Called to Be Men of God — Eric J. Alexander

The Need to Take Heed to Self and Doctrine

While the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God has created, to be received with thanksgiving of them who believe and know the truth.

For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer. If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine whereunto thou hast attained.

But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little or temporarily, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation. For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trusting in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, specially of those that believe.

These things command and teach, that no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believer in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.

Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Meditate upon these things, give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all.

Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this, thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee. May the Lord bless his word to us. Brethren, as we come together this evening, I want if I may to open my heart to you in a special sense.

I had been looking forward to this conference day much for many weeks, and to the fellowship that we were to share together, and to the opportunity which is so seldom given to any of us who are here this evening, I suppose, of being ministered unto in the things of God.

And I had, in a very decisive way, set aside the last two weeks, specifically from all other outside engagements and concerns, in order to give myself to preparation for this week's conference. Now I have been in the ministry for something like twelve years now, I suppose.

And I cannot recollect a time when I have been so deluged with pastoral problems of the most profound and difficult nature, and my whole plans and programs so effectually torpedoed as they have been in the last two weeks.

I have spent, I cannot count how many hours, with a twenty-eight year old doctor in practice who is a paranoid schizophrenic. I have been in the middle of the night as well as during the day dealing with another woman who is mentally very seriously ill.

I have been deluged by problems from two families in my congregation where the daughters have fallen morally, and there has been agony in the hearts of their parents. And so there is a very real sense this evening in which I come to you with all the plans and patterns that I had previously intended to work through, demolished.

I was saying to someone earlier today, I'm sure there was a time when this would have worried me very much. Largely, I think, and I think we all know what this means, for the sake of a certain kind of spiritual pride, that I believe that God is sovereign in this matter too.

And that in one sense, he has been preparing the way for this conference in a way that I would never have expected nor chosen. And that there are certain things that are on my heart this evening in these hurried hours that I have had to prepare for this conference, which he means to say to us during these days.

And therefore, there is a very real sense in which I come to this conference with my spirit molded by the way that God has been dealing with us in our own situation in Scotland in these last weeks, and in a very special sense, cast upon him.

And I come to in the spirit of being concerned, therefore, peculiarly. Not so much to be talking to you, or being the one who is teaching, but rather to learn together with you some of the things that seem to me to be so utterly vital in all our thinking about the work of the ministry, which is our theme in these evenings.

Within this general concern, I believe that God has purposed that we might focus our thinking on these three evenings and three spheres. This evening, upon the primary fact that above all other things that we are called to be, we are supremely called to be men of God.

And that is to be the focus of our thinking for this evening. Tomorrow evening, I hope to draw your attention to the essential nature of the work of our ministry, and to suggest to you that we are called supremely in that connection to be ministers or servants of the Word of God.

And on the last evening, I hope we may deal with some of the things that are involved, and which you will understand are peculiarly close to my own heart and experience in these days, in being called to be shepherds of a flock.

The Minister's Character Determines His Ministry

But this evening, the focus of our attention is upon what the Apostle Paul is thinking of, I have little doubt, when he says to Timothy, take heed unto thyself and to the doctrine. And the priority is an apostolic priority, and a priority which you and I may neglect only at the profoundest peril, for ourselves and for our ministry.

There is a very real reason, and a peculiar one, for this priority. It is a reason which is peculiar to the work of the ministry, and I reckon is not to be found in any other sphere of life, and that is that the man you are conditions and largely determines the character of the work that you do.

Now I suggest to you that that is not true in almost any other sphere of life, or in any other calling. It is quite possible, you see, in almost every other sphere of life, for a man to divide these two things effectively, the man he is, and the work he does.

For example, I have been in conversation in the last few weeks with a medical practitioner, who is a man with a brilliant mind, and an extraordinary ability, particularly in diagnosis, and who is recognized to be a brilliant physician.

But I can tell you this evening, because you don't know who he is, that he is a thoroughly bad character. His ethics are atrocious, personally. But he is still a first-rate physician, and that combination is utterly impossible in the ministry.

