August 11, 2017 Show with C. Matthew McMahon on “The Worthy Churchman, or the Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 11th day of August 2017, and I'm delighted to have back on the program Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, who is founder of A Puritan's Mind, and he's going to be addressing today The Worthy Churchman or The Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, and this is a book that was written by John Jackson who lived in the 17th century, and it's my honor and privilege to you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. C. Matthew McMahon.

Thank you, Chris, happy to be.

Here, look forward to discussing the topic of The Faithful Minister. Amen, and in studio with me is.

My co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, it's good to be here for that conversation.

And let me right away give our listeners our email address if you have a question for Dr. C. Matthew McMahon on this subject. Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Chrisarnzen at gmail .com, that's c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

And you may remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter, perhaps for some reason you're complaining in some way about the pastor of the church where you are a member or something, perhaps you have a strong disagreement with your pastor on theology or a doctrine or practice or something else.

I understand that that would give rise to your wanting to remain anonymous, but other than that, other than a private and personal matter, please just give us your first name, city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

And as I was mentioning to you, Dr. McMahon, off the air, there is something explosive happening in regard to the expansion of Iron Sharpens Iron's audience. We're getting contacted sometimes on the air and many times off the air every day by listeners who are new to the program, who have never heard of it until recently, who have fallen in love with it.

So there's going to be a lot of folks perhaps listening that have never heard you on this program and may not yet be familiar with a Puritan's mind. So why don't you share a bit.

About a Puritan's mind with our listeners? Well, the whole idea behind what APM was about was taking what was a blessing to me and sharing it with others. Back in 1997 or so, I had already begun reading all sorts of Puritan works that were being put out by Soledad, Gloria, and Banner of Truth.

One became great, sanctifying blessings to me. And in thinking about that, this new fangled thing began called the internet. And I thought, you know, the internet would be a really great place, an instantaneous global network to put out really good information, Christ, about theology, about the Puritans.

I wanted to come away with the same kind of mind that men like Jeremiah Burroughs and Christopher Love and Francis Turton and William Ames and some of these others that I was reading. I wanted to have the same kind of mind that they had about Christ.

And so I thought, oh, Puritan's mind, that's kind of catchy. So let's take that and we'll post some excerpts of their writings and see if we can get people interested in it. And so Christopher Love and William Ames and Francis Turton were the first three that I started posting.

And that basically just snowballed into what it is today. So over the past 20 years or so, we have thousands of pages, hundreds of Puritans, whole lines there for free. That in turn got me thinking about what kind of people will read what it is that we're putting out.

Because generally what we would do is take the actual information. That means that people were reading things in Old English. Sometimes, depending upon the Puritan, William Perkins, Nicholas Byfield, and some of them, they were earlier, a little bit more difficult to read.

So naturally, out of a Puritan's mind of what we were doing there, Emerge Purit decided to take works that hadn't been, and not only publish them, but make them easily readable. And so we would update them in modern English.

And we have about 200, and most of them, John Jackson is one of the really getting into some of the doctrine and hooks. Well, the Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say.

I just, I can hear through, obviously not literally through my headphones, but I can just hear a lot of the listeners thinking to themselves right now, are you kidding? Why would we want to read the Puritans?

Aren't they those starchy, boring, old-fashioned people that nobody remembers?

Right? Yeah, people tend to get dissuaded from reading them for a couple of reasons. One, the world constantly, even brutally cruel within the church in that way. For example, when we run to the Salem Witch Trials, well, that wasn't the Puritans.

Those were the pilgrims who came over from England and separated themselves from the Church of England because they didn't think that the Church of England could be dissuaded from being changed or sanctified in England.

The Puritan Legacy and the Need for Application

Application. And that was one of the things that made for a faithful minister in that particular manner. Not that they just told you what Scripture said or when they preached. They were eminent in taking that and applying it into your heart, crawling in the back of their head and depositing the truth of God there, placing it in their heart.

Now, preaching for them was not only to the ears, it was to the mind, and they had a very particular way about doing that, which I think we have pushed that off to the side today. It's one of the things, John, that a faithful minister not only understands the Word itself, not only understands what the intent of the Holy Spirit is, but also that he takes it and applies it to the life of the people.

The Puritans were eminent to be, to look in the writings of Augustine. When you read Calvin's Institute, it's almost like you're just reading Augustine. And when you read Augustine, you think that he teaches the world what's in them.

They were the opposite of that. The English Puritans were, and we have a particular application integrating that into their own church, even if we come here out for America, men like Jonathan Edward. Edward was not a Puritan.

