Welcome to the Further Gospel Podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Costi Hinn, and I want to welcome our listeners on Apple and Spotify and those of you watching this on our YouTube video podcast format. On this episode, it is the final sermon of our summer sermon series. If you have ever gotten stuck in the rut of trusting in your works and even your good Christian morality and your spiritual discipline, and being very put together in a number of ways, and then forgetting that it's all about affection for Jesus. Or maybe you've been a pastor and you've pounded the people with the imperative commands. And look, I am a pastor and I know the need for balance. We can't just live in this sort of ethereal thing and make people feel good and go, You're loved. We we have to actually call them to obey Jesus. You're preaching the indicatives and the imperatives. Yes and amen. But at times, we can be very heavy-handed for long stretches without reminding people of the soothing healing balm of the gospel and God's grace and his righteousness and the peace that comes from rooting everything we do in a love for Jesus. If that's ever been you, Sinclair Ferguson is going to be a blessing. I've shortened or just narrowed the title down into one word. It's affection. And so let's jump in with Sinclair and let this sermon wash over our souls as we finish off this series.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's turn in our Bibles, if you've any energy left tonight, to the letter of Paul to the Philippians. And I want to read a few verses there at the beginning of chapter 1, Philippians chapter 1. And we're turning now from last night's consideration of our holy calling to the subject of holy affections, and want to read from verse 3. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mind for you all, making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I'm sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yarn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. It should lie very clearly in our minds that even a surface understanding of the ministry of our Lord Jesus and the ministry of the apostles, notably the Apostle Paul, that these ministries are characterized by what I've called affection. And I want to turn to this subject this evening because it is in its own right significant and important. But I think it's also especially important in a day when there is a recovery of better biblical exposition. And many of us here, I'm sure, are involved in and engaged with young men that we are trying to train in a right interpretation of Scripture. And in a sense, what lies behind everything that I want to say this evening is that interpretation without affection will not lead to exposition that will bring transformation. Because scripture not only comes to us in the form of literary character, but it comes to us embedded with the affections of God. Sunday night here Jonathan was preaching and emphasizing from the letter to the Hebrews how the author of Hebrews picks up the words about chastisement and discipline in Proverbs chapter 3 and underscores for us that in these words God is addressing us as sons. And that address is suffused with divine affection. And there are, I think, two different ways in which we could approach this subject and help one another as we study it together. One, I think, would involve an entire series of studies on the way in which in the ministry of Jesus, the ministry of the apostles, in some surprising contexts and situations that we do not ordinarily notice, the text is suffused with expressions of affection. We are often concerned with the truth of the passage without being interested in the affection with which that truth is conveyed to us. In other words, we are interested in the interpretation of words and not in the interpretation of the livingness of the fact that these are God's words addressed to us through God's servants speaking to their time and to our time with what the Apostle Paul calls here in this section, in verse 8, the affection of Christ Jesus. And it seems to me at the end of the day that it makes a great deal of difference to the impact of our ministry upon our people and to how they are shaped by our ministry, that we address them and live before them and with them as exemplars and expressors of the affection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many years ago, through happenstance, I don't need to narrate, I got to know a couple in a church, highly intelligent, highly devoted, highly supportive couple who had sat under a ministry, I would think for about ten years, of a man I didn't know and never met, but I had occasionally preached in their church, and they told me after the minister had left that on reflection over those ten years, and they were enormously supportive, they'd come to the conclusion that they had been well instructed but poorly nourished. Well instructed but poorly nourished. And I felt almost certain there can be only one explanation for that, and that is that the focus of the ministry has been an addressing of the intellect without any real concern to understand that people are not brains, that they have affections, and that this book, with all its different