But you see, it is possible to divorce these two things in other spheres of life. It is utterly impossible in the ministry. You cannot keep your true self hidden in the ministry, which thereby becomes one of the most effective and radical sins of a man's character.

And if you are not found out, as it were, in the early stages, brethren, the day comes when the truth will out about the inner hidden reaches of a man's life. And in the ministry, you cannot keep it hidden.

The man you are determines the work that you do. And the reason for this is that there is spiritually, as well as physically, a law of bringing forth. They brought forth every one after his kind. And there is a sense in which that physical principle can be applied to the spiritual life of fruit-bearing.

And we are sent by our Lord and Master that we might bear fruit. And it is impossible to gather grapes of thistle. And the fruit that we bear will be in direct relation to the character that we possess.

Robert Murray McShane, who had to come into this address sooner or later, Robert Murray McShane once said, What a man is on his knees before God, that he is, and nothing more. And that brings us to our true size in the ministry, brethren.

What a man is on his knees before God, that he is, and nothing more. Now you will see what this means. It means that it is perfectly possible for a man to be brilliantly trained theologically, greatly gifted technically, thoroughly orthodox mentally, and reformed, and yet for his ministry to be a complete and unrelieved disaster.

Because it is possible to be thoroughly trained, thoroughly orthodox, thoroughly reformed, and thoroughly dead. And beloved, if you are a corpse in the ministry, it doesn't greatly matter whether you are a reformed corpse or a liberal corpse.

You are a corpse all the same. And in these days we need to pay attention to this. I believe. The reason for this, of course, is that it is men God uses. It is men God anoints. The Holy Spirit of God throughout the whole of the scriptures comes upon men.

So I say again, the man you are largely conditioned. The work that you do. Now I'm well aware that that statement taken out of its context could in some senses be misleading. But there is a basic principle here from which we can never escape.

Experiential Knowledge of God and the Gospel

And as we seek to discover together some of the marks of the man God wants to make us, I make no apology for suggesting to you that he must first of all be a man of experience. Now, of course, I am not referring here primarily, nor indeed at all for this purpose, to that kind of experience which is so often thrust upon people as a necessity when they're preparing for the ministry.

The experience of the world and the experience of men and getting to know people and getting alongside the man on the factory floor and so on. This is all very helpful, I'm sure. And I think it's wrong to be cynical about that kind of experience.

But I'm referring rather to that personal experience of God and of the gospel that a man is called upon to minister. My concern is expressed infinitely better than I could express it in the words of Spurgeon when he wrote, Better abolish pulpits than fill them with men who have no experimental knowledge of what they preach.

Now, brethren, we may all of us say amen to that. But let us wait to be sure that we are not saying it about other people and failing to apply this truth to our own hearts. Better abolish pulpits than fill them with men who have no experimental knowledge of what they preach.

Of course, there is a basic New Testament provision which undergirds this. One of the New Testament words used to describe the ministry is the word matu and concerns the whole thought of witnessing to something that we have experienced and known for ourselves.

And I don't believe that this is confined to the preserve of the first apostles. Paul speaks addressing himself to the Ephesian elders at Miletus describing his ministry that he had received from the Lord Jesus in these words, testifying, he says, this is the ministry, testifying to the gospel of the grace of God.

And there is this element in ministry, an inescapable element, of a testifying to something that we ourselves have touched and handled, the reality of which has broken in upon our lives. And it is this that I would suggest to you is the indispensable context of a man's ministry.

Now, be careful, I am not saying that it is the content of his ministry. You will scarcely imagine that I am suggesting that our preaching should degenerate into the retailing of personal experience. But I insist with equal vigor that the context of a man's ministry of the word of God is inevitably this personal experience of God and of the gospel and of the things that he is preaching about.

It is the essence of the New Testament atmosphere in which the word of God is ministered. Our preaching is, of course, a heralding of God's mighty act in redemption. But my point is that we are to preach it as men who are personally involved in the Redeemer in such a way that his redemption and revelation have changed our own lives.

