I’ve been preaching through 1st John on Sunday mornings here at SCBC. The Spirit has been sweet to me, and to the Body at SCBC during this time. He has encouraged and convicted our hearts. He has warned us about our worldly desires and approved our love for Christ. It has been good. Last week I preached on the antichrist. Tomorrow, I will continue working through what I believe John is driving at in chapters 2 & 3. I believe it is a warning and an encouragement to understand the hard truth that there will be many who are “from us” but not “of us”. That is to say, there are many who exist in the “church”, but are not really part of the “Church”. I was struggling with the application part of my sermon this week because its almost identical to what I preached last week. Last week, the first part of my application was the question “are you an antichrist?”. Tomorrow, like last week, the first part of my application will be the question “are you part of the Beloved?” I wasn’t sure I should ask basically the same question two weeks in a row, but over and over again, I just kept thinking to myself “the Almighty has us here in 1st John by His providence, so,,, I’ll trust him”. Then today I began reading Richard Baxter’s A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live. I love Baxter! Oh, that the Almighty would put words in my mouth like Baxter’s words. I know that the following quote is long, but it was so timely for my message tomorrow. I almost wept when I read the part about the Lord filling the ministers hearts with more compassion, casting themselves at the feet of the miserable souls, and following them to their house to speak again to them with bitter tears. Have you wept at the feet of your lost friends and family? Have you asked the Almighty to make your eyes a fountain of tears in lamenting their careless state? Oh, be sweet to us Spirit, and break our hearts for the unconverted! Here is some Baxter Balm:
"In compassion of your sinful miserable
souls, the Lord, that better knows your case than you can know it, hath
made it our duty to speak to you in his name, 2 Cor. v. 19. and to tell
you plainly of your sin and misery, and what will be your end, and how
sad a change you will shortly see, if yet you go on a little longer.
Having bought you at so dear a rate as the blood of his son Jesus
Christ, and made you so free and general promise of pardon, and grace,
and everlasting glory; he commandeth us to tender all this to you, as
the gift of God, and to intreat you to consider of the necessity and
worth of what he offereth.--He seeth and pitieth you, while you are
drowned in worldly cares and pleasures, and eagerly following childish
toys, and wasting that short and precious time for a thing of nought,
in which you should make ready for an everlasting life; and therefore
he high commanded us to call after you, and tell you how you lose your
labour, and are about to lose your souls, and to tell you what greater
and better things you might certainly have, if you would hearken to his
Call, Isa. lv. 1, 2, 3. We believe and obey the voice of God; and come
to you on his message, who hath charged us to preach, and be instant
with you in season and out of season, and to lift up our voice like a
trumpet, and shew your transgressions and your sins, Isa. lviii. 1. 2
Tim. iv. 1, 2. But alas! to the grief of our souls and your own
undoing, you stop your ears, you stiffen your necks, you harden your
hearts, and send us back to God with groans, to tell him that we have
done his message, but can do no good on you, nor scarcely get a sober
hearing.--Oh! that our eyes were a fountain of tears, that we might
lament our ignorant, careless people, that have Christ before them, and
pardon, and life, and heaven before them, and that have not hearts to
know or value them! that might have Christ, and grace, and glory, as
well as others, if it were not for their wilfill negligence and
contempt! O that the Lord would fill our hearts with more compassion to
these miserable souls, that we might cast ourselves even at their feet,
and follow them to their houses, and speak to them with our bitter
tears: For, long have we preached to many of them in vain: We study
plainness to make them understand, and many of them will not understand
us; we study serious, piercing words, to make them feel, but they will
not feel. If the greatest matters would work with them, we should awake
them; if the sweetest things would work, we should entice them and win
their hearts; if the most dreadful things would work, we should at
least affright them from their wickedness; if truth and certainty would
take with them, we should soon convince them; if the God that made
them, and the Christ that bought them, might be heard, the case would
soon be altered with them; if scripture might be heard, we should soon
prevail; if reason, even the best and strongest reason, might be heard,
we should not doubt but we should speedily convince them; if experience
might be heard, even their own experience, and the experience of all
the world, the matter would be mended; yea, if the conscience within
them might be heard, the case would be better with them than it is. But
if nothing can be heard, what then shall we do for them? If the
dreadful God of heaven be slighted, who then shall be regarded? If the
inestimable love and blood of a Redeemer be made light of, what then
shall be valued? If heaven have no desirable glory with them, and
everlasting joys be nothing worth, if they can jest at hell, and dance
about the bottomless pit, and play with the consuming fire, and that
when God and man do warn them of it; what shall we do for such souls as
these?" Richard Baxter, preface to A Call to the Unconverted
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