genres, comes to us in a whole variety of divine affections towards us, expressed through those who minister to us. And so what I want us to try to do together this evening is not to work through endless passages of scripture to try and build up all the different aspects of the affections that should characterize our ministries, but to reflect thematically or topically or systematically on one or two emphases that we find in Scripture about the affection and the affections that should characterize our ministries. And I want to say four things. I want to try and explain the nature of holy affections. I want to think about the specific characteristics of holy affections. I want especially to stress the importance of holy affections, and then I want to try and say something about the development of holy affections. First of all, something about the very nature of holy affections. And here what Paul says in Philippians 1 is helpful to us, although I think it might be better translated in our English versions. What Paul is saying here in verse 7, it is right for me to think this way. The verb is froneo, and it focuses on the conceptualization of his relationship with the Philippians. It probably would have been better translated. It's right for me to think this way about you. In the broader sense, that thinking involves relationship. To think about you is my disposition towards you. It's right for me to have this disposition toward you because I hold you in my heart. And in verse 8, God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. There is a process of mental disposition towards others that leads to a holding of them, a having of them in our hearts. And that may lead to that marginally painful experience that is nevertheless an exquisite experience, that we actually yearn for them. Our hearts move out towards them. You know that in Scripture generally, and in the Hebrew world, the root of the emotional life of the individual is placed further down the anatomy than it is in the Western world. There is a paraphrase of the prodigal son in the Scottish book of paraphrases that I have never heard anyone sing, because it has this line in it, the father saw him from afar, and all his bowels did move. And you can understand why it's never sung. But it is actually physically more accurate than saying his heart went out to his son. It not only locates the root of human emotion anatomically deeper down, but places that reality deeper down. Or in the language that's used in the Old Testament scriptures, generally speaking, in the plural rechamim, the entrails, the bowels. It's used fascinatingly in the singular for a woman's womb. That concept that this, as it were, is the sphere of our existence from which new life will emerge, that will be loved and nurtured and cared for, and all of a mother's emotional devotion will be poured out upon the fruit of her womb. And the Apostle Paul is saying that Christian fellowship creates that in us, and Christian ministry requires that of us. And what, as the commentators often enough point out, is that Paul, who is so concerned about unity in the Philippian church, is constantly saying, This is how I feel about all of you. Alistair's little secretary there, you can hear him again, can't you? You really want to include all of them. Yes, all of you. And, you know, it seems to me to be so much definitive of what it means to be called to the ministry that this is not something that we work up, is it? We may have to work at it, but it's not something that we work up. It's something that is sent down to us so that we may have people in our congregations who give us almost endless hassle. And at least early on we might think that if they knew how much we yearned for them, they would give us less hassle. But perhaps not. But we still yearn for them because we are their shepherds and we love them. And we love them with the affection of Jesus Christ. Think about the affection of Jesus Christ for me, and he loved me. When I was dead in trespasses and sins, when I was under the wrath of God, when I was weak and helpless and an enemy, such was his affection. However mysterious his divine nature was, his coming to earth and dying on the cross was not simply a mathematical equation, but the expression of the deepest longings and yearnings that he might bring us back to his heavenly father. And all the way through the history of the Christian Church, those who have best taught us, including those who have been the most cerebral in their theology, have understood that ministry requires this balance of the exposition of truth directed to the mind that simultaneously comes within the context of God's affection, Christ's affection towards us, that it comes to us born on the love of God's servants for God's people. This is why when John Owen speaks about our affections, he puts it this way. He says, affections are the only power of our souls whereby we may give away ourselves from ourselves and become another's. The only power of our souls whereby we may give away ourselves from ourselves and become another's. That is the yielding of our whole self to the needs of someone else so that those needs may be simultaneously imprinted on our affections without overpowering our