And if this is so, it will quite inevitably break through. The reality of the words that we are preaching will first be borne witness to, beloved, by the Holy Spirit through our own lives. And I wonder if it is not the absence of this that is the explanation of that cold and metallic touch that can creep into a man's ministry so easily.

May I share with you, brethren, that there are many people who sense amongst those of us who hold the Reformed position that very coldness and detachment and clinical touch in our ministry. We are here this evening and in these days to deal with realities.

And I suggest to you that there is something of this that we need to come before God with honest and open hearts about. That spirit of harshness, that coldness, that sense of distance and detachment. Is it not here that we need to learn afresh the need for a conviction that is born of experience?

And I wonder this in suggesting to people that we do not live, of course, by our experience. We live by the Word of God in our concern for being objective to which I give my whole heart and mind. I wonder if we may be in danger of losing the need for that reality in our own experience which is so vital.

Last summer when I was on holiday I took with me Helmut Thielecke's book to be distinguished from the other man with a similar name, Paul Thiele. Helmut Thielecke is the German whose writings have become very popular amongst many people today.

He has a book called The Trouble with the Church. I don't think that what he thinks is the trouble with the church is really what I think is the trouble with the church. But there are some very valuable insights in Thielecke's book.

And in one place he asks a question which seems to me to be very vital. And it's directed to ministers. Is the center of gravity of your life in the message you preach or is it somewhere else? This is what the world wants to know, says Thielecke.

In these days of the advertising medium when the man who speaks so much about the commodity doesn't take it himself at home the world wants to know is the center of gravity of your life who preach the everlasting tidings of God's grace in the message that you preach or is the center of gravity of your life however slightly somewhere else?

Do you see what he means? And with all the other things that one would disagree in his writings one has to open one's heart to this particular issue. Where is the center of gravity of your life? Is it in these very things that you are preaching?

And is that obvious to people because it's true? I think the greatest testimony that was ever born to a minister was born by someone who spoke of a ministry in Scotland and of the man behind it. In these words, he is a man who knows God and he helps me to know him better.

I suggest to you brethren, that is the kind of character we ought to covet. The man you are conditions the work that you do and the basic thing, the context in which we minister the word is that we should be men of experience who have experienced the very things that we are urging upon other people.

The Love of Christ as a Constraining Force

Within the same context, may I suggest to you in the second place that the man God calls us to be will be a man under constraint. I'm thinking, of course, of that description of the Apostle Paul's ministry in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 14 where he describes himself and his fellow laborers as men under constraint.

The love of Christ constrains us. And the word, as you will know, is the same word that Jesus used when he speaks of the baptism with which he is to be baptized. I have a baptism to be baptized with and how am I straitened?

And it's the same word as constrained. Until it be accomplished. And it is a word which doesn't mean so much what we often take it to mean to be thrust out. Here is what thrust out the great Apostle over the ancient world, a flame for God, he was constrained by the love of Christ.

The word rather means quite the opposite. It means to be held in as the banks of a river hold it in and keep it on its course. And this is the meaning of this word which sheds so much light upon the Apostle's ministry.

He is a man under constraint, held by the love of Christ. I remember Alan Stutz at one of the earliest student conferences that I ever attended telling us of his time in China. When he used to see the river Yangtze at one point in its journey and this connection, it has that one place great banks which are a solid rock which hold the river, constrain it on its course.

I remember Alan Stutz telling us who were students and some of us students for the ministry in these days he said it does three things to that river. It gives it depth. As these grey constraining banks hold the flow of the mighty Yangtze it ploughs its way down into the depths of the river bed and gives it vast depths at that point where it is constrained.

It gives it dynamic for the great power of this surging water is harnessed by the constraining force of the banks of the river and it gives it direction. As this river cannot be dissipated and moved to and fro like that other river in ancient times which put a word into our language, the river Meander which is a picture of so many of our lives the river Yangtze is at that point held and given direction.

And beloved if there are three things that we need in our lives and in our ministries and in our churches and in the lives of believers for whom God has given us responsibility in these days it is these three things is it not?

