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Welcome to Faith of Our Fathers. Today we feature John Stott, described as the presumptive pope of the evangelicals. Yet so little is known about the man who had won exceptional honors. The evangelical world lost one of its greatest spokesmen and I have lost one of my closest friends and advisors, said Billy Graham, paying tribute to the Reverend John Robert Walmsley Stott. Whether in the west or in the Third World, a hallmark of Stott's ministry has been expository preaching that addresses not only the hearts but also the minds of contemporary men and women. Today, John Stott presents a sermon on the integrated Christian.
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Well, our topic for these three Sunday mornings is the integrated Christian who is a disciple of Jesus Christ, whose mind, emotions and will are in harmony with one another and are submissive to his lordship. We ended last Sunday morning with Haim Potok's epigram that a mind without a heart is nothing. We begin this morning with another, not exactly an epigram, but something like it. That is. At All Soils Church and at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. We are not in the business of breeding tadpoles. Now, I imagine you know what a tadpole is. Tadpoles are aquatic larvae of frogs and toads. They are creatures with a huge head and nothing much else besides. Well, friends, I have known a number of Christian tadpoles in my life who have huge heads bulging with biblical theology. But they have no place for their emotions and it is to them that we are addressing ourselves to some degree today. But perhaps you think that I am the last person in the world who should think about this subject. Because I am descended from hard headed Vikings, I'm an Anglo Saxon by origin, I have no spark of Celtic or Latin blood in my veins. And in addition to all that, I was brought up in one of those peculiar institutions called an English public school. There I was taught the philosophy of. Of the stiff upper lip. Do you know what that is? Well, you see, when you begin to feel a bit of immersion, your upper lip begins to quiver. And you are told that you can have a quivering upper lip but you must on no account reveal it. Instead of that, I was taught the manly virtues of courage and fortitude, whereas weeping was strictly for women and children and never for the male sex. And then, my friends, I was introduced to Jesus Christ, the perfect human being. And I learned to my astonishment that Jesus was no tight lipped, unemotional, ascetic. But on the contrary, he turned on the hypocrites with anger. He looked on the rich young ruler with love. He could rejoice where told in spirit. And he felt acute pain in the garden of Gethsemane. And on seven separate occasions we're told that he was moved with compassion. He even burst into tears twice in public. But then he wasn't brought up at an English public school. Well, you'll forgive that rather lengthy introduction, but I felt we needed to be on the level with one another. Let me tell you the territory that I hope we will traverse this morning. I want to begin firstly with the emotional life of Jesus. I want to go on secondly to the place of immersion in the life of the disciple. And then I think we'll have a little time at the end for the relation between the mind and the emotions. And we begin with the emotional life of Jesus. That's why I asked for John 11 to be read this morning. It is because Jesus is at the graveside of Lazarus, face to face with death and with the bereavement of Lazarus, two sisters. So how did Jesus respond to this situation? Well, According to John 11:33, the new international version says he was deeply moved, which is an emotional experience. Other English versions say that he sighed or that he groaned. But the Greek word embrymesthai means that he snorted. The word is used sometimes literally of the snorting of horses and sometimes metaphorically, of snorting with indignation. Anger. CK Barrett, in his commentary on John's Gospel, writes, it is beyond question that embry mestai implies anger. And then B.B. warfield, the famous Princeton theologian, wrote, what John tells us is that Jesus approached the grave of Lazarus in a status not of uncontrollable grief, but of rather irrepressible anger. Now, what is this anger that Jesus experienced and why did he experience it? Well, it's because he saw in death an alien intrusion into God's good world. He saw the unnaturalness of death. He saw what Calvin called the violent tyranny of death. And he burned. I'm quoting still from Warfield. He burned with rage against this oppressor of human beings. Fury seized upon him. His whole being was discomposed and perturbed. It is death which is the object of his anger. And behind death, him who has the power of death, the devil. And then, after that fascinating insight into the emotional life of Jesus, John tells us a second thing about it, and that is that in verse 35, Jesus wept, not now tears of anger in the face of death, but tears of sympathy for the bereaved victims of death. Now, to me, friends, it is a very beautiful thing that Jesus was so deeply moved in spirit. He felt indignation in the face of death and he felt compassion towards its victim. First he snorted verse 33, and then he wept, verse 35. Well, I tell you frankly, I long to see more anger among Christian people today towards evil. Think of the evils of today, of racial prejudice and social injustice, of the