understanding of their needs. And in ministry, isn't it so true that as ministers we we fall under the judgment of Martin Luther that our problem is we are in curvatus in se, we are turned in upon ourselves. When we look to Jesus Christ, when the Holy Spirit begins to work into our souls the affections of Jesus Christ, we lose ourselves in our giving ourselves to others. But there is such self-forgetfulness in us because we are taken up with the other. And many of us may have been blessed with knowing perhaps older ministers or others who have ministered to us that we have known when we have been in their presence, nothing diverts them from their expression of devotion to us. It's so easy, isn't it, in the ministry to abuse others by using them for ourselves. And what Owen is speaking about here is that the key to a ministry that nourishes others lies not only in the communication of intellectual truth to them, but in the self-giving of ourselves to them in the process of communicating the truth to them. And it seems to me that people, by and large, people in our congregations are not analysts of what is happening in our preaching, but they do experience it. They may not be able to explain why they can tell the difference between one kind of preaching and another kind of preaching. But they know that preaching that is communicated with the affections of Jesus Christ does them great good. And sometimes communication of the truth of Jesus Christ without them does them no good. A very interesting exercise sometimes. I don't teach preaching and haven't taught preaching, but sometimes when students naively think that I might have some wisdom about preaching, I've sometimes said to them, listen to a totally orthodox sermon from a preacher you know who is thoroughly dull. And in your mind, be careful where you are driving when you do this, but in your mind, a nanosecond later, transpose those very same words into the preaching of someone whose preaching has nurtured and blessed you. And you will discover that exactly the same words can have very different effect and affect in your life. And the explanation will be this that in the exposition of truth there is the yarning for those who are hearing in the self-giving of the minister of the gospel. So that's the nature of holy affections. Let me say something about especially the outworking of the affections of Jesus Christ. Paul speaks about here, it's a very striking phrase, isn't it? I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. The most difficult word in the New Testament to exegete is the word of, isn't it? Does he mean here that his affections are modeled after Christ Jesus? Or does he mean here, as I rather think he does from other things he says to the Philippians, that the affections of Christ Jesus are actually the expressions of the affections of Christ Jesus that are wrought into his heart and life by union with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. That in actual fact this transformation into the likeness of Christ is something that affects our affectionate life as well as our intellectual life. Transformation into the likeness of Christ means having the mind of Christ not only in the sense that we think God's thoughts after him, as it were, but that we experience Christ's affections after him. And I think it's this that the apostle is after, and therefore we have some clues, don't we, in the New Testament as to what this might mean, what the character of holy affections might be. Most of us have read Warfield's great essay on the emotional life of Christ. It has a rather narrow focus, but it brings this out very powerfully, doesn't it? The fullness. Of the holiness of our Lord Jesus Christ comes to expression in his affectional life. I came across some time ago what I thought was a very striking difference in preaching on the same passage. So I had become accustomed to hearing that the way in which you preach the section in the Gospels, in which Jesus shows his power, his power over nature when he stills the storm, his power over demons when he deals with the Gadderene demoniac, his power over sickness when he heals the woman with the issue of blood, his power over death, when he raises the daughter of Jairus. And the the standard way, it seemed, of expounding that was to say, behold the power of Jesus Christ over all things, over nature, over demons, over sickness, and over death. And all of that is true, absolutely true. But listen to what Dr. Stalker, who just happened to be a 19th-century Scotsman, but he might have been a 19th-century American. Listen to how he handles the passage about the raising of Jairus' daughter. What do we see here? He says we see the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see the sensitivity of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see the indignation of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see the delicacy of affection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see the modesty of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what's the difference between these two expositions? The first may not get past literary structure. The second gets us to Jesus. And at the end of the day, no matter how good our understanding