He was Puritan-esque. He had much of the same doctrine as the Puritans, and if you read his sermons there, you would read any of the other Puritans, Bridges or Sibbes, and you'll see that they're going to take, explain, and expound it.

Then he's going to pull a doctrine from the text and teach you what that doctrine means, and then he's going to apply it specifically to you, which after years of doing that, the Lord for us here in America chose that Jonathan Edwards would be utilized as one.

And so churchmen in the ministry, they're going to want to preach in the best way. Where are they going to look? They're going to look to the Reformation. They're going to look to the Puritans in that way.

Because they were masters. Yes, you are actually one of the few that I've spoken with who has a thorough knowledge of the Puritans that actually does draw a sharp distinction between Puritans in England and Christians here in the United States, or in America, I should say, who were here even prior to what became the United States of America.

Sure. For instance, I've heard Jonathan Edwards being referred to as the last Puritan, and I've heard that those Christians in New England and Massachusetts had set up what was very near to be a Puritan theocracy in that area.

So these immigrants from England to the United States that were Congregationalists in adherence to the Savoy Declaration and so on, that many of the current day Congregationalist churches who are apostate could actually nonetheless trace their roots back to these Puritans and somehow obviously veered very sharply off the track there of biblical teaching into heresy and apostasy.

But were the ancestors of those who are in Congregationalist churches, especially in New England, were they not properly called Puritans? Or you seem to have a different.

Idea on that. Well, no. They began first to be called precisionists, and they're precisionists with the way they're precise in their doctrine, preaching, and in their lives. But yes, a little after that, the idea of the Puritan came about being those ones who wanted to take and purify the church.

Thomas Cartwright in 1570, he was ejected from his teaching post at Cambridge because he criticized the Church of England and its liturgy and its government, and he called what they were doing pretended.

He says, and I quote, but alas, we have too much reason to complain that Christian religion is fallen from its primitive purity. And so, but when you look at Puritanism in and of itself, if you want to give like formal dates for it, 50s up and through around the 16, middle of the 1660s, where the Act of Uniformity was ultimately passed and Church of England booted out 2 ,000 ministers out of their pulpits, wanted, in words was Puritan-esque, but he didn't live in England, but he followed most of and many doctrines and even the logical order of the way that he preached and taught.

As you can see from reading any of his sermons or his works, it was very Puritan-esque in that way. So the precisionist was a really important term for them in the beginning because it was something in which they were sharply defining.

They were known for, at the same time, logic and such and making that subservient to Scripture, and yet at the same time utilizing that, knowing that you have to be able to think well in order to preach well and study well and such, basically to be some of the greatest.

Persecution, the Westminster Assembly, and Puritan Churchmanship

Preaching that you find in the history of the Christian Church. We have R .J. in White Plains, New York, who says, I heard you just mention moments ago that the Puritans were not the ones responsible for the execution of the witches in Salem, Massachusetts, but I have heard that in England there have been hundreds if not thousands times more witches or alleged witches burned there, and I was wondering who were the perpetrators of those executions?

Were they Puritans or were.

They clergymen in the Church of England? Understanding the historicity of that, I have not dealt so squarely with it to uncover all of it. When you start, if you look at any of the good, what I'm going to call good Puritans, I mean if you look at Burroughs and any of these guys on the Westminster Assembly, none of them had, they didn't have dawdle in such things, they weren't thinking in that particular way to go around persecuting people.

The whole idea, for example, of the Westminster Assembly, they were engaged in putting together what right worship was going to be for Scotland, England, and Ireland, and they were called by Parliament to do that specifically because they needed uniformity in religion.

So who may have persecuted people before then, or maybe the turn of the Reformation up to the start of Puritanism, I don't really know who those people are, because they're none of the good people that I read.

It's not going to be, you know, William Ames and Christopher Love and such. So I think that's one of the problems that people have, is they get this kind of fall-off idea that suddenly when you say the word, that must mean all of them were like that, as much as to say, well, I know a minister scandalously must be just like that, just to think of it that way.

Again, when you're at least, you don't even have to be widely read, you can just be moderately read, or even just pick a few Puritan paperbacks. You'd be like, I mean, you would not find any of those disparagements in any of those works in any of the writings of any of those men.

So reading and studying and looking at most of them are pretty well known to.

Us. Now, earlier in the program, when we first began, you alluded to the Westminster Divines and said that you could elaborate on those men of God, if you could, just to give our listeners more context of where we're coming from.