bombing of the innocent, of the callous killing of human fetuses in the womb as if they were nothing but bits of tissue. And again, the cynical wickedness of pornographers and of drug pushers who make a fortune out of other people's weaknesses and at the cost of their ruin, since these and many other evils are displeasing to God and hateful to him, and they should be hateful to us as well. And then what about the victims, the wounded, the maimed, the bereaved, the hungry? What about unborn children at risk in a selfish society and many other victims? I want to ask, where is our sense of outrage and where is the compassion of Jesus for the victims? I don't myself know whether Bob Geldorf makes any kind of Christian profession, but you'll know his name. He was certainly brought up as a Roman Catholic in Ireland, but I doubt if he makes a profession now. Bob Geldorf definitely has a very sensitive social conscience. I'm not thinking of the G8 incident quite recently, but of what happened when he was watching on television the victims of Ethiopian famine some years ago. He tells us in his autobiography that he experienced while watching on television, a kind of secular conversion. He felt disgust. He felt enraged and outraged. I felt a deep sense of shame. He goes on, so what was it that motivated him? Well, he tells us it was a combination of pity and disgust. Well, we may not remember how Bob Geldorf reacted, but I hope we shall remember how Jesus reacted in the face of evil. He snorted with indignation and he wept with compassion. The emotional life of Jesus. Now, secondly, I would like us to spend a little time considering the place of emotion in our discipleship. And I think we've time for two or three examples. First, there is a place for emotion in spiritual experience. To be sure, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, but his ministry was not limited to teaching. He also, we're told in Romans 5, verse 5, he also pours God's love into our hearts. Have you ever had something of that experience when the love of God, which is God's love for us rather than us for him, that he pours his love into our hearts? And then the Apostle Peter writes that there are times when we are filled with. With an inexpressible and glorious joy. Not, I think, always. I'm suspicious of people who are always filled with joy or love. But from time to time, Christian people should always have this experience in spiritual experience. And then, secondly, there is a place for immersion in public worship. We read at the end of Hebrews, chapter 12 that we've come to the heavenly Jerusalem, to thousands upon thousands of angels, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. But many of us here, as we know this morning, are worshipers in other churches. And however small or large our congregation may be to which we belong, I hope there are times when we feel lifted, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven before God's throne. We are transported beyond and above ourselves and have a profound sense of worship, of that combination of awe and wonder which we call worship. And we bow down before God. So there is a place, you see, for immersion both in our spiritual experience and in our public worship. And thirdly, in gospel preaching, as we've seen and did last week, the Apostle Paul used his mind in the proclamation of the gospel. But he didn't only use his mind. He did use his mind. He took time and trouble to explain the gospel, to argue the truth of the gospel, to defend it. But his preaching was never arid or cold. On the contrary, he was never satisfied with a bare statement of the good news. He went on to beg his hearers with tears in his eyes to be reconciled to God. One person who has written about this is the late Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, whose name will be familiar to most of you who had an outstanding ministry in London, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. And he wrote a book on preaching. He gave lectures on preaching at Westminster Theological Seminary just outside Philadelphia, in Westminster Theological Seminary. And these lectures were later published in a remarkable book called Preaching and Preachers, which I strongly recommend to anybody here who aspires to be a preacher. So in the course of his book, he asked himself a question. What is preaching? And he gave himself this answer. It is logic, fire, eloquent reason. Are these contradictions? He asks. Of course they are not, as we find it in the Apostle Paul and others. Reason concerning this truth ought to be mightily eloquent. Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. It's a wonderful definition of preaching. And I long to see more fire in the pulpits of the world today. Do you know the name of William Sangster? Willie Sangster. Was a Methodist minister at Methodist Central hall, just opposite Westminster Abbey. And on one occasion, he was a member of a panel who were interviewing young men who were aspiring to the pastorates. It was a kind of selection panel. And on one occasion, a particular candidate who was being interviewed was a very shy and diffident young man. So he thought he would anticipate what the panel might want to ask him by saying, gentlemen, I think I need to explain to you that I'm not the kind of person who would ever set the River Thames on fire. Well, most of us live in London, so you know what the River Thames being set on fire is. To set the Thames on fire is a London idiom for creating a sensation