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Beloved First Scots family,

I am writing to send you a brief update on my health, as well as to thank you for the remarkable love you have shown to me and to my family over these past weeks.

As many of you know, I was initially hospitalized at MUSC in Charleston on November 15 due to a strep anginosus infection that settled deep in my mediastinum, likely tied to an illness I contracted while traveling earlier this year. The doctors considered this a very rare and complicated medical occurrence, as the mediastinum is difficult to access and safely operate on. As the infection progressed, I also developed pneumonia, which complicated things even more. On Monday, November 17, the surgical team performed an emergency procedure to address the infection, and I am deeply grateful for the Lord’s mercy in guiding them.  I returned home on Nov 21, which meant I was able to enjoy Thanksgiving with my family (my favorite holiday!).

While home, progress was initially slow but steady. However, after a few days at home, fevers began to be a normal thing, and my energy level was waning. On this past Wednesday, December 3, things got substantially worse: my heart rate was elevated, fever was high, and chest pain was severe. Stefany made the wise decision that I needed to return to MUSC, where I was admitted first to the ER and then to the ICU. The diagnosis was pericarditis, an inflammation in the area that contains and protects the heart. It has responded well to medicine, and I finally feel like myself again.

Lord willing, I will be discharged today to go home and recover. They have removed my tube, and the meds I will be on are oral, so I will have my picc line removed soon, and ought to be a "normal" person again (I mean, as normal as I’ll ever be!).

I cannot thank you enough for the care, prayers, and love you have extended to us. Your meals, messages, kindnesses, and many unseen acts of service have been a profound encouragement. The Lord has used you to strengthen us more than you know.

At this point, I expect to be out of the pulpit for at least several more weeks. My doctor is pleased with the progress and says I am the best judge of what I can/ can’t do, but I’m aware that I am not yet ready for the demands of preaching. I hope to be able to encourage you in other ways in the meantime. Thank you for the way you have supported and encouraged our guest preachers during this time—your warmth toward them is a ministry in itself.

Church family, the love you have shown to me and to Stefany and the boys has been overwhelming in the best way. We feel upheld, carried, and cherished by you. Thank you for being the body of Christ to us.

With deep gratitude and affection in the Lord,
Alex

My dear congregation—

Well… what a difference a few days can make! Last Saturday morning I was fishing with Samuel, and by Saturday evening I was at MUSC on the cardiothoracic floor. I have often wished to update you more, but haven’t always had the time or the words, and I am especially thankful for David Purser and Carole Ingram, who sent out regular updates.

I’ll try to give a quick update of what’s been going on. On Saturday evening, doctors at Beaufort Memorial noticed a mass in my chest cavity, and they transported me via ambulance to MUSC, where a specialist, Dr. Mayor, could address it. Dr. Mayor and her team have been nothing short of amazing, going to great lengths to handle this in the best way possible. I have literally put my life in their hands, and they have been excellent.

On Sunday, care progressed fairly cautiously and slowly, as the area where the infection was located is very complicated to reach surgically (look up “mediastinum” and you’ll see what I’m talking about!). They wanted to rule out all other options and come up with a game plan for treating this wisely and carefully. However, on Monday evening, as pneumonia began to set in, I felt so poorly that they couldn’t wait any longer, and they rushed me back for surgery to remove the abscess. The surgery took roughly two hours (that’s what I’m told — I was busy having the best nap of my life!).

The surgery successfully removed the infection, and the doctor left a drain in place so that it does not build up again. Once they have determined the cause of the infection and how best to treat it, the drain can be removed and the incision closed. I’m not exactly sure when I might be able to come home, as it largely depends on the cultures they are growing and what those begin to reveal about the type of bacteria we are dealing with.

Right now, recovery is slow, but we’re committed to doing the exercises needed to get out of here as soon as they’re ready to discharge me. I just had a great night’s sleep (for a hospital!) and did four laps around the floor — yesterday I was only able to do two at a time.

The Lord has shown me much through this time, and one of the primary things is just how well this congregation loves their pastor and his family. Stef and I are deeply grateful for every call, text, email, and prayer lifted up on our behalf. I am also deeply indebted to our leaders and how they have stepped up during a very busy week, taking over all the details for Assistant Pastor Candidate's visit. They have been an extraordinary help, as have so many others of whom I may not yet be aware. Thank you all.

I love you, and I look forward to being back with you soon.

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Alex

Dear Church Family,

One of the sweetest aspects of doing life together in a church family is that we get to celebrate so many of the “highs” of life: births and baptisms, weddings and worship services. It’s such a sweet privilege to walk together through these life events alongside those whom the Lord has called us to live.

But another unexpectedly “sweet” aspect of church life is that we can come together for funerals. Though it is a time marked by sorrow, it is also a gathering drenched in hope.  And it is with that in mind that I want to encourage you to view it as a ministry to attend funeral services within our church family when you are able – even if you didn't know the person who has died.

Here are a few reasons why this is both good and deeply Christian.

1. Weep with Those Who Weep
Paul writes in Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” As a church family, it’s often easier to do the first. Celebration comes more naturally to us than sorrow. But Christian obedience and love are not selective; church life shares in both the laughter and the tears of others.

When Jesus came to the tomb of Lazarus, “He wept” (John 11:35). Though He knew He would soon raise Lazarus, He still entered into the grief of those He loved. So also, when we attend a funeral, we are imitating Christ’s compassionate heart — joining our tears to His as we weep together.

You may not have known the person who passed away, but someone you love did. A brother or sister in Christ is mourning. By showing up, you minister to your church family by quietly saying, “You don’t have to walk through this valley alone.” You are lending your presence as a small but sacred comfort — a living reminder that the body of Christ suffers and heals together (1 Corinthians 12:26).

2. Witness to the Watching World
Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Every funeral is a moment of witness. Many in attendance — friends, neighbors, coworkers — will be unbelievers. They will listen, watch, and wonder how Christians face death.

When the church gathers in reverent love, surrounding the grieving family, singing of the hope of resurrection, and proclaiming the gospel with tenderness, it leaves an indelible impression. It gives unbelievers an opportunity to “See how they love one another” (as the church father Tertullian once said).

In a world that often hides from death, the church does something utterly different: we face it — with tears, yes, but also with triumph. We declare that “death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54), that “to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21), and that “whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:8). Your quiet attendance is a part of that proclamation — a testimony to the world of our resurrection hope.

3. Worship Together
Funerals, perhaps more than any other service, are worship in the key of longing. They remind us that “the last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26), and that day is coming soon. They invite us to fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, “for what is seen is transient, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

When we sing together at a funeral we are not merely comforting one family. We are re-preaching the gospel to our own hearts. We are rehearsing for eternity.

And by the way, for those who are raising children and may not be able to get childcare during the service…bring your children, too. Let them hear the hymns of hope. Let them face the realities of death, but also to see that we grieve, but “not as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). And don’t worry if they make a little noise: the laughter or whispers of children are sweet sounds of life in the midst of death — an echo of Jesus’ promise: “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19). In this way, funerals become classrooms of faith, where even the youngest hearts learn that Christ conquers the grave.

A Final Word
Beloved, when we attend a funeral, we are doing ministry. We are loving our neighbor, bearing witness to the gospel, and renewing our own hope. We are standing together, side by side, declaring that death does not have the final word — Jesus does.

So when the next funeral comes, even if you didn’t know the one who has gone home, consider coming. Bring your Bible. Bring your children. Bring your heart ready to comfort and to be comforted. For when the people of God gather to weep, to worship, and to witness, the future hope of Heaven becomes a little nearer to us.

With love in Christ,
Pastor Alex

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” — Matthew 5:4

Dear First Scots family,

There are many in our nation today who are quite anxious about how today will turn out as we go to the polls to elect a new President.  In one sense, it’s only natural that we care deeply, thinking of the impacts on communities, families, and our witness as Christ’s followers.  We are greatly blessed to live in a country in which we can make our voices heard and participate in the election of leaders.

And yet, as important as elections are, we must fix our minds on the reality that, while these choices matter deeply, they are guided by a hand far greater than any human plan or authority. As you think of the election today, think of these words by John Newton: “There is one political maxim which comforts me: ‘The Lord reigns.’ His hand guides the storm; and He knows them that are His, how to protect, support, and deliver them.”

Indeed, Scripture tells us that “the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will” (Daniel 4:32).  God is not a distant observer but the sovereign King over every square inch of earth.  He raises up leaders, and He also deposes them.  Though we have a role to play in exercising wisdom, prayer, and responsibility, the outcome belongs to Him.  Proverbs reminds us that “the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1).  How sweet it is to know that no matter who sits in office, their very heart and decisions are held within God’s mighty and merciful hand!  

Our hope, therefore, does not rest upon the four year term of a flawed individual, but in the unchanging reign of our Lord.  “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Psalm 103:19).  Political seasons bring great uncertainty, but God’s promises remain firm and eternal.  He has always been faithful, and His purposes will prevail, even when the world seems completely unstable.  Our call is not to anxiety but quiet, calm confidence that should be reflected in our words, actions, and prayers. When unrest creeps into our hearts, let us cast ourselves upon God’s promise that He is working all things together for good to those who love Him (Romans 8:28), knitting each thread into His beautiful plan that the glory of His Son be seen upon throughout the world.

Brothers and sisters, rather than fretting over leaders who rise and fall, who say one thing and do another, fix your eyes today upon the truth that Jesus Christ remains “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).  Leaders come and go, but our true King endures.  In this truth, we find hope that transcends all earthly kingdoms.

Thankful to be a citizen of a Kingdom that cannot be shaken,

Alex

Dear Saints,

2 Peter 3:18 says, “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.”  The chief way that we do this is through the study of God’s Word.  I hope that, if you are taking time to read only one thing, it is your priority to mine the riches that exist in each and every verse of Scripture.

Another way that God grows us up in the grace and knowledge of Christ is through reading good Christian books.  Books written by faithful and insightful authors offer us profound wisdom, encouragement, and guidance rooted in Scripture.  They challenge us to think more deeply about our beliefs, help us to live out our faith more fully, and give us greater glimpses of the beauty and glory of Christ.  As we study solid books, we are equipped to better navigate the complexities of life with a steadfast and informed faith, enriching our communion with God and our collective strength as a church family.

Each month, I share a list of recommended reads that may be a blessing to your souls.  Peruse the following list and perhaps select a book or two that might be an encouragement to your soul.

Christian Living: The best book I read last month was Michael Reeves’ excellent little (only 84 pages!) book entitled Preaching: A God-Centered Vision. It’s no exaggeration to say this book is the most important work I’ve read about preaching…but should a non-preacher take the time to read it?  I commended the book to Sarah Mangum, who wrote the following review:


Devotional: John Calvin was one of the great theologians that the Lord has given the Church.  Sadly, he has been caricatured as a cold, aloof doctrinalist, though anyone who holds such a view has clearly never read Calvin.  If you’d like a great entry point for reading Calvin’s writings, some of his warmest and most beautiful love for the Triune God comes across in either his Little Book on the Christian Life or a daily devotional based on his writing in the Psalms, entitled Heart Aflame.

Theology: Dr. JI Packer was one of the most influential reformed Christians of the past century.  He had a gift for taking complex theological truths and putting them into a digestible, bite-sized package.  I’ve always kept a copy of Packer’s Concise Theology close at hand as a great tool for both understanding and explaining what we believe.  

