Rise Early | Behold Your God Podcast

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Hey, I'm Matthew Robinson, the director of Media Gratiae, and I'm here at Christ Church New Albany with my longtime friend and pastor,

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John Snyder. John, thanks for joining us today. Yeah, glad to be here, man. If you've been following along on our blog and through the emails that we've been sending out recently, you know we've been talking a little bit about using the means of grace, and specifically quiet times, reading your

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Bible, waking up to meet with the Lord in the mornings. And so that's kind of what we want to talk about this morning, and specifically in the life of someone that we sort of look up to from the past.

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In week six of Rethinking God Biblically, beholding

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God in the response of personal holiness, we went to Dundee, Scotland back in 2012, and you mentioned a young man named

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Robert Murray McShane. So tell us, why is he such a significant spiritual influence?

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For a long time, ever since I came to the Lord, McShane has been one of my all -time favorite

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Christian saints. Not just his holiness, not just the impact of his life, his memoirs that his best friend

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Andrew Bernard put together are really stirring, they're really very devotional. And there have been other biographies since, and some collections of his sermons.

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So if you take the whole picture, it's quite an impressive life. But I think what's most helpful to me with McShane is his own communion with God.

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Because I mean, we all feel it. It's one thing to be a college kid, perhaps you feel like you're very busy, but really you only have a few classes, you got some homework to do, but the rest of your life can pretty much be focused on Christ.

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But you get married, you have a wife, you have kids, you become a pastor, and there are so many things, legitimate things, that call for your attention.

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And McShane is a real friend to walk alongside me, and to remind me that the heart of all of that, that the fountain, the stream of all

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God -honoring efforts at home or at church, really they flow from that communion with God.

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But when we think about McShane's devotional life, which I want us to talk about, I do think we need to keep him in his historical context.

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McShane was a college student in the early 1800s, during a time when there was a great turning in part of the

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Church of Scotland. Now the leader of the Church of Scotland, really the main thinker, well the main leader, was a guy named

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Thomas Charles. Now Thomas Charles was actually a very liberal, unconverted pastor.

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He was a theologian, but he found the ministry unengaging. He was a philosopher, he was a mathematician.

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He gave a couple of days a week, in his own letters he mentions it, I give a couple days a week to church, that's plenty, give the rest of my time to something more important.

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But God captured Thomas Charles' heart, and through the conversion of Thomas Charles, there was a real shift among many in the

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Church of Scotland, particularly college students where he taught. And McShane was one of those young men.

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And in the transformation that occurred there, Chalmers emphasized true biblical theology, but he also emphasized the experiential quality that a man must come under the influence of the truth that he professes.

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And so that sweet communion with God, that interchange between God and the soul, really played a significant part in Chalmers' application.

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McShane, in my opinion, is one of the brightest examples of that, of all the young men that were influenced.

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Now, one problem when you read McShane's memoirs, is that his friends say things like this, and you can come away feeling this, we can talk about this later, but one of his friends said that he thought that holiness or grace,

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Christ -likeness, came naturally to McShane, that it was just, it was easy for him.

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And that is a very dangerous lie, because if we believe that, then we put this young man in a different category than us.

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We say, well, he's not like me, and I can admire him, I put him on a shelf like a beautiful thing, but I can't follow him.

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When you read McShane's own words about his spiritual life, though, things are very clear. That's not his experience.

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I was reading his journals, and as a 20 -year -old, soon after conversion, he was writing December 11th, and he writes on that day that he was unfit for communion with God.

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He labored to pray, but he described his prayer time that day as prayerless prayer.

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So it wasn't easy for McShane. But when we continue to read his journals, we find that he presses on.

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He is continually laboring to gain a continual sense of the presence of God.

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And one question would be, why? Well, one answer is the beauty of Christ, the love and loveliness of Christ.

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But there are times where the Christian doesn't feel that. So it's very encouraging to read what

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McShane says. McShane says it wasn't just the loveliness of Christ, it was the awareness of his own personal need of God.

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On one day in his journals, he writes this. He notices that there's a spiritual decay, there's a coldness creeping into his heart as a

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Christian, and he writes, and he asks himself, what's the cause of this? And his answer is this, humble, purpose -like reading of the scriptures has been omitted.

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And then he writes this, what plant can be unwatered and not wither? So this sense, this humility in McShane, this honest assessment of himself,

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I am all need and Christ is all sufficiency, moves him through the rest of his short life on earth to pursue that daily walk with the

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Lord. And so we read things like this later, he says, I rose early to seek God, and I found

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Him whom my soul loveth. Who would not rise early to meet such company?

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It's interesting if you read his memoirs, that toward the end of his life, he wrote up a series of spiritual resolutions.

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And so major point number two dealt with personal prayer life. So it deals with praying for other lost people, for the church, you know, all these things.

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But it also talks about his own walk with the Lord. And he mentions in there one of his spiritual maxims, and I think this is one that he's pretty famous for.

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And he said that he was determined to see the face of God before he met any other person. And this shows up in his advice.

