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I found that reference for Robert Gordon!

Rejoice with me! I have found the reference to the Rev. Robert Gordon that I had lost. It is in D. Sage’s Memorabilia and Domestica (1899) p. 169.

The Rev. Donald Sage recalled Gordon when he was still teaching Mathematics at the Perth academy:

“This Mr. Gordon also delivered a discourse — a close and most consummate piece of reasoning — but the most perfectly free from the slightest allusion to the gospel of anything of the kind. Afterwards he became minister of Kinfauns, in the neighbourhood of Perth, and there, through the instrumentality of his excellent wife, he experienced a thorough change of views and of heart. He is now advanced in years, and is the eminent and pious Dr. Robert Gordon of Edinburgh.”

Mr. Gordon’s excellent wife’s name was Isabella.

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How is the book going?

No one has asked, but I thought that I’d tell you anyway. The book’s working title is, Heart, Mind and Conscience: the preaching of the Free Church 1843-1873.

So far, I’ve written about 15000 words. This means, that the introductory chapter (a potted history of the reformed church of Scotland from 1560 to 1843) has been roughed out. The second chapter looks at advice given to trainee ministers on sermon making during the 18th century, and the capacity of the common people to understand those sermons. The third chapter reviews the sermons of an unconverted minister of the 18th century, and provides a brief insight into the evangelical sermons of that period. The fourth chapter begins the review of Free Church preaching with the sermons of the Rev. Thomas Chalmers, who was, for the first 10 years of his ministry, an unconverted person. His pre- and post-conversion sermons are very different from each other. By the grace of God, Chalmers became the sort of minister that he once despised. Rough versions of all these chapters are now written.

Presently, I am working on the fifth chapter, which reviews the sermons of the Rev. Robert Gordon (1786-1753). He too, it seems, was ordained to the Christian ministry before he was converted. I’ve ‘heard’ that his believing wife was instrumental in bringing him to a right understanding of the gospel — I’m still looking for the reference (I know that I’ve seen it, somewhere). I have no Free Church sermons from him, only those first published in 1825, but his preaching was used by God to convert — during the 1820s and 30s — many ministry students who later became Free Church ministers. I suspect his ‘method’ of sermon making influenced the character of the later sermons by these men. After this chapter is finished, I intend doing chapters on the sermons of the Revs William Cunningham, Robert Candlish, John Duncan, Thomas Guthrie, and Robert Rainy. Let’s see how far I get.

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Moses’ chair

Matthew 23:2-4 records some words of our Lord Jesus Christ about the scribes and Pharisees of his day. He said this:

The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ chair. Therefore, do and observe whatsoever they tell you, but do not do according to their deeds for they say but do not do. They bind heavy and grievous burdens and place them on the shoulders of people, but they themselves are not willing to move these things with their finger.

In those days, when someone was going to teach, he sat down. The scribes and Pharisees were teachers of the Law of Moses. They sat (taught) in Moses’ chair. Our Lord Jesus tells us that these teachers, as they spoke the words of Moses, spoke correctly. But even while they accurately related the truths of the Law, they were not themselves followers of Moses. They did not feel the weight of what they taught. As teachers of the law, they did not think that the weight of the law would fall on them. This, I think, was one of the reasons why the religious leaders hated our Lord Jesus Christ. He exposed their lawlessness, their sinfulness. Jesus had been sent to save sinners; he came to die in the place of the lawless and to rise again for their justification, yet the religious leaders did not and would not regard themselves as needing repentance or faith in Christ. They were the righteous ones.

It is important to note that these accurate Bible teachers were nevertheless unbelievers. They said all the right words, even the words of Moses that pertained to the forgiveness of sins on the basis of an acceptable sacrifice. But they did not believe that the words applied to them.

I am reading at the moment many sermons by Presbyterian ministers from the 18th Century. These men were learned, very orthodox, but were essentially moral preachers. Many of them were not believers. In a printed sermon of 123 pages about the Spirit of the Gospel, no more than 10 lines had anything to say about the Gospel itself. The sermon was wholly about how ‘Christians’ ought to live. It said very little about the sinners’ guilt before God and what God had done to save the ungodly, and how one may obtain an interest in the salvation that Christ has won.