of the literary structure, for example, here, of a gospel pericope or a series of pericopes is, that's not going to save anyone. It may not even attract anyone. But to know that he is a compassionate Savior, to know that he is sensitive, to see the way he deals with such modesty with these people, to see his indignation against those who deride the blessed Savior, to see the delicacy of what he does, to see Jesus' affections, is to meet with the real Jesus. And when we scour the Gospels, we see this is all over the place. That Jesus is amazed, that Jesus has compassion, that Jesus has joy, that Jesus has anger, that Jesus has love, that Jesus is troubled. Isn't that something? That Jesus knew the affection of being troubled. Fascinating, isn't it, in the farewell discourse that the Jesus who says to them, let not your hearts be troubled, is the very Jesus John says about. He was troubled in spirit. And perhaps most sensitively, Jesus experienced distress. And there are various expressions of it in the New Testament in the Gospels. And perhaps the most powerful one is in the Garden of Gethsemane. Those of you who know Lightfoot's commentary, old Bishop Lightfoot's commentary on Philippians, Paul uses the same language in Philippians chapter 2, when he says in these very moving words, and I think they were quoted earlier on by Alistair today, I've thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need, for he has been longing for you all, and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Listen to how Bishop Lightfoot, this is the same verb that's used in Mark's Gospel, chapter 14, 32, to speak about the Lord Jesus. This he says, and Lightfoot was undoubtedly the greatest New Testament scholar of the second half of the 19th century. He says this. This denotes the confused, restless, half-distracted state which is produced by physical derangement or by mental distress, such as grief, shame, disappointment. What is he indicating? He's speaking about Epaphroditis. I'm not even sure he was thinking about the fact, if I say this about Epaphroditis, am I going to say this about Jesus because the same language is used? That the Jesus we know is a Jesus who has tested the affections of distress because he faced a situation to which the appropriate response of human affection was overwhelming distress. That this holy one, who could not conceivably desire to be abandoned by the sense of the Father, saw in the cup he was to drink in Gethsemane, that overpowering reality, that he would not have been a holy Savior had he not been overwhelmed with this affectionate response of distress at the thought of separation from the smile of his father. And all of this is what we find in the Lord Jesus. And what Paul is saying here is that the Jesus who is in heaven is the same Jesus who was on earth. When Hebrews 13, 8, isn't it says Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever, that is not a long way around of saying Jesus is eternal. That means the Jesus of yesterday, who, from the point of view of the author of Hebrews, is the Jesus of the Gospels, is exactly the same Jesus today in the whole period of redemptive history. And he will always be like that. He did not sloth off his humanity in his ascension as though it were simply a necessity in order that he might become our Savior. He is forever the God man. Isn't that what Hebrews presses on us again and again and again? The nearness of Jesus to us. And that because we are united to him in his humanity, we know we're not united to him in his deity, but we are united to the eternal Son of God who took our humanity in order to unite us to himself, in order that, as Kuiper says, out of resources the angels could not provide, but only the incarnate Son could provide, there would begin to be embedded into us a likeness to Christ that would extend even to our affections. And so as we draw closer to Jesus, as we understand Jesus better, as we live with Jesus, he works providentially in our lives, as he guides us in our ministry, he reproduces his own affections in our lives, in order that as we minister to his flock as under shepherds, they may sense that Jesus Christ Himself is ministering through that likeness to himself he has reproduced in us. And therefore the people feel and hear the echoes of the affection of Jesus for them. That brings me to a third point, which simply elaborates on this second point, but I want to press down on it a little more in a particular context, and that is to stress the importance of these affections. I think I could say tongue in cheek that they are so important that they make the Apostle Paul swear. Do you notice how he puts it? God is my witness. God is my I swear to you, cross my heart and hope to die. I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. What a thing to be able to say. But he doesn't regard it as unique. He doesn't regard it as something that is true of apostles, but not true of evangelists, or of prophets, or pastors, or elders, or deacons, or anyone. But this is the fruit of union with Christ. And if I may say so, the way in which our people corporately are most likely to experience it, if it is a reality in our lives, is in the way we preach to them. You know, and you