Why don't you just give a little summary of the Westminster.

Divines? Sure, sure. The Westminster Assembly of Divines, they received their name from the Church of Westminster Abbey, situated in the Western District of the Assembly. Five years, actually, standards.

When these men come together, they chose out a number of different kinds of ministers, independents, Presbyterians, even Erastians. They came together, God's glory, a unified understanding of practice based on solid exposition and doctrine.

They ultimately, once they began to come together, to invite the Scottish commissioners to come over, and so they invited men like Alexander Henderson and George Gillespie and Samuel Rutherford, and the Scottish came over, keeping it brief for you, because there's a lot of history that's involved here.

The Scottish commissioners were like, listen, if we're going to come over and we're going to do this with you, then we need to place together a solemn league and covenant, because it would be really silly and spend years, which they did, on all of these different doctrines, put together a confession, put together catechism, put together the Directory of Public Worship and Private Worship and the form of church government that should be for England, Ireland, Scotland, that if when we just felt like it, we could just toss it all away.

No, here's what we're going to do. We're going to covenant together, and we're going to say, when we're sitting on the dotted line, so the Church of England, who were calling all of these men together to have all of them, solemn league and covenant, sure enough, that's what they did.

And the assembly came together to ratify all of these parts of uniformity. They wanted to be uniform in religion, and you lose a lot of people, because a lot of Christians today are like, well, me and my Bible.

It's just me and my Bible. I don't need a confession. I just need me and my Bible. Well, there's a moment that you ask them, well, what is it that you believe about your Bible? Please tell me what you believe without giving me any kind of...open your mouth and start saying, well, I believe the Holy Spirit is such...you're giving a confession.

So what they did is they picked the best mind and put the chapters, theology of...the confession is not a polemic. It's not written in that way. Its work on the confession began in 1644, 1640. Finally, then in 1649, Parliament and lots of committees that needed to be put together to study all of these different things, writing book, and it's amazing how much they acted then on the ecclesiastical aspect, attended the assembly, and worked with them to put together the best creedal formulas that we have.

It wasn't just that we want to sit down and tell people, you know, who God is, but at the same time, we want to show how that's going to practically apply, which is what they do.

All through the larger and shorter. I am going to read you a part of a question here from our second listener. And by the way, RJ in White Plains, I forgot to mention to you, you have also won a free copy of The Worthy Churchman or The Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ by John Jackson, which is published by our friends at Puritan Publications, the publishing ministry of our guest today, Dr. C. Matthew McMahon.

So thank you for sending in that question. And also our second winner here is Daniel in San Jose, California, who's also won a copy of the book. I'm going to be forwarding you Daniel's email with this question, but I'll also read it right now and you could answer it when we come back from the break.

Thank you for today's show. I always look forward to your interviews with Dr. McMahon. Could you ask him to explain the significance of the stones, the color, their virtue, and how ministers of the gospel today can and should take heed to this Puritan work?

And secondly, could you briefly explain what up to God means in the context of this book? And lastly, explain the importance of The Worthy Churchman, especially in today's culture. You have three questions there, and I'm actually forwarding, as I said, the email to you, so you can mull it over over the break.

And anybody else who would like to join Daniel in San Jose, California with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we do have a few of you already waiting, and we'll get to as many of you as possible before the end of the program.

And so don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with Dr. C. Matthew McMahon and our discussion of The Worthy Churchman. Tired of bop store Christianity, of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert?

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Because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you just tuned in to our program, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, founder of A Puritan's Mind.

Today we are discussing The Worthy Churchman or The Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, a book by John Jackson who lived in the 17th century. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address for a question for Dr. C. Matthew McMahon is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. As I read to you before we went to the break, Dr. McMahon, Daniel of San Jose, California had three questions, and let me read again the first one for you.

You should have these in front of you now. I emailed them to you, but he asks...

I do.

Okay, he asks, could you ask Dr. McMahon to explain the significance of the stones, the color, their virtue, and how ministers of the gospel can and should take heed to this Puritan.

Work? Now, Daniel, thank you for placing us right on track, because that is the sum and substance of the whole work. The idea that, first, Jackson was a brain. He was a very smart man. He wrote, there's actually not a lot of information about his life, but he wrote nine different works, this being the first of the nine that we put together and put out there, a number of others, all of which are, but even in the way that through his works and looking at how he says what he says, how he thinks about things, what he's done is he's taken the breastplate of the high priest and the 12 stones in that breastplate, and he kind of, Exodus 28, 17 to 20, the text says, and you shall set in its settings of stones, even four rows of stones, the first row shall be, and then they name all the different stones and such.