Now the Apostle Paul found this constraining force upon his own ministry upon his own life and it was this that gave focus to his life and direction to his ministry. And he is writing out of all the context of the sufferings and perplexities and trials and tribulations of the ministry in two Corinthians, you'll remember it's there that he speaks about being perplexed and cast down about bearing about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus and yet when people ask what is it that keeps the man going through all these years through all these dark and harsh and difficult days his answer, the love of Christ and that not in any dissipated and emotional sense Paul speaks of the love of Christ in that passage in a very clear and very decisive fashion he says the love of Christ constrains us because we thus judge we look at it this way, this is how we understand it and brethren it was his understanding of the theology of the atonement that did this for the Apostle Paul it's not his love for Christ, it's Christ's love for him and this is what New Testament theology did for Paul it set a flame burning in his heart that remained incandescent throughout all his days as he went out over the ancient world and saw men and women drawn to God.

And it is this kind of constraint that we need to let God apply to our lives so that we are men under constraint. It was this that made him the kind of man who says this one thing I do brethren are you known as a man of one thing?

True Humility and the Glory of God

A man under constraint. May I suggest to you in the third place that this whole concern of being the man whom God will be pleased in his grace and mercy to use will involve us in not only being a man of experience and a man under constraint but a man of true humility.

Now by that I mean something rather specific. It's a very difficult thing to speak about humility isn't it without becoming very self-conscious. I'm not speaking now about that kind of groveling attitude which has more to do with Uriah Heep than with the New Testament which is very proud of its humility you know and very conscious of it.

I hope we may be able to speak of this outside of that atmosphere this evening. You know about that book which I apologized to Mr. Riesinger came from America entitled Humility and how I achieved it. I'm speaking this evening about something which seems to me to be tremendously important for our present purpose in thinking about the ministry of the word.

Every calling has its peculiar habits. And the man who stands in the pulpit and is set over a people and he is in a very real sense set over them by God as the shepherd of the flock he is exposed to the sickening peril of vainglory and pride and self-display.

Brethren you will not have been long in the ministry if you haven't discovered this already. And it is something that we need to face because however much we may seek to disguise our pride and our vainglory there is nothing so deadening in the ministry as this.

However you may disguise it. And I suppose if God opens up pathways to ministry in different spheres if there are larger numbers and you're called to minister in a place where there are many people you are exposed to it in an ever more incisive fashion and I say again it's a deadly thing.

I wonder if you know of the young man in Scotland it's said by some that it was in Dr. Alexander White's church of St. George's in Edinburgh that he went up into the pulpit on his very first Sunday in the church newly ordained a brilliant young man who had been made a very great deal of in the circles in which he had moved and had been the first man of his year in the university and he was very full of himself.

And he walked up into the pulpit in St. George's on this Sunday when it came his turn to preach with great confidence and great cockiness and there he stood before the people and surveyed them all. And as he started to preach suddenly his words appeared to rush back down his throat and his mind went a ghastly blank and he forgot everything that he was going to say and his tongue wouldn't obey the dictates of his thoughts and he found himself confused and stumbling and bungling his way through ten minutes and in deep shame and embarrassment he sat down and crawled down the pulpit steps at the end if it had been possible with his head between his knees and came into the vestry and lay over the table.

And when quite if it was he came back in he said to himself what went wrong. White said to him Laddie, if you'd get up the way you come down you'd have mere chance of coming down the way you get up. And there is a profound spiritual truth in that and that is not said in order that we might try to affect some kind of mock humility than which there is nothing more obnoxious.

I believe in the sight of God that we might learn the fact that Paul was seeking to teach the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 you'll remember where he was faced with this problem of people glorying in men.

And Paul deals with it largely by pointing to the fact which underlies the point of true humility in the ministry. And that is this that this work in which we are engaged is God's work and not our. Paul may plant and Apollos may water.

But planting and watering are not the efficient causes of vegetation. It is God that giveth the increase. And then he turns to the neuter gender to emphasize the point what then is Paul? What is Apollos?

What thing is Paul? What thing is Apollos? They are no thing. Only God is anything in the ministry of the word. It is God that giveth the increase and beloved. It is the increase that we so greatly need in our day as in Paul.