experience this when you preach. It used to be said of Thomas Hooker, the New England Puritan, that when he began to preach, it seemed as though he grew so large you would have thought he could have picked up a king and put him in his pocket. Not a bad thing to do with a king sometimes. But that happens to you as well. Your mind is never so alive as when you are preaching. Your emotions are never so expanded as when you are preaching. And the fascinating thing to me, at least as a listener, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that no matter how often as preachers we pray, hide me behind the cross, that apparently is not God's way of doing it. And in fact, we are enlarged in the process. And our heartbeat becomes more evident how we really are towards the people. And it seems to me discerning people see this. Discerning people understand, for example, as we saw last night, what it means for Timothy to have faith that is without a mask. They understand, discerning ones understand when preaching is a performance, in distinction from preaching being a ministry. When preaching is drawn out of the preacher's soul by affection for those to whom he is preaching. And preaching, no matter how eloquent and stunning it may be, is actually simply employing the congregation for its own ends. And this is, I think, so important. You must have experienced sometimes listening to preaching, and you've closed your eyes and you've cried out to God and said, Oh God, do I sound like this? Save me. Save me. And it's not because the man may not be the greatest exegete in the world. It's because something is being communicated that seems so unlike the Lord Jesus. And it's a very it's a very telling thing, isn't it? That if we want to exhort our people to be like Jesus, then we ourselves actually should never be more like Jesus than we are when we preach to them. And that's the thing that really matters. And we may see more of that, perhaps not tonight, but as we go on. And what are the telltale marks of what the theologians have often referred to as disordered affections? Now we all have disordered affections. But in our in our communication with our people, what are the telltale marks? Well, one of them would be that it it really wouldn't matter if they were there, we would still preach the same way. There is no personal tone. That whatever our personality may be, whether it be small or great, whether it be loud or quiet, that there be this person-to-person tone, because what we are doing through these words is saying, the Lord Jesus has given me this gift. It came to me in my study as I was preparing or walking, it came to me in the middle of the night. The Lord Jesus has given me this for you, and here I am. I'm inwardly on my knees before you to say, the Lord Jesus loves you, and he sent me with this little gift for you. I'm not sure what it is, it's all parceled up. Only you will find out what he's put for you in this parcel of my exposition of Scripture. But my job here is to come and say that in this gift Jesus loves you. And in giving it through me, I want to love you as I give it to you. There's another telltale sign, and that is what I think of as an oppositional tone. When the congregation is treated as though it were the preacher's enemy, and there is an attack mode in absolutely everything that is said. And the the affectional tone of this is, and you see it, you see it in preachers who you understand, as it were, get to a cruising altitude. And the cruising altitude is in a fighter jet. And the whole of the flight through the sermon is attack you, attack you, attack you, attack you, attack you. And there will be people in the congregation who will shake his hand and say, That was a powerful word, Pastor. But the blood of his congregation is splattered across the back wall. And they are not being nurtured, they have been forced down to realize they are sinners, and they don't hear the word that the only interest Jesus has in their sin is to get rid of it so that they may embrace him. And that's why he wants to draw them to himself. I think another way of putting that is to say that the tone of the preaching, even when the words are indicative, the tone of the preaching is always imperative. It's very difficult to analyze this, but I think it's a reality, isn't it? That in our preaching we can be saying we can be making great indicative statements, but in the way we communicate, the affection with which we communicate is not the infection of the indicative that raises up Christ in all his glory. But that somehow or another, even if it is in a subliminal sense, is, as it were, coming down upon the people who are listening, instead of bringing them up to the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, C.S. Lewis has a very interesting statement. He makes it in more than one occasion. Often when people speak to him or wrote to him about writing, tell me how I can write, I want to write a great book, and Lewis says, Well, you've got to have something to write about. And then he says this more than one occasion. Never tell people how they should feel. Never tell people how they should feel. Why? Because gracious feelings will never be produced by imperative statements. Show