And then he also jumps over to Revelation 21, and he shows that the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all these different pressures, and they link together in that this is something of the Old Testament that was placed on the minister, and in the New Testament, it was placed on the gates of the apostles, also ministers, and so what he did is he took each one of these, and he basically researched how each one these stones have certain virtues and certain ideas associated with their color.

We generally would just read it and say, and this neat-looking ephod, and he was like, no, no, it's much more than that, because what it does is it gives certain virtues away based on each one of these stones.

So his whole book is about being a faith, and he goes through, I don't know if we'll have time to go through every single one of them, so what he does is he sends a vivid account of what they've done with God in that particular way.

And in thinking about that, because I think your, why should we, how ministers today should take heed of that work, the, every aspect that the Puritans put together in talking about pastoral theology and talking about who ministers are before God are, it's eminently important, because in being a worthy, being a faithful minister, there should be that.

And we say, well, we have all sorts of faithful ministers, ministers in general are faithful. Well, there's a little bit more of a dimension to that than just simply saying it. For example, Jeremiah said, and I have this day declared it, that is God's will, to you, that is to the people, but you have not obeyed, and listen to what he says, the voice of the Lord, your God.

Or anything which he has sent you by me, that's Jeremiah 42, 21. So Jeremiah spoke and equated it with the voice of the Lord. Why? Well, because God's people ought to hear God's voice in the mouth of the minister.

And so, if the minister is going to be a sole winner, if he's going to be faithful in that way, working alongside with God, doing what God has called him to do, being a herald, then he's God's voice. Do we, as Christians, really think about the minister in that particular way?

Or when the sermon is over, do we just get up and say, oh, that was a nice sermon? Do we really need to think about what it is that God has done in taking the faithful minister and placing him in the context, and what he is to do?

Now, he's only a man, but we're not talking about him just being only a man. We're talking about him being a worthy churchman, one that's sent by God to be a herald for God, because he is supposed to be the cure of souls in that particular manner.

And in thinking about what that means, he is supposed to be able to do that faithfully in order. It's not simply that he goes out and, because a lot of people are thinking, well, winning souls is converting people.

Well, it's not necessarily all that that's made up to be, because when you're dealing with the sanctification of the congregation itself, the minister wins souls by keeping all of those sheep inside the fold.

So not only is he going up to the byways and highways and come in, but he's also tending to the sheep. He is fulfilling, as Paul said, in Christ's ministry that he was. But what he does do, teachers are then sent out, and knowing that suddenly they may be called by God to give an account of what their ministry was, she came out and said, worry in carrying them in that way.

Paul mentioned in that particular the second stone and the virtue that it's having a minister which delights in the things above, searching out, finding out. And he says that the color itself, which was yellow, the stone was a yellow stone, it demonstrates that the Church is the queen adorned investments of gold, as Psalm 45 9 says, and that wise and good Christians will give worthy ministers their double honor and have in them singular love for their work's sake.

They love their work, they are diligent in it, and they continue to minister to the people in a manner in which brings them the whole counsel of God. I think on that particular point, there's a lot to say, because I think that we've kind of lost the idea of what, like, why do we preach?

Why do ministers preach the Word? Well, they preach to win souls. No, that is not why they preach. Well, they preach to sanctify the congregation. No, that is again not why they preach. They are supposed to be heralds on behalf of God who declare, as Isaiah 52 7 says, your God.

Their message is to be one of the supremacy of God in preaching. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns.

That is their main focus and main message. So the word of deliverance, redemptive preaching in that particular way, is showing that not only that God, he publishes the reason why he acts. He acts because he reigns.

He's the supreme God, the one who is high and lofty and lifted up. So the preacher is supposed to come in, and in every sermon that you hear, and every sermon that we hear, when the preacher preaches, not only are we to hear God's voice, we need to do better in really thinking about what it is that's occurring at that particular moment, but also that the central aspect of every sermon ever ought to be this redemptive preaching concerning Christ.

Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, the preacher can't preach on tithing, or that he can't preach on what it means to have the fruit of the Spirit. They could preach with all sorts of things, but the central message is this colored stone of diligently unfolding divine truth in such a way as to keep God central and supreme.

