Revisiting Letters of Robert Murray M'Cheyne | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. For the next couple of weeks, we're going to be doing some re-broadcast. Because we're in the middle of a series discussing the influence of Puritans on the era we in America know as the First Great Awakening.

In the UK, the work is known as the Evangelical Revival. Eventually, we're going to be focusing on their view of the great doctrines of our salvation. Now, if you're a longtime listener, Puritans and Evangelical Revival are certainly not new ideas to you.

However, if you've recently discovered the podcast, you may not be as familiar with them as some of our older listeners. So, we thought it'd be a good idea to dig into our archive and introduce you to some people who were greatly influenced by the Puritans that we won't necessarily discuss in this series.

This week, we wanted to point you to one of John's favorite pastors, Robert Murray McShane. We'll have the audio and video from each episode available at Mediagratia .org. We hope you enjoy.

Robert Murray McShane and the Purpose of the Letters

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

This is the first episode in a new series where we're going to be dealing with letters to a soul-seeking Christ that were written by Robert Murray McShane back in 1841-ish in Dundee when he was a minister there.

And these are letters that we've used here in the church pastorally, John. You've given them to lots of people that have been in the situation similar to the young lady that we think Robert Murray McShane wrote these letters to back in 1841.

Tell us a little bit about the letters and tell us about how you've used them pastorally here at Christ Church.

The letters are very simple. They're about a page each typed, and they're very biblical. He gives a statement and then he gives a passage so that the reader can see that it's not just Robert Murray McShane that's saying these things.

And we do use these frequently as an evangelistic tool within the church. Now, there are some guidelines, as you mentioned. One is the type of person we would give these to. We don't give these letters to people who are just kind of curious.

We give these letters to people who have come to us, and there's a real sense of burden over their soul. The ground, you can tell, is already starting to be plowed by the Spirit and the gospel. And so they're pretty serious, and they're serious enough at least to read six one-page letters.

So these aren't the kind of people that you might just hand a gospel tract to, but nor are they necessarily the kind of people that we would give a small book to. And that's also what we do after these letters.

If people have read through these letters and we've discussed them, and there's still a lot of confusion, maybe it seems that they haven't really moved forward very clearly, sometimes we'll give them another resource, Joseph Alain's book, Alarm to the Unconverted, or A Sure Guide to Heaven, two different titles, same book.

And that's for those that are really willing to plow through a 150-page book. So these letters, we give it to people that are pretty interested in their spiritual condition.

Yeah, they were written to an anxious seeker in the flock. And so even though that's not a category of people, that does describe sometimes where people find themselves, where they've heard the bothered, they don't know.

If they don't feel like maybe they are in Christ, and they want to know, what do I do? So that's the person that you would sort of have in focus.

Yeah, and when we give the letters, we give them generally one a week or two a week. So maybe if it's a person that's very regular in church, I give them a letter on Sunday, and then I give the next letter on Wednesday, and the next letter the next Sunday.

And the reason we don't give them to them all at once is because people will be tempted to just zoom through them. And I mean, you know, it's easy to read six pages in 15, 20 minutes. So what we want them to do, and what we encourage them to do is, and oftentimes I'll write a little kind of a letter to go along with the letter that says, you know, when you read through these, read through them slowly, wrestle with these issues, keep a journal, write down what it is that you don't understand, write down what it is that is particularly impacting you, but meet with the letter, spread the letter out before the Lord, you know, go to your bedroom, shut the door, kneel beside your bed and say to God, you know, what about what this man says?

And so we ask them to read them slowly, carefully. We often ask them to send an email after reading through a letter and say just what things really bothered you or helped you, but whether or not they send an email at the end of reading the six letters, so between one to three to six weeks, I'll sit down with them or somebody else will sit down with them and just say, okay, now these are things the letters talked about.

What are you going to do with these things? And we have found these to be so very helpful for the person who's seeking the Lord, who's anxious, whether it's a teenager, 13-year-old, or whether it's a 50-year-old doctor in the church.

They're just a very beneficial.

Tool. So why do a short series on the podcast about these letters? Well, we've done a series on evangelism, and we want to point back to how a lot of the things that we've discussed in that series are found.

A lot of those same principles are found in this letter. Here's a guide to Christ who is actually employing those kind of methods, if you will, those principles in pointing anxious inquirers to Christ.

But then on top of that, two reasons. You may be an evangelist, you may be a pastor, you may be just a church member, a Christian who wants to be a faithful guide to Christ, to those who are around you.