Kids: For children who enjoy good stories, Christian Focus has a wonderful series called “Trailblazers” that chronicles the lives of Christians whom God has used throughout the years.

As always, while I recommend these books, it doesn’t mean that I recommend everything in all of these books.  Always read with discernment, that your soul may be nurtured and grow in the Lord Jesus.

Finally, remember the words of Charles Spurgeon: “Visit many good books, but live in the Bible.”

With love in Christ, dear saints-

Alex Mark

Dear Saints, 

Each month, I make recommendations of books that I hope will be a blessing to your walk with the Lord.  One thing I’ve learned through this process is that too many recommendations can be overwhelming, so I’ve shortened the list to a few good reads you might enjoy.

Also, you may benefit from this video in which Iain Murray speaks about how and why to read books well.

Devotional: At General Assembly, I picked up a copy of Ian Hamilton’s devotional on Psalm 23 entitled Our Heavenly Shepherd.  Few people can connect God’s Word with the experience of life as well as Dr. Hamilton.  I’m excited to dig into this book while on vacation later this month!

Theology (but also very devotional!): The Holiness of God by RC Sproul.  In this classic work, Dr. Sproul sets before us the Scriptures teaching on the God whom the angels worship as “Holy, Holy, Holy.”  There is also an outstanding video series that goes along with this book, which can be accessed for free here.

Worth a Listen: Do you have five minutes each day that you can set aside for your heart to be stirred by faithful teaching?  Then dear ones, make a habit of listening to Sinclair Ferguson’s wonderful podcast, “Things Unseen.”  

Kids: This month, I’m not suggesting one specific book, but rather a publisher.  Christian Focus Publishing produces outstanding children’s material, which are not only well written but beautifully illustrated.  We will have several Christian Focus children’s books available this month for purchase.  Of particular note is that they are one of very few publishers who do not use images of Jesus in their children’s books.  

As always, while I recommend these books, it doesn’t mean that I recommend everything in all of these books.  Always read with discernment, that your soul may be nurtured and grow in the Lord Jesus.

With love in Christ, dear saints-

Alex Mark

Dear flock,

This week in our pastoral letter, we will look at the extraordinarily sweet biblical doctrine of adoption; that God has adopted us as his own children. In this letter we will define the Bible’s teaching on adoption as “God’s gracious act of changing enemies into children by the Spirit of adoption, and blessing them with all the rights and privileges of a natural child.”

Beloved, are you aware of the great miracle and blessing it is that God would adopt us into his family? We are often far more concerned about our salvation (justification) and less concerned about how we fit into God’s family. John L. Girardeau, the great nineteenth century preacher in Charleston, explained the difference like this: “Justification confers upon him the rights of a righteous man; adoption, the rights of a child.”

When we think of adoption, most of us probably think of it primarily in terms of human adoption, in which a child is transferred from one family to another in a legally binding act. While such adoption is beautiful in itself, perhaps the greatest thing adoption does is point to the glorious way that God adopts us into His family as sons and daughters through Christ. The great Puritan John Owen recognizes that five things must be true for an adoption to be considered legitimate:

1. The adoptee is initially of another family.
2. He is being brought into a family into which he ought have no right.
3. This is “an authoritative, legal transition” from one family into another.
4. The adoptee be freed from all obligations incurred in his previous family. This means sin longer has any dominion in your life!!!
5. The adoptee, through adoption, “be invested in all the rights, privileges, advantages, and title to the whole inheritance,” of the adopting family, as if he were a natural born son.

All five of these are true in the way God adopts us, showing us that adoption into the family of God is not merely metaphorical language; it’s an authoritative, final act whereby God brings us into His family and loves us with Fatherly love.

It is imperative for us to understand our adoption, for it tells us how both who we are and how we ought to relate to God. Understanding our adoption is to understand the beauty of coming before our loving Father; it changes everything! We don’t serve and obey Him in order to be loved; we serve and obey because we are loved!  Instead of hiding from God with slavish fear, we come to Him with the reverence appropriate for a child to have towards a good father. William Cowper’s great hymn “Love Constraining to Obedience” captures this well:


A Right to All the Privileges

In question 34 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we ask the question “What is Adoption.” The answer: “Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the Sons of God.”

Eternity will hardly be long enough to contemplate what it means that we have a right to all the privileges of the Sons of God! Yet I’d like to briefly discuss four privileges that ought to impact our lives deeply today:

1. A Father’s Protection: Good fathers protect their children. They protect them both from physical danger and from spiritual danger. Our Heavenly Father does both for us: He and his angels have protected us from physical harm in ways that we’re unaware of. He also protects us from spiritual harm, both in giving us the nourishment of the means of grace as well as foiling our own “best-laid plans” that could otherwise destroy us. Your Father’s eye is always upon you!

2. A Father’s Correction: Good fathers correct their children. Parents who do not discipline and correct their children often think they are being loving by letting the child do whatever he wants, but in reality they are failing to do their duty of giving the child correcting grace. It is a reminder that our Heavenly Father loves us so much that He would rather afflict us than allow us to wander away from Him. As the Puritan William Gurnall said, “God’s wounds cure; sin’s kisses kill.” Our great heavenly Father is using all things for your good!

3. A Father’s Attention: God may not always heed our prayers, but He always hears our prayers.  He enjoys hearing our prayers, perhaps far more even than we enjoy praying them. Through Christ, we have access to the Father’s throne in a way that not even the angels have! We’re not kept at a distance; we’re told that we should actually approach his throne with confidence (Hebrews 4:16). Tim Keller states this beautifully: “The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.” Your Father delights for you to draw NEAR to Him!

4. A Father’s Provision: When Jesus was speaking about worry and anxiety in the Sermon on the Mount, He pointed to the fact that we should not worry because God is our Father. The gentiles seek after the things of this world, and yet your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all (Matthew 6:32). God, as a good heavenly Father, never forgets his children. He always provides what we need on time, all the time. Your Father cares for you even more than you care for your own children!

How Deep the Father’s Love for Us!

Armed with the doctrine of adoption, we’re able to walk through life knowing that our Father, who loves us with an everlasting love, has ordained every single thing that comes into our lives. If you experience hardship, it is part of your Father’s correction. If you experience blessing, it comes from the hand of a Heavenly Father who loves to bless His children.


Unless God is our Father, we are orphans. But God’s own Son has become our Older Brother, and we receive all that is His. The Holy Spirit dwells in our lives, making us a suitable dwelling place to receive the Father and the Son! What an awesome blessing, as we learn that we are not abandoned and unloved, but rather that we are loved by the Father, by the Son, and lovingly cared for by the Holy Spirit (John 14:21).

In His kindness, when we are first starting to understand the faith He doesn’t overwhelm us with His awesome glory, for we would be terrified to draw near to Him if we saw all that He is. But as we grow up in the faith, we find that He grows with us, and we never outgrow Him. The same truths that once our young minds seemed to fully grasp, now we can hardly begin to ponder. As we grow, He grows so much bigger!

One example of this is what Paul says in our passage in Romans 8, specifically that we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” When I was a fairly new Christian, I memorized all of Romans 8, and I can remember reading that line and thinking that it was special, but it was just one of many great promises in Romans 8. Today, after 24 years as a Christian, I feel that I have far less of a grip on this awesome truth than I did as a new believer; it’s not that my theological understanding has declined, but that what it means to be in Christ, and all of the privileges that entails, has grown so much in my eyes.

Co-Heirs with Christ

So what does it mean that we are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ? It means, as Spurgeon said, “Everything that belongs to Christ is ours in Him.” There is an inheritance that Christ deserves as the Son of God in whom His Father is well pleased, and through our adoption as Sons of God, the Father is absolutely delighted to share the fullness of that inheritance with us.

In Luke 12, Jesus was asked to intervene in a dispute between brothers concerning who would receive the largest portion of their father’s inheritance. It’s a sad but oft-repeated scene in this world. Yet such a scene will never happen in Heaven, for the inheritance that is ours in Christ is infinite. There is no dividing the inheritance, for all of us who are in Christ receive all that belongs to Christ!

What a truth for us to grow into! No human language can begin to capture the magnitude of this promise, but I think Jonathan Edwards did as well as any: “To be heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ means that we share in all the blessings and privileges that belong to Christ as the Son of God. We are adopted into God’s family, made partakers of His grace, and destined for glory. This is a glorious inheritance that surpasses anything the world has to offer.”

Growing in the Family Likeness

But dear one, being heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ is not merely a cause for celebration; it is also a call to action. Just as Jesus laid down His life for us, so too are we called to take up our cross and follow Him. We are called to live lives of sacrificial love and obedience, thus the Apostle’s exhortation, “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

As you go through your day, facing both its joys and its trials, embrace your identity as a child of God with boldness and confidence. Take heart in the words of Peter, who reminds us that our inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for us by the power of God (1 Peter 1:4).

Are these truths real to you? Do you realize that you are the “apple of your father’s eye” (Zechariah 2:8)? Do you believe that He loves you more than any earthly father has ever loved a child? Do you believe in His Fatherly care? Yes, beloved, He has promised all of these things to you in His Word.

May the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of adoption, empower you to live a life worthy of your calling as a beloved child of God. May He strengthen you with His power and fill you with His peace, knowing that you are loved beyond measure and that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Dear Saints,

Each month, I make recommendations of books that I hope will be a blessing to your walk with the Lord.  In some months, I think the list has been a bit overwhelming, so this month I’ve shortened it to make it more accessible.

My Main Read for June: While I’m still slowly working through Owen’s Communion with God and plan to be for quite some time, I do have one main read that I’m excited to dig into in June: Authentic Ministry by Michael Reeves.  Most everything Reeves writes is wonderfully encouraging, and I have no doubt this will be as well.

Theology, History, and Christian Living: Not many authors could cover all three of these categories in a way that is as enjoyable as it is edifying, but Sinclair Ferguson has done that in his book The Whole Christ.  In this great book, Ferguson analyzes an obscure 18th century Scottish theological controversy, and turns it into a wonderfully insightful book distinguishing between legalism, antinomianism, and Gospel obedience.  I love this quote by Ferguson: “When we behold the glory of Christ in the gospel, it reorders the loves of our hearts, so we delight in him supremely, and the other things that have ruled our lives lose their enslaving power over us.”
 
Worth a Listen: Many of you have a deep hunger for the teaching and preaching of God’s Word, so you might enjoy the many resources available from Ligonier Ministries. Some of our congregants traveled to Orlando this past week for the Ligonier annual conference and said that many of the talks were a great blessing.  You can access the audio from the conference here.

Kids: Once again, I asked Sally Purser for recommendations on books for children, and here are a few suggestions:
 

• The Ology: Ancient Truths Ever New by Marty Machowski
• God Made Me for Heaven: Helping Children Live for Eternity with Jesus by Marty Machowski

As always, while I recommend these books, it doesn’t mean that I recommend everything in all of these books.  Always read with discernment, that your soul may be nurtured and grow in the Lord Jesus.

With love in Christ, dear saints-

Alex Mark

Preaching and Revival

Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at the awesome topic of revival, and we’ve used the revival that took place in Beaufort in the 1800’s as our case study.  I hope that this study has built within you a hunger for God to once again bring revival to our community.  

