Isn't it great to sing about what Jesus
has done for us and to remind ourselves
again and again and again of the extent
and consistency of the application of his work?
What we've just sung there is just glorious
truth that we can count entirely on Jesus
Christ and on his saving work.
It's great truth to sing.
First of all, I did not ask Steve
to tell you that story to embarrass Steve.
The fact that Steve didn't send the checks
to the Wood Roast was my fault.
I ought to have directed him, so he
tried to take the mea culpa there, but
that's not fair.
We should have given him greater instruction there.
But it is, in my mind, just a
great story of so many different things.
First of all, God's great provision in matching
dollar for dollar exactly what Charles Mead was,
and also of how God can take oversights,
mistakes, failings, even sin, and work them together
for good, which he did in that case.
I hope that is great encouragement to you
as you consider the Lord and what he's
able to do with your life and all
your mistakes and all your oversights and all
the rest.
He's able to work these things together for
good.
That's a good God, as we saw this
morning.
Let me read for you from Hebrews chapter
12.
I'm just going to read a verse if
you want to listen to it.
First verse.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great
a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay
aside every weight and sin which clings so
closely and let us run with endurance the
race that is set before us.
What we've been trying to do this summer
is remind one another of those who have
been faithful in front of us that have
finished their course and by their lives find
some encouragement.
So it is not the normal fare of
our church on Sunday nights to look at
people.
We like to look at the Bible to
unpack the scripture.
But what we're trying to do over these
Sunday nights is look at the lives of
people and see how God changed their lives
and then use that for our own encouragement.
And that's what we've done so far with
Samuel Pierce and Jonathan Edwards.
And tonight we hope to do with Robert
Murray McShane.
So before we do that, let me pray
and ask the Lord to give us grace.
Father, we thank you for all that you've
done for us in Jesus.
And now we pray do much more for
us through the life of McShane.
We ask for your instruction, your help, your
blessing.
His life would be used to encourage us
to see what can be done with a
man who is close to God.
Have mercy on us, we pray in the
Savior's name.
Amen.
Well, you ought to have a handout if
you don't raise your hand.
Julian's at the back and he'd love to
bring you a copy of that.
McShane's life.
Maybe there's none left.
So you lose.
Okay.
But you don't lose if somebody shares who's
around you.
So we got some people that will share.
Anyone been camping this summer?
Anybody intend to go camping this summer?
Foolish, foolish people.
But if you have been camping, I'll give
my annual tirade against camping.
I won't do that now.
If you've been camping, you've perhaps enjoyed a
camp fire or a bonfire.
And if you've done a number of these
fires, you will know that some of them
take a little while to get going.
Maybe your wood's a little wet, your tinder
isn't quite good enough, and the conditions aren't.
Or maybe you just don't know how to
build a fire.
But it takes a while to get that
fire going.
And it seems to finally start burning.
And then it burns for a while and
then it slowly dissipates.
Other times you start a fire and if
you've got the right fuel there, you just
light that thing and it takes off and
it burns and it's done.
Both fires create heat and light.
But oftentimes it's the fire that burns fast
and furious that draws our attention.
We start wondering things like this.
Is the whole forest going to come down?
And such was the life of Robert Murray
McShane.
He was one of those people who burned
fast and furious.
He died in his 30th year.
He was 29 years old.
He had not yet reached his 30th birthday.
And in the eight years of his public
ministry, God used him in remarkable ways in
his day.
And he has continued to use him for
the 150 years, 160 years since.
Andrew Bonner, who was a good friend of
McShane, collected some of McShane's writings, his sermons,
booklets and tracts that he'd written.
And then he wrote a biographical sketch.
And since 1844, that, to my knowledge, has
never fallen out of print.
It has been republished again and again and
again.
Men like David Martin Lloyd-Jones, men like
Charles Spurgeon would attribute this biographical work on
McShane as one of the most influential things
in their lives.
Shaped how they thought about God, shaped how
they thought about Christian ministry, shaped how they
thought it was to live as a Christian.
Twenty-nine years old and he died.
And my hope is that.
Does anybody else find this when you watch
the Olympics, you go out for a jog?
You ever seen that correlation?