And it is this that our Lord is emphasizing to the disciples. I am the vine ye are the branches. The agricultural metaphor is the perfect one of course. And without me ye can do nothing now. Of course this does not mean that there is no kind of work that you can do in the ministry even although God the Holy Spirit is breathed right out of your ministry by your own foolish pride you can go on laboring.

And it is as though God is saying go on great preacher without me. For you see it is possible for a man to indoctrinate other men even with reformed doctrine beloved that only God can regenerate them.

And a great illustration of this principle of course is the life of John the Baptist who had not merely as a motto pinned on his wall but as words that were burned into his soul. I must increase. And John's ministry is introduced to us you will notice in the gospels largely with an emphasis not on who he was or what he was doing but rather on what he wasn't.

Have you noticed that? And a great encouragement to those of us who are discouraged by ourselves and our own weaknesses and failures. He was not that light. He was not that prophet. He was not what was he then.

He was a voice crying in the wilderness. But they heard John speak and they followed Jesus. I tell you brethren there is no greater blasphemy under God's heaven than to use the pulpit as a place for self-advertisement or self-display or self-glory.

Now God is the God who has said my glory. I will not give to another so that I have to ask myself this evening before God. And I am opening my own soul to is the real honest longing of my heart that when I am done people may say what a preacher or what a sermon is my longing that they might say surely the Lord is in this place.

This has been to me the house of God and the gate of heaven. Is that the longing that really consumes our heart. Brethren that's what I mean by a man who has a true humility. Remember Jesus warning in Matthew chapter 6 in the sermon on the mount about giving alms.

And it applies to the whole sphere of Christian service. When thou doest thine alms he says don't do it as the Pharisees do in order that they might be seen of men. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.

That thine alms may be in secret. And God who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Now there is a principle of reward and of purpose and intent in these areas. In Matthew 6 where Jesus is speaking about the secret concern and the principle appears to be that the man whose desire is for the reward of men gets it.

They do it that they might be seen of men. Verily I say unto you says Jesus they have their reward. They get the praise of men. But that's all they get. But you when you do your alms do it in secret. Let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth.

And God your father who seeth in secret will reward you openly. The question is you see do I need to be seen of men in order to be faithful to God. Now brethren let's examine ourselves. What about the big occasion as opposed to the little occasion.

You know am I more concerned to be faithful in preparation for instance when it's the big occasion than I am when it's just the dozen or so in the quiet hidden corner of ordinary people. I tell you with utter honesty this evening I face this question.

When I go to the couple of dozen people who meet with me for Bible study on a Wednesday evening in my congregation I face this question. What about that occasion as opposed to the other when there may be hundreds of people there.

I don't think there are many of us who don't need to search our souls about this. What is our aim and purpose. Who are we out to please. Oh we say we are not men pleasers. Well let him that thinketh he standeth take heed.

This is why Spurgeon is said on the steps up to his pulpit to have paused. Is he not on every step as the adulation of the crowd was focused upon him and he stopped to say on every step as he mounted up to preach the word.

I believe in the Holy Ghost. I believe in the Holy Ghost and of true humility. If what I've just been saying is true then the last thing is a logical corollary of this and that is that if we are to take heed to ourselves and become the kind of men God uses we will be men of prayer men of experience men under constraint men of true humility and men of prayer.

Prayer as the Foundation of Ministry

If this work is God's work you see and not ours then in such a man's life and ministry prayer will not as it so often is be supplemental it will be fundamental. Let me quote you Sturgeon again of course the preacher is above all others distinguished as a man of prayer.

He prays as an ordinary Christian. Else he were a hypocrite. He prays more than ordinary Christians else he were disqualified from the office which he has undertaken. The point is that the eternal worth of any man's ministry is in direct proportion to the validity of his secret life and his walk with God.

It was Professor Finliss and I first heard saying it in Scotland. But I gather that it's a phrase that has arisen in many contexts that it does express the truth that the secret of failure is so very often failure.

There is of course a warning note that needs to be sounded here. All this does not mean that a minister's private devotional life is a kind of lever for service and a means starting from God as it were for blessings that we see we need.