What we have seen thus far in our study is that revival is a powerful outpouring of God’s Spirit in which the lukewarm are awakened, unbelievers are converted, and a whole community seems to be saturated with the awareness of the glory of God.  Surely, such a work is too great for the most gifted of men, or even the largest of churches, to manufacture.  No methodology, no man-made tactics, nothing mere men could ever do could cause the kind of outpouring of God that we see when revival comes to a community.
 
And yet that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t use means to bring revival about.  The means by which God historically brings about revival is through the preaching of the Word.  After all, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:12-13). As the Word is faithfully opened and unashamedly preached, the Spirit accompanies it with great power.  Consider these words of Martin Luther as he reflected upon how God’s Word brought about the Protestant Reformation:


The Dutch Second Reformation of the 17th Century, the Great Awakenings in America, and more recently the Hebrides Revival in Scotland all line the walls of history with beautiful evidence that God uses the faithful preaching of the Word for awesome ends.  Charles Spurgeon is right: “The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.”

The Preaching God Blesses

In 2 Timothy 4:1-2, the Apostle Paul is speaking to his son in the faith about what faithful preaching looks like: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”  In light of this definition, we see that biblical preaching must be Scripture-saturated, bold, tender, and personally applicable to the lives of the hearers.  

In preaching, we are not merely conveying information; we are exalting Christ through the life-changing power of the Gospel.  The power for preaching does not lie in the eloquence or charisma of the preacher, but in the living and active Word as it is faithfully proclaimed to the hearts and minds of the hearers.

Martyn Lloyd Jones gives an excellent definition of faithful preaching: “The whole duty of the Christian minister is to preach the Word of God. He is to present the doctrine of the Scripture, to preach the theology of the Bible, to expound its teaching and to exhort its practice.”

Yet not all preaching is faithful.  In the Paul’s next words to Timothy, he warns that there is a counterfeit form of preaching that will always creep into and be embraced in churches, one that simultaneously flatters men and: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3–4). Such preaching may cause us to feel good about ourselves, but they won’t lead anyone to faith in Jesus Christ.  Sadly, the pitiful state of the church in America today bears witness that so much preaching reflects exactly what Paul warns against.

Revival Preaching: A Case Study

Oftentimes when people visit First Scots for the first time, they will say something like this: “you preach like a Baptist.”  What they mean is Presbyterian preaching today is not synonymous with the bold proclamation of the Word of God; the perception is that we have left the hellfire and brimstone up to our Baptist brethren.  Today, Presbyterian preaching is rarely identified with bold, Scripture-saturated sermons, with calls to repentance, correction, and so on, but historically it was.

If we rewind to a better time when the love of the world didn’t have such a grip on so many churches, we would find that historic Presbyterian preaching was powerful, saturated with Scripture, and overflowing with the passion of a heart that is resting in the Gospel.   An excellent case study in historic, faithful Presbyterian preaching is the ministry of Daniel Baker, whose preaching sparked the revival in Beaufort nearly 200 years ago.  

When the Rev. Daniel Baker came to preach a series of meetings in Beaufort back in 1831, the small coastal town had the privilege of experiencing what true Presbyterian preaching looked like. Baker held to the strong conviction that the Holy Spirit alone could change hearts, and that God would typically work through the preaching of His Word.  When Baker arrived in Beaufort in 1831, he brought this approach of expounding the Scriptures and exhorting the people to turn from their sin to follow Christ.  The results were phenomenal: The churches were full, hearts were changed, and the culture of Beaufort was transformed.

Who Was Daniel Baker?

Daniel Baker was born in 1791 in Liberty County, Georgia.  His mother died when Daniel was an infant, and he was only eight when his father died.   He and his four older siblings were raised by an aunt.

Baker was raised in Midway Church where his father had been a deacon.  In the book Southern Presbyterian Worthies, John Miller Wells claims that Midway “probably sent out from its membership more ministers than any church in the United States.”  But it wasn’t at Midway that Baker would come to trust in Christ; it was when he was nineteen years old and lived in Savannah that he was converted through the ministry of Independent Presbyterian Church (yes, the same church that planted First Scots in Beaufort nearly 200 years later!).

Though Baker had little formal education, he believed that the Lord was calling him to ministry.  In 1811, he enrolled at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia.  The next year, however, the War of 1812 affected Hampden-Sydney so greatly that Baker and other students transferred.  Baker arrived at Princeton in 1813, where God used his evangelistic efforts to convert a significant portion of the student body.

Upon graduation, Baker elected not to go to seminary, but rather to teach at a girls’ school in Virginia.  He married his wife, Elizabeth, in 1816.  That same year he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in Winchester, and he accepted a call in Rockingham County, VA.

He left Virginia in 1820 in order to pastor Second Church in Washington, DC.  This church had several prominent members, including John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.  Despite its distinguished membership, the church struggled greatly, and Baker had to subsidize his income by working nearly forty more hours each week in the local land office.

Nearly two decades after his conversion, Baker returned to Savannah in 1828 to pastor the very church that ministered so faithfully to him as a young man.  Baker’s influence at Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah was great, and the church experienced a revival of its own.   All the while, Baker’s true passion was to serve as an evangelist, and invitations came from all over the East Coast.  He would eventually resign his pastorate at IPC and focus his full attention on preaching in small towns in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.

Dr. Baker Comes to Beaufort

As his reputation for Spirit-filled preaching grew, Baker was invited to speak in Beaufort by Rev. Joseph Rogers Walker of The Parish Church of St. Helena.  He had previously preached meetings in Pritchardville and other nearby towns, and his reputation for preaching powerful, gospel-centered sermons preceded him in Beaufort.

As we have previously examined, this was a very timely blessing for the community of Beaufort.  At a time when political controversy had divided even family members, Beaufort was in need of healing.  That healing came in the form of the Gospel message, which led to reconciliation in nearly every aspect of community life.

Preaching with Conviction

Dr. Baker was already known as a powerful preacher and evangelist in the 1830s.  While he did preach for the affections in his preaching, he did not rely on the methodology of manipulation that had become so common by the 19th century.  He simply preached the Gospel by helping people to see their need, as well as the glory of Christ who is able to save.  One contemporary of Baker’s testified that the constant theme of Dr. Baker’s preaching was the Apostle Paul’s “Christ and him crucified.”  In the words of one eyewitness:


This was Baker’s approach to preaching: to appeal to hearts to consider not only the offer of Christ, but the reality of the eternity that awaits them:


After calling his hearers to awareness of the grave danger of our souls apart from Christ, he then extended to them the magnificent love of Christ in the Gospel.  This was the heart of Baker’s message that he preached clearly and with great compassion for the people:



The words of compassion were accompanied by a call for the people to believe:


The Holy Spirit’s Work

Rev. Baker preached the power of Christ boldly, calling his hearers to repent and believe the Gospel (Mark 1:15). And as all good preaching does, he not only displayed the people’s great need of the Savior, but the great Savior to meet their need.  Yet not all preaching produces such powerful results, and even other places that Baker preached did not have such a powerful outpouring.  How should we understand that?  

Indeed, as powerful as Baker’s preaching was, the Beaufort revival was undeniably the Lord’s doing (Psalm 118:23). Long before Baker stepped foot in the pulpits of those two beautiful downtown churches, the Holy Spirit was preparing hearts (Ezekiel. 36:26).  The Lord used the foolishness of preaching, causing it to take root in hearts that were, by His grace, ready to receive it (Matthew 13:23).

While Baker was at the center of the revival, we must also recognize that such powerful outpourings of Gospel grace are ordinarily preceded by seasons of pleading in prayer (Ephesians 6:18). What we typically see in revival is that God answers those prayers by sending a preacher to speak courageously about the dangers of sin (Ephesians 2:1-3) and our glorious Savior (Colossians 2:13-15).  

Jesus Christ: The Same Yesterday and Today

The revival that swept through the streets of our beloved town, transforming hearts and renewing spirits, stands as a powerful testament to the enduring might and mercy of our Lord.  He raised up Daniel Baker, His humble servant, whose faithful proclamation of the Word pierced through the darkness, stirring souls to love for Jesus.

Though Daniel Baker has long since gone to be with the Lord, our God remains unchanged.  The same Holy Spirit who moved with such awesome power in the hearts of men and women has not changed; He is more than able to revive us again.  As we yearn for revival in our own time, let us labor faithfully in prayer and proclamation, trusting that the same God who brought revival then is able and willing to do so again now!

Last week we began a study of the great revival that took place in Beaufort in the 1830s.  We were introduced to Rev. Daniel Baker, the great preacher from Savannah whom God used greatly to spark this tremendous movement, and churches that were affected, such as our friends at The Parish Church of St. Helena and The Baptist Church of Beaufort.  Through this period of revival, our small community became saturated with the glory of God!  In the coming weeks, we’ll look with detail at those changes, which lasted for almost an entire generation in Beaufort.

But before we look with greater depth at how God transformed Beaufort, and through Beaufort, the world, we must first consider what revival is and how we can pray for it

The Meaning of Revival

In Habakkuk 3:2, the prophet cries out, “O LORD, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O LORD, do I fear.  In the midst of the years revive it; in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.”  When we speak of revival today, we’re echoing the desire of Habbakuk’s heart: that the Lord would show the great power of His mercy toward a people who only deserve wrath.
 
In its original and most pure sense, revival speaks of bringing new life where life has been lost.  But where did that life go?  If we want to understand the value of revival, we must first understand the necessity of revival: We need revival because we are spiritually dead! Because of sin, none of us has the spiritual life that we were created to have.  And so God alone can bring a spiritually dead person to life! At times in history, God has chosen to bring life to many people at once, in one community, setting their hearts ablaze for the Lord Jesus Christ.  That is revival.  

God typically begins the work of revival in the church; the people of God who were once lukewarm are awakened from their spiritual slumber.   Those who were once complacent toward God and His Word become impassioned; those once opposed to a God-centered life become consumed by it.  When the church experiences such power, it inevitably draws the attention of the watching world.  When this happens, revival is the result.

How does revival begin?  There’s been a tendency in the church over the last couple of centuries to believe that revival can be manufactured by strategic methodology or dynamic preachers.  Yet revival begins with neither; the power for revival begins with the heart of God Himself!   Revival comes to a people previously marked either by lukewarmness or opposition to the Gospel, and yet in His sovereign love, God pursues such a people.

Is this not a beautiful picture of the heart of Jesus Christ, who came to “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10)? While it is amazing that God should save even one sinner, it is beyond comprehension that God should save many at once, drawing such sinners to Himself.  History bears witness to times in which almost entire countries have been converted with no earthly explanation.  And yet there is one clear heavenly explanation: We have a God who delights to show the power of His mercy by saving sinners!  

The Marks of True Revival

How do we recognize revival?  One of the best examples of what happens in revival is found in the way God stirred the hearts of His people through the ministry of Ezra following their return from Babylonian exile.  Let’s consider several lessons from that time:

Deep Conviction of Sin: The people of Israel had been released from their time in exile, and many had returned to their homeland to begin rebuilding their lives.  While there had once been excitement to be able to return home and restore Biblical worship, that zeal waned quickly.  Ezra was heartbroken by the complacency that he saw in them.  As he read the Scriptures and called the people to account, they responded with deep humility as they saw how their sin had grieved God and hurt many.
 
Revival typically begins with deep sorrow over sin.  JI Packer says,


Deep Joy of Sin Forgiven: After the people were pierced by God’s word through Ezra, they repented with tears and mourning.  While this response was appropriate, Ezra did not wish for them to remain downcast over their sin, and thus he called for joyous celebration because they responded in faith, and their sins were forgiven.  