people the reality that will make them feel the way you desire them to feel. And that's true of preaching, isn't it? That's the difference between telling people they need to repent and they need to trust in Christ. And doing what the Westminster Confession and other confessions, let's be completely ecumenical about this. Other confessions say repentance arises out of the hope of mercy in Jesus Christ. To show his mercy, to show his grace, to show the wonder of his love, his death upon the cross. Brothers, you know, I know, it is in many ways far easier to expose people's sinfulness, to show the poverty and the impoverishment of their Christian lives and their prayerlessness than it is to exalt and magnify the glory and grace of God, the loveliness and love of the Lord Jesus Christ, the blessedness of tasting the Holy Spirit as the gift of the age that is to come, the treasures of the gospel. So much more difficult for sinners to do that, because sadly, so often we ourselves know so little of it. And so what we are learning here is that when we gaze upon Jesus Christ and see him in the totality of his humanity, and we ourselves are drawn to him, then we then we begin to go through that process. It is a kind of can I say it's a it's a preacher's repentance, where instead of thinking that we will help people by downing them, we raise people up and show them the glory of Jesus Christ and offer them this Jesus Christ, and by the Holy Spirit who loves to see Jesus Christ thus glorified, they are so sweetly drawn to Him and trust Him. And when that happens in our preaching, it doesn't matter, in a sense, it doesn't matter a button what we are preaching on. The people of God will go home satisfied because they have found in Jesus Christ that we have preached what they needed, even if we neither told them that was what they needed, or even showed them how they would get it in him, because they met him. I mean, isn't that one of the great things? I think Jim Packer points this out in his book Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, how one of the characteristics of the evangelistic preaching of Wesley and Whitfield, as they recorded what they had done, was to say simply, I offered them Christ. I offered them Christ. And it's when preaching is like that, that people's own affections are cleansed and Renewed. And you see, it's that touching of the affections that lubricates and oils the wheels that enable the volitional aspect of our humanity to take hold willingly of Jesus Christ. We are complex beings, but we're not compartmentalized beings. And these realities all go together, the exposition of Scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit, the exaltation of the reality of the person of Jesus Christ, and the effect that has simultaneously on the understanding, on the affections, and on the will of those to whom we preach, so that they close with Jesus Christ. And so in our tradition, our greatest theologians, some of whom have had the greatest impact not only on their own day, but on other days, have emphasized the importance in preaching of raising the affections of God's people. One of the greatest English theologians who ever lived, a man by the name of Jonathan Edwards, and if you think about his dates, you'll remember he was actually English. When he defends the preaching there was in the Great Awakening and acknowledges that there could have been excesses, he emphasizes that in true preaching there is always a proportionate impact on the affections of the hearers, that is neither feigned nor forced, and has the greatest tendency to bring the minds of the hearers and the wills of the listeners to close with Jesus Christ, so that he goes so far as to say, I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with. So it's right that we say the truth of our exposition addresses the mind, but God didn't make people just as minds. He made people who have wills and affections. And what Edwards is saying is at the end of the day, what our preaching is all about is bringing people up to close with Jesus Christ and to say, My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine. For thee, all the pleasures of sin I resign. So that our whole being, mind, will, affection is regenerated by the gospel, transformed by the gospel, cleansed by the gospel. Our consciences are cleansed from good works by the gospel. And you would hardly say that Jonathan Edwards lacked intelligence. And you would hardly say that his preaching was even simple. But what was he aiming at? More love to thee, O Lord. And the same is true, I think, even of the more cerebral individuals. You think about Samuel Rutherford. I know there are only certain books of Samuel Rutherford we read, but hey, I'm Scottish, so I read Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex, about which it was truly said there was more inspiration in Napier's table of logarithms than there is in Lex Rex. But then you read his letters, and Spurgeon says about his letters, it's the nearest thing to divine inspiration that's ever been written. Why? Because it's so full of affection for the Lord Jesus that spills over in his apostolic experience of yearning for his people with the affection of Jesus Christ, so