I mean, you see what somebody can do
with all this training and you think, oh,
I could do that or something in it.
You feel inspired.
You watch Wimbledon, you play tennis, you watch
the Stanley Cup finals, you go out and
play ball hockey for the first time in
20 years, whatever it is, it just seems
to draw it out of you.
And the same thing ought to be true
when we're surrounded by godly people.
You get around them and you start to
think, I want to be like that.
And hopefully not in fits and starts, but
your life is really changed.
So let me give you an overview of
his life.
You will see there a timeline of his
life.
It's a short life, 30 years.
It's summarized there for you.
Eighteen thirteen McShane was born, grew up in
a very religious upper middle class family.
He was a poet.
He was an athlete.
He liked gymnastics.
In fact, one time he was on a
somebody put a bar across two limbs of
a tree and he and he was walking
through his little parish and he saw these
guys doing tricks and he said, watch me.
And he got up there and he was
doing spins and stuff.
And then it broke and he fell on
his head, which might have actually contributed to
his early death.
But he was an athlete.
He was fun loving.
He was winsome.
He's kind of one of those guys that
walks in a room and draws everyone's attention.
He's just that outgoing, effervescent personality.
And such was Robert's life until he was
18.
And when he turned 18, his brother died.
His brother is eight years older than him.
Twenty six years old.
And his twenty six year old brother had
faithfully evangelized him.
But McShane Robert had not really spent a
lot of time listening to his brother.
But when his when his brother died, it
rocked his world.
And not so much the fact that his
brother died as much as the way in
which his brother died.
For his brother died with great confidence in
God, a sober reality settled in in his
deathbed.
And Robert looked at his brother and he
said, I don't have that.
And so from that moment on, he would
mark that time period of his life as
the time in which God saved him.
He didn't know exactly the day or the
hour, but he could point to that time
as the event that rocked his world and
showed him Christ.
And so he began to pursue the Lord.
That same year, 1830 or rather 1831, he
started seminary at the University of Edinburgh under
Thomas Thomas Chalmers.
Chalmers or Chalmers.
I'm not sure how you pronounce it exactly.
The great thing about him is his emphasis
on real heart religion.
None of this scholastic nonsense.
He wanted the men under his charge to
know Christ and to love Christ.
And not only that, he wanted them to
be evangelists.
So he would take him out and he
would say, here's your block.
Go evangelize the block.
And these guys would go out weekly and
just call on people and cold call evangelism.
And that's the ethos in which McShane was
trained.
After his graduation, he's licensed to preach under
John Bonner, who's the brother of Andrew Bonner,
his best friend.
And then he has that 10 month trial
and he's called the St. Peter's Dundee.
That's where he'll spend his entire ministry.
It's a new church building, seats about 1100
people.
Within a few years, it is full and
packed, people crowding to get in because this
man's ministry was, for lack of a better
term, anointed of God.
In 1839, when he's 25, 26 years old,
he gets heart palpitations, meaning his heart starts
to beat.
I can make a sound.
His heart beats really quickly.
And it's uncontrollable.
There's no medication.
Doctors say the only way to treat that
is get out of ministry.
And so he goes and imagine this just
when things start to really seem to be
taking off.
He's removed.
He goes and he lives with mom and
dad again.
And then he is approached by some older
pastors who are going to Palestine to inquire
after the state of Jewish people, whether they
know Christ, whether there's a Christian church in
Palestine.
So he travels for a year.
And while he's gone, revival breaks out in
his church.
I want you to think about that.
You're 25, 26 years old.
You've been preaching, praying for revival.
You are laid aside because of your health.
And then you go off to a foreign
land.
And while you're there, revival comes.
Hundreds and hundreds of people that had no
Christian background are converted, come into the church.
He's not there for any of it.
He returns a little bit better, not completely
healed.
And the revival seems to be coming to
an end.
And he is the pastor.
Now, all these new Christians within the next
three, four years, he dies.
Typhoid.
He's visiting a Christian and he's preaching the
gospel to them.
They have typhus fever is raging through the
area.
Sure enough, he contracts it.
He's already in a weakened state because of
his heart.
And he dies.
Here's what Andrew Bonner said.