Revival is not merely religious excitement; it is religious excitement that is centered upon the work of Jesus Christ in the Gospel.  While not all revivals have come from the exact same theological perspective, all share one common principle: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15).  And those who have truly experienced such grace never get over it.

A View of God that Permeates All of Life: After the people repented under Ezra, they immediately began to consider what their obligations were as God’s covenant people in Nehemiah 10.  It was clear that the people had strayed from their duties, and now their lives would need to be completely reoriented toward God.

Jonathan Edwards comments on the ways in which revival produces lasting transformation in the people:


Sincere Commitment to the Local Church: In the last line of Nehemiah 10, the people make a wonderful proclamation: “We will not neglect the house of our God” (Neh 10:39). In revival, God does not call people to isolated Christianity.  He is calling them into His house, His family, His church, where faith can be nurtured and grown through the ministry of the means of grace and rich fellowship.  

Again, Edwards shares this experience from the revivals he witnessed in Northampton: “(God) causes them to be more diligent in the use of His appointed means of grace. Especially, this is seen in a greater desire to hear and read the word of God.”  

Hope for Revival Today

As I consider the history of revival in our community and throughout the world, I am met with two conflicting emotions.  First, I am filled with deep longing to experience such a powerful pouring out of God’s Spirit firsthand.  Second, I am filled with sorrow at how far things seem today from the periods of revival once known in our community.  

We are often tempted to believe that our culture is too far gone, that our sin is too great, and that God simply wouldn’t do a great work here, but history has proven otherwise: The wretched pagan culture of Rome that God brought to life in the early church is evidence of such a fact.  The revival of Scottish culture under John Knox (if you want to be greatly encouraged, listen to this sermon by Martyn Lloyd-Jones on how God converted Scotland almost overnight) and the great Beaufort revival remind us that, no matter the depths that a culture may hit, it is never out of God’s reach.

As my mentor Douglas Kelly has said, “No matter how dark our day may be…I consider it definitely not too late for revival and renewal.”

So let us commit ourselves to prayer that God will once again pour out His Spirit, first awakening the church and then reviving our land.   Revival is not merely for the spread of the Church; revival is for the glory of God’s name.  Pray with confidence, for “our God is in the Heavens; He does all that He pleases” (Psalm 115:3).

Beaufort’s Rich Spiritual History

Living in Beaufort for the first 18 years of my life made it very easy to take for granted the beauty of this majestic town.  I am probably not alone in that; I am sure that many of us forget that not every town has exquisite views, Spanish moss-covered oak trees, history that dates back centuries, all of which are only matched by the wonderful people who live here.

As I’ve gotten older and returned to Beaufort, I’ve grown to appreciate this beautiful place more and more.  “Beautiful Beaufort-by-the-sea,” as my grandmother used to call it, is undoubtedly the most wonderful town in America, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather live.  I will forever be grateful to my Heavenly Father for allowing me the privilege of growing up and pastoring here.

But it’s not the beauty and charm of Beaufort that makes me most excited about being here. There is something else, something eternal, that gives me great hope for what God could do in this community.  It is my conviction that God has a wonderful future for this community, and I count myself blessed to be a part of it.  One of the reasons I’m confident of this is that God has already done it before in Beaufort, and I am convinced that He is able to do it again (Eph 3:20-21).

During the Second Great Awakening, which transformed much of the east coast between the 1780s and 1830s, Beaufort was the scene of a great revival, of which even many locals are not aware.  While our friends at The Baptist Church of Beaufort and at The Parish Church of St. Helena have done good work in remembering what God did here to transform Beaufort through the preaching of His Word, I first learned about the Beaufort revival in 2003 by reading Dr. Douglas Kelly’s book entitled Preachers With Power. In this book Dr. Kelly (who would soon become my mentor) tells of a preacher from Savannah who came to Beaufort to preach a series of evangelistic messages.  From these meetings came one of America’s greatest experiences of the power of God’s Spirit to transform an entire community.  

A Rich Spiritual History

The early 1800s were a time of both economic and political difficulty in the district of Beaufort, also known as St. Helena’s Parish.  Beaufort, which had been one of the wealthiest of the Sea Islands, suffered just as others did in the wake of the Depression of 1819.  Cotton prices had plummeted, and many had left South Carolina in order to find better work.  At the same time, there was a large political division in the community known as the Nullification Crisis.   The core issue dividing South Carolina and the young nation was whether or not the federal government could impose laws upon the states without the approval of those states.  South Carolina and others argued that the Constitution was a compact that was freely entered into by sovereign states, and thus those states, within their boundaries, could nullify the rulings of the federal government if they felt it necessary.

This controversy was exacerbated with the federal tariffs of 1828 (known as the “Tariff of Abominations”) and 1832, both of which raised objections from many South Carolinians. Perhaps the greater concern behind these tariffs was not so much the financial cost of paying more taxes, but concern that the federal government was overstepping its bounds.  South Carolina dug in its heels, seeking to protect states’ rights.  In response to the resolute South Carolinians, Congress sought to compromise.  But it was too little, too late and in November 1832 a state convention declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional.

Although South Carolina and the federal government were eventually able to reach an agreement in the Compromise Tariff of 1833, there was still much division between nullifiers and unionists.  The district of Beaufort, with much to lose because of the wealthy plantations, felt the impact of the division as well.  Even within local families there was dissension over the issue, and at times the hostility was intense.

Perhaps the hostility of this setting makes the account of God’s amazing work here even more remarkable.

The Preaching of Rev. Daniel Baker

The story of the Beaufort revival starts not in Beaufort, but in Savannah at the historic Independent Presbyterian Church of Savannah, the same church that partnered with us in 2013 to plant First Scots.   Independent Presbyterian, founded in 1755, was pastored by the Rev. Daniel Baker at the time of the Nullification Crisis.

Rev. Baker was born in Midway, Georgia, in 1791.  After graduating from Princeton, he pastored several churches in Virginia. However, due to a slumping economy, the churches were unable to retain him and he took a call at Independent Presbyterian in Savannah. Although Baker was called as the full-time pastor of Independent, he also possessed a zeal for hosting evangelistic meetings in communities throughout the south.

In the early 1830s, he preached a series of meetings in Bluffton and Gillisonville.  One who was in the crowd at those meetings was a Beaufort lawyer named William Barnwell.  Although Barnwell had grown up in church, his interest in God had taken a backseat to the busyness of practicing law.  Yet upon hearing Baker preach, Barnwell was drawn to saving faith in Christ.  In his excitement over the message he had heard Daniel Baker preacher, Mr. Barnwell encouraged Rev. Joseph Walker of The Parish Church of St. Helena to listen to Rev. Baker’s preaching.  Walker knew the Gospel alone could change people, and he quickly agreed to have Baker preach a series of services in Beaufort in October 1831 (although some sources argue for an 1832 date).

The first issue to be decided was where the meetings were to be held.  Beaufort Presbyterian Church, founded in 1804, had already closed its doors, so it was determined that the meetings would be split between The Baptist Church of Beaufort and The Parish Church of St. Helena.

Baker, forty-years-old at the time, preached three times each day for ten days at the two churches with much support from the leadership of each (although the leadership did at times have to urge the congregations to support this movement that was so different from their own traditions).  Each day, notices were sent to homes in the area announcing the place and hour of the services for the following day.   The churches were packed and a high percentage of people from the community attended at least one preaching service during the series.

The results were astounding: This community that had previously been distracted with politics and concerned with an uncertain future suddenly was enthralled with the preaching that they heard from Baker.  The Holy Spirit had done His work of preparing the people, and they responded with fervor to Baker’s messages.  In Baker’s own words, “O what blessed meetings we had!  Three times every day did I preach and every day and night to full houses.  Besides it was usual to have what was called a ‘concert of prayer’ at the going down of the sun.”

Evidence of the Work of God’s Spirit

It is nearly impossible to overestimate the work that God did in our community!  The Holy Spirit’s work through Baker’s preaching was powerful and transformative.  Some who came only to mock the preaching of God’s Word left as transformed people.  The same community that only days before had been divided over politics was now being united under the banner of Christ.  There was no question that Beaufort was experiencing revival!
But what would happen with all of these converts converted under the Presbyterian pastor’s preaching?  Baker’s concern was not to start a new church, but to encourage new converts to join the churches that already existed and were thriving in the community.  As a result, the Parish Church of St. Helena took in at least 70 new members, and the Baptist Church of Beaufort received about the same.  Those who came to faith in Christ ranged from age fourteen to eighty-six.  It is estimated that in total, Baker’s preaching led to two or three hundred new converts.  Many others grew in zeal, and the faith of many was renewed.

Not only did local churches grow, but as a result of these services, many young men sensed a calling to full-time ministry.  One of those young men was Richard Fuller, a Beaufort lawyer who would eventually become pastor of the Baptist Church of Beaufort.  It was under Fuller’s leadership and guidance that the current sanctuary of the Baptist Church of Beaufort was constructed in 1844.

Another beneficiary of Baker’s preaching was a local lawyer, Stephen Elliott.  Elliott, twenty-five years old at the time of hearing Baker, was converted and sensed a calling to the ministry.  Five years later, in 1836, he was ordained a priest and later served as the first Bishop of the Diocese of Georgia.  He eventually became the 37th bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and the first and only Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America.

In total, at least eleven young men entered the ministry as a result of these meetings.  And the effects of the revival were not limited to only a few who entered full time ministry; the entire fiber of town was changed.  What was once political unrest became spiritual fervor, and the community seemed to be saturated with an awareness of God.

Consider the words of Mr. Grayson, editor of the Beaufort Gazette:


I don’t know about you, but that gets me excited!  We all want to see change and growth in our community and our country, and we all have our own solutions for it.  But God has His solution as well: to send His Spirit in power so that people would be converted, and an entire community, even one torn apart by politics, can be united as the body of Christ.

Over the coming letters, we’ll take a deeper look at this powerful working of God’s Spirit in our dear community.  We will examine the ways God used those who were converted, as well as how we should understand what exactly happens in revival.  Finally, we’ll examine how we can seek God’s grace that He might do it once more here in Beaufort!

Dear Saints,
This is my monthly letter with books that I think will be a blessing to your soul.  Before I get to my recommendations of what to read, I want to share a few thoughts from Charles Spurgeon on how & why to read:

• Why all of us should be readers: “Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. You need to read.”
• Reading as a way to redeem our time (Eph 5:15-16): “We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure time, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service. Paul cries, “Bring the books” — join in the cry.”
• Contemplate the truths you read so that they may sink into your soul: “An ounce of heart knowledge is worth more than a ton of head learning.”
• Read with discernment: “Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.”
• Read good books, but let the Bible be your primary material: “Visit many good books, but live in the Bible…All human books grow stale after a time–but with the Word of God the desire to study it increases, while the more you know of it the less you think you know. The Book grows upon you: as you dive into its depths you have a fuller perception of the infinity which remains to be explored. You are still sighing to enjoy more of that which it is your bliss to taste.”

With that as my argument for why you should read, here are some recommendations of what to read.  Because I know we have people with various interests, I send many different categories of books.  Don’t be overwhelmed by the list- I’m giving you a broad selection in hopes that you’ll pick a book or two to read this month.