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There was a young ministerial student that wrote him a letter and said, you know, well, I'm struggling as a

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Christian. What do I do? You know, we can certainly sympathize with that. And McShane gave a list of things like, do what the

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Lord gives you to do immediately. Don't put it off. Do everything you do as unto the Lord.

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But the third thing he says to this young college student, he says this, above all, keep much in the presence of God.

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Never see the face of man till you see the face of Him who is your life, your all.

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Now, when we say that, it's, I suppose it would be easy to think, well, what

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McShane is talking about is getting up especially early before all the, you know, the tyranny of the urgent comes crashing in, and making sure you have a good quiet time.

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Well, that's part of it. But Andrew Bernard, his best friend, wrote in his memoirs, remembering McShane's life.

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And he said this, McShane labored to enjoy God all the day.

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So it was more than just the mornings. Yes. So personal enjoyment of God.

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I mean, that's what he even says. Who would not wake up to meet with one like this? Clearly, he didn't see it as a chore.

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He didn't see it as something that he needed to check off in order to stay in God's good graces, that it was the love of God and the beauty of his own

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Savior that drew him to the closet, you might say. But personal enjoyment of God.

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Some might say that that's a pretty narrow focus. So with so much emphasis on personal prayer and communion with God, that one could become self -focused and it could lead to a life of sort of self -indulgent mysticism and not just living on the good objective truths of the of the

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Christian faith. So what was the outcome of that kind of devotion in Robert Murray McShane's life?

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Now, I think that that fear is a valid fear. It is something that we as believers want to guard against.

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I mean, anytime the Lord gives us a precious gift, we do find that we have an enemy that would cause us to abuse that gift.

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I remember reading in the letters of Samuel Rutherford when he was in prison that he experienced such extraordinary seasons of the nearness of God.

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You know, I mean, it was it was a time of great need for his own soul. And as we always find our

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Lord, he meets his children in those times. And there is there is an unusual comforting that comes.

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But Rutherford in his letters, which McShane read a lot, Rutherford mentioned that it was always possible for a believer to have two

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Jesuses. One was the true Christ that you love. And one, you could make a little Jesus or a little

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God of the feelings you have in your quiet time. And so Rutherford was afraid that he was enjoying

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God so much that he might make an idol of the feelings instead of focusing on God himself. And so I think that's a valid fear.

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But if we bring our souls to meet God himself with a determination that God is the treasure of our heart and not just the way we feel, then

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I think we can trust our Father that if we start to get off the path, you know, he does take us by the hand and he leads us back.

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But in McShane's life, it is very clear that that was not the result. This kind of a self -indulgent spirituality was not the result of this walk with the

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Lord. Let me give you a few examples. Some of my favorite. One evidence or one fruit of this walk with the

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Lord was what we could call a real fragrance of Christ in his life.

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And it's the kind of thing that other people notice and they were affected by it. My favorite account of this in McShane's life was when he was preaching away from his own church in Dundee and he was preaching at another pastor church.

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And the pastor of the church was an older, very godly, very faithful pastor. And so McShane preached at his church and spent the night.

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And the next morning they were up early in the pastor study and they were having a conversation and McShane needed to go ahead and head back home.

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So he gets on his horse and goes home. And the elderly pastor's wife is shocked when she hears her husband in his study weeping.

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So she comes in and ask him, what's wrong? And his statement is so convicting to me.

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He said, there goes the most Christ like man I've ever met.

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So a real Christ likeness, the kind that haunts people beneficially, was one result.

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Another result really, we could say, is a compassion for souls. We might not think that our own personal communion with God in prayer and the

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Scripture would make us focused on other people, but it really does ultimately, you know, the heart of Christ being formed in us.

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After McShane died, Andrew Bonnard notes in his memoirs of his friend that people would kind of make a pilgrimage to the church.

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They wanted to see the place where a great revival had occurred under his preaching.

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They wanted to see where this famous young man who died at age 29 lived and labored. So people would come to the church and they would ask to see his pulpit.

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They would ask the elders at the church, what was the secret of his impact on people? And it's very instructive what the elders did.

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One elder would take the people and he would take them not to the pulpit first, but he would take them to McShane's study and he would show them the place where McShane would kneel and pray.

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And there was McShane's Bible open and the pages were tear stained. And he would say, if you want to have a compassion for souls like McShane, you start here, you weep over the souls in prayer.

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And then he took them to the pulpit. And you and I have seen that pulpit when we were there. And on the pulpit, they would walk up into the pulpit and they would see that the

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Bible stand on the pulpit was also covered in tears. So first, McShane wept for people in his prayer time and then he wept for them while he spoke to them about Christ.

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So a real compassion for souls. Another interesting story. Dundee was a pretty rough industrial town and McShane was a sensitive, poetic young man.

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You would have thought that it was not a good match. But the Lord used this young man in a wonderful way. So much so that there is an account of the homeless kind of drunks in the town.

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When McShane would walk by, they would take their hats off in respect to this pastor.

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And one man who was kind of new to the scene, he was sitting by the other drunks.

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And when they took their hat off, he said to them, what are you doing? And they said, take your hat off, man.