And the quotation is there at the end
of that timeline.
This afternoon, March 25, 1843, about five o
'clock, a message has just come to tell
me of Robert McShane's death.
Never, never yet in all my life have
I felt anything like this.
It is a blow to myself, to his
people, to the Church of Christ in Scotland.
Oh, Lord, work for thine own glory's sake.
Arise, oh Lord.
The godly seeth and the faithful fail.
My heart is sore.
It makes me feel near death myself.
Now, there was no friend whom I loved
like him for the next forty nine years.
Andrew Bonner would live another forty nine years.
He was an old, old man when he
died.
Eighty three, I think, which is old for
the day.
Some of you are going to stop that
old, but it was old for the day.
For the next forty nine years, Andrew Bonner
would mark the date in his journal, the
anniversary of McShane's death, and almost every single
entry over those forty nine years said something
like this.
Oh, when will I have the godliness of
McShane?
Now, you have forty nine years to find
it.
Now, just a little bit of context and
then some lessons from this short life.
No telephone.
No internet.
No electricity.
No computer.
No DVDs, Blu-ray, whatever.
In other words, not a lot of distractions
in McShane's life.
He also had a sister who lived with
him and cared for him.
She did all the cleaning, all the cooking,
and would entertain guests when people would call
on him.
So when you hear what McShane did in
his life, you need to understand he's a
single man.
He never married.
He was likely in love with a young
woman.
He never quite fessed up to that in
his journals, but he sure wrote a lot
about her, which is often a good sign.
On the flip side, he didn't have a
car, but you know what?
He did have kids.
Anybody want to take a guess what this
pastor rode around in?
Well, not a car.
Like a horse.
Not a buggy.
No, a donkey.
Not a donkey.
A mule.
No.
What is what's the ones that like they
don't breed?
A mule.
Yeah, he had a mule.
Want to know his name?
Want to take a guess?
No, not mule.
Lazer?
Oh, Cleezer.
His name was Tully.
Good.
Do you want to just stand up for
a minute?
It's so hot in here.
I realize it's oppressive.
Do you need to just stand up and
breathe for a second?
You can just like, here, just stretch and
let the blood flow for a second.
Really?
It's so hot.
Okay, now sit down.
Okay, let me tell you four or five
things we can learn from McShane's life.
Number one, pursue God with all your strength
and you will find him.
The great thing about men like McShane is
they model for us a man who found
God when he pursued God with all of
his heart.
He wrote this, Who's Brainerd?
I want a grown-up to tell me
who's Brainerd.
Nice and loud.
David Brainerd.
When did we just hear about David Brainerd?
Jonathan Edwards.
Jonathan Edwards that we saw last Sunday when
John was telling us about Jonathan Edwards.
John Bell was telling us about Jonathan Edwards.
And he put together the Journal of David
Brainerd, which is still in publication, still used
of God in many, many people's lives.
And John said, we all need to read
it.
So McShane read Brainerd.
Oh, to have Brainerd's heart for perfect holiness,
to be holy as God is holy, pure
as Christ is pure, perfect as our Father
in heaven is perfect.
That's just a journal entry.
Or rather, I think that's in a letter
he wrote to another pastor.
In his journal, he would say, I often
pray, Lord, make me as holy as a
pardoned sinner can be made.
That's a great prayer.
Do you see the theology of that prayer?
Is that your intention of your heart?
Make me as holy as a pardoned sinner
can be made.
In other words, don't make me just over
the cusp of acceptability.
Make me as holy as a pardoned sinner
can be made.
Pursue God in that way and you will
find Him.
He was convinced of his own inability, so
he would say, I must first see the
face of God before I can take on
any duty.
In another place, do everything in earnest.
If it's worth doing, then do it with
all your might.
Above all, keep much in the presence of
God.
Never see the face of man till you
have seen his face, who is our life,
our all.
It's not in Bonner's account, but I believe
it was McShane who one day they were
waiting for him to preach in a certain
place.
I think it was at Dundee, St. Peter's.
And he didn't show up.
He didn't show up.
They're singing.
They're praying.
He didn't show up.
Finally, they send some of the elders to
find him.
They knock on the door and they said,
Mr. McCain, it's time to preach.