We would hope that hearing this podcast would be a help to you in seeing some of those principles that we've talked about in the evangelism series applied. But you may be a person who is an anxious seeker.

You may find yourself not sure of your own spiritual state and how do you come to find a saving interest in Christ. And this podcast may have been given to you by someone who wants to help. And so we're going to read these letters one at a time and discuss them a little bit, hopefully in a way that will be helpful to people in both situations.

But if that's you in the latter category, then listen to what John said. Don't just burn through this whole series of podcasts in an afternoon, but take one, listen, you can look them up online, you can pick them up in the Banner of Truth Memoirs and Remains of Robert Murray McShane and take them slowly and really allow the Lord to deal with you.

Let me jump right into the first one here. I wanted to point out again that this is available in the set that the Banner of Truth makes. It's a single volume called Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray McShane by Andrew Benar.

This is actually 35 through 39, a soul seeking Jesus in the letters section. So great volume, definitely worth your investment. This is letter one written by Robert Murray McShane to an anxious seeker in his flock.

We believe it was a young lady who was anxious about her spiritual condition written in Dundee in 1841. McShane writes, Dear friend, according to promise, I sit down to talk with you a little concerning the great things of an eternal world.

How kind it is in God that he has given us such an easy way of communicating our thoughts, even at a distance. My only reason for writing to you is that I may direct your soul to Jesus, the sinner's friend.

This man receives sinners. I would wish much to know that you were truly united to Christ and then come life, come death, you will be truly and eternally happy. Do you think you've been convinced of sin?

This is the Holy Spirit's work and his first work upon the soul. And he references John 16, 8, Acts 2, 37 and Acts 21, 29 to 30. If you did not know your body was dangerously ill, you would have never sent for your physician.

And so you will never go to Christ, the heavenly physician, unless you feel that your soul is sick, even unto death. Oh, pray for deep discoveries of your real state by nature and by practice. The world will say you are an innocent and harmless girl.

Do not believe them. The world is a liar. Pray to see yourself exactly as God sees you. Pray to know the worth of your soul. Have you seen yourself vile as Job saw himself? Job 11, 3 and 5 and 13, 5 and 6.

Undone as Isaiah saw himself in Isaiah 6, 1 and 5. Have you experienced anything like Psalm 51? I do not wish you to feign humility before God, nor to use expressions of self-abhorrence which you do not feel.

But, oh, pray that the Holy Spirit may let you see the very reality of your natural condition before God. I seldom get more than a glance at the true state of my soul in its naked self. But when I do, then I see that I am wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, Revelation 3, 17.

I believe every member of our body has been a servant of sin, Romans 3, 13 and 18. Throat, tongue, lips, mouth, feet, and eyes. Every faculty of our mind is polluted, Genesis 6, 5. Besides, you have long neglected the great salvation.

You have been gainsaying and disobedient. Oh, that you were brought to pass sentence on yourself, guilty of all. Hear what a dear believer writes of himself. My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable and swallowing up all thought and imagination like an infinite flood or mountains over my head.

I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than by heaping infinite upon infinite and multiplying infinite by infinite. When I look into my heart and I take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deep and yet it seems to me that my conviction of sin is exceedingly small and faint.

Perhaps you will ask, why do you wish me to have such a discovery of my lost condition? I answer that you may be broken off from all schemes of self-righteousness, that you may never look into your poor guilty soul to recommend you to God, and that you may joyfully accept of the Lord Jesus Christ who obeyed and died for sinners.

Oh, that your heart may cleave to Christ. May you forsake all and follow Jesus Christ. Count everything lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. You will never stand righteous before God and yourself.

You are welcomed this day to stand righteous before God in Jesus. Pray over Philippians 3, 7, and 9. I will try and pray for you. Grace be with you, your friend in Jesus, Robert Murray McShane.

And that letter has so many good starting points. Right off, we want to say that these letters are written in a consecutive order. If we get them out of order, we really, you know, they lose so much of their impact.

So the first letter seeking to know how deep the corruption goes, how deep the need goes. Just a couple of things from the letter we want to pull out as highlights. First of all, the enormous hope that's found in this statement that he mentions.

He doesn't start with the statement of, look, you're a wretched, rotten person. He starts with this statement. This man, speaking of Christ, this man receives sinners. And as Matt was reading that, you know, and I was just thinking, this is not just an academic exercise for us.

This is John Snyder and Matthew Robinson's only hope that the one God that exists receives sinners. And there is such a joy just to hear Matt read over that. And, you know, I have pastored for quite a few years, but to read it and to hear it like it's for the first time coming to ears that are just as needy today as the very first time.