in the town. So he said, I'm not the kind of person who'd ever set the River Thames on fir. Well, Sangster responded with a great deal of wisdom. My dear young brother, he said, I'm not interested whether you can set the River Thames on fire. What I want to know is this. If I picked you up with a scruff of your neck and dropped you into the River Thames, would it sizzle? In other words, are you on fire? Which is what really matters? Well, we've considered three aspects, three situations in which there is a place for the emotions. Now we have a few more minutes in which to talk. Thirdly, the relations between the mind and the emotions. We are to be neither such emotional Christians that we never think nor such intellectual Christians that we never feel. God has created us. Human beings, and human beings by creation are both rational and emotional. But how are they related to one another? I want to give you two, I think, important examples. Firstly, the mind should control our emotions. There have always been, right through the history of the world, there have always been some who campaign for an unfettered expression of the emotions. I think in the ancient world of Bacchus, whose Greek name was Dionysius, and who was worshipped in orgies of wine, dancing and sex. In our day, popular Freudianism, although I think by those who have not fully understand what. Understood what Freud meant by repression. But popular Freudianism often says that it's a great peril to suppress our emotions, although that is not so. Christians cannot possibly follow this path. Our emotions, like every other part of our human being, because of our depravity, have been tainted and twisted by the fall. And so because our emotions are twisted and tainted, they need to be controlled by our mind. Let me give you an example or two. Take anger. The Apostle Paul wrote that there are two different kinds of anger. There is righteous anger, there is unrighteous anger. And he wrote, in your anger, don't sin. So when we feel anger rising and burning within us, it would be very foolish indeed for us to give vent uncritically to our anger. No, instead we should say to ourselves, now wait a minute, wait a minute. What is this anger that is rising within me? Is it divine anger or is it really just an injured vanity? So we need to exercise control over our anger. We need to be sure that our anger is righteous and not unrighteous. Well, then let me take love as another example. What do you say to a married man who says he's fallen in love with another woman? He cannot help himself. He's overwhelmed, he says, by emotion. This love that he's now experiencing is the real thing. And he must divorce his wife and marry this other woman. Well, what do you say to a person like that? You say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Did you not pledge yourself to your wife in exclusive commitment? You're not the helpless victim of your emotions. You must put this other woman out of your mind. Because our mind is the sensor of our emotions. So here are two examples. Anger on the one hand, and love on the other hand, which the mind must act as sensor to the emotions. But then there is a second relationship between the mind and the emotions, and that is that if the mind should control our emotions, it can also stimulate them. I give you one example only, and that is the wonderful story of the first Easter day in which two disciples walk from Jerusalem seven miles to Emmaus. Jesus joined them on their walk and he explained to them from the scriptures that the Messiah had to suffer before entering into his glory. And later, after he had left them, they said to each other, were not our hearts broke burning within us when he opened to us the scriptures? Well, this inward burning of the heart, this heart burn, is an emotional experience, I hope. We've often had it an N word. Heart burn. But what kindles the burning of the heart? Answer it was Jesus turning Jesus teaching out of Scripture? Nothing sets the heart on fire like fresh vistas of truth, whether in private or in public. It's when the mind is enlightened that the heart begins to burn. So I conclude, and I conclude with another little epigram, if I may. It comes this time from the man called Bishop Handley Mole. Handley Mole was the first principal of Ridley hall in Cambridge University and later became Bishop of Durham. Bishop Handley Mole. This is what he wrote. With great wisdom, we must beware equally of an un devotional theology and of a theological devotion. We must beware equally of an un devotional theology that is a mind without a heart and of an untheological devotion which is a heart without a mind. So let's not separate what God wants to keep united. Let's pray. We spend a moment reflecting on the emotional life of Jesus who snorted and wept on the place of emotion in our own Christian discipleship and how to keep mind emotions together. Let's pray that we may become integrated Christians. We desire to thank you, Heavenly Father, for the riches of your word and for the many lessons which it teaches us. We ask your forgiveness for times when our discipleship has been unbalanced and we pray for ourselves and one another that we may become truly integrated Christians, our mind and our emotions in relation to one another. Hear us, we humbly pray in the name and for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Been listening to John Stott Listen to Faith of Our Fathers each Saturday and Sunday to hear more great 20th century preachers.