And he says, I can't come.
Anybody know the rest?
No, not because he was sick.
I can't come until the Lord comes with
me.
He was unwilling to enter the pulpit till
he was sure that God was with him,
that he had met with God in prayer,
that he had found God and was able
to now come and bring God to the
people.
It's a reflection of a man whose heart
was intent on the Lord.
He wrote this, rose early to seek God
and found him whom my soul loves, who
would not rise early to meet such company?
Me?
Sometimes.
He knew the way to find God was
through reading the word of God.
So seeing such a value in the word
of God, he probably heard of McShane's reading
calendar he put together.
It was kind of the first guy that
we know to do this, a calendar in
order to read through the New Testament and
Book of Psalms twice and all of the
Old Testament once in the course of a
year.
And with every day came particular readings morning
and evening.
And the idea was that if we as
a whole church are all reading the same
thing, we're able to fellowship around the word
together, which is why we do the same
here.
We just kind of made it easier for
you.
He would write this in general.
It is best to have at least one
hour alone with God before engaging in anything
else.
At the same time, he's writing this not
for anyone else, by the way.
This is just his personal conviction.
So just hear the man's conviction.
It's not saying this to anyone else in
a journal that would have at least one
hour alone with God before engaging in anything
else.
At the same time, I must be careful
not to reckon communion with God by minutes
or hours or by solitude.
I poured over my Bible and on my
knees for hours with little or no communion.
And my times of solitude have often been
times of greatest temptation.
But he's saying in practice, I need to
seek to have this hour alone with God
every day.
He also practiced prayer.
He wrote, No person can be a child
of God without living in secret prayer.
And no community of Christians can be in
a lively or alive condition without unity in
prayer.
We know that to be true, don't we?
By our own experience, if we're not praying
individually and then coming together to pray corporately,
there is a liveliness that decreases in church
life.
But when Christians are in the closet and
then they come out of the closet to
pray with one another, there's an electricity in
the fellowship because they've been with their God.
I love this next quote where he says,
Pray to be taught to pray.
What does that mean?
Pray to be taught to pray.
We don't
know how to pray unless God teaches us
how to pray, right?
So he says, Pray to be taught to
pray.
Don't assume you know how to pray.
He goes on.
Do not be content with old forms that
flow from the lips only.
We get that sometimes with the little children,
right?
It's like the Grace Kids night.
You know, dear Lord, thank you for the
food.
It's the grace prayer.
It's the meal prayer.
It's just it's an old form.
But, you know, we might we can do
the same kind of things, just have the
same language in prayer.
He says, Don't be content with old forms
that flow from the lips only.
Most Christians have need to cast their formal
prayers away to be taught to cry Abba.
He said at one time, If I could
hear Christ praying for me in the next
room, I would not fear a million of
enemies.
Yet the distance makes no difference.
He is praying for me.
So pursue God with all your strength.
And as McShane models, you will find him.
Number two, apply the gospel to your sin.
Again, writing simply to himself in his journal,
he said, I am persuaded that I shall
obtain the highest amount of present happiness.
I shall do the most for God's glory
and the good of man, and I shall
have the fullest reward in eternity by maintaining
a conscience always washed in Christ's blood.
He then goes on in that same sort
of section to describe how there is a
tendency in his heart to carry a burdened
conscience rather than confess a sin.
Kind of what we were talking about this
morning, not believing in the goodness of God,
rather believing that I've got to do some
things to earn God's favor back.
So he wrote this.
I feel follow this closely.
I feel when I have sinned and immediate
reluctance to go to Christ, I am ashamed
to go.
I feel as if it would do no
good to go.
Anyone ever feel this way?
I'm asking anybody ever feel this way?
You sin and it feels like no good
to go to Christ.
He goes on as if it were making
Christ a minister of sin to go straight
from the swine trough to the best road.
Ever feel that way?
You're angry at your husband and you say
all kinds of things that you that fill
you with regret and it feels wrong to
go to Jesus.
You feel filthy because of your sin and
a thousand other excuses.
But I am persuaded they are all lies
direct from hell.
John argues the opposite way.
If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the father.
Jeremiah 3 once and a thousand other scriptures
are against it.