And I remember, you know, we knew each other before you were converted. And to see you read that and realize Matt Robinson is not outside of a city hearing about good news of those people inside. He is inside the city speaking to those people outside saying, come.

In the letter, there are a number of key points that we want to point out. First of all, is that McShane really wants to drive home the issue that only God can open a person's eyes to how desperately needy they are.

It's one thing to say I'm a sinner. It's another thing for God to open the eyes to the depth of the corruption. And he warns them, again, not to listen to the world because this is a this is a church girl.

So she could easily hear from other friends that she's she's a fine she's fine, you know, and spiritually she's doing well. But she needs to know what God thinks about her. He helps her to see that by driving home some specific points.

He says in that letter, your body has been devoted to selfishness. You've just you've lived for yourself with this body and the mind, he says, has been polluted in every aspect with sin. And then he gives another evidence of sin.

It's so bad, he says, you've even been willing to neglect up to this point the gospel claims of Christ. Now, one of the evidences that a person really sees these things is mentioned in this letter that you pass sentence on yourself.

You know, you quit justifying yourself, blaming God and others, and you start justifying God's assessment of you and you pass sentence on yourself. And that really is always a very clear evidence that God is dealing with the person.

At the end of the letter, you know, he asked this kind of rhetorical question. Why am I why am I really driving this home? You know, is this cruel? Is this some kind of dark religion that always wants to make a person introspective?

No, he says, I don't want you to mistakenly think there's anything in yourself that you can commend yourself to God with because I want you to go to Christ alone. So in this first letter, right off, we see the balance between objective truths of the gospel truths about ourselves, but also we see a very warm experiential grasp of them.

Christ Our Righteousness and the Need to Hide in Him

Well, moving on to letter number two, remembering again that this would have come after some time, not just a couple seconds later on a podcast, but he writes back to the same young lady and says, Dear friend, I trust the Lord is dealing gently with you.

Above all, I pray that the Holy Spirit may sweetly and silently open your heart to relish the way of salvation through the blood and obedience of Emmanuel. Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins and by him all that believe are justified from all things.

Acts 13, 38 to 39. You would be deeply concerned to hear that your roommate and the name is left out there has been so suddenly and awfully called away. Should it not be a solemn warning to you? Oh, that you may be even now clothed in the righteousness of Jesus so that if you were called away, you may meet God in peace and hear Jesus say, enter into the joy of your Lord.

In yourself, you will never stand righteous before Jehovah. Psalm 130 in verse two answers your case. Enter not into judgment with me must be your cry. In your nature, in your past life, in your breaking of the holy law, in your contempt and neglect of Jesus, in your indwelling sin, God can see nothing but what he must condemn.

Oh, that you would be of the same mind with God about your own soul. Do not be afraid to look upon its loathsomeness for God offers to clothe you in Jesus Christ. By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Romans 5, 19. There is only one in all the world on whose face God can look and say he is altogether lovely. Jesus is that one. Now God is willing that you and I should hide in Jesus. I feel at this moment that he is my righteousness.

This is his name, whereby he shall be called the Lord, our righteousness. Jeremiah 30, Jeremiah 23, 6. I feel that the love of God shines upon my guilty soul through Jesus. This is all my peace. Your tears will not blot out sin.

They do nothing but weep in hell, but that does not justify them. Your right views of the gospel will not justify you. You must be covered with a spotless righteousness. Your change of heart and of life will not justify you.

It cannot cover past sins, neither is it perfect. Your amended life is still fearfully sinful in Jehovah's sight, and yet nothing but perfect righteousness can stand before him. Jesus offers you this perfect righteousness.

In him you may stand and hear God say, you are all fair, my love. There is no spot in me. Do you thus look to Jesus? Do you believe the record that God has given concerning him? Do you receive Christ with open arms?

Do you cry, my Lord and my God, my surety, my all? Dear friend, do not tarry. Eternity may be near. Now is your best time, perhaps your only time, of closing with Christ. How many worlds would a lost soul in hell give for such an opportunity of cleaving to Christ as you have now?

He that has the Son has life. This is all my prayer and desire for your precious, precious soul. Ever yours in the gospel, Robert Murray McShane.".

So in the second letter, we're carrying on the theme of man's sinfulness and need. But McShane's bringing, he's introducing into this conversation the hope. So it's not all dark. This letter really, you're seeing the dawn on the horizon rise.

But he gives some very clear warnings. He said, the sinner must always say to God, enter not into judgment with me. That's got to be our cry. God, I will never ask you to weigh my good and bad and see if I'm okay.

