Robert Murray M'Cheyne: A Soul Aimed at Christ

6 · Cohen catalogs M'Cheyne's youthful gifts—intelligence, popularity, physical attractiveness, athleticism, artistic ability—and emphasizes his diverse, well-rounded character

And in McShane's youth, as you guess, he got a strong education. The guy was smart. He memorized the Greek Alphabet for fun. He just did that for fun. When he was young, he was also popular in his class. He was known for being teachable and capable. He was attractive. He was tall and slender and he would really. He loved to. He was very inventive and he enjoyed friends. That would be a theme we'll talk about throughout the night is that he enjoyed making friends and keeping close friendships throughout his life. He also enjoyed athletics and he enjoyed poetry and he enjoyed sketching. So he was just this diverse, well rounded person. He was ambitious and winsome and he, like I said, he had some contrasting traits. Like he was competitive, but he was also kind. He was firm but patient. He was artistic and organized, which I think is hard to be all these things, but it's just a unique guy that God just gifted this is in his youth and what he wrote about his youth. He said, when tears that we shed were tears of joy and the pleasures of home were unmixed with alloy. He just really enjoyed his youth, his childhood. And I think it's a mix of both parents, the influence of both parents.

7 · Cohen pivots from M'Cheyne's youth to his conversion

So, yeah, then m' Cheyne was converted fairly young.

8 · Cohen narrates M'Cheyne's conversion: his brother David's godly death left a deep impression, leading Robert to see Christ and be saved

His eldest brother David, passes away. So David gets sick and dies. And the way David died, David loved the Lord, followed the Lord. And really, like Psalm 63 would have been really apropos for David. And so when Robert saw him die, which left a great impression on Robert. And so Robert began to see Christ, his brother David passed. And so Robert gets converted, God saves him. But at first, he doesn't really have a minister overseeing him, so he turns to books. So one book is called the Sum of Saving Knowledge, which is appended to the Westminster Confession. It just explained the Gospel really well to him and rooted him really well into just the love of God, the love of the Lord in the truth of the Gospel. And he threw himself into Christian service, got involved with the Sabbath school, diligently read the Bible, and that will be a theme throughout his life. If you've heard of the McShane Bible Reading Plan, I was talking with Kale about that earlier. It's a Bible in a year plan, and it just. It gets you through the Bible. So McShane created this plan. So if you Google it or whatever, you can see that. But he loved. He diligently read the Bible, he attended church, and he kept a detailed journal, which would be helpful for guys written books about him.

9 · Cohen describes M'Cheyne's theological training at Divinity Hall under influential professors like Thomas Chalmers

And then he got trained. He found a quick call to ministry after his conversion. He was very ambitious for ministry. And so he started attending the Divinity hall in Scotland to study for ministry. And he had some highly influential professors in his development, Thomas Chalmers being one of them. If you ever heard of Thomas Chalmers, he was a Scottish minister, wrote a variety of things. But the three big influences in his. In his teaching, Theology, Hebrew and church history. Theology, Hebrew and church history, which we'll see. He was the theologically driven, very sharp. He also had a heart for the Jewish people. And maybe that's tied to his love for the. For Hebrew and then church history. He was grounded not so much in just his day, but he saw that God is God of history. And he, I think, learned from and benefited from other guys throughout history. That I think inspired him in the way that we're inspired by McShane.

10 · Cohen summarizes M'Cheyne's brief ministry career: licensed at 22, served as pastor, missionary to Palestine (with a heart for the Jewish people), and itinerant revivalist (longing for awakening)

So 1835. Oh, sorry. Before that, he made wonderful Friendships in his theological training. So Andrew Bonar, who will later put together his memoir, Wonderful Friend, throughout his life, he was minister, licensed to minister in 1835. He's 22 years old. So imagine being a pastor at 22. It's kind of like your dad. I mean, that's young, but some guys can just do it. Total respect. So he's 22. He starts to minister. Throughout his service in his life, he serves as a pastor, as we talked about, he was a missionary to Palestine, Israel. He had a great heart for the Jewish people, which he called God's peculiar people. So he thought the Jewish people had a peculiar. God had a peculiar plan for the Jewish people. And at the end of his life, he serves as an itinerant preacher because he had a real heart for revival. He really wanted to see many people awakened. I think he was influenced by Edwards and the Great Awakening. He really wanted to see people awakened to God and his glory and his goodness. In, what was it, 1843, he contracts typhus fever as he's preaching itinerantly. And he dies at 29.