that you know when he was exiled in Aberdeen he would even dream about them. Because he loved them so much, he missed them so much. Would it be too much to say that this is the real test of preaching Christ from the Old Testament? Because it was apparently what happened to the two disciples on the Emmaus Road. Did not our hearts burn within us? I don't suppose there has ever been a time in the last several hundred years when there has been so much focus on preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Every theological student in every decent seminary is urged to preach Christ from the Old Testament. But then often it stops with that he showed them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself, and doesn't go on because the seminary can't teach you to do this with the fruit of that. That when Christ preaches himself from the Old Testament Scriptures, which is what is happening whenever we preach him from the Old Testament Scriptures, he preaches himself as the Christ of the Gospels, to whom the Old Testament Scriptures pointed. And the result of that is burning hearts. Burning hearts. And that's affection. That's the affectionate preaching of the Word of Christ producing affections in us. Well, I need to close with this four-point. How are we going to develop these holy affections? Well, we could do worse than listen to Martin Luther. How do you become a theologian, says Luther, a theologus, which means a pastor? That's interesting, isn't it, that he understood that pastors are theologians. And you know the answer. He says, in the 119th Psalm, you will find three rules aptly presented throughout the whole Psalm. They are oratio, meditatio, tentatio, prayer, meditation, and trials. And that's the simple truth, isn't it? How is this going to be, how is this going to be translated into our lives and into our ministries? Because we are not all naturally affectionate. We do not all have the same natural capacity to express affections. But this is not about natural capacities. This is about a spiritual grace that is produced through our union and communion with our Lord Jesus Christ. And so the first thing, of course, is to pray that we will be filled with the affection of Jesus Christ for the people of Christ. And the affection of Jesus Christ for those who are as yet outside of Jesus Christ, that we will be moved. That something will happen in our wombs, as it were. The kind of thing that Paul speaks about to the Thessalonians, about his disposition towards them. As fathers who loved them, as nursing mothers who cared for them, who yearned for them, who loved them. We pray, Lord, make this true of me. And at the same time, we reflect on the Lord Jesus in the Gospels. Now, anyone who knew me would know how much I love systematic theology, but Jesus is not a piece of systematic theology. Not even Herman Bavink died on the cross for me. Jesus died on the cross for me. And so as I read the Gospels, I need to get to know him. I might love the epistles, but I need to read the Gospels. You know, I do wish in a way that at seminary students would stop being taught to preach Christ from the Old Testament and learn to preach Christ from the Gospels. Because then they would discover the Christ they're supposed to preach from the Old Testament. To be saturated in him, to reflect on him, to meditate on him, to see a stalker saw in the raising of Jairus' daughter, not just the expression of the power of Jesus over death, but the soul of Jesus expressed to the Uyghur's mum and dad, the delicacy with which he deals with them, the indignation towards those who demeaned him, as well as the power coming close to Jesus in the Gospels, so that he steps, as it were, off the page. We come to know him. And then, of course, it's true that we also will learn this through whatever trials we go through. We are not the ones who choose the trials of our ministry. We all know there will be trials in our ministry. What is their purpose? One of their purposes is to help us to press into our dear Lord Jesus. And as we press into our dear Lord Jesus, we ourselves sense his affection for us. And we're like Paul when he says to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 1, what is actually happening is that we are comforting you who are afflicted with the comfort that we received in Jesus Christ when he was afflicted. And it's because of that what we experienced in him that enables us to communicate him to you as he really is, as the comforter of the afflicted. And there is no doubt that that can be very costly. Perhaps familiar with the words of C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves, he says, to love at all, and he's speaking about an affection, to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it round carefully with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change, it will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, and you can apply this to the ministry or at least to where there is a risk of tragedy, the alternative is damnation, because the only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell. And you know, brothers, if you think about this from a historical point of view, I think perhaps exaggerating just a trifle to make the