Instead, he says, you've got to be courageous. In fact, you've got to be courageous enough to let God show you yourself and not to turn your face away from that horrible sight. And it is a thing that would make any person really tremble.

And when God begins to show us ourselves, it is tempting to say that's enough, but it's not. Let God do a thorough work. So we must see what God sees about us. But we also want to see what God sees when we're in Christ.

And he warns them, nothing can substitute for Christ. So he says, not your tears. And there's a terrible statement there. People in hell will weep, but their tears will never earn them forgiveness. They do nothing but weep.

And he says, not right views of the gospel, even being able to come to God and say, okay, I've studied the gospel and I've got the right gospel. Just recently, we heard a testimony of a young man in our church who said that he once hoped that having right views of the gospel would put him in a different category than other sinners.

And, you know, and he happened to be speaking with me. And I had to say to them, you think you're some kind of special sinner. Well, I'm a sinner, but at least I'm not a sinner that has that silly view.

Well, that's not a different category.

Yeah, good theology is not Christ.

Yes, yes. And then he even says, changes within you, changes that religion is making, those can't be offered to God. So what can be offered to God? And he says, when God looks at us outside of Christ, he sees nothing except what must be condemned because God is a holy judge.

But when God looks at a believer in Christ, he finds Christ to be altogether lovely. And that really is, as McShane says there, this is all my peace that God delights perfectly in the son that God would say that the son is altogether lovely and that the son is our representative, is our hope.

He goes on to say that in Christ, God can say this of the believer, you are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you. Now that's from the Song of Solomon, but it's a very accurate and beautiful picture of what we read in Colossians, that we are above even God's condemnation or blame because he sees us in the son who, in whom he sees nothing but what he commends.

I think one of my favorite parts about this letter, though, is after saying all these things, McShane says this very simple statement, God is willing for you to hide in Jesus. I mean, this is not a cop out.

You know, this is not me saying to God, okay, I don't want to keep your law, so I'm going to go try plan B. This has always been the delight of the father, that the sinner seeing our need would humble himself or herself and come to God through God's way for God's glory.

And God delights for you to hide yourself in the perfect righteousness of his son.

Evangelistic Use of McShane’s Letters and the Motive for Repentance

Well, let's take a short break here and we'll come right back and sum these two letters up. One of the most encouraging things about attending conferences is when people drop by our booth to tell us how one of our studies or films helped or influenced them, their families, or their church.

Eventually, we started asking if they would let us record their stories to share with you. This is Royal. We talked to him at the G3 conference about rethinking God biblically.

We watch it as a family devotional, a learning opportunity. We go through one of the men of the faith at a time to learn more about them and how that theology affects our lives today. So we spend a lot of time doing that.

And again, we watch it over and over again because you just, you miss certain things, or you just want to remind yourself of what's going on. Wonderful series, wonderful series. I've never been a biography guy.

Theology guy is probably not a lot about biographies, but consequently, having saw the video series, I picked up probably a biography of everybody on the videos because it's so interesting. And when you get those little vignettes, it tells you a little bit about them, but then you really do want to know more about them and what caused them to be so faithful toward God.

And you hear about all the things that they're challenged with as well. And when you hear about these great men who had all the challenges of their life, it makes it so that you say, well, if they can do it and they can persevere to the end,.

So can I. For more information about Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically, visit themeansofgrace .org. So in summary of these first two letters of the six from Robert Murray McShane, letters written to an anxious inquirer, you might say, it seems like the first one, he's really focusing on making sure that the person has a biblically accurate anthropology, a right view of really what we are, what the effect of sin has been.

So that, not just to beat them up, not just to tear down their self-image, so to speak, for the sake of doing it, but so that we never hope in ourselves. We always come to Christ as our only hope and our only plea.

Then in the second letter, there's more of that, but it's a little bit more detailed and it's wise, I believe, because your first inclination to say, OK, OK, OK, I see it. Now I'm going to try to do better.

I've really let myself go. I need to get in spiritual shape. I'm going to try to do better. And then that new activity will recommend me to God. And he says, no, it's not even your new amended life. Let go of all of those things.

You're condemned in anything that you do. But if you're in Christ, you're loved and welcomed and forgiven. And that offer is open to you. Come now. So where do we go in the following letters?

Yeah, in the following letters, having really brought us face to face with the fact that even our best has to be laid in the dirt. He's going to really move, especially in letter three, to the joy that the believer finds that the center finds in believing in the act of believing.

There comes great joy. And and, you know, really here, the kindness of the Lord becomes.

The motive for repentance. 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.

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