With the magnificence of eternity before us, let time, and all its fluctuations, dwindle into its own littleness. -Thomas Chalmers
The longer I am in ministry, the more acutely aware I become of how much, by the grace of God, I have learned and grown, and how much learning and growing I have yet to do. As I read about some of the great Christians of the past, I am amazed at how balanced they were and how much time and effort they poured into becoming more like Christ so that they could lead others by example.
Take Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) as an example. Chalmers was a childhood prodigy. At age eleven he entered St. Andrews University in Scotland, graduated a year later in mathematics, and then entered divinity school at age fifteen. By the time he was twenty-three he had become the pastor of a parish in Kilmany, Scotland. The people loved his boyish manner and his deep intellectual prowess, but they were baffled by his practice, Sunday after Sunday, of bellowing at them from the pulpit about the wickedness of theft, murder, adultery and other moral imperfections. In fact, for eight years he did just that -preached the law against acts of lawlessness. Then something amazing happened; one Sunday he entered the pulpit and preached on the love of God displayed in the cross of Christ and the way of salvation. For the remaining years of his pastorate in Kilmany, Chalmers spoke of the beauty of the Christian life and the duty to follow after Christ, not due to the law of God, but due to the grace of God. What had happened? Chalmers had come to know Christ through his studies, and he himself had been converted. From the night of that conversion onward he was a new man, and a new minister. By the time his ministry ended at his death in 1847, Chalmers had come to be known as the "Sublime Thunder." One Scottish Lord said of his ministry, "All Scotland shuddered beneath his billowy eloquence as a cathedral vibrates to the deep notes of the organ." Chalmers has been called the "chief Scottish man of his time." One bishop of the Church of Scotland who knew him well applied Dante’s words to him: “The holy wrestler, gentle to his own and to his enemies terrible.”
God changed Chalmers, and Chalmers in turn was used by God to change countless others. When I read of his ministry in his later years, I am amazed at how gentle and caring and loving he had become, and yet he remained lethal with the word of God! He had an amazing ability to speak the truth in love.
How we all need to grow in the grace of God! Our study in Genesis, I trust, will help us do just that. I continue to be humbled by my own study in preparation to preach through this book. Here we see the vastness of God and the minuteness of our ability to comprehend him, or his revelation to us. Not that we cannot know anything about him, but we certainly cannot plumb the depths of his greatness, or his goodness to us. From start to finish, Genesis is a book of God’s sovereignty, grace and willingness to involve himself in his own creation, for his glory and for the good of humankind.
We are all learning, friends. Let's continue to grow up in Christ and in the knowledge of God’s grace so that others may be blessed by us, and taught by our example.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Jym