A sermon may be true in all that is said but it may yet fail to say what is most important. For a year and a half, the apostle Paul determined to know nothing among the Corinthian church but Christ and him crucified. This apostle then wrote two letters to that same church urging it to hold fast to the gospel that he had preached, least they had believed in vain. We all must be careful how we hear the Word, and to assess our own response to it.

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Preach the word

In the fourth chapter of his second letter to Timothy, the apostle Paul gives his son in the faith a charge. He tells him what he must do as a pastor of a church. Timothy, as with all who have the position of a teacher in a church, must preach the word. The word for ‘preach’ is closely related to that for a herald. In the ancient world, a herald was a messenger who was given a message from a ruler. The herald was to deliver that message to the people. The herald was under obligation to deliver that message as it was given to him. The message that Paul and Timothy had received was the gospel of Christ which is contained in the written word of God. God’s will, as found in that written word, was to be authoritatively declared and explained. Then the people were to be convicted, rebuked, exhorted and evangelised. Timothy was not to entertain his hearers. He was not to surround the word with a miasma of coffee fumes, TikTok videos and memes.

Conviction comes as the truth is presented. If we find that we are out of step with the requirements of God’s law and his gospel, we are convicted of sin. Whether we like it or not, when we find ourselves out of step with the law of God and his gospel, we are guilty. To be rebuked is to be told that our guilty condition is our own fault and that we are in the wrong. We cannot, we must not, try to pass the blame onto someone else, or to blame our circumstances. The rebuke comes to us for our lawless deeds. The exhortation is to repent and believe in Christ. It is not an exhortation to self-improvement. We are dead in our transgressions and sins. We are in love with sin, and unless Christ has mercy on us we will die in, and because of, our sin.

Repentance is a change of mind. We must stop thinking that we are the good guys and that our creator is bad. We must stop trusting ourselves or anything else except Jesus Christ. We must put our faith in him alone because he alone as worked salvation for the lawless. His death is the full satisfaction of God’s judgment upon the sins of his people. His resurrection displays his own personal righteousness which Christ donates to those who trust him. If anyone repents and believes, it is the result of the Holy Spirit’s work in regeneration. The Spirit brings people to new birth so that they will repent and believe. Such a person is justified (declared to be just) by that gift of faith. This often happens when the word of God is preached with an aim to bring conviction, rebuke and exhortation. This is the work of an evangelist.

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We wish to see Jesus

In the twelfth chapter of his gospel, the apostle John records an incident when pious Greeks came to Philip. It was the time of the Passover and they asked to see Jesus. The verb ‘to see’, as given in the text, can mean to see with the eyes, but I do not think that these Greeks were merely tourists. The verb can also mean to ‘know, perceive, understand’. This makes better sense, considering Jesus’ own response to the request. He spoke so that those Greeks, and others at the feast, would understand him and his mission.

First, our Lord responded by speaking of the necessity that a grain of wheat should die before it may germinate to produce more grain. We will ‘see’ that this is a reference to his own impending death for the life of his people. From verse 27, Jesus spoke of the death that he would die in glorifying the Father and himself. When he was lifted up (a euphemism for crucifixion), he would draw all to himself (v.32). Yet this is not all that Jesus told the Greeks.

In vs.25 & 26, the Lord Jesus said that the one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for ever. This is not an encouragement to suicide. The point is about one’s attitude to life in this world. The word ‘world’ has two basic uses in the New Testament. It can simply mean the place where humans live, or the humans who live on the Earth. John 3:16 uses ‘world’ in this sense. But the word ‘world’ is sometimes used to mean that place of enmity against God. 1 John 5:19 say, in part, that ‘the whole world resides in [or with] the evil one.’ It seems to me that our Lord Jesus is urging people to abandon their place of acceptance with that rebellious world and to follow him instead. To hate the life that they have lived as God’s enemies and to embrace the life of an outcast. Later Jesus will say, ‘If the world hates you, know that it hated me first’ (John 15:8). The one who follows Christ, we are promised, will be where he is, and the Father will honour such as follow the Son. This implies the need for the new birth (John 3:7) as it is a radical change of mind and character that is described here.