My Main Read for March: As I thought about the book that I will focus on this month as my main personal read, I came across It Will Cost You Everything by Steven Lawson.  I speak often of the benefits of following Christ, but we also must keep in mind the sacrifice of following Him.  In this book, Lawson pulls no punches in applying Scripture to call us to live the sacrificial Christian life- for there is no other kind of Christian life.

Devotional: If you have been around First Scots long, then you’ve undoubtedly heard me make reference to Charles H. Spurgeon a lot. I’ve always wondered whether or not Mr. Spurgeon would be honored that I named my dog after him, but regardless it shows the high esteem in which I hold him!  Spurgeon has several great daily devotionals, but I think the best in Morning and Evening.  There are many different versions of it, including a beautiful pocket edition, but perhaps the most readable is this one.

Biography: While Spurgeon is fresh on my mind, I have really enjoyed Michael Reeves’ recent biography of Spurgeon entitled Spurgeon on the Christian Life: Alive in Christ. Reeves is one of my favorite writers, and this book helps us get to know Spurgeon the person, to understand the influence of his ministry, and to learn lessons from his life that we can put into practice as well.  It’s also worth noting that for those who have access to Hoopla through the Beaufort Library, this book is available for free as an audiobook.  

Bible Study: People often ask me what is the best commentary for them to read, and there’s no easy answer to that.  As I have said previously, the best whole-Bible commentary is by Matthew Henry. When it comes to a book-by-book selection of best commentaries, that list becomes much more complicated.  Rather than recommending to you a book, I want to recommend a resource from Ligonier that provides trustworthy recommendations for every book of the Bible. Check it out here: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/top-5-commentaries.

Christian Living: One of my all-time favorite authors is the Puritan John Owen. He’s taught me more about the glory of Christ, the mortification of sin, and the value of sound theology than almost anyone.  My favorite of his books is on The Mortification of Sin from Volume 6 of his collected writings.  It’s gold!  Perhaps the most famous line of that book is “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.”  

With that said, reading Owen isn’t easy. His writing style is complex and at times can take me several minutes just to digest one sentence.  Thankfully over the past few years, several modern rewrites of Owen have been released.  I think the most accessible and helpful is Kris Lundgaard’s The Enemy Within: Straight Talk about the Power and Defeat of Sin.  There are two emphases in this book: first, the sinfulness of sin. Second, the power to defeat sin by the indwelling Holy Spirit.  This book is a great encouragement!  

Church Issues: It’s no secret that one of the most controversial issues in churches today is the distinction of roles between men and women.  The controversy will not lighten up any time soon, so as believers we need to be well-versed in Scripture’s teachings on this topic.  I have read many books dealing with this, and I don’t think anyone addresses this better than Kevin DeYoung in his book Men and Women in the Church: A Short, Biblical, Practical Introduction.

Family/ Parenting: One of the sweetest things about First Scots are many healthy marriages that have stood the test of many years together.  However, no matter how healthy a marriage may seem, there is always room for growth.  I recommend The Gospel-Shaped Marriage by Chad and Emily Van Dixhoorn as a wonderfully joyful work on cultivating a marriage that reflects the beauty of the Gospel.  

Christianity in Culture: Last year, Geoff Back gave me a book entitled Pride: Identity and the Worship of Self by Matthew Roberts. I had never heard of Roberts, but this book is excellent as it gives a very helpful analysis of the current “pride” movement and the theological issues at stake with it.  

As always, while I recommend these books, it doesn’t mean that I recommend everything in all of these books.  Always read with discernment, that your soul may be nurtured and grow in the Lord Jesus.

With love in Christ, dear saints-
Alex Mark

Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at the various rest-work rhythms that God has built into our world; night and day, rest and work, seed time and harvest.  These rhythms are gracious provisions for weary pilgrims sojourning through this world.

And yet, even those rhythms often leave us longing for more.  We enjoy a vacation, but we know it will soon come to an end.  We love the Lord’s Day, but we remember that Monday is lurking right around the corner.  Many who have spent years looking forward to retirement often find themselves disappointed.  We hope for rest in this world, but it’s never quite enough.  

C.S. Lewis once said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”  Each of these rhythms remind us that there is a rest our hearts truly long for that cannot be found in this world.  That’s why this final letter in our series will deal with a glimpse into the future, final rest that we as believers eagerly await (Phil 3:20)!

Already and Not Yet

The Bible often describes the Christian life as a sojourn (Acts 7:6, 1 Peter 2:11). This terminology naturally harkens back to the time when Israel had been delivered from Egypt and journeyed toward the Promised Land.  This was to be a land filled with milk and honey, abounding in earthly blessing.  It was to be a place of rest that would be a haven for their weary souls after years of harsh slavery in Egypt.  But even after God’s people entered the land, those blessings were not fully realized; instead they pointed to a future city (Heb 11:10) infinitely greater than any earthly city (Rev 21).  

This is a wonderful summary of the Christian life: We already enjoy God’s blessings to some degree in this world, but there is a fullness of blessing that we will only enjoy in the world to come.   This is especially true of rest: While we will never fully experience complete and perfect rest in this world, the day is coming in which we will enjoy perfect rest with God in Heaven.

In Hebrews 4, we are told several times that the Israelites failed to enter God’s rest because of disobedience (Heb 4:3, 5, 6). And yet Hebrews asserts that God’s kindness endures despite our hard-heartedness: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Heb 4:9-10).

How can we enter into such a glorious future rest?  Only through the finished work of Jesus! Verse 11 tells us: “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”  When Hebrews says “strive” we should not take that to mean we must work to enter the rest; it means that we must be sure that we are truly trusting in God’s Son for salvation, as evidenced in a life of faith and repentance.  To be a Christian is to live all of life understanding that our time in this world is very temporary, and we are merely sojourners making our way to our eternal home in Heaven.

Dear ones, we must learn to live our lives and set our hopes on the glory of this future day! Life in this world is full of toil and difficulty; if we’re only living for this world, our souls are in very grave danger (Philippians 3:19). But what great joy our souls will experience if we set our hopes upon the future rest that is ours in the eternal Sabbath spent with the Lord Jesus (Hebrews 4:1)!  

While our final rest will not come until we are present with the Lord, we do receive a sample of that rest now by faith when we observe the Lord’s Day as a day in which we can simply rest, revel, and rejoice in what Christ has done (which will be the main occupation of Heaven!).  The Sabbath rest we enjoy in this world is but a foretaste of that “final, perfect consummation of all the purposes of God in and through His creation, which has been washed clean through the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 5:9) for whose pleasure all things are and were created (Rev. 4:11).” (Douglas F. Kelly, Creation And Change: Genesis 1:1–2:4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms, Revised edition (Mentor, 2017), 336.)

Let us conclude this series with an extended, wonderfully encouraging quote by Robert Murray M’Cheyne:


I cannot wait to experience that future Sabbath in which the joy of walking with Christ and fellowshipping with the saints will never, ever end. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

This month in our pastoral letters, we’re thinking about the rhythms of rest and work that God has built into His created order.   This week, I want to discuss one of our Lord’s sweetest gifts to His people: the rhythm of six days of work and one day of rest.  The day of rest is known in Hebrew as the Shabbat, meaning “ceasing or stopping,” from which we get our word “Sabbath.”  

Because of the Judeo-Christian influence on our world, it can be easy for us to take this pattern of rest and work for granted.   For a moment, rather than looking at this through the lens of 21st century America, let’s go back to the middle of the 1400’s BC, when Israel was in Egypt.  After Joseph and his brothers settled in Egypt, the land was increasingly being filled with Israelites who had been fruitful and multiplied, echoing God’s command (Gen. 1:28; 9:1) as well as His promise to Abraham and His chosen descendants (Gen. 17:6; 35:11; 47:27). As long as Pharaoh knew who Joseph was, the Israelites had permission to live freely in the land and to work it.  But when a new king of Egypt arose who did not know Joseph (Ex. 1:8), he saw the people who had once saved his nation now as a threat to national security, and he established a harsh form of chattel slavery.   Ruthless taskmasters heaped upon them two awful burdens: First, they must make bricks without straw (Ex. 5:10), and second, they did not have a day off.  Scripture is descriptive about their experience in Egyptian slavery: Their lives were “bitter” (Ex. 1:14), with “hard” (Ex. 1:14; 6:9) service resulting in “misery” and “suffering” (Ex. 3:7) and a “broken spirit” (Ex. 6:9).

Now fast forward to around 1440 BC as God delivers His beloved people out slavery, and now gives them His Law.  And what command does He give?  “Six days you shall do all your work, and the seventh shall be a Sabbath to the Lord your God.”  Following such a miserable existence in Egypt, one can hardly imagine the joy of hearing that their new King, Yahweh, would actually require that they rest for one full day out of every seven!  It was to be a vacation every single week, and more importantly, a regular reminder that the yoke of slavery had been broken.

Nothing has changed in the last 3400 years: The command to keep the Sabbath holy is still an incredibly gracious gift.  Let’s take some time together to explore this liberating commandment.  

On the Seventh Day, God Rested

The story of the Sabbath doesn’t start with weary slaves but with a sovereign God.  After six days of awesome creative power, we are told that “on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.  So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation” (Gen 2:2).  This God, who neither slumbers nor sleeps (Ps. 121:4), chose to rest after His work of creation.  He did so, not out of necessity (for God needs nothing outside of Himself) but in order to mark creation’s completeness and to enjoy the satisfaction of His creative work.

God’s Sabbath was not a one-time event, but rather a creation ordinance, woven into the fabric of God’s world.  The fourth commandment not only requires that we follow this work-rest rhythm but also gives us the rationale: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex. 20:11).  God’s pattern established creation’s rhythm.

Just as God had surveyed the creation and rested satisfied in it, the Sabbath was set apart for man to rest satisfied in God.  What a gift: A day to set aside all the labors of other days, and to be reminded of the truths of the nature and character of God!  God’s design for humanity is that we live slowly enough to think deeply about Him.   He created us to enjoy Him, and yet He also knows that there is a tyranny of the urgent which often engulfs our plans and distracts our hearts.  This is something God has never experienced- He’s never been subject to mis-prioritized schedules.  But we are.  And He gave us this wonderful gift of one day in every seven just to think about Him.  It is no wonder then that Scripture exhorts us to call the Sabbath a delight (Isa. 58:13)!

Sinclair Ferguson says that in the Sabbath, the Christian:

Sabbath Rest and the Gospel

Many believers today recognize the role of the Sabbath under the Old Covenant, but believe that it no longer applies to us in the New Covenant age.  I have always found this a peculiar line of thought because the Sabbath is not a binding and oppressive requirement; it is a gracious gift!  Far from nullifying the fourth commandment, the Gospel transforms the Sabbath, making it an even greater blessing to our souls!

Under the Old Covenant, the pattern was this: work six days and rest one.  In that paradigm, work precedes rest, which was a picture of the righteous requirements of God’s Law.  How could we ever rest, knowing that there was always more work to be done, more law to be kept?

But in the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus, our debt is fully paid and our sins are forgiven.  His precious words “It is finished” speak not only of His sacrificial work, but of His fulfillment of every single demand that the Law had put upon us.   Through Him, our souls are able to experience true rest, and the Sabbath transforms from burden to blessing.  This transformation is marked by the transition from the Sabbath coming at the end of the week to now coming on the first day of the week.  Following the resurrection on the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1; John 20:1), the Church made it her rhythm to worship on Sunday as well (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:1-2).