I am sure there is neither peace nor
safety from deeper sin, but in going directly
to the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is God's way of peace and holiness.
It is folly to the world and the
clouded heart.
But it is the way.
If that if you can take any takeaway
value from McShane's life, I want it to
be this that you begin to see in
your life that when sin comes, go immediately
to Christ.
Be always confessing sin.
Be always seeking grace and find there a
welcome reception.
Apply the gospel to your sin.
Number three from McShane's life over the page.
Do all you can to crack, chisel, expose,
kill and ruin pride in your life.
I told you about this event where he
goes off to a foreign land, is sick.
In fact, before he went, this is what
he wrote.
I think this quote is in your.
Yeah, here it is.
He's writing to another pastor before his trip
to Palestine.
He's sick at his parents' house.
And this is what he writes.
I sometimes think that a great blessing may
come to my people in my absence.
Often God does not bless us when we
are in the midst of our labors, lest
we shall say my hand and my eloquence
have done it.
He removes us into silence and then pours
down a blessing so that there is no
room to receive it, so that all that
see it cry out, it is the Lord.
This was the way in the South Sea
Islands.
May it really be so with my dear
people.
It's like this man had a prophetic gift
because that's exactly what happened.
In fact, he was in Buzha, which memory
is failing me.
It's either Greece or Iran or Turkey.
How's that for helpful?
I think it's Greece.
No, I think it's Iran.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
It's an antiquated place name, but this is
what he wrote to Dr. Gibson later on.
I really believe that my master had called
me home and that I would sleep beneath
the dark green cypresses of Buzha till the
Lord called and Lord shall come.
And my most earnest prayer was for my
dear flock that God would give them a
pastor after his own heart.
And it was on that very night when
the revival began back in Dundee, Scotland.
He's lying at death's door and all he
can think to pray of is for his
church.
And as he's laboring in prayer alone, Andrew
Bonner wasn't with him.
He'd gone on ahead and he's alone.
He's in the heat.
He thinks he's going to die.
And he's praying that God would send revival,
that God would be gracious, that God would
send a pastor to his flock.
And that's exactly what the Lord did.
There is no hint of him ever looking
at God and going, why didn't I get
to see the revival?
No hint of envy.
W.
C.
Burns was the pastor taking his place while
he was gone.
He was four or five years younger, inexperienced.
And God brings the great work through the
inexperienced young pastor.
Never does he grow bitter.
Number four, love children and call on them
to turn from sin and put their sole
hope in Jesus.
McShane was always addressing the children in his
preaching, in a sermon on the revenge, the
sword of God's revenge.
In the application, he turned to the children.
This is what he said.
Think this, little children, you are the pride
of your mother's heart, but have gone astray
from the womb speaking lies.
Little children who are fond of your plays,
but are not fond of coming to Jesus
Christ, who is the savior of little children.
The sword will come on you also in
a gospel tract entitled Reasons Why Children Should
Fly to Christ Without Delay.
He writes this.
It is high time you seek the Lord.
The longest lifetime is short enough.
Oh, if you had to stand as often
as I have beside the dying bed of
little children to see their wild looks and
outstretched hands and to hear their dying cries,
you would see how dreadful it is to
fly to Christ and how needful it is
rather to fly to Christ.
Now it may be your turn next.
Are you prepared to die?
Have you fled for refuge to Jesus?
Have you found forgiveness?
This is not a man just manipulating children.
He he was I mean, typhus was running
rampant.
There were there were other fevers and diseases
that were going on.
He was regularly burying children.
When he says what he says here, he's
speaking the truth.
He would often be at the bedside of
dying children.
And so he was burdened for those children
to come to Christ.
Children, you need to come to Christ.
You need to look to Jesus and ask
him to forgive forgive you for all of
your sins, all the times that you were
mean to brother or sister, all the times
that you were thinking bad thoughts towards mommy
and daddy or times when you were even
hitting people and screaming and angry.
All of those sins, they need to be
forgiven.
And God will forgive you if you turn
away from your sins and believe on Jesus
Christ.
He would write of James Lang, who was
converted when he was about 12 years old,
died when he was 14.
And he wrote a tract about James.