So, the Greeks wanted to understand Jesus. His reply was that in order to understand him, they must come to terms with the necessity of his death in their place. We are no different. Our guilty enmity against God requires our death forever. If we are ever to hate our lives in the world, we need Christ to die as our sin bearer. On the basis of Jesus’ atoning death, sinners are born again into newness of life by the Holy Spirit. There is no longer any condemnation for those who trust Jesus. In the place of eternal death, Christ provides eternal life. Hebrews 2:9* says, ‘But we see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour, that he might by God’s grace taste death for all.’

Do you see Jesus?

Note*: In Hebrews 2:9, the verb is ‘blepo’ not ‘eido’, but it has similar uses: to see, perceive, understand.

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The Rev. Lachlan Mackenzie (1754-1819)

In my last post, I wrote about the sermons of the Rev. George Hill (DD) and how he was an amiable man who preached calm, reassuring sermons. I suspect that George Hill was an unconverted, moderate minister. His sermons contained references to the gospel of Christ, but the Gospel was never preached nor were his hearers ever urged to make their calling and election sure.

I have now read two sermons by the Rev. Lachlan Mackenzie that were collected in a book entitled, Sermons Preached at Lochcarron (1849). Mr Mackenzie’s ministry was contemporary to that of the Rev. George Hill. The difference between the sermons of George Hill and those of Mr Mackenzie is great. I understand that Mr Mackenzie was an Evangelical minister in a largely moderate presbytery. He was well aware that there were many unconverted ministers in Scotland who preached moral sermons and minimised the necessity of the new birth. He once compared the number of ministers in Scotland in his day to the number of locusts that God had sent to Egypt during the plagues of Exodus. He was not sure which of the two groups was the more destructive.

Mr Mackenzie was in earnest. He understood from the Scripture that we humans became, by means of the fall into sin though Adam, enemies of God and subject to sin and death. He believed God’s testimony regarding His son, Jesus Christ. He urged people not to be content with all the outward appearance of Christianity in Scotland. He did not want them to be content that they were neither gross malefactors nor religious enthusiasts. He called his hearers to a right understanding of their sin, their danger of hell, and how these miseries might be escaped through faith in Jesus Christ. He called people to seek the new birth from God; to call out for mercy while it might be found. He showed his hearers that the Son of God had come to die for his people, and those for whom Jesus died and rose again are revealed as they are brought to faith in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit.

In short, Mr Mackenzie did not preach calming sermons. He did not mention the gospel in passing. His aim was to preach the Gospel and apply it to the heart, mind and conscience of his hearers. This was his main aim in the two sermons that I have read so far. I do not expect this aim to change as I continue through his book of sermons.

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The Rev. George Hill, DD (1750-1819)

I hope to write a book. The alleged topic is the preaching of the Free Church of Scotland from 1843 to 1873 (or thereabouts). As preliminary reading for this project, I decided to read sermons from the preceding century so I might have a point of comparison. The ministry of the Church of Scotland during the 18th century was largely ‘moderate’. This refers to the fact that moderate ministers were learned, elitist, nominally Calvinistic, orthodox and mostly unconverted.

The Rev. George Hill was a leading moderate minister. He was a gifted student, graduating Master of Arts at the age of 14 years. He was good to his mother, and had a mostly unblemished public character. His biographer, the Rev. George Cook, was brother to Hill’s son-in-law, and a beneficiary of Hill’s patronage. The biography does not mention anything about the impact of the gospel in George Hill’s life, nothing about his being taken out of death into life by the mercy and power of Christ crucified, risen and glorified. Now, to be fair, Dr Hill was already dead at the time his biography was written. We cannot blame Dr Hill for the choices that his biographer made in his absence, but for such information to be left out of biography of a minster of the gospel is to me extraordinary.