Rather than the old rhythm of working for six days and then finally receiving rest, the New Covenant brings rest first, followed by six days of work.  Like the Israelites who were to be reminded every week of how they had been liberated, the New Covenant Sabbath gives us rest first, a weekly reminder that, indeed, “It is finished.”  Every week begins with the poignant reminder that we can set aside one day to do no work, and yet we are still utterly loved and accepted by God.  

In other words, Christ has purchased our Sabbath for us.  

Sabbath Rest and Sanctification

In one of His many engagements with Pharisees concerning right use of the Sabbath, our Lord set before us one overarching principle: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). The Sabbath is for man’s good, and what higher good does man have in this world than to grow in sanctification and in the enjoyment of God?

Yet such growth does not happen spontaneously.  While Christian conversion is instantaneous (like an earthquake), God has ordained sanctification to be a process of growth whereby we learn to “do natural things spiritually, and spiritual things naturally.” (William Still: Collected Writings of William Still, Volume 2, 326).

What is the key to this process?  It’s not a matter of just trying harder, but rather sanctification is the product of deliberate, holy rest and contemplation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  As we live slowly enough to think deeply enough about these realities, they become impressed upon our souls in such a way that it transforms our character to become more like that of the Lord of the Sabbath.  

To be clear, there have been many throughout history who have outwardly observed the Sabbath, but have never experienced the wondrous contemplation of the face of Christ.  The Pharisees were a perfect example: At least on one occasion, they spent the Sabbath plotting how to kill Christ (Matt. 12:14)!  This is the very definition of legalism: They observed laws, but didn’t adore the Lawgiver.  Regardless, abusus non tollit usum: abuse is no argument against proper use.  The Sabbath, when used as a day of worship and contemplation, has deeply sanctifying effects on the Christian soul.

A Well-Spent Sabbath

As we do business day after day with the world, the flesh, and the devil, it wears upon our souls.  How frequently do worry, angst, people pleasing, and the tyranny of the urgent sap us of the very energies God has given us for the tasks to which He has called us?  A well-spent Sabbath is intended to restore to us those energies.
 
There is a misconception that the Sabbath is to be a day of idleness, for as we have already seen, our greatest need isn’t mere physical rest; it is the spiritual rest that we find in God alone.  And the Sabbath gives us an entire day set apart for that purpose.

So how can we do that?  Here are a few things I’ve learned from watching others who love the Sabbath:

• Keeping the Sabbath really starts earlier in the week: Get all your work done in six days so that the Sabbath can truly be a day to focus on God.  If you can’t get all your work done in six days, you’re probably doing more than God has called you to do!  
• Use the time before morning worship to prepare to meet with God.  Review the Scripture passages and hymns for worship in advance.   Here are five practical thoughts on how to be “ready” for worship: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/ready-present-worship/. 
• Disconnect from the daily distractions that tether our minds to this world.  Turn off the news and close the newspaper; the world will get along just fine without us knowing what’s going on in it for a day. 
• Be intentional to keep your mind set on things above (Colossians 3:2). This is not a one-time action, but an entire attitude of beholding God and His Word.  As we seek to delight in the Sabbath in this way, it helps train our minds to think this way the rest of the week. 
• Take time to connect the morning and evening sermon with your own life, and then consider how you can make application of what you’ve heard. 
• Fellowship well!  Get to know your church family- especially those who may be lonely or need to feel more connected with the church. 
• Use a day off from normal activities as an opportunity to visit the sick and shut-in. 
• Enjoy God’s creation!  

Conclusion:

Dear ones, I doubt it is possible for me to overstate the importance of the Sabbath in the Christian life.  Not only does Scripture testify to that, but so does history: when Israel was at its best, they kept the Sabbath as a day to worship and contemplate the glory of God.  So too for the church: when Christians observe the Sabbath as a day of worship and resting in Christ, we are at our best.   But as goes the Sabbath, so goes the Christian, and as the Christian, so goes the church.

Several years ago, I was out in the boat and dropped anchor to fish. We fished happily, not knowing that our anchor had not caught but instead was dragging along the mud beneath us. Next thing I knew, we had drifted into an oyster rake.

Drifting is dangerous, and yet so often we can drift in our walk with the Lord without noticing it. Slowly, we spend less time in prayer or in the Word. What we once despised, we now indulge.  Spiritual drift happens similarly to the way Ernest Hemingway described the way going bankrupt happens: it happens very slowly, and then all at once.

DA Carson is helpful here:


Brothers and sisters, are you adrift in your walk with Christ? Drifting begins with caring more for the things of this world more than the things of Heaven. Before long, we begin to accept lukewarmness as the new normal of our souls, and may only faintly remember a time when we were truly passionate for Christ. If we are not careful, drifting can lead to make a shipwreck of our faith (1 Timothy 1:18-20).

So how do we keep from drifting? We must hold fast to Christ, the anchor of our souls! A vibrant faith is the rope that connects us to Him.  Keep Him ever in your sights, seek to serve Him in all that you do. Meditate upon His Word. Let His praise be upon your lips. Speak of the Gospel, first to your own heart, and then to others. Seek to say with the Apostle Paul, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2).

With love in Christ,
Pastor Alex 

This month, we are studying the ways that God has designed us to glorify Him both in our rest and our work.  As we saw in last week’s letter, God has designed the world with built-in rhythms for both:  He has designed the day for activity and the night for sleep.  He has designed seasons for harvesting and seasons for reaping.  He has designed six days for working and one for rest.  He even gives us a few months off from cutting grass each year!  These rhythms all point to the wise design of an caring God.  

No Rest for the Weary

If such rhythms are baked into creation, why do most of us find ourselves so unhealthily busy?  Let us return to the distinction between rest and restlessness that we looked at last week: Just as Adam and Eve were restless in their hiding and search for security and identity after sin came into the world, so too are we.  Instead of seeking these things from our Creator, we seek them in the creation, thereby upsetting the very rhythm by which we could otherwise find these things our souls crave.

This is why in our contemporary culture, perhaps more than in any other in history, work has become the means to secure those things.  Carl Trueman addresses this difficulty well in his excellent The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: “Is job satisfaction to be found in the fact that it enables me to feed and clothe my family?  Or is it to be found in the fact that the very actions involved in my work bring me a sense of inner psychological well-being?”[1]

As a result, we have come to believe that who I am is defined by what I do.  And because there is always more to do, rest seems only to get in the way.  From this perspective, work is all-consuming, and rest is burdensome.

It may not appear this way at first, but such an attitude is deeply theological.  Pastor David Murray notes several errors that we communicate when we refuse to rest as God has ordained to us:


Indeed, there’s no rest for the weary.  But how can we rest from our labors when the work is never done?  

“It Is Finished!”

By resting in the One who fulfilled all that was required of us (Gal. 4:4). When the Lord Jesus hung upon the cross, His final cry was tetélestai (“it is finished!”), pronouncing that not only was His work finished, but so too was all that God requires of us for salvation.  

In order to understand this in relation to rest and work, we must seek to understand the full scope of our salvation.  Most of us tend to think of salvation in terms of Christ bearing the penalty for our sins.  Hallelujah!  What kind of God would forgive rebel sinners as we are at such expense to Himself?

But astonishingly, God’s kindness to us does not stop at the forgiveness of our sins; all of Christ’s perfect righteousness is imputed to us!  Every day for 33 years, He perfectly and actively obeyed every single commandment of His Father to the utmost.  No jot or tittle of the Law was left incomplete.  Here we see the only perfectly righteous man who ever lived, One who absolutely abounded in good works, and the full record of His perfect righteousness is imputed to me, wrapped around me as a brilliant robe.  

Theologians refer to this as “double imputation”[3]: My sinful deeds are imputed to Christ on the cross, and His righteousness is imputed to me.  This glorious double truth is captured in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin (the imputation of our sin to Christ), so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us).”

A stunning picture of this is in Zechariah 3, when the prophet had a vision of the high priest Joshua standing in the presence of God.  Yet Joshua’s appearance was completely inappropriate attire to stand before God: his garments were covered in utter filth (the Hebrew indicates that it was actually excrement- far from the attire fit to be the presence of a mere man, much less the Holy One of Israel!).  Joshua’s appearance is a picture of our standing before God because of our sin.  God had every reason to condemn him.

But God did the exact opposite: He directed the angels to remove those soiled garments and give him clean clothing.  In his narrative of the vision, Zechariah explains that the soiled garments represented Joshua’s sin, and the removal of them signaled God’s forgiveness: “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you” (Zech 3:4).  This is a picture of our guilt being taken away by being laid upon Christ.

It would have been a stunning act of grace if the scene stopped there, but God’s grace to Joshua didn’t stop there: “I will clothe you with pure vestments.” (Zech 3:4).  These are not mere “clean clothes”, but rather a dazzling display of beauty that could only be created by God Himself!  Isaiah gives us more detail of these divinely-woven garments: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isa. 61:10).

Where do we find these garments?  They are not found in any formula of mere Christian propositions; they are found uniquely and perfectly in the person of Christ.  What the Old Testament describes in vivid word pictures, the New Testament portrays with beautiful simplicity: “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

Without the finished work of Christ, rest is an impossibility; in Christ, rest is an objective reality.

Find Rest for Your Soul

In Matthew 11:28–30, Jesus speaks what I believe are some of the sweetest words ever to come from human lips: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Our precious Savior is inviting us to a very specific kind of rest: one that finds its comfort and security, not in what we do, but what Christ has done.  In regard to work, this means that my work, my success, what others think of me, none of that defines who I am.  The single most important thing about me as a Christian is that I belong to Jesus Christ, and He belongs to me!

Moreover, He also invites us to wear His yoke and promises that when we do, we will find rest.  One of the jobs commonly done by a carpenter in the ancient world was to make yokes for livestock.  There is an old story- probably not a true story- but it’s illustrative nevertheless, which says there was a sign outside Joseph’s carpenter shop in Nazareth that read, “Our yokes fit well.”  Myth or not, the carpenter’s Son fashions a yoke for us, one in which we are joined to Himself.

We enjoy Christ as our true rest when we look to Him as the Friend of sinners, the One who loves and accepts us, not just the way we are, but despite the way we are.  And He says to us, “the rest that you have sought through work, the peace of mind and heart that your soul craves, the rest that can be found only in coming to Me and trusting in Me and leaving behind and turning away from everything else—that rest is now being offered to you, and you’ll find it in Me.  So come to me, my dear child.”  

I’m reminded of the words of one of my favorite hymn writers, Horatius Bonar:


Ultimately, resting in Christ is both a present reality and a future hope for believers.  It is the assurance that in Christ, we find forgiveness, acceptance, and eternal life, both now and in the age to come.  This concept permeates the Christian life, serving as a foundation for understanding the believer's relationship with God and self.

So today, let’s come again to the Lord Jesus and find our souls refreshed, renewed, and rested in Him.  Or perhaps you need to come to Him for the very first time and discover that He’s meek and lowly in heart, and He invites you Himself to come to Himself.  Come then, let’s trust Him and find rest.
__________
[1] Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 23.
[2] David Murray, “There Are Souls to Be Saved: How Can We Rest?” 9Marks, accessed February 14, 2023, https://www.9marks.org/article/there-are-souls-to-besaved-how-can-we-rest/.
[3] For a helpful explanation of the doctrine of imputation, check out https://faculty.wts.edu/posts/what-is-imputation/.

