Episode II: Letters of Robert Murray M'Cheyne | Behold Your God Podcast

Introduction to the Third Letter and the Theme of Joy

Welcome to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Matthew Robinson, director of Media Gratia, and I'm here again with Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and the author and host of the Behold Your God study series by Media Gratia.

This is episode two of our series, Letters to a Soul Seeking Jesus by Robert Murray McShane. If you haven't listened to episode one and you're just jumping in, I want to stop you here and get you to go back and listen to episode one.

Begin at the beginning. It's always the best place to begin. We're coming in immediately to the third letter that Robert Murray McShane wrote to this young lady, this anxious inquirer after Christ in his congregation.

And I'll just go right into it. He writes, Dear friend, I send you another line to tell you that Jesus is the way we are now looking forward to another communion season. And I'm busy instructing young persons for that holy and blessed ordinance.

I think you said you were a good deal impressed at our last communion and wish that you had been one of those seated at the table. Perhaps you may never be permitted to sit at the table on earth. Perhaps your first communion may be in glory.

There is a text in Romans 15, 13, which expresses all my desire for you. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may be abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

You see here who is the author of conversion, the God of hope. He must open your heart to attend to the things that are spoken. The truths that are presented to you will not convert your heart. The God of hope must breathe on your heart and water it oft.

Then see how he gives you joy and peace in believing. When Jesus revealed himself to Thomas in John 20 and verse 28, Thomas cried out with joy, my Lord and my God. If Jesus reveals himself to you and all the glory of his person, the completeness of his work and the freeness of his love, you too will be filled with appropriating joyful faith and will cry, my Lord and my God.

It is a difficult thing to explain what it is to believe. I suppose it is impossible. But when Jesus unveils his matchless beauty and gives you a sweet glimpse of his matchless face that was buffeted and spit upon, then the soul joyfully clings to him.

This is believing and this is joy and peace in believing. The truest, purest joy flows from a discovery of Jesus Christ. He is the hidden treasure that gives such joy to the finder, Matthew 13, 44. Do you think you have found that treasure?

Touching question, for if not, you are poor indeed. But how much joy may you have in Christ? The God of hope fill you with all joy. You need not be afraid to take the full joy that Jesus gives. If you really come unto Christ, you come unto the love of Jehovah and that is a filling love.

The love of the creature does not fill the heart, but God's love coming full upon the soul gives fullness of joy, 1 John 1, 4. It is holy love, sovereign love. Do decide the question of your eternity.

One thing is needful. Have you closed with the great mediator? Have you got saving knowledge of Jesus? Then only will death lose its power and the grave become the bed of peaceful rest. There is a land of pure delight where saints immortal reign, infinite day excludes the night and pleasures banish pain.

Lean all your care for time and eternity on Jesus. That is the softest of all pillows, the bosom of our guardian, Emmanuel. I am ever yours, Robert Murray McShane.

Joy in Believing and the Holy Spirit’s Work

In the third letter here, obviously, the dominant theme is joy. And I think it would be an honest thing to admit that if you've not embraced Christ, this kind of letter just sounds like religious fiction.

You know, like that's a nice idea. And that works on Sunday mornings inside of a building, inside of a box where everybody goes and sings old songs and reads a book and talks about this God that we can't see in touch.

But for the believer, for McShane in his own experience and for so many through his ministry, it's not just words. It's not just words for the believer today. So he gives that wonderful verse from Romans 15, 13 as the guide for this whole letter.

Now, the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace, right, in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then he pulls out these key points. God is the author again of salvation, and he's made that point in every one of the letters.

It's not the gospel alone. Even the gospel doesn't really turn a person from death to life. It is the gospel in the hands of the Holy Spirit that does that. He says later in the letter that if Jesus reveals Himself to you in all of His glory, in all of His infinite fullness, and, you know, He kind of waxes eloquent, and you can appropriate that by simple faith.

To lay hold of that.

Yes. If you could grab hold of it, bring it down, you know. Then he says, that's where joy is experienced. It's not just in understanding the gospel. Certainly there's not much joy in seeing how much you need a gospel, but there is great joy in making it yours.

And you know, and when he goes to describe faith, he says, faith is, well, what I'm talking about is pretty hard to describe, but the believer knows, you know, we can use words, we can give simple definitions for faith, but when we talk about the experiential aspect of a life that is suddenly flooded with joy because we believe what God says in the gospel, that's something really that a person has to experience, you know.

The next point he makes is another sweet point. He says, you can trust God. Do not be afraid that God would not give you enough, you know. God delights to give the fullest joy through Christ. One of the sweetest sentences here, he says, the truest, purest joy flows from a discovery of Jesus Christ.