Anyway, I have now read the first eleven sermons that Dr Hill chose to place in his book, Sermons (published in London, 1796). These sermons are calm, sane and largely orthodox explanations of scripture. His expositions provide useful advice and warning to the reader. The death and resurrection of Jesus is often referred to as providing sinners with hope of heaven. He even referred to Jesus as the propitiation of our sins (only once, so far, but Hill immediately changed the subject). A modern Christian might read these sermons with some measure of satisfaction and even pleasure. The problem is that the gospel (so often mentioned) is not preached. The claims of Christ have not yet been pressed upon the heart, mind and conscience of the hearer. The emphasis is firmly on moral implications for sinners, never yet that sinners must be born from above.

I do not know that I will live to finish (or even start) the book that I hope to write. I thought it important to mention now that we must be careful how we hear sermons. A thoroughly orthodox, scriptural sermon can also be a gospel-less sermon. May I urge you to note the emphasis (or lack thereof) that is placed upon expounding the gospel of Jesus Christ and the exhorting of the hearers to examine themselves whether they are in the faith. If you discover that there is more gospel in the songs than in the sermon, it might be time to change church.

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Cessationism?

The term cessationism, as I understand it, is the ending of the apostolic gifts because there are no apostles now (unless the alleged apostles are 2000 years old, according to Acts 1:21-22). To me, cessationism means that extraordinary gifts (such as healing, foretelling the future and adding to God revelation) no longer are given to individuals to exercise (eg., no one now may speak a word so that a blind persons sees because of that spoken word). God still gives gifts of healing to people who study medicine, to other people God gives the gift of being able to learn languages, and to others is given the gift of understanding and explaining the word of God written. Again, cessationism, as I understand it, does NOT mean that God no longer does as He pleases. He still heals and converts people (the miracle of regeneration). Our God is free to work by, without, or against means.

Some non-cessationists say that they believe in the continuance of prophecy, but maintain that the Scriptures are complete. It is hard to understand what they mean, then, by prophecy. This is my take on the idea.

The word ‘to prophesy’ in Scripture can mean to foretell or to forth tell (announce). The spiritual gift of foretelling future events was a very limited gift and had definite proof. If the thing foretold did not occur, then the person who ‘foretold’ it was a false prophet (Deut 18:22), on the other hand if the prophet gives a miraculous sign and then tries to turn people from the already written Word of God, then that prophet is a false prophet (Deut 13:1-3). The prediction of a true foreteller will ‘come to pass’ and the prophet will turn people back to the written word (see major and minor prophets of the OT). In the NT we have, apart from the Lord Jesus and the apostles, a person called Agabus (Acts 21:10) who foretold Paul’s arrest. I believe that prophecy in this sense has ceased.

On other occasions in the NT ‘prophecy’ seems to mean a forth telling of the Word of God written. This can be by the direct speaking of the written word in public, such as in 1 Corthinians 14:24 where it may be a reference to congregational singing of the Psalms (the whole Church forth telling the word of God; see also 1 Corthinians 11:5 for another possible example of congregational prayer — led by men [1 Tim 2:8] — or the whole church singing). Prophecy can also mean the teaching the Word by uninspired men (1 Corthinians 14:29-34). Here whatever is forth told was to be judged by others. Such judging is not an appropriate attitude to the Word of God, but it is an appropriate attitude to take toward the words of those who claim to interpret the Written Word.

In 2 Peter, the apostle indicates that he is writing things down against the day of his death (2 Peter 1:12-14). Peter did not believe that further revelations of the Spirit will be available after the death of the apostles (1:15) and he pointed his readers to the Written Word, of which his letters (and Paul’s) formed a part (the ‘prophetic word’ is the written word — 2 Peter 1:19-21). John made similar statements about his writings, ‘These things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and by believing have life in his name (John 20:30).’ But finally, if modern ‘prophecy’ provides new revelations of the Holy Spirit then necessarily the Scriptures would not be the sole source of God’s revealed word.