And I think, personally, that that's not something, generally, that homiletics classes teach in seminary. I say learning, ministers are learning in seminary, ministers are learning in seminary, like three credits on a homiletics class with the Word, and think that it does not tell you how many sermons, after sermon, after sermon, when we hear somebody enter into the pulpit, the first thing that they do, and they start out with an illustration about what the sermon is going to be about.

Maybe, let's say they don't do that first, they read the scripture, start to do right after that scripture is written, an illustration about what the sermon is going to be about, as if the Word is going to tell you that.

What we need, Puritans and to dying men, in 15 -20 minutes, talking about is that they did on the way to the church, had to wait there, and you will know nothing about Jonathan Edwards. You will know a lot about God, but he never talked about his wife and his children, his illustrations, any of anything not about him, as if you read a biography about them, because it's not going to be in their sermon.

They were thinking, when we bring these glad tidings to the church, as commissioned ministers of God, the only way that we're going to have lovely feet in that particular way, is if we bring God's message, be preaching in that particular manner.

And I'm assuming, I don't recall you actually addressing the second question, you addressed the first and the third from Daniel, but the second question Daniel had was, could you briefly explain.

What up to God means, in the context of this book? Yes. Everything that the worthy churchman does, everything that the faithful minister does, is going to be given first and foremost to do and say what the minister to do, in the context of God, first.

And then God will then bless whatever the work is, if that minister is being faithful to the message. I mean, just think about the practical application of that in preaching or teaching, what a minister preaches or teaches.

To use the illustration of Jonah, got swallowed by the fish, he's in the stomach of the fish, rank by the time he's puked up on the beach, and he was, right? So he was probably pretty in bad shape. He gets puked up on the beach, in front of a city, on my family vacation, God commissioned him, and then he has to go, and God says it again, what I tell you to preach, this is the message that you need to be faithful.

Faithful minister, that kind of minister wants people in a killer manner, maybe there's some fear of men that comes in that way, but we need more worthy churchmen, God's manner.

Well, I tell you, that illustration that you gave earlier of the pastor, no it wasn't Jackson, I think it wasn't Jackson, who was found by his wife on the floor weeping over his, who was that? That was John Welch.

That's right, John Welch, right. That really puts me to shame as I reflect upon the very few times that I have been found on the floor weeping, it was usually because I called the pizzeria too late to get a delivery.

I mean, this man, this man is actually really, truly concerned over the souls of his flock. Right, right. That's really awe-inspiring and embarrassing to all of us who, I mean, when we think, even if we're not pastors, how often have we wept over the souls of our own families and our lack of evangelism to them or our lack of even just being.

Obedient Christians in their lives? Well, you know, it's converted under preaching. What happened to converted in that particular way? You know that people who were converted and knew that they were converted at that particular time, they, that was a different, not just another sermon.

It's forming life, changing the preacher, took our hand and put it into the hand of Christ, put it into the arms of Christ, and it was not just another sermon. So why is it, though, that if we have, let's assume we have faithful ministers who are preaching, we have those John Welches, we have those John Jacksons, we have those guys that are concerned about our souls, why is it that we go into listening to preaching and it was just another sermon?

And we're not affected in that particular way, and we don't weep over our sin, and we aren't thinking about it that way. It's not that our lives are supposed to be drab and dreary, but we are to have a real sense of being continually ripped away from the world and brought closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.

I think one of my favorite illustrations in any of the Narnia Chronicles is when Eustace, he goes and he touches, you know, the cup and the treasure on that island, and he turns into a dragon, and everybody's like, where's Eustace?

And he's a dragon, and Aslan has to come, and literally with his claws as he had that. We think that when preachers preach, you know, it's not sharing, it's not musing at the pulpit, it's not a theological lecture, it's supposed to connect us with the intent of the Holy Spirit in the Scripture that's being preached on for the good of our sanctification, and we should be brought either closer to heaven or closer to hell, one way or the other.

And I think that a lot of that is lacking today. I don't think that we are as serious as we could be, and I think that's one of the reasons why the Puritans are so important.

And I'm going to read a question and go to our midway break. Gordy from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, I've already forwarded you his question. He says, there seems to be an inherent, deep, reverent attitude towards the call to the pastorate by Puritan writers.

Do you find this attitude in evangelical circles today to be lacking? What about Reformed Church leaders? And you can respond to Gordy when we come back from the break. And thank you, Gordy, for that question or those two questions.

And if anybody else would like to join Gordy with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

Don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, with more of Dr. C. Matthew McMahon and the worthy churchmen. One sure way all Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers.

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