11 · Cohen reads M'Cheyne's church monument epitaph, which captures his life's essence: walking closely with God, exemplary in every Christian virtue, laboring ceaselessly for souls, and drawing many to Christ

And that's. McShane's life is not super long. But I want to dig into why we're talking about this guy, because there's. There's so much to McShane and his love for the Lord and what the Lord did in him. So let me read the church monument that was written about him. So this is on his. Like the church monument that's dedicated to him. It says, walking closely with God. An example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. He ceased no day and night to labor and watch for souls, and was honored by his Lord to draw many wanderers out of darkness into the path of life. And I think that church monument, what's written on there, was like, symbolic of m' Chene's life. And a number of lessons I want to tease out that came pretty much from the Holy Minister book by Jordan Stone. So we got five, and then I'll summarize.

12 · Cohen introduces the sermon's five-part structure (M'Cheyne aimed to know, love, grow in, share, and rest in Christ) and begins with the first: knowing Christ theologically

First, m' Cheyne was. He aimed for his life to know Christ. So theologically, he grew theological acumen of learning. He loved Christ, he aimed for his heart to love Christ. So he had personal affection and holiness. He sought to grow in Christ. So he utilized the means of grace to do that. He aimed to share Christ. So he had missionary and evangelistic zeal, and he aimed to rest in Christ. He pushed for people to enjoy the Sabbath and rest on the Sabbath. So we'll. We'll go through those five points, some of them will take longer, some of them will blaze through real quick. But we want to start out. My main thesis is that McShane was a man whose life and heart and soul was aimed at Christ. Aimed at Christ. So first of all, he made it his aim to know Christ. So his mind, so theology. And he was centered on two roots of belief. Covenant theology and Calvinism. So you guys heard of covenant theology at all? Yeah. So you think about the covenants. He loved the covenants. Covenants with Noah, covenant with Abraham, covenant with Moses, God's covenant with God, the Father's covenant with Jesus. And in the covenants he saw that life and salvation is just all of grace. He just loved free grace. And he saw that God's covenant with Noah was a covenant of grace. Ultimately, that God would never destroy the world again through water. And that God be blessed through Noah's line, covenant of grace. Abraham, that all the nations of the world be blessed. Abraham's offspring, Moses, he saw it as a covenant of grace, of the covenant in Sinai that God had rescued Israel from Egypt. And it wasn't a covenant of works, it was a covenant of grace. There was animal sacrifice, constantly pointing to a savior that would come and ultimately God's covenant with Jesus, that God would save the world through Christ. So he loved the covenants and he believed that salvation was all of grace. He also loved Calvinism, which you don't always think about like, you know, like a caged age Calvinist is like, you know, like someone that like loves Calvinism. But he loved it. He believed passionately in God's sovereignty. He said, a sovereign almighty Jehovah must bring you into the covenant or it will be left undone. He put a huge focus of God's sovereignty in his notebooks. He said, salvation is only by the free grace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. So he really believed in God's sovereignty in salvation.

13 · Cohen establishes that M'Cheyne deeply believed in human depravity—not abstractly, but because he was painfully aware of his own spiritual pride and selfish ambition

He was a big believer in human depravity. He knew and lamented the depth of his own sin. I think he really believed in human depravity because he knew his own spiritual pride and he knew his own selfish ambition. He laments it. He's like God, like, I preach, I preach well today, but I don't want to do it for myself. I want to do it for you and I want to do it for your people. He gets very personal in his journals and talks about that. So he knows his own depravity. So he believed in human depravity.

14 · Cohen explains that M'Cheyne was captivated by the beauty of Christ—nothing astonished him more than Christ's desire to save sinners

He believes in Jesus beauty, the Sons of beauty. Nothing astonished McShane as much as Christ's desire to save sinners. God's grace in Christ was entrancing, ravishing, overwhelming to him. Just the fact that his name was written in the book of life, that he was saved, was just glorious to him. He says this is the chief object of the Bible, to show you the work, the beauty, the glory, the excellency of this high priest. And he believed that beholding the beauty of Christ was the ordinary way that God drew sinners to himself. That by seeing the beauty and the glory and the goodness of Christ. Remember, take 10 looks at Christ for one look at yourself. He really believed that that was the way. As sinners, we're drawn to God. If we're just focused on our own sin, yes, we want to be convicted of it, yes, we want to be grieved by it, but we also want to be so much more aware of God's grace and God's glory and God's goodness. So he really believed that.

