Comfort, Comfort Ye My People

By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:

Doctrinal Preaching and the Peace Which Comes From Gospel Truth

Howdy,

Pray y’all have had a blessed week filled with joy, thanksgiving, and grace. It is a grand time of the year, not only as we rest in the everlasting goodness of our Lord, but look forward to the good fortune that awaits us in His providence in the year to come. At Bethany we will be starting a new morning sermon series on January 5th. Our 2025 is going to focus on the great truths of the faith and we are rightly going to start with the Great Shema of Deuteronomy 6:3-6. Being able to understand who God is and who He is cannot be forgotten if we are going to know how to live in a world gone mad. There is great comfort available for the Christian in remembering these ideas.

In our time this week in the Westminster Directory for Public Worship as we close our thinking on the doctrine of preaching and its place in our life the DPW kind of repeats itself in keeping the minister in mind to what his real duty is in the pulpit. Meditating on what is below is a good way for all of us to give weight to what happens on the Lord’s Day, and benefit from it. Let’s read:

In applying comfort, whether general against all temptations, or particular against some special troubles or terrors, he is to carefully answer such objections as a troubled heart and afflicted spirit may suggest to the contrary. It is also sometimes requisite to give some notes of trial, (which is very profitable, especially when performed by able and experienced ministers, with circumspection and prudence, and the signs clearly grounded on the holy scripture,) whereby the hearers may be able to examine themselves whether they have attained those graces, and performed those duties, to which he exhorteth, or be guilty of the sin reprehended, and in danger of the judgments threatened, or are such to whom the consolations propounded do belong; that accordingly they may be quickened and excited to duty, humbled for their wants and sins, affected with their danger, and strengthened with comfort, as their condition, upon examination, shall require.

And, as he needeth not always to prosecute every doctrine which lies in his text, so is he wisely to make choice of such uses, as, by his residence and conversing with his flock, he findeth most needful and seasonable; and, amongst these, such as may most draw their souls to Christ, the fountain of light, holiness, and comfort.

This method is not prescribed as necessary for every man, or upon every text; but only recommended, as being found by experience to be very much blessed of God, and very helpful for the people’s understandings and memories.

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