point, you might just say that not only is this costly, but it's because of Christ-like affections that perhaps the most significant conversion in Christian history after that of the Apostle Paul took place because of affections. You remember how Augustine puts it? He says, In the confessions, I came to Milan, to Ambrose, the bishop, known throughout the world as among the best of men, your devout servant. At that time his eloquence ministered in abundance the flour of your wheat to your people, the gladness of your oil, and the sober inebriation of your wine. To him was I led by you, all unknown to me, that by him I might knowingly be led to you. That man received me like a father and showed me the kindness of a bishop. I began to love him at first indeed, not as a teacher of the truth, which I utterly despaired of finding in your church, but as a person who was kind to me. How are we to reach the intellectual people that we know? Our tendency is to think we need to have the strongest possible apologetics, and that is our intellectual responsibility. But Augustine was drawn to Christ by Christ-likeness because Ambrose was kind to him. You know, I wonder if there are ministers of the gospel who have lived and died and nobody has ever been able to say about them. He was kind to me. But if someone is able to say that about you, that means much more than your hermeneutical skills and even the clarity of your orthodoxy. Because it's possible, as Alexander White used to say, to have that style of ministry that feels as though it's been hardened by vinegar. And a ministry that's been hardened by vinegar is not going to draw people to the Son of God who loved us, gave himself for us. So may God help us to preach Christ, to care for our people, to offer them Christ with the affection of Christ Jesus. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you again for this day of fellowship, worship, ministry. We thank you for your word. We pray that you would cleanse from our minds anything that might lead us astray, that you would cleanse from our hearts any sinful motion or emotion that might rebel against the way in which you press your word in upon us. We are such sinners. And we are ministers of the gospel. We feel we are the chief of sinners. Lord Jesus, we feel that perhaps in our dying moments the only thing we'll be able to say is, Lord Jesus, I'm so sorry. We thank you that you have promised that you love us so much, that you have been willing to drown our senses of regret in your cleansing blood, and to reassure us that it is clay pots you use, frail men like ourselves, men who are a jumble of disordered affections, and we thank you that the gospel is able to order and reorder our affections, and that in measure we are able to echo the words of the Apostle Paul to our own people. I yearn for all of you with the affection of Jesus Christ, and we pray as we fellowship together, as we worship together, as we inquire together, as we stimulate one another to love and good works, we may also so be stimulated to these holy affections that it really will be obvious to our people when we return to them. That here at Parkside again, we too have been with Jesus and have become more like him. We pray this in his name.
SPEAKER_00What a way to end the series. What a blessing and what a reminder. Yes, we are called to obedience, yes, that should never be divorced from our Christian walk. But as we walk out of Christ's call to obey, let it be with affection in our hearts for Him. And I pray if you're a church leader like me, you be convicted and reminded that we need to point people in the right direction, not just pound them with the truth. And they need to know that in the direction, there must be a route of affection. I pray that all of the sermons we've aired for you this summer have been an encouragement and strengthening. If one in particular has been a blessing to you, we'd love to hear about it. Maybe drop a comment or shoot us a DM. And thank you as always for sharing these resources with other people. I pray that they're always an encouragement, a tool in your tool belt, so you can go out and live for the gospel and you've got something to bring along and share with someone that will encourage and sharpen them. Be sure to follow us on all social media platforms for ongoing encouragement and videos and quotes that drop every single day. As well, keep an eye out for some regional events here in Phoenix that we're gonna be announcing, some big news. And if you're in the Florida area or anywhere near the south and you want to join us in Panama City, keep an eye out for a conference. There's event information on our website. It's a for the gospel regional called Knowing the Spirit. It's gonna be in Panama City, Florida, September 20th and 21st. It's gonna be an intimate time where we can gather together and dialogue about the work of the spirit. I'm gonna do some teaching. The host church, Pastor Ethan Jago, my friend, is gonna be doing uh some teaching as well. We'll have a pastor's panel, plenty of interaction, and a wonderful time all together. You can register for that at forthegospel.org. In the meantime, I'll be back with another episode next Monday. Keep on living for the gospel.