15 · Cohen explains M'Cheyne's conviction that the Holy Spirit is absolutely necessary for conversion and Christian life

He also really believes in the Spirit's efficacy, that if someone's going to be saved, it was a work of God, it was a work of the Spirit. It was. The Spirit is totally needed for conversion. And if anyone's going to stand up in a pulpit and anyone's going to come to Christ, it's not because of the preacher, it's because the Spirit drew him. He said the Holy Spirit is the greatest of all privileges of a Christian. The greatest, he said, of all privileges of a Christian. It is sweet to get the love of Christ, but I'll tell you what is equally as sweet, that is to receive the Spirit of Christ. That's equally, it's equally as sweet to know the love of Christ, but then to have love of Christ communicated to you through the Spirit. And, and we talked about it on Sunday. God is not just with us, but God's in us through the Spirit. He believes in that. So that's his theology. That's machine's theology.

16 · Cohen pivots from M'Cheyne's theological knowledge (knowing Christ) to his personal affection (loving Christ), signaling the next major section

Now he also made it his aim to love Christ. So he put a very high value on personal devotion, piety and holiness.

17 · Cohen defines M'Cheyne's understanding of holiness: it is an all-consuming passion for Christ, not legalistic hoop-jumping

And he defined true holiness as an all consuming passion for Christ. A person who grows in holiness will increasingly think like Christ, feel like Christ, react like Christ and love like Christ, entire likeness to Christ. Devotion in the whole man is the aim of biblical piety. So we don't just seek after holiness for the sake of holiness or to jump through some hoops, but we do it to get more of Christ and we do it because we love Christ. So we saw pursuit of a holy life as the highest form of love for Jesus.

18 · Cohen introduces M'Cheyne's three-part teaching on holiness (necessity, power, crucible) and begins with necessity: M'Cheyne believed that lack of devotional discipline—especially neglect of Bible reading and prayer—may indicate lack of true conversion

He taught about the necessity of holiness, the power of holiness, and the crucible of holiness. So I'll go into those briefly. It was the necessity, the power for holiness, and the crucible of holiness. So in necessity for holiness, McShane believed that he believed in a pursuit of holiness, especially in personal devotions, through reading the Bible. And he felt that a lack of devotional discipline suggested a lack of desire for Christ. That if you don't have any savoring of the Word as you read the Word, or if you don't spend any time in the Word or any communion with the Lord, that would really concern him, he would be concerned. That could be reflective. Could be reflective of a lack of conversion. That if you don't relish spending time with Christ, at least when you do that, that could be reflective. So he would put a very high premium on personal devotion.

19 · Cohen quotes M'Cheyne directly: a pastor's life preaches all week, not just on Sunday, so personal holiness is the foundation of usefulness

He said, oh, study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this, your sermon. So talking to pastors, he would say, your sermon on Sabbath lasts but an hour or two. Your life preaches all the week. And he said, I earnestly long for more grace and personal holiness and more usefulness. This is the guy that people thought living an exemplary life. And he was. I want more. He was content in Christ, grateful for Christ, but he had this taste. It's like, I don't know, you guys. Like, I get a taste. Like I get. I eat some, drink some soda, and maybe have some barbecue sauce. There goes my diet. I just had some sugar. Now I just want sugar, sugar, sugar. Like, Christ was sweet to this guy, and he just wanted more of him. And he felt that personal holiness was a way to experience more of Christ. And then usefulness for Christ, that was a necessity of holiness.

20 · Cohen explains the power for holiness: it comes only from the Holy Spirit and our union with Christ

The power for holiness, where he talked about this. The Holy Spirit, our union with Christ, provided the power for holiness. Only the exalted Christ, indwelling in his people, who by the Spirit through faith, can empower holiness. We can't live a holy life apart from God's grace. And he taught that. He taught that we need the Spirit. We need to pray for the Spirit, we need to depend upon the Spirit. Then we need to act in confidence in the Spirit to cultivate holiness.

