.
| Sermon ID | 1116231814511663 |
| Duration | 35:29 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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