Final Thoughts as I Finish Preaching Through the Gospel According to John
I considered reviewing the major themes of John’s Gospel in this last sermon on the book, but decided against it. Instead I want to reflect briefly on this series which began on January 17, 2016. This is the 153rd sermon I have written in that series (though it will only be the 151st sermon posted on Sermon Audio from it--I’m not sure which ones are missing). This series began to be preached at Reformation Bible Church, one month after we began meeting at East Valley High School where we would continue to assemble for another 13 months. Reformation Bible Church became Reformation Orthodox Presbyterian Church in October of 2016. Some of you have been here for the entire series, but there are many new faces that have come since it began and a few that began the study with us but now are gone. Others came and went somewhere in between.
I preached on the Book of Romans from February 2014 until September 2015, and the church changed a lot during that series too. That series began at what was then called Community Christian Church; by the end of Romans we were Reformation Bible Church and well on our way to becoming fully, confessionally Reformed. Before I finished chapter 3 a mass exodus had begun, eventually including nearly all of the elders who originally brought me to Arizona. One of them infamously announced, “I know I am a sinner, but I don’t like being reminded of it every Sunday!” Indeed. Those first three chapters of Romans are quite uncomfortable if you would rather not be reminded you are a sinner.
When I began preaching through Romans, I was a credo-baptist. By the time we finished the book I had baptized young children and an infant in four different households, including my own. If I had known in chapter 1 what I learned by the time we reached chapter 16, I would have handled some of the text a little differently. But I am gratified to hear periodically from people who are still listening to that series and find something helpful in it. It certainly was helpful to me.
I didn’t think I would survive the book of Romans. I’ve had a few doubts during the last five years in John. But God has graciously sustained my strength and this ministry. We’ve been on a roller coaster over the last seven years. I’ve never seen this kind of recurring and sustained stress and controversy in a church, nor have I ever seen the level of love, unity, joy, and enthusiasm in a local congregation. This church could have perished, collapsed, or closed a half dozen times since 2014, but here we are. We stand only by grace, and we will continue to proclaim sovereign grace so long as the Lord gives breath to our bodies and keeps our doors open.
If Romans was the birth pangs which introduced the gospel to a congregation that formerly had not known it (or had not heard it regularly and distinctly from the pulpit), then John (and the concurrent series on the Westminster Confession of Faith) has been our elementary education. We are not the church we were five or six or seven years ago. I am not the preacher, pastor, husband, or father I was then. We’ve changed. I think/hope/pray/trust we have grown. What’s humbling is realizing how much we still have to grow, how much more there is to know. It is humbling, and exciting. Considering how God used Romans to reform this congregation and how he used John to edify, equip, and empower it, what might he do next? How will the next book series and those after be used by God as instruments for his strengthening, sanctifying, and saving work?
At some point you will be done with me, or the Lord will. I am only a tool in his hand, and whenever he finishes whatever job he picked me up to accomplish, he will put me down. But I hope you are never finished with Romans or the Gospel of John. I hope these books continue to thrill you, fascinate you, and occupy you for the rest of your earthly sojourn. God used expository preaching--which was rarely, if ever, done in the churches of my upbringing--to teach me the gospel and open my eyes to grace. Expository preaching, not the preacher. I hope that is your experience as well. The power is in the message, not the messenger. God willing, the messenger will be forgotten. But I pray the message will burn, bright and hot, for the rest of your life. --JME (August 2020)