21 · Cohen presents the crucible of holiness: suffering

And then he taught about the crucible of holiness, which, as you can guess, suffering. The crucible for holiness was suffering. And Jordan Stone kind of paraphrases McShane in his book, and he says, suffering is the sandpaper that God uses to increase the shine of holiness. So if you've got anything going on tonight and you're wondering, like, what is God up to? Probably up to like a million different things in your life. If you got some suffering going on, a million different things. But one is he's just rubbing, just sandpaper rubbing to increase the shine of holiness in your life as you seek the Lord and you draw near to the Lord through it.

22 · Cohen transitions to the third major point—M'Cheyne aimed to grow in Christ—and previews the means: Bible reading, sacraments, community, and prayer

All right, McShane, that's a good segue. McShane ultimately made it his aim to grow in Christ. And had he grown Christ, you guys probably guessed it. Read the Bible, take the sacraments, live in community and pray. Not super complicated, at least to McShane. And I think if you read the Bible, I don't think it's that it's not like super complicated.

23 · Cohen highlights prayer as the most important means of grace in M'Cheyne's life

And I'm going to highlight prayer because he was. He had such a prayer life. He said he believes in Jordan. Stone says he believed and taught that prayer is the Christian's noblest and most fruitful employment. So read the Bible and pray, Pray, pray, pray, pray. Sometimes it can feel like we're just talking to the sky, but surely we're not. God is always listening. And God is always inclined to hear us in Christ and desires to answer our prayers. And sometimes he answers them quick, sometimes he takes decades or in eternity. But he will. He will respond to our prayers, yes or no, in some way. And so McShane really made it his aim to pray and grow in Christ through prayer, as well as the Bible, sacraments and Christian friendship, Christian Fellowship, Community.

24 · Cohen presents M'Cheyne's approach to preaching: he was a man grabbed by the text, with truth as fire in his heart and Christ as the delight of his soul

McShane also made it his aim to preach Christ. To preach Christ. There's a whole chapter in this book on his approach to preaching. But in summary, I love this quote. So here this one. He emerged on the Lord's day as a man whom the text had grabbed. The truth was a fire in his heart. The Savior was the delight of his soul, and he preached accordingly. I was reading another book. It was talking about how when you get up to preach, the greatest thing that you could do for people is just be someone who has spent time with the Lord and has communed with God and has felt God and experienced God and thought of God, has been grabbed by the text. So that was McShane by God's grace.

25 · Cohen catalogs M'Cheyne's evangelistic practices: house-to-house visitation, children's evangelism, belief in revival, church planting (church extension), and global missions to Palestine

And then McShane also made it his aim to share Christ. So he would go from house to house and do house visitations within his pastorate. He loved to tell kids about the Gospel. He loved to evangelize children and tell Kids about the gospel. He believed wholeheartedly in revival. So he wanted to see mass amounts of people and he believed that mass amounts of people could come to know Christ and be awakened to the glory and beauty of Christ and salvation of Christ like we do. He believed in something called church extension, which is really just church planting. He loved to see churches grow to a certain amount and then take some people, put them somewhere else and let them grow too, and just extend churches church extension. And as we talked about, he believed in local and global evangelization missions essentially. So he went to Palestine at one point, I believe, with Bonar, and preached to the Jewish people in Palestine in the hopes that they would convert.

26 · Cohen presents the fifth aim: M'Cheyne aimed to rest in Christ through Sabbath observance

So. All right, last major point and then we'll get into our summary. McShane made his aim to rest in Christ. McShane was a passionate believer in communing with and join Christ in the Sabbath. In the Sabbath, he said, the Sabbath is Christ's trysting time, just time of communion and showing his love with his church. If you love him, you will kind every moment of it precious. You will rise early and stay up late, sit up late to have a long day with Christ. Like I think about getting up early so I can get to work and then staying up late, you know, like doing work or whatever. McShane was like, no, no, no. Love the Sabbath. Enjoy the Sabbath. Have a long day with Christ on Sunday. I just think that's unique and inspiring.

27 · Cohen signals the sermon is moving into summary mode, introducing seven lessons drawn from M'Cheyne's life

So, all right, to sum it up, I've got got seven major lessons. Just to sum it real quick, number one, McShane, if McShane were here, what would he say?