He is the hidden treasure that gives such joy to the finder. So we don't have to fear that God won't be able to fill up our lives. There is sufficient joy in Him. God fills, he says, and nothing else really does.

There is nothing in this world that can satisfy. So I think before we even go to the fourth letter, it's a good test for ourselves to stop and ask, do I have that joy? Not do I agree with McShane's letter, not could I have said the same things in a letter.

There was a long stretch in my life where I was a youth minister or, you know, I would preach as a college student at little churches studying for the ministry. I was in earnest at times. I didn't know the Lord.

I just knew these words. And I could have written some of this letter. But if you would have captured John Snyder in an honest moment and said to me, if I take away from you friends and television and money, could you be happy with Christ?

And I would have had to said, no, not Christ alone. But after conversion, you know, the joy that I found in just opening the Bible and being alone with my Savior was really inexpressible.

Just a note here that anytime we talk about joy, you know, we're not talking about a personality.

Attribute.

Right.

And my friends call me Eeyore, you know, I'm not just a bouncy, joyful guy in that sense and not in a glib sense, sometimes maybe, you know, over the top silly, but I am more depressive than I am, you know, glib.

That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about get a new personality and suddenly become this bubbly happy.

Maybe you will.

Maybe that's you by nature. But if it's not you, then that's not what we're pointing at. We're pointing at the joy. Look, when you're faced with death, eternal death, and Christ has made unto you life, when you're faced with the terror of the wrath of God upon you justly for all eternity, and instead the peace and the life of Christ comes to you, then Christ has made to you life and health and peace.

And that is a joy that is inexpressible. And there is no illicit pleasure on this earth. And there is no wholesome happiness on this planet that compares with the joy of appropriating, laying hold of, and knowing Christ is truly mine.

And that's what we want to see inquirers come to know for themselves. Let's get right into the fourth letter here. This is written a time later. It's dated December 1841. So, McShane writes back to the young lady and says, Dear friend, it is written unto you who believe, he is precious.

And if you are a child of God, you will know and feel what the words mean, 1 Peter 2 7. At one time Christ was like a tender plant to you and like a root out of a dry ground. You saw no form nor beauty in him.

No beauty that you should desire him. And at that time you were at ease in Zion. You had no concern for your soul. Do you remember that time? Is it otherwise with you now? Have you been pricked in your heart by the Holy Spirit?

Have you been made to see how impossible it is for man to be just with God? And has the Spirit drawn away the veil from the fair face of Emmanuel and given you an unfeigned glance at the brow that was crowned with the thorns and the cheek from which they plucked off the hair?

And has the Spirit opened a window into the heart of Jesus to let you see the fountainhead of that love that passes knowledge? Then you will be able to say, to me, he is precious. If you see plainly that all your standing before God is in him and that he is your foundation stone, your fountain, your wedding garment, then you will feel him to be precious.

Most people refuse to come to Christ. Read Luke 14, 16 -24. They all with one consent began to make excuse. Why is this? Just because they do not see and feel that he is precious. But, oh, if you, my dear friend, feel that he is your only righteousness, your only fountain of living water, your high priest, your shepherd, your advocate, then you will say, he is precious.

You will never say, have me excused. I carry to you the sweet invitation, come, for all things are now ready. Jesus is ready to wash and clothe you in his own blood and righteousness. The Holy Spirit is ready to come into your heart and make it new.

The Father is ready to put his arms around your neck and kiss you, Luke 15, 20. The angels are ready to give thanks for you and to love you as a sister for eternity. Now, will you come? For all things are ready.

Are you now saying in your heart, I cannot but believe I am the chief of sinners and Jesus offers to be my refuge, my mediator, my all in all, I feel he is precious. Oh, dear friend, I trust that you do.

This only will make you happy in living and blessed in dying. This is a poor and dying world. Man that is born of a woman is of a few days and full of trouble. There is no part here that death cannot take from us.

But if you have Christ, you have the only imperishable portion. Oh, may the Holy Spirit give you a firm hold of Jesus. Then we shall meet in that sweet place where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.

The Lord deal kindly and gently with you, both soul and body. Farewell, dear friend, ever yours, Robert Murray McShane.

In this letter, we really move to, you know, just the full sunshine of hope that there is in Christ. He presses home the reality that we find in 1 Peter 2 that you read at the beginning of the letter, that unto the person that believes Christ is precious, Christ is the treasure.

At the heading of his letter is, taste that Christ is precious, reminding us of the Psalms where David says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. So I think we have to be honest. There are many good, nice, admirable church members who would say a lot of good things about Christ.

But if you really press them, they would not say he is the treasure. They would not find him precious because it is only the true believer that does, not the Pharisee and not the moral man. In the letter, he talks about the fact that the Spirit has to, again, he drives this point home, the Spirit has to open your eyes and he asks her, has he opened your eyes to see Christ?

