Of His Good Pleasure
Jess Slusher
Something was wrong…very wrong. He looked over his message again, the one he had been preparing for a couple weeks. Since the first of the year his congregation had been reading the One Year Chronological Bible and he had weekly preached on a passage or theme from that week’s reading. Small groups within the church body were using the readings as their discussion topic and it had breathed new life into them. This Sunday he was to preach on the twelve spies being sent out. So many lessons from that text, so many ways to encourage his people about the dangers of unbelief and the necessity of having a vision that demands courage and action…but something was wrong. He heard a voice call from the back of his mind that urged him to think again, pray again, about the message.
He sighed, removed his glasses and rubbed his brow. “What is it, Lord? What are you trying to tell me?
In his mind he stood in his pulpit overlooking his congregation. He saw people who had been part of the church long before he had arrived and he saw new faces as well. He could see hearts of faith and hearts of unbelief. He saw people he knew were not serving Christ even though they came every week. He saw people struggling with disappointment and those who were experiencing their prayers being answered.
It had always been his hope as a pastor to proclaim the Word in such a way that the people would say, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” That passage from Luke 24:32 about Jesus on the road to Emmaus with two disciples had motivated him to know the Word and prepare it well so that others would understand about Jesus and why he came. So he studied and prepared and prayed over his sermons. He enjoyed that settled feeling of knowing exactly what he was going to say. There had, of course, been the occasional “Saturday Night Special” when he had hurriedly put together the message because inspiration or time had evaded him the entire week. He hated those times. His preaching often seemed empty and uninspiring and he felt so unprepared. And now today, an hour before people started showing up, he felt there was something wrong. But it was a different feeling from general anxiety over a difficult text – this was a message he had been anticipating and looking forward to preaching. This was a text to “sink your teeth into” and yet it was losing its draw and he felt suddenly no inspiration in it.
He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes and the thought occurred to him, “Do these people really understand what a Covenant is?” He sat forward, with a panic, his thoughts racing. “What? Covenant? Are you kidding? Now?”
It was a good question. They had been studying the progression of God’s plan as they were reading through Genesis and Exodus – so many great stories and foundational truths! Many of his people had been raised in the faith and could give a theological discourse themselves on Covenant Theology. But it was a big subject – an entire Second Year, 5 credit course in seminary. For that reason he had avoided getting into the subject of Covenant because it would require a sermon series in itself.
“But they don’t understand…” This thought dumbfounded him. So what was he supposed to do, scrap his message? As soon as the thought crossed his mind another thought came, not his own, “YES!”
‘At a total loss’ would describe a little of what he felt. He lifted the pages of his ‘Twelve Spies’ notes and sighed, tossing them to the corner of his desk.
“Ok, Lord, but you’ve got to help me…what do I say?” He was committed. Committed to step out away from the comfort of his preparation and lean on the leading of the Holy Spirit. “Here’s something they don’t teach you in seminary…” he sighed out loud to himself as he closed his office door, the well prepared message still on the corner of his desk.
When he stepped into the pulpit he told the people they were going to do a review of what they had been reading to make sure they had a basic understanding of Covenant. “How many of you as you have been reading, have questions about or difficulty understanding the term Covenant and what it means?” Hands all across the congregation went up from folks of all stages of faith and maturity. There were also visitors there that morning. Some of them were new to church and some had never before made a profession of faith and had no understanding at all.
So he ventured out, quoting briefly from the passages of God’s covenant with Noah never to flood the earth again. He spoke of Abram and God’s promise to give him a son and that his descendants would be like the stars in number. He spoke of God’s promise to bring Abrahams descendants into the land of Canaan and from there transitioned to the Exodus and God delivering the Covenant of the Law, the Old Covenant through Moses. The people followed him because over the last two months they all had been reading these very passages. But there were people there who had never heard about a Covenant other than a real estate contract or a marriage vow and he had the impression – no, the clear understanding that he was to keep this teaching simple.
All during this message he was following a half a page of notes, a basic outline – and yet it was as if words flowed from him, as if the Holy Spirit was speaking directly through him to the heart of His people. An invisible current was flowing through him and he could feel it. It was effortless. God was putting him on like a glove. His voice was God’s voice, his words God’s words. God was bringing revelation and conviction and life. He could feel this, sense all of it. When he paused between thoughts expectancy hung in the air. People leaned forward to hear.
“This covenant that came through Moses was not “unto salvation but for the sake of salvation.” He quoted an old friend of his, T.M. Moore whose book, The Ground For Christian Ethics, had brought fresh understanding to him. “You see, you can’t be accepted by God by keeping these commandments. You can come to church your whole life and never satisfy the demands of a holy God by trying to keep the requirements of the Old Covenant. God’s law is written on the consciences of all people and no one is able to have confidence that they have met the demands of a holy God. That’s why, Christian, you are miserable and without power in your life because you trust your own efforts – and your best efforts have brought you to this point. God’s law points us to Christ, to someone who met God’s righteous demands.”
He then shared about the New Covenant that came through Christ. “A man named Andrew Murray said, ‘The Old Covenant showed us what man’s best efforts could accomplish and ended in failure but the new Covenant showed us what Christ could accomplish….’” It was then he heard weeping, weeping of conviction and relief.
The air was electric, filled with the stillness and power of Christ, with the activity of the Holy Spirit. He stepped down from the pulpit to the front of church. He asked some of his leaders to come and stand in the front and then he said, “Some of you have never given your life to Christ, now it’s your day. Some of you have trusted in yourself for too long and been too long disappointed and now it’s your day to agree to the offer that God makes to you in the New Covenant. Will you trust Jesus today?” Then he invited people to come forward for prayer with the leaders up front – something else they had not taught him in seminary. His worship leader came and played as people responded to the Word of Christ. And there was one in the crowd, a young girl who had struggled with addictions, was pregnant and broken and that day confessed her sins and surrendered her life to Christ through a message on Covenant.
There were days in the pastor’s ministry to his flock that brought him great joy and pleasure, but this day, this day that he yielded to Christ was a day of transport and transformation. That he could be so used, could feel the pleasure of God as he cooperated with the Holy Spirit… changed him. He realized that diligence and preparation in study was to be a doorway for the power of the Holy Spirit, not a restriction, if he would only learn to listen and yield.
A teaching from the Westminster Confession of Faith came to his mind, once only read but now experienced,
“Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ. And that they may be enabled thereunto, beside the graces they have already received, there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit, to work in them to will, and to do, of His good pleasure: yet are they not hereupon to grow negligent, as if they were not bound to perform any duty unless upon a special motion of the Spirit; but they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.”1
- paragraph III of chapter XVI, “Of Good Works”, of The Westminster Confession of Faith.