He was so impressed by this young man's
life.
And I put it on my blog recently.
I would encourage that you read it.
It's long, but it's remarkable what this little
boy did from his sick bed.
He would call in his friends and preach
the gospel to them.
And this is what he said.
The greatest what the greatest lack in the
religion of children is generally sense of sin.
Artless simplicity, meaning kind of a gullibility and
confidence in what is told are in some
respects natural to children.
Kids believe what you tell them.
And this is the reason why we are
so often deceived by promising appearances in childhood.
Parents take note.
Your children are growing up in your home.
You're the biggest influence in their lives.
They long to please you.
You tell them of God.
You tell them of Jesus.
There is an artless simplicity.
They are not well nuanced.
They have not been exposed to everything in
the world yet.
And so they seem to receive it.
They seem to accept it.
They seem to believe it.
They can parrot the words of the gospel,
the vocabulary of the gospel.
But then McShane says this, the reality of
grace in a child is best known by
his sense of sin.
Just being able to talk about Jesus isn't
necessarily the evidence of true conversion.
But true conversion is much better seen when
a child is able to articulate his sinfulness,
her brokenness, her neediness before God.
I urge you, parents, to take that thought
and ponder it really quickly.
Number five, love people who are not Christians
yet and tell them about their lostness and
all about the wonderful solution, Jesus.
McShane said, Do not be satisfied without conversions.
Are you satisfied with people not coming to
Christ?
Don't be.
Have a holy dissatisfaction with lack of conversions.
He would write to a pastor, never forget
that the end of a sermon, the goal
of a sermon is the salvation of the
people.
Writing to a young man who was awakened
but not yet converted, this is what he
wrote a letter and said this.
What has the world done for you that
you love it so much?
Did the world die for you?
Will the world blot out your sins or
change your heart?
Will the world carry you to heaven?
No, no.
You may go back to the world if
you please, but it, the world, can only
destroy your poor soul.
Have you not lived long enough in pleasure?
Come and try the pleasures of Christ, forgiveness
and a new heart.
I have not been at a dance or
any worldly amusement for many years, and yet
I believe I have had more pleasure in
a single day than you have had all
your life.
In what, you will say?
In feeling that God loves me, that Christ
has washed me, and feeling that I shall
be in heaven when the wicked are cast
into hell.
A day in your court is better than
a thousand elsewhere, Psalm 8410.
If you die without Christ, you cannot come
back to be converted and die a Christian,
a believer.
You have but once to die.
Oh, pray that you may find Christ before
death finds you.
In one of his six evangelistic letters to
a young woman, McShane wrote, The world will
say you are an innocent and harmless girl.
Do not believe them.
The world is a liar.
Pray to see yourself exactly as God sees
you.
More and more of those quotes are there.
Look at the very last one, where he
says this.
Now, do not look so long and so
harassingly at your own heart and feelings.
What will you find there but the bite
of the serpent?
Look to Christ.
Look to Him and live.
You need no preparation.
You need no endeavors.
You need no duties.
You need no strivings.
You only need to look and live.
Do not take up your time so much
with studying your own heart as with studying
Christ's heart.
For one look at yourself, take ten looks
at Christ.
And finally, I leave you with a personal
word.
McShane's life has changed in my life.
Reading his biography, reading his letters in particular,
all of these things have exposed my own
lack of godliness and have encouraged me to
more greatly value God over everything else.
And so, if you look at your life
and say, man, when I just look at
my life, I seem to be taken up
with work.
I seem to be taken up with ministry.
I seem to be taken up with parenting.
I seem to be taken up with this
and with that.
I'm not taken up with God.
Then I would urge you, get a copy
of the full volume Banner of Truth edition
of Robert Murray McShane's Memoirs and Remains and
start reading his letters.
And if you can't afford that, you can
read it on Google Books online.
The thing is there, the title is there.
You can read it right online.
You can print it off if you want.
It's free.
It's past copyright.
But read those letters and let them stir
your affections for Christ.
I will leave you with what is perhaps
the best known McShane quote.
It is not great talents that God blesses
so much as great likeness to Jesus.
A holy minister is an awful, meaning powerful,
weapon in the hand of God.