And has he opened up Christ to you? So he says things like this, if you see plainly that all your standing before God is in him, that he is your foundation stone, your fountain, your wedding garment, then you will find him to be precious.

And he moves on to that passage, you know, where the wealthy man has a wedding feast and he invites people from all around to come and they refuse. They are just too busy or whatever their excuse is. And he, you know, he points out the fact that Christ is our wedding garment, Christ is our everything.

Now, he makes a statement here that I think is just so sweet. He talks about the joy that he feels in pointing this young lady to the gospel, to Christ. He says this, I carry to you the sweet invitation, come.

And then, so let's just stop right there for a second. We've been talking about the unbeliever, we've been talking about them coming to Christ, but here's a little window on the evangelist. It is a sweet privilege for the evangelist to go to a person and not just bring bad news about sin and not just bring the truth about the gospel, but to be able to say with the authority of God behind us and not with kind of a, like, I hope this will work, come, all is ready and, you know, because of the finished work of Christ.

And then he just spells this out, he says, Jesus is ready. So the Son and the Spirit and the Father, they're all ready. Jesus is ready to wash and clothe you in His own blood and righteousness. We've talked about that.

The cross, washing away the offense that was between me and a holy God and the obedience of Christ, clothing my nakedness so that I can never again be condemned by the law because the law is satisfied.

Then he says, the Spirit is ready to come into your heart and make it new, that is, you know, to not only indwell you, but to give you a new nature, to make you alive from the dead. The Father is ready to put His arms around your neck and kiss you, you know, the picture there of the prodigal son and the Father pursuing that son, God embracing.

It's one thing to explain the gospel. It's another thing for the witness to be gripped by the realization that actually everything is ready right now for you. And so there is a joy in sharing the gospel that we would not have if we thought, you know, wait, there's still some things that have to be finished.

Let me go and check and make sure it's time. No, all things are ready. Toward the end of the letter then, He gives a healthy balance, which I imagine we would have to admit that in modern evangelism, it's something that perhaps we wouldn't think we need to say.

And if modern evangelism for us is more like salesmanship than proclaiming the truths of a king to the needy sinner, then certainly this is a part that we might want to leave.

Out.

In salesmanship, we give just enough of the enticing aspects of the object that we want people to buy, to get them hooked. And we don't, obviously, we don't give them the whole story, you know. The government makes drug companies say, oh, and the side effects could be, and I'm always amused, you know, when you're watching the television and it says, you know, if you're having trouble in this area of life, and it's not life and death, you can take this medicine, but here are the side effects.

And then the side effects, you think, good grief, who would take that medicine? Well, God is not a salesman and we're not to be salesmen like that. We are proclaimers of an eternal truth. We are telling them the truths about God.

We are telling them the truths about themselves. But we need to tell them the truth about the Christian life, what will follow. And so, McShane gives about 20 of this letter is taken up with explaining to them, you're going to believe in this Christ, and this is joy unspeakable, but it's going to be done in the environment of a fallen world, and there's going to be sorrows.

And in a world full of sorrows, you have an imperishable hope, an imperishable joy. But it will be lived out in this present world. And so, that's a really healthy balance for a person, because we don't want people who embrace the gospel to suddenly come back to us, you know, after a few months and say to us, why didn't you tell me the whole story?

There's a struggle now. There's a battle now. I'm brokenhearted. I remember a young lady in our church that was converted, who after about a year of walking with the Lord, I asked her, so how are you doing?

And she said, well, you know, I'm doing well, but my religion before was just a mannequin religion, plastic, perfect, beautiful, no feeling, no pain. She said, and now, I hurt, you know. And so, we want to make sure we've helped people to understand.

There will be joy, but it will be lived out in a world of sorrow.

The Preciousness of Christ in Evangelism

So, John, the title of this letter, as you mentioned, is Taste that Christ is Precious. And for McShane, guiding this soul to Christ carefully, this is non-negotiable. This is something that he really wants to drive home.

Have you tasted, because as he quotes 1 Peter 2, 7, unto you who believe, he, Christ, is precious. Now, is that really a part of our evangelism? Is that really something that we should look for in a person who we are hoping comes all the way and closes with Christ?

I want to challenge you if you're listening, and that question is in your mind. Go to the passage, the shortest parable in the New Testament. Go to Matthew 13, the parable of the treasure hidden in the field.

We probably all know it from memory that a man goes and finds a treasure hidden in a field, and for joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has so that he can buy that field. And I want to challenge you to look at the context for that parable, see where that comes.

It comes right in after the parable of the weed and the tares, and then it's followed by another parable that says, you know, the kingdom is like a net that captures all kinds of fish, some good, some bad.