Dear Saints,

I hope that reading these pastoral letters have been as much of an encouragement to you as writing them has been for me.  I don’t know if you have experienced this before, but I believe that the teacher often gets more from the lesson than the students.  That was certainly the case with this series on the “one anothers” of Scripture, as the Spirit moved powerfully in my own heart, convicting and challenging me to not merely be a hearer of the word, but doer also (James 1:22).

This month in our pastoral letters we will be considering rhythms of rest and work in the Christian life.  This is a topic that I wrote a chapter on last year in a book honoring my mentor, Douglas Kelly, entitled Generation to Generation: Writings in Honor of Douglas F. Kelly.  We will adapt that chapter for use in these pastoral letters over the next month.

May I speak candidly for a moment?  Before we begin exploring this subject, I confess this is an area of great weakness in my own life.   Sleep and rest have never come easily to me, and for much of my life, rest has felt more like an enemy to me rather than a friend.  As we work through this topic, my hope is that it will not only encourage you, but remind my own soul of the goodness of how God has made us for both rest and work, and both are intended to be good and gracious gifts from Him.  

A Theology of Rest and Work

As we think about a theology of rest and work, we must begin where all theology starts: with God Himself.  We serve a God who is, in Himself, all sufficient (the theological term is the “asiety” of God).   He is dependent upon nothing else for life, strength, power, and so on. In terms of rest and work, this means that God is able to do all things to keep the universe in existence (His “work”) and yet He has no need of rest.  Thus Psalm 121:4 says, “Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”  

Though we are made in His image, we are not made to be all sufficient, but rather we are designed to be dependent.  God has created us for work, but our bodies also require rest.  Rest is not a necessary evil resulting from our finitude, but rather a gracious gift from our Heavenly Father (as Psalm 127:2 says, “he gives to his beloved sleep.”) This perspective on rest reminds us of two important truths: there is a God, and I’m not Him!  

But as we will see, the rest we need is not merely for our bodies.   God has made humans, body and soul.  Therefore, physical rest is not our only need- or even our greatest need- but rather rest for our souls.   And thankfully, as Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30 wonderfully illustrate, what our souls desperately need, Christ abundantly provides for us in the Gospel.

Created for Rest and Work

God created Adam with an extraordinary job description: tend and keep the earth.  Equally significant is the fact that Adam was created on the sixth day, meaning that Adam’s first full day on earth, before he would undertake any of his duties, was a day of rest.  Like a tourist taking in the wonders of a new city, Adam’s first full day was spent thinking deeply about his God, so that his heart could be calibrated to the true north of his Heavenly Father’s glory.  All the subsequent work he was called to do would flow from that rest, upward to the glory of God.  This was God’s divine purpose: work flows from rest.  As Adam rested and rejoiced in God, His duties to tend and keep the earth would be a great joy and privilege.
 
But alas, the evil one, jealous of God’s glory, despised Adam’s rest in God.  Tempting Adam to question God’s trustworthiness, the serpent set a trap and the man stepped in.  The result was not equality with God as the serpent promised, but rather a lifetime of working to be his own savior, while also knowing at the deepest level he was radically unfit for that job.  In an instant, work lost its transcendence and rest became an impossibility.

These effects of the fall are still seen in our world today, as most people tend to see work and rest as polar opposites, equating work with virtue and rest with laziness.  Yet biblically speaking, work and rest are not opposites; they are rhythmic complements which glorify God and bless us when they are in proper balance.  We were created so that our rest fuels our work, our work builds in us a healthy capacity for rest, and both are vital aspects of our worship of God.

Restless Hearts

If work is not the opposite of rest, then what is?  The opposite of rest is restlessness.  With the entry of sin into the world, our first parents (and all their posterity) experienced a deep sense of inadequacy and spiritual nakedness so acute that they hid themselves with fig leaves.  But the makeshift coverings only heightened their workload as continual work was now needed to keep themselves hidden.  The serpent’s deception interjected into God’s world a new rhythm: work, work, work, yet the only payment he could give was ongoing restlessness.

The effects are clear today: Rather than work being a means for glorifying God and blessing our neighbor, we now have an innate tendency to seek meaning and security through the labors of our hands.  Our jam-packed calendars all testify, not to the busyness of our schedules, but the restlessness of our hearts.  So much of what we call work today is really an expression of that restlessness—a desire to create identity, to find security, and to prove our sufficiency rather than resting in the sufficiency of who God is.

If rest could ever come for man’s weary soul, it must come from God Himself.

Definition of Biblical Rest

In 2010, I enrolled at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.  As a bit of personal background, the main reason I chose RTS Charlotte was to study under my friend and mentor, Dr. Douglas Kelly (in whose honor this chapter was originally written).  It was an extraordinary experience to study with world-class pastor-scholars and prepare for ministry.  

It was also an exhausting experience as I was spread very thin with courseload, work as Dr. Kelly’s teaching assistant, an internship at a local church, pulpit supply at my home church, all on top of personal and family obligations.  I already knew my diagnosis: I needed rest…and it always seemed just a semester away.

I was in my second year of seminary when Dr. Kelly introduced me to a fascinating work written by one of his mentors, Dr. William Still.  The book was entitled Rhythms of Rest and Work. Dr. Kelly sat under Mr. Still’s ministry at Gilcomston South Church in Aberdeen, and the two remained friends until Mr. Still went to be with the Lord in 1997.  Not only were the two men kindred souls in their love for God, but also in their understanding of the rhythms of rest and work that God had built into His creation, which exist both for our good and His glory.  Mr. Still’s words resonated with me:


He was right: The only cure for human restlessness is to rest in the sufficiency of divine grace.  While physical rest is certainly a necessity and one that Scripture does address, we can never get enough physical rest to calm the restlessness of the human soul as we navigate life in a sin-cursed word.  The soul must come to rest securely in God, or as St. Augustine famously said, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.”[2]

And mercifully, what our souls crave, our God provides in His Son, Jesus Christ.  He commands us to “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him” (Ps. 37:7).  He bids us to come, all who are weary, and find rest for our souls (Matt. 11:28-30). He alone can provide rest, for He alone is, in Himself, perfectly at rest.  To quote Mr. Still again, “When infinite intelligence finds infinite perfections in itself, infinite stability and integrity of character are assured.  This integrity is simply another name for God’s righteousness, or rightness.”[3]  When He becomes our rest, and we work to His glory, our souls are truly in a happy condition.

Rhythms of Rest and Work

God has designed the world with rhythms of rest and work built into the infrastructure: the day for working, the night for sleeping.  Six days for laboring, one day for resting.  Seasons for sowing and seasons for reaping.  These all reflect the finitude and dependence of our souls.  We will consider in two weeks how those rhythms, especially the rhythm of keeping the Sabbath holy, are integral to the vitality of our souls.
 
But before we get to that, next week we will consider how the Lord Jesus gives us true and lasting rest in the Gospel.  I look forward to studying this topic with you, and I pray that you and I both will benefit from it!

All my love-
Pastor Alex
__________
[1] William Still, Collected Writings of William Still: Studies in the Christian Life, Vol 2, ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson (Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, 1994), 295.
[2] Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.1.
[3] Still, Collected Writings of William Still 2, 297.

We have been using these pastoral letters over the last two months to examine many of the different “one another” passages in the New Testament. I hope it has been an encouragement to you; it has certainly encouraged me as I have watched you live out these commands from God in the life of our church.

As we conclude this topic with this pastoral letter, I want to return to a quote I shared in the first pastoral letter in this series: “Holiness is not a mystical condition experienced in relation to God but in isolation from human beings.  You cannot be good in a vacuum, but only in the real world of people” (John Stott, The Message of Ephesians, 184).

I have reflected on this quote in my own mind with each of these pastoral letters as we have considered how we are to treat one another. This is so incredibly important for us to understand: no matter how theologically orthodox our Christian profession may be, our faith must be evidenced by our love for one another.  An unloving Christian is a contradiction in terms.

Nobody spoke of the connection between love for God and love for neighbor as much as the Lord Jesus, and in no passage did He speak more clearly of love for one another than in John 13:34-35:  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Think of all the other things Jesus could have said.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you pray earnestly, if you prophesy, if you speak in tongues, if you cast out demons, if you heal others.  Without love all of those things, and in fact all of the Christian life, are but a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1).  

Our Lord is clear: Our love for one another is the visible evidence that we are His disciples.

That Your Love May Abound More and More

For nearly eleven years, I have had the tremendous privilege of watching you as a congregation grow and mature.  There have been so many areas of growth: your theological understanding, your zeal for worship, your knowledge of the Word.  But perhaps more than any other, I have been so blessed as you have grown in your love for one another.  I recently heard one of our newer members say “I have been brought to tears so many times because this congregation has made me feel so entirely loved.”  I second that emotion!  Every week, I watch as you heed the words of Romans 12:10, to “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”

Of course, as there always will be on this side of glory, there is still room for growth.  In my own prayers for you, I echo Paul’s prayer for the Philippians, “that your love my abound more and more…” (Phil 1:9)!  My desire is that this letter might play a small role in urging us forward to love that would absolutely overflow from the congregation in such a way that it would utterly transform our entire community.  

What is Love?  

Our culture’s definition of love is that it is primarily a feeling.   We should “feel” love towards others, and then we can act that way.  And if we don’t feel love, then we don’t have to act in love.  The problems with such a mindset are obvious: Isn’t the reason so many marriages end today because people claim to have “fallen out of love”?

The New Testament uses various forms of the term translated “love” 228 times, and the vast majority of them are verbs.  Biblically speaking, love is not a feeling; it’s an action.  It’s something that must manifest itself in visible, tangible ways.  John, sometimes known as “The Apostle of Love,” makes this point with great clarity in 1 John 3:18, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”

Love must be expressed in how we treat one another, or it cannot be called love.  We can say we love our brother, but if we won’t visit him when he’s lonely or help him when he is troubled, there is no love.  CS Lewis is on point here: “Don’t waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did.”  
 
And far from being something we do when we “feel” like it, the kind of love Jesus commands is one that is most active when we least feel like it: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matthew 5:44-46).

Thankfully, what Jesus commands from us, He also enables within us.

What Love Is…Jesus Is

All of us are familiar with the famous love passage in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).  Naturally speaking, we may have tendencies toward some of these things, but none of us does them even close to perfectly.  

But Jesus does.  We could insert his name into this passage in place of love, and it would make perfect sense: “Jesus is patient and kind; Jesus does not envy or boast…”.  In other words, in Jesus Christ, we have One who loves our souls absolutely perfectly!  He does not treat us as we deserve, but rather treats us every bit as well as He deserves (Psalm 103:10-12).  He does not love us with a fleeting, fickle love, but with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).  He does not love us in order to get something in return, but He gives His love freely and in unimaginable abundance (Romans 8:32). To quote Jonathan Edwards, “God’s love is an ocean without shore or bottom.”  There is absolutely no love like His in all the world- a love so undeserved, so immeasurable, so extraordinary, that we cannot truly encounter Him without being impacted by it.

And what we will find is that as we grow closer to Jesus, not only will we grow increasingly amazed at His love for us, but His love will actually begin to live within us, so that we begin to love more like Him.  

Love Overflowing

Paul begins his great list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 with love.  If we wish to bear such fruit, we must be planted by streams of living water, which yields fruit in its season (Psalm 1:3). Before we can truly love others well, we must walk closely with Him.   As we do, not only do we love Him supremely, but we begin to love others powerfully.  

