Read: 2 Corinthians 4:1-18
There is only one missionary, to my knowledge, who has so turned the world upside down that she has earned a place on the back of a Scottish £10 note. Whoever it is, everyone acknowledges that Mary Mitchell Slessor, was a missionary of missionaries, and a Christian of Christians.
Read: Song of Songs 5:1-16
From time to time a nation produces someone who is truly great. Scotland was never so blessed as it was in the mid-17th Century when Samuel Rutherford was in his prime. He was one of the greatest pastor-theologians Scotland has ever known, but whatever he had chosen to do, he would have excelled at it. Rutherford was such a bright star in the sky of Scottish Christianity, that after his death, many families in Scotland named their children after him. And yet, his was a martyr’s death at the hands of a changeable and deceitful King.
Read: Mark 9:14-29
The history of the Missionary endeavour of the Church of Jesus Christ is the history of the Unlisted Legion. Thousands of men and women who gave up their lives to spread the good news of a free and sovereign salvation through Jesus Christ – men and women we won’t ever hear about until we meet them in glory. Such a man was James Gilmour of Mongolia. Virtually unheard of, the first I came across him was a Victorian biography of him written by Richard Lovett. In this, Gilmour has the advantage of the vast majority of other missionaries, most of whom have no biography and whose earthly remains have been laid in far off countries where they served the Lord and sought no recognition for it.
Read: Ephesians 6:13-24
Over the next few weeks and months I want to do something completely different at the prayer meeting. We are going to briefly survey the lives of some of the greatest Scottish Christians of history. We’re going to do this not just so that we gain a deeper appreciation of our spiritual forefathers (and foremothers), but more particularly so that we can glean from each one just a couple of things which they discovered and excelled at in their prayer lives. Hopefully, as our studies go on, we will begin to get a wider and fuller picture of the historical and Biblical practice of prayer. We may also pick up one or two hints which may help us in our own private and public prayers. The great Scottish figures I want to look at over the next while are: Thomas Chalmers, Samuel Rutherford, Andrew Bonar, John G Paton, James O Fraser, Thomas Boston, Mary Slessor, and tonight, by way of a dramatic introduction, Robert Murray McCheyne - the minister of St. Peter’s Church in Dundee from 1836 until his early death in 1843. But who really was McCheyne and what can he teach us about prayer?
Read: John 14:8-17
The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, other than the Bible, is the most influential book in Christian history. Perhaps the most famous words of the Institutes are those Calvin begins with, “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” If we do not know ourselves, how much less we know the infinite, eternal and unchangeable God of the Universe! And yet, over the last few months, we have been surveying what our Westminster Shorter Catechism has to say about our God – from Q.4 dealing with His attributes and characteristics, through Q.5 dealing with His Oneness, through Q.6 revealing God as glorious Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In an effort to expand our wisdom, I want to conclude our studies into the Shorter Catechism’s definitions of the character and nature of God by looking at the last clause of Q.6 – “equal in power and glory” – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal in power and equal in glory. I want to look at this under two headings this evening: first, what does this mean; and secondly, what difference does it make?
Read: John 14:15-31
Life is hard for one poor Japanese businessman. Given the low interest rates the financial institutions were offering at the time, this businessman decided to bury his savings in his back garden. Whenever he needed some money, he would go and dig up his stash, take what he needed, and then rebury it. However, on October 10th, he noticed that his back garden has been dug up. When he looked for his money, it had gone. The seriousness of the incident only appeared when it was revealed how much the man had lost – he told police that the equivalent of 2.8million pounds had been stolen from his back garden. It’s an awful lot of money to lose in one go!
The Church of Jesus Christ is often guilty of losing the most precious and valuable things through its own neglect and ignorance. One such precious thing (or I should more properly say precious person) the Church has neglected is the Holy Spirit. Never mind 2.8 million pounds, if we lose the Holy Spirit, we’ve lost God and we’ve lost everything. By contrast, with Him there is nothing we cannot do. The person of the Holy Spirit forms the fourth of our studies into Q. & A. 6 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism – “How many persons are there in the Godhead? There are three persons in the Godhead, – the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” By way of rediscovering the glory of the doctrine and person of the Holy Spirit, I want to explore three avenues tonight – hoping that they will be useful starters for your own studies into His precious person: first, the divinity of the Holy Spirit; secondly, the Personality of the Holy Spirit and lastly, the Role of the Holy Spirit.
Read: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Last week, I saw a billboard poster for a prominent British insurance firm recently with the message, “There is only one predictable thing in life – the future is unpredictable.” Now there’s a sense in which I understand what the insurer is saying, but there’s another sense in which that’s just plain not true – that’s just a gimmick to get you to buy their insurance products – that should be prosecuted under trading standards legislation, because you see the problem is that ultimately, the future is 100% predictable. We know the future for 100% of us here today, like as not, will be death and the grave. Every one of us will die – from the oldest to the youngest, from the fittest to the laziest, from the poorest to the richest – we all know the future – and it ain’t orange – the future is dead. We don’t know is when, where or how it will happen, but we know it will. How dark the future is!
Read: Hebrews 1:1-12
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” – so said a wise man to me not that long ago. If there is one thing among many which we may call the ‘main thing’ of Christianity, without which one cannot call oneself a Christian no matter what else one believes, what would it be? Without any real hesitation, the answer is the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus Christ is nothing and no-one less than God Himself. Now you may think that this is not as important as we are making it out to be – that it is just another bit of theological jargon and an another opportunity for theologians to argue; but without the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ everything in Christianity falls flat on its face – there can be no true knowledge of God, there can be no salvation, there is no Christianity.
Read: John 6:35-51
25 year old Paul Burns, from Glasgow, is probably the most versatile and multi-talented clinical physiologist in Scotland. He combines his busy job at Gartnavel General with a professional career in Welterweight boxing. You probably couldn’t think of two things which are more different! You would never know from looking at him in his hospital scrubs that Paul Burns has aspirations to win the British welterweight boxing title by beating the living daylights out of his opponents.
Just like sometimes people can surprise you by who they are and what they do, God never stops surprising you. In particular, as we enter into a brief study of God the Father, we are caused not just to be surprised, but, along with the words of Professor John Murray, “stagger with amazement.” Who He is and what He does exceeds all we give Him credit for!
Read: Matthew 28:19
Jigsaws make popular Christmas presents. I got one last year. One jigsaw I’ve never tried is called, “the hardest jigsaw in the world”. You can find it on the internet – it’s basically a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle with no picture – just pieces. So you have no idea of where the pieces fit together. It’s really hard. The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity is a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle where you don’t have the full picture to make up your puzzle from. You just have to fit the pieces together and then see what the jigsaw looks like. You have hints, but no final picture. And the doctrine of the Trinity – that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God – is the hardest puzzle in Christianity.