And in the end, the angels will take the good and keep and throw the others out. So the emphasis of finding Christ to be precious, more precious than anything else, for all the reasons that we've talked about in the podcasts that have led up to this, the letters that have led up to this, because he is our life and our health and our peace, finding Christ to be precious is an essential part of what it means to come to Christ.

And I just want to make that point that this is not a hyper experientialism. We're teaching this because we believe that Christ himself taught it to us, and he teaches it so clearly there in Matthew 13.

So I would encourage you to go and look at the context of that parable of the kingdom.

Yeah, yeah.

American Gospel and Deliverance from Prosperity Teaching

So we're here on the last day of the Shepherds Conference 2019 at Grace Community Church, and I've run into Justin Peters. Justin is an evangelist, and you will also recognize him from the American Gospel film.

People who purchased this have been getting in touch with us, and I've heard from pastor after pastor. About every other week, we'll hear from someone who says, well, guys, we got four new families in our church, and they've come from the church across town, which they didn't realize was a prosperity gospel church.

Indeed. And here at the Shepherds Conference, I've heard hundreds, literally, that's not an exaggeration, hundreds of comments from people here who have been impacted by this film. And I hear those same stories that I've heard pastors tell me that people have watched the film and come into their churches, and that's the thing, is that God delivers His own out of deception.

That's right.

You can't be indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God and stay in that level of deception indefinitely. If you truly belong to Christ, then the Holy Spirit will lead you out of that. If the Holy Spirit is strong enough to save us, He's strong enough to deliver us out of deception too.

Yeah, amen.

God in His good providence is using that film and the truth therein to open people's eyes and come out and get in good churches, and that's vitally important.

Well, I know that I speak on behalf of so many of the people who will see this to say.

Thank you.

Thanks for spending time with Brandon, and Brandon, great job. We love your film, and we're grateful to see the Lord continue to use it. For more information about American Gospel, Christ Alone, visit themeansofgrace .org.

Summary of the Two Letters and Closing Announcements

John, let's sum up these two letters that we've just talked about.

In letter three and four, we really have turned the corner, and it's just like the good news, one after the next, one aspect of it after the next comes rolling over the life. And if you haven't worked through the issues of the first two letters, it's not that good news.

It's saying, well, God loves you, and you might say, well, I'm pretty lovable. But if you have really, by God's help, seen the truth about yourself, then this is so good that apart from the help of God, you wouldn't believe it.

But God does help us, and we do believe. And so, he talked about the joy that comes in believing, that is, not just in the infinite fullness of Christ, but in the infinite fullness grabbed hold of by faith and brought into our lives, grabbed hold of, held onto, or appropriated.

And in the fourth letter, you know, he talks about the preciousness of Christ. He is precious, but to whom is He precious? He is precious to men and women and children who have believed in Him, who have grabbed.

Hold of Him.

And then, you know, he ends that fourth letter with that wonderful plea that we can go to and say to them, all is ready. The Son is ready to wash and clothe you. The Spirit is ready to make you alive and to renew you and to indwell you.

And the Father is ready to embrace all who come through His Son.

So a Trinitarian salvation, all three members of the Godhead engaged in the redemption of a sinner through Christ, and all three ready and willing to save all those who will come to Christ. Join us next week for the third and final installment in this Letters to a Soul-Seeking Jesus series, where we'll be talking about what does it mean to be found in Christ.

Thanks for listening to the Behold Your God podcast. All the scripture passages and resources we mentioned in the podcast are available in this week's show notes at Mediagratia .org slash podcast. That's M-E-D-I-A-G-R-A-T-I-A-E dot O-R-G.

You can also get there by going to TheMeansOfGrace .org. You can watch the podcast there through our YouTube channel or subscribe via iTunes, Google Play, or anywhere you get your podcast feed. The Behold Your God podcast is a production of Mediagratia.

If you're unfamiliar with the Bible study series, documentaries, and other multimedia projects that we produce, let me invite you to have a look around for materials you can use in your church, small groups, Sunday schools, or family worship at Mediagratia .org.

If you're one of our monthly supporters, jump over to Mediagratia .org where you'll find the link to this week's supporter appreciation episode. This is weekly bonus content that we produce as just one tangible way to say thank you to those of you who believe in what we do and come alongside of us monthly to help us continue doing it.

If you're interested in becoming one of our supporters, whether that's through a one-time gift or a monthly commitment of any amount, visit Mediagratia .org and click on the donate.

Button.

Once you've done that, we'll get in touch and we'll give you access to our whole library of supporter appreciation material just shortly after. As with everything we do, we never want finances to be a legitimate barrier between our content and those who would benefit from it.

If that's you, reach out to us at info at Mediagratia .org. We'd love to hear your feedback there on this episode, questions, comments, or any other subject that might be on your mind. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.