Doubtless we do not do it very well.  Sometimes love can be hard, and some people are harder to love than others.  But aren’t Christians supposed to love one another even when we’re difficult- because our God loved us when we were difficult?  Because the Gospel has transformed us, our love doesn’t start with how deserving the other person is; it starts in our own hearts as we are filled to overflowing with the love of God.

Here’s another way of thinking of it: Imagine carrying a cup full of liquid through a crowd and someone bumps into you.  Whatever is in that cup will splash out- it will overflow.  Dear ones, when difficult people “bump” into us, whatever is inside our hearts will come out.  This is why our Lord says in Mark 7:21-23 “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.  All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”  

The only way to have love overflow out from us, is for us to have a constant intake of love poured in.  And as we have already demonstrated, the only true and constant source of love in the universe is the love of God in Christ Jesus.  

Love, the Great Apologist

Notice our Lord’s words: by this all people will know.  People may not affirm our beliefs, but they should not be able to deny our love.

History has proven our Lord’s words to be true.  As the second century of Christianity began to unfold, the faith was spreading throughout the Roman Empire—particularly to some of its great cities like Rome and Carthage.  Government leaders were on high alert, keeping an eye on these Christians.  Fairly soon, Christians became considered enemies of the people because they would not sacrifice to pagan gods.   Rumors had begun to circulate in some places about what Christians actually taught and did in their meetings together.  Persecution was becoming increasingly prevalent.  

One church leader, Tertullian, gave an apology (from a Greek word meaning “defense”) of the Christian faith.  In it, he argued that it was an observable fact that the lives of Christians were marked by far greater love and integrity than their pagan neighbors.  Here is what Tertullian wrote:


And conversely, do we not realize that when we are angry, annoyed, frustrated, compelled to gossip about or slander others, we are undermining our own testimony to the world?  How often has the world seen the church’s pettiness and division, and thought “they’re just like everyone else?”  This should not be, for “everyone else” does not have the redeeming love of Christ or the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit!  

If people outside our church today were to take a careful look at us, would their overall impression be, “Those people sure love each other!”?  While they might not agree with what we believe, they ought not be able to deny that there is something supernatural in our love for one another.

But the Greatest of These Is Love

Brothers and sisters, over these two months of looking at the “one another” passages, we have seen many different instructions about how to live within the body of Christ.  Love is not just another thing in that list; it is the common thread that unites together all of life in the Church.  If we love one another, we will seek to live in harmony with one another, forgive one another, count one another as more important than ourselves, build one another up, and welcome one another.  Love ties all of these things together.  

You, dear flock, do these things so well, and yet we must always seek to grow in our love for one another.  How can we do this?  

Only by fixing our eyes upon the One who is love Himself; looking to Christ in the Gospel.

I love you all and am so blessed to have you-
Pastor Alex 

This week in our pastoral letter, we’re going to think about a topic that is vital for life in the church: hospitality.  We will look at several New Testament exhortations to hospitality in this letter, but I want to focus on 1 Peter 4:9: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”

Life in the early church to whom Peter wrote these words was exceedingly difficult.  Internally,  there were the pressures of theological controversy, division, and relational strife.  Outwardly, there was the reality of increasing persecution from the Roman government.  There was nothing easy about being a Christian in the first or second century.

If ever a group of people had an excuse not to show hospitality, it was these people.  Can you imagine the congregation as they read this call to hospitality from the great Apostle Peter?  “Our lives are in danger every day because of our faith, and you want us to have people over to our house for dinner?”  What’s Peter’s response?   “Exactly!”  

Consider what he says immediately afterwards in verse 10: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace…”  In other words, there is no “hospitality team”; this is the work of all believers.  To whatever degree we are able to show hospitality, we are stewards of that gift.

I assume that is why, immediately after the call to hospitality, Peter adds that we are to do it “without grumbling.”   Grumbling has always been a great sin among God’s people, not because we have anything to grumble about, but because sometimes we just don’t want to do what God has commanded.  We can even be quite clever in our grumbling about God’s command of hospitality:

• “If I had a nicer house, I’d have people over more often.”
• ”I’m not a very good cook.”
• ”This is such a busy season, I’ll get to it when things slow down.”
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Do any of those responses sound familiar?  They do to me- I have probably tried all of them at some point.  But each of these excuses betrays an unbiblical understanding of what hospitality is and does for the Christian church.

Hospitality Defined 
Biblical hospitality is simply opening our homes, resources, and lives to one another for mutual encouragement and edification.  The word hospitality in Greek is xenophilia, which means “love for strangers.”  While there is certainly an aspect of hospitality that involves caring for outsiders, Peter’s emphasis was on caring for one another within the church (“show hospitality to one another”).  Within the early church, hospitality became an integral ministry as a means of building one another up.

Hospitality isn’t merely about sharing a meal with someone or giving them a place to stay; it’s about welcoming one another into our lives in order that we may help one another enjoy a richer experience of knowing Jesus Christ.  It was through the hospitality of others that I learned so much about the Christian life, from marriage to childrearing to family worship; the hospitality of others became my classroom for learning the Christian life.

If we accept this definition of hospitality, most of those excuses we made above no longer seem to work.  In fact, those excuses only get us off the hook for something entirely different: entertaining.  When we entertain, our aim is to impress others with our home, culinary expertise, and stimulating conversation skills.  When we show hospitality, our aim is to impress them with the glory of God in the Gospel of His Son.  Those are two very different things.  

Five Blessings of Hospitality
A church that is committed to the ministry of hospitality is a church that will abound in blessing.  Though this list is far from exhaustive, here are five blessings that ordinarily come with a ministry of hospitality:

1. Hospitality helps us prioritize the things that matter to God. The Scriptures teach us to steward our lives in accordance with the will of God, and therefore anything that God commands in Scripture is near to His heart.  Peter’s exhortation to hospitality is one of several times God’s word calls us to this sort of care for one another:

• Romans 12:13- “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”
• Hebrews 13:1-2- “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
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So important is hospitality to the Christian life that in 1 Timothy 3:2, Titus 1:8, and 1 Timothy 5:10, Paul considers hospitality a necessary mark of godliness.  That’s because a person who is hospitable is one who is aligning the purpose of his or her life with the purposes of God.  

So what does this say for us if we’re just too busy for hospitality?  The problem isn’t just hospitality; if we are unwilling to love and serve our neighbor in the way God has commanded us, we must examine ourselves and our schedules!  If we're too busy to do the things that matter to God, there must be something occupying our time that God did not put there.  We would all do well to assess our lives and determine what we ought to change so that we can enjoy those things that God holds nearest to His heart.

Dear one, I do recognize that certain seasons of life can make hospitality more difficult than others.  If you just had a baby, you probably don’t need to host a dinner the very next week!  Others of you are in family situations in which hospitality is difficult and may require thinking outside of the box.  But those are simply seasons; the normative Christian experience ought to be to welcome one another into our homes and lives (and to care for those going through such seasons).

2. Hospitality drives us to our need of the Gospel:  We all want others to think well of us, but let’s face it; even those of us who seem to have life “together” have areas that can be pretty messy.  We can typically keep things together for an hour or two on Sundays, but what about when we welcome people into our home?  What happens when the house is a mess or the kids misbehave or we burn the meal?  

For most of us, fear of these things keeps us from practicing hospitality.  Perhaps there is a better response: Instead of being paralyzed by the fear of what others think of us, let us rest our weary souls in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  When we are secure in His love, we need not live for the approval of others (Galatians 1:10).  

How does the Gospel enable us to practice hospitality?   Because when we stop seeking our identity in how well-behaved our children are, how clean our home appears, or how good of a hostess we are, it frees us to serve one another in love.  After all, most of the time what people need isn't a gourmet meal; what they really need may just be someone to talk to over a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese.

3. Hospitality turns our attention outwards rather than inwards. Stefany and I often think  about the "tiny home" craze, and at times it seems very attractive to sell our house and move into a few hundred square foot tiny home.  Less space to clean and a lower mortgage payment- what’s not to like about that?  But we always come back to one thing: How could we show hospitality?  God’s call to hospitality reminds us that life isn’t just about me; it’s about how God can use me to serve and bless others.

That doesn’t come naturally to us because one of the effects of sin upon our souls is that we can naturally be very protective of “our stuff”: “Our” time, money, and possessions can all hold an unhealthy place in our hearts.  But as believers, our hearts must belong to Jesus Christ only.    After all, everything we have is already His (Deuteronomy 10:14), and we’re just stewards of it (see the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30). We must come to grips with this: When we are committed to biblical hospitality, it will cost us.  It’s not only the cost of the meal; it’s the time spent preparing and cleaning up.  It’s not about the meals we like; it’s about what others would enjoy.  This is one area that my wife absolutely amazes me: She pays careful attention to what almost every person in the church eats and doesn’t eat- it’s her love language!  

4. Hospitality moves us beyond merely shared theology to a shared life. In the Gospels, the Lord Jesus frequently ate meals with people.  And yet, sharing a meal isn’t about the food; it’s about building relationships.  In fact, as Tim Chester points out in his book Meals with Jesus, the word “companion” comes from the Latin “cum” (“together”) and “panis” (“bread”).  Chester continues, “We may not long for bread, but we long for meaning, intimacy, fulfillment, community, purpose, and joy.”

As a pastor, I see this as one of the great benefits of hospitality: As we welcome one another into our homes, we move from being fellow church members to sharing rich fellowship with one another.  Churches can implement all sorts of programs to connect people, but it’s all useless until we begin to genuinely let one another into our lives.  

Sadly, so many church members miss out on the benefit of sharing life together.  I was speaking to a friend a few years ago about his attendance at a very large megachurch in another state.  I asked what the appeal was for him, and his answer surprised me: “I can remain completely anonymous here.”

Church is not a place to remain anonymous; it’s a place to know and be known!  And hospitality is one of the best means by which we help people move from anonymity to familiarity.  And how badly do we need that?  Many studies have shown that one of the primary reasons people choose a church is not theology, but relationships.  Likewise, people are less likely to leave a church if they have substantial relationships.  

We cannot cultivate meaningful relationships with one another for an hour or two on Sundays; we must learn to share life together.

5.  A ministry of hospitality is not only an example to the church but a witness to the world.  Families committed to hospitality are vital to the health and life of any church.  The Lord Jesus says that the world will know us by the love we have for one another (John 13:35). What better way can we show love to one another than by meaningful hospitality?  And hospitality tends to have a snowball effect: as a few families in the church faithfully practice it, others will undoubtedly follow suit.

Likewise, when we are faithful to show hospitality, it is an extremely attractive witness to the watching world.  I heartily commend Rosaria Butterfield’s book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert as a case study in how sharing a meal can open doors and hearts to the Gospel.  I encourage you to read it, then set an extra seat or two at the table each Sunday, and go out of your way to invite visitors.   Regardless of what they think of the preaching, if the food is good they’ll be back next week.  That’s why we often say as a church “if you feed them, they will come.”

Serve One Another in Love
Perhaps you have agreed with what I’ve said above about the importance of hospitality- wonderful!  But that’s only half the battle. The other half is to do it.  Dear ones, hospitality matters.  As the church of Jesus Christ, we’re not called to live by good intentions; we’re called to do the work of the ministry.  Therefore, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”

I love you all very much,
Pastor Alex