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There goes a man that loves your soul. So there was something about his own walk with the

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Lord that kept him from being a self -centered mystic, but made him so concerned about the other souls around him that even the drunks in the town honored that.

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I think there is one other thing I'd like to mention. There is something about a walk with the

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Lord that produces a life that I would describe it this way. It is a life worth missing.

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I mean, there are some people that when they pass away, their family misses them. Of course, their loved ones, their friends miss them.

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But really, the kind of life they live was so selfish and so destructive that it's not really a life worth missing.

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And then there are some people that pass away. And the loss of that believer, not just in your home, but in a church, in a town is felt.

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Let me read you what his close friend wrote when, what Andrew Bernard wrote when

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McShane died. He wrote this. Never, never in all my life have

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I felt anything like this. It is a blow to myself and to his people and to the

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Church of Christ in Scotland. Life has lost half of its joy.

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There was no friend whom I loved like him. It would be quite a statement if the way we open our souls to God before Him every morning as the scriptures opened up and we sit before Him and say to Him, we are yours.

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Say whatever you want to say. What a wonderful thing if at the end of our life, when we're no longer on this earthly scene, those around us would say those kinds of words about us.

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Now, a few days later, Bernard wrote this. I feel as if there were less of God's presence among us now.

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But here was his answer. I must myself live nearer to God and find what my friend found.

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You know, when we read things like that in biographies of McShane and other saints from the past, it can really kind of feel like they're super Christians.

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So they're like A -level guys and we're down here, we're B and C and some of us are Z's, you know, but they're in a different category and that's why they had that kind of life.

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What would you say to people who feel like they could never walk with the Lord as near as McShane did?

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Yeah, well, I think the short answer to that is join the crowd. You know, I remember a group of young ministers or we were all meeting together in the early days of the church plant here and we met in Memphis, Tennessee.

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So Anthony was there, Jordan, and we were reading McShane's memoirs together.

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And I mean, you know, your heart would be inflamed. But the next feeling you would feel was, man,

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I'm not even a Christian, you know, or I'm a Christian, but I limp along. And McShane was like the world -class sprinter.

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And it was very good. We followed that book with a book by John Owen called Communion with God. You know,

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Owen's sweetest, simplest book on how does a Christian hold fellowship with all three persons of the

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Trinity. And it was like God showed us our slow pace when we looked at McShane and then looked at ourselves and then

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God showed us Christ and we found the cure. So it was it was really the right order.

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Yeah. But let's look at McShane's life. McShane faced that same question when he was in college.

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He was really bothered because he bought Jonathan Edwards complete works. He had just read

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David Brainerd's life, which which Edwards published. And so the early American missionary, the early revivalist

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David Brainerd. And he said, oh, you know, he looked at Brainerd and said, if if I just had half of that Christianity, then he reads

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Edwards. Well, I mean, he's in at the deep end, not just intellectually, but spiritually. And he was really bothered when he could see that Edwards seemed to be so far ahead.

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And when he looked at his life back here, he thought, I'll never walk with the

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Lord like Edwards walked the Lord. I'll never be a bright and shining light. This is what he wrote in his journal.

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He said, how feeble does my spark of Christianity appear besides such a son?

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As you in such a star. But then he writes this, even

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Edwards had a borrowed light and the same source is open to enlighten me.

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And then we watch his life from that point forward be a demonstration that Jonathan Edwards, a glorious, shining star in the

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Christian history, in the church. But that was a borrowed light. It came from Christ. So why could not

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McShane have the same light? Now, when I read that, I am so encouraged to think

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John Snyder is no John Edwards and John Snyder is no Robert McShane. And I have admired

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McShane for twenty nine years. And I feel that sometimes I'm further behind McShane than when

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I first read him. But at the end of the day, we turn our our floundering souls to him and we say to the

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God that purchased us, McShane had a borrowed light. Can I not have something of that same light for your glory in my day?

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So I think that anybody that reads McShane and is tempted to put him on a pedestal has to really put to death that lie and go to Christ and say, for your everlasting glory in my day, in my town, in my marriage, in my school, they had a borrowed light.

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And I want to know, are you still the unchanging son? Can I still have that light in my life and put him to the test and see if that not is if that if that truth is not still true for us today?

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's sometimes we have to shake ourselves back into reality and remember that none of these guys woke up every day and said, you know what?

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I'm Robert Murray McShane or I'm Jonathan Edwards. You know, I know how this story ends.

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I better get after it. There was no encouragement in who they were, just like who we are is rarely, if ever, an encouragement to us.

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But they had the same word of God. They had the same means of grace that God's people have today.

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And they had to humble themselves every day and open it up and seek the

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Lord's face. And he was faithful to meet with them. And he will be faithful to meet with us.

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It's very encouraging when we see it from that perspective. Yeah. Well, thanks for taking time, brother.

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We'll get back together next week and talk about this a little more. Good. We're about to cut now.

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And we're going to record some questions for some of our supporters, some more personal

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Q &A questions. And if you're interested in that kind of thing, you can take a look at MediaGratia .org

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and see what our monthly support options look like there. Thanks for taking time to watch.