Skip to content ↓

Sacrifices by Fire

Sponsored Collection cover image

Sponsored

This sponsored post was prepared by Professor Barry York, Dean of Faculty at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

I knew the day would come.

Burning BowlMy life, like yours, is becoming increasingly a digital one. I am moving away from filing papers to storing items electronically. I knew one day those three big, rusting, steel filing cabinets in our basement, sitting there like artifacts in a museum in that they remind you of the past but are rarely visited, would be emptied and removed. Why keep paper files of items already stored on multiple devices and backed up in the cloud?

The past few days it finally happened. A desire to declutter our basement drove me to it. What satisfaction it was to haul those cabinets out to the curb and, literally within minutes, have someone stop by in a pickup truck and take them away to be scrapped.

Yet the joy of being free of the cabinets’ bulkiness turned into unexpected melancholy as I pulled the wagon filled with their contents over to the fire pit. Now it was time to burn these papers, which mostly meant for me watching over two decades of my sermons go up in flames.

My mentor had taught me his sermon writing tips, which I dutifully practiced over the years. Half sheets of paper worked best, as you could tuck them into your Bible. That way, you could carry them securely in place without them sticking out. Once preached, sliding them into 6 x 9 inch manila envelopes made for good storage. So much of my life and ministry were on those pages.

I lit the fire. I watched as the flames first teasingly licked slowly over the files and envelopes, as if not quite sure of the taste. But then they picked up a hungry intensity and began to eat away at the contents. As I threw small bundles of envelopes on the fire, titles of messages caught my attention. Like the bursts of flame, flashes of emotion struck my heart as the titles brought to mind occasions, peoples’ faces, or a particular preaching moment. Sometimes an envelope would burn off and, as if the fire was preaching back to me my own message, one page would be exposed, begin to darken around the edges, then peel off into the flames to reveal the next page.

Dusk came. Ashes floated through the air, the white flakes gently landing around our yard prompting inquiries from my children. When told what they were from, they responded with some of the same sadness I was feeling and then went on with their evening.

As darkness fell, I reflected more on the nature of preaching. Is it not to be a sacrifice by fire, an offering to the Lord that one prays is blessed by the Spirit’s fiery power to touch hearts and lives of the hearers? Are not the opportunities to preach quite limited? Is not the preaching moment itself so fleeting? More melancholy came over me there in the dark by the fire, as I thought of so many failings in sincerity, in urging, in preaching for conversions, in mindfulness of the eternity that every hearer faces, in upholding the greatness of our God who Himself is a consuming fire. Prayers of repentance ascended up with the smoke and flames.

To celebrate the end of the school year, some students in my homiletics class and I arranged to watch a documentary on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ life and ministry. What moved us most was hearing Lloyd-Jones’ actual voice, as portions of his recorded sermons played as scenes of an empty Westminster Chapel moved across the screen. You could hear in his voice a holy, humble, growing intensity as he proclaimed in simple sincerity God’s Word, and imagined what it would have been like to sit there and be moved by the Spirit speaking through him. The movie’s title, a phrase from Lloyd-Jones’ own concise definition of what true preaching is, was apt: Logic on Fire.

No, we preachers cannot all be a Lloyd-Jones nor should we strive to be. Yet in this short life can we not pray that more of that Spirit that lit him would ignite the hearts of men across the land that step behind our pulpits? Can we not pray that every Lord’s Day and throughout the week true sacrifices by fire would be offered in their preaching? That ministers like the prophets of old would be having such encounters with God that they speak with His fire? As another preacher once said, if we want revival, it needs to be brought to the pulpit.

Learn more about Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary at RPTS.edu.

Sponsored


  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (March 19)

    A La Carte: How to know if you’re using God / The soul-poison of the little word ‘should’ / True, false, or heresy? / Truthful thinking is greater than positive thinking / Unless the seed dies / and more.

  • The Phrase that Altered My Thinking Forever

    This week the blog is sponsored by P&R Publishing and is written by Ralph Cunnington. Years ago, I stumbled repeatedly on an ancient phrase that altered my thinking forever.  Distinct yet inseparable. The first time I encountered this phrase was while studying the Council of Chalcedon’s description of the two natures of Christ. Soon after,…

  • Always Look for the Light

    Always Look for the Light

    For many years there was a little potted plant on our kitchen window sill, though I’ve long since forgotten the variety. Year after year that plant would put out a shoot and from the shoot would emerge a single flower. And I observed that no matter how I turned the pot, the flower would respond.…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (March 18)

    A La Carte: God is good and does good—even in our pain / Dear bride and groom / Sin won’t comfort you / Worthy of the gospel / From self-sufficiency to trusting God’s people / The gods fight for our devotion / and more.

  • Confidence

    God Takes Us Into His Confidence

    Here is another Sunday devotional—a brief thought to orient your heart toward the Lord. God takes the initiative in establishing relationship by reaching out to helpless humanity. He reveals himself to the creatures he has made. But what does it mean for him to provide such revelation of himself? John Calvin began his Institutes by…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    Weekend A La Carte (March 16)

    A La Carte: I believe in the death of Julius Caesar and the resurrection of Jesus Christ / Reasons students and pastors shouldn’t use ChatGPT / A 1.3 gigpixel photo of a supernova / What two raw vegans taught me about sharing Jesus / If we realize we’re undeserving, suddenly the world comes alive /…