Can you grasp the distinction that I'm seeking to make here the moment a man's communion with God comes down to this level of using it as a lever because he sincerely believes that this is the way to see God work.

He becomes guilty of using God for his own end and of indulging in the blasphemy of making God his servant. I think this is an important thing. You get the same kind of thing in many people's personal lives in what is often called the devotional reading of the Bible.

You know where people say I just read the Bible devotionally to get a word to help me through the day. You know the kind of thing to get a thought that is going to carry me through the next 24 hours. If somebody professed their love for you but was only interested in you in so far as you ministered to their own ends and purposes you would accuse them or at least suspect them unjustifiably of covered love wouldn't you.

And if they professed their devotion it would be legitimate to ask to whom are they devoted to me or to themselves. And there is a sense in which we need to beware of the subtle peril only being interested in a life of communion with God because we want the display of God's power in order that we might feed our own spiritual pride.

Do you know anything about this? I read to you a portion of William Law's serious call devotion is neither public nor private prayer but prayers whether private or public are particular parts or instances of devotion.

Devotion signifies a life given or devoted to God. He therefore is the devout man who lives no longer to his own will or the way and spirit of the world but to the soul will of God who considers God in everything who serves God in everything who makes all the parts of his common life parts of piety by doing everything in the name of God and under such rules as are conformable to his glory.

I suggest to you that that is the foundation of the life of communion with God which ought to lie at the heart of a man's and this will relieve us of something of that strained unnatural atmosphere that creeps into some of our lives my respected and trusted friend the Reverend William Still of Aberdeen who once said it is the spiritual thing done naturally and the natural thing done spiritually which distinguishes the man of God.

I commend that to you for a meditation Reverend. Now in the light of all this I think we need greatly to see this imperative place of prayer in the context of our basic need as Christian men and Christian ministers to know God.

That is the reason that prayer is so vital in the ministry not as a lever primarily but the primary reason it's so vital and from this of course the whole question of our intercession and supplication for the work of God's spring but the primary reason it is so vital is that there is no greater need in the ministry than that a man should know God.

Knowing God Rather Than Merely Knowing About God

I think it's not unnecessary even amongst us this evening to distinguish between knowledge about God and knowledge of God. Those of us who have the concern which is so entirely commendable for the diligent study of theology need to watch over our souls in a special way here because you see it's possible to know about God in the most detailed and profound and orthodox way and yet hardly to know God at all.

I read you some words of Dr. Packer from the Evangelical magazine of a few years ago in this analytical and technological age there is no shortage of books on the church book stalls or sermons from the pulpit on how to pray, how to witness, how to read our Bible, how to tithe our money how to be a young Christian how to be an old Christian how to be a happy Christian how to get consecrated, how to lead men to Christ, how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit or in some cases how to avoid receiving it, how to speak with tongues or how to explain away Pentecostal manifestations and generally how to go through all the various motions which the teachers in question associate with being a Christian believer.

Nor is there any shortage of biographies delineating the experience of Christians in past days for our interested perusal whatever else may be said about this state of affairs it certainly makes it possible to learn a great deal second hand about the practice of Christianity.

Moreover if one has been given a good bump of common sense one may frequently be able to use this learning to help floundering Christians of less stable temperament to regain their footing and develop a sense of proportion about their troubles and in this way one may gain for oneself a reputation for being quite a pastor.

Yet one can of all this and hardly know God at all. I think that's true brethren. Daniel 11 32 reminds us that it is the people that know their God who shall be strong and do exploits. And one is therefore not to find not surprised to find amidst all the paganism and all the debauchery of the atmosphere in which Daniel ministered this man of God standing out in his generation as a man who was influencing rather than influenced.

Nor is one surprised to discover that his windows were open towards Jerusalem and he was found bowed before God three times a day. And one is not surprised to find either that the great apostle himself who preached the strongholds of Satan in days full of complexities and darkness tells us that the consuming passion of his life was that I may know him all things I am ready to count but loss for the excellency of this knowledge.