28 · Cohen lists seven lessons from M'Cheyne's life, framed as what M'Cheyne would say to us: (1) Love Christ deeply; (2) Make prayer a priority; (3) Pursue personal holiness; (4) Embrace the power of sincerity; (5) Value friendship; (6) Long for revival; (7) Be aware of eternity's gravity

He would say, love Christ. Machine falsely taught to have a deep, great affection for the person of Christ. He would say, make it a priority to pray. All power came through prayer, which he expressed his humble dependence on and confidence in God. Make it a priority to pray. Pursue personal holiness. We will seek likeness to Christ. If we love Christ and if we're born again and we got Christ's spirit within us. There is something in us that loves Christ and wants to be holy like Christ, it's there. Sometimes we gotta read a psalm or two to remind ourselves in the morning or at night or whenever. But in all of us that profess Christ, it's in there. So pursue personal holiness. Embrace the power of sincerity. We haven't talked about this yet, but the book talks pretty deeply about how sincere McShane was. He was all about not putting on formality or a face of holiness. And to truly love Christ and show openly that love to others. And that's. He especially did that in his preaching, where he just felt like, if you just preach with an open heart and you show your sincerity of love for Christ, people will resonate, that will connect with that. If they have the Spirit in them or if they don't, they will yearn for it. So embrace the power of sincerity. Value friendship, which I think we do. We wouldn't be here on a Wednesday night if we didn't value friendship with other guys. So Andrew Bonar, they met at Divinity hall in Edinburgh. They studied for ministry together. They were like brothers throughout their lives. They loved each other as brothers. And if you want a primary source document, a m' Cheyne primary source document, Bonar's memoir would be the place to go. If you want to actually read m' Cheyne's writings, his journals, that's. That's where. That's where he could go. And that was published after McShane's death. 6. Long for revival. If McShane were here, he would say, long for revival. Deeply desire and pray for awakening, awakening in our congregation here at Providence. May we be awakened more and more every day to how glorious God is and how great God is and the salvation and the fact that we're saved because of Christ. May we just grow in being amazed at that and how that will overflow and just seep out of our lives and to greatly long for the Spirit's outpouring. Because like we talked about, that will not happen without the Spirit. So we need to pray for the Spirit to do that. And then. And seventh thing I think McShane would say to us would, be be aware of the gravity of eternity. Be aware of the gravity of eternity. Jordan Stone writes, mcshane was a dying man ministering to dying men. So I wrote, may we learn from his example and grow in our faithfulness. Maybe we learn from his example, grow in our faithfulness. He saw that life's a vapor. And he was. I don't know if he. If he sensed that he would die at 29 before he got typhus, but he just burned for Christ. And he just saw like, life is short. Eternity's long in God's glorious. We should live that way.

29 · Cohen closes with final exhortations: be grateful for M'Cheyne, but don't idolize him

So, all right, so final thoughts. I'm grateful that the Lord saved a sinner like McShane. I think God did, clearly. I think God did a wonderful work in this guy. And through him, I'd beware that we would idolize him. At first, I said we shouldn't saint him, you know, like Saint quotation marks. I changed it to Idolize because, like, he is a saint, because Satan is just someone who's called we are all. If we're born again, we are all saints. We're called to be in Christ's body. So I took out that word. I just said idolize. We shouldn't idolize him. He was an ordinary guy with an extraordinary God who blessed him just extraordinarily with the spirit, with insight, with family upbringing that inclined him to study hard. And even if you don't have that family upbringing, like, it's a choice and we're free to choose to pursue God the way McShane did. So he was an ordinary guy with his own struggles. We talked about spiritual pride. We talked about selfish ambition. So he struggled with that kind of stuff. He was a sinner that was totally aware of his total depravity. Totally aware. Ten looks at Christ or one look himself. He needed to be reminded that Christ is his righteousness. And let's learn from this guy. Be inspired by the trophy of the Lord's grace that he was and is. He's worshiping the Savior now in heaven with Christ, but he's alive more than we are because he can see Christ right now. So let's be grateful for him. Let's learn from him.

30 · Cohen closes by re-reading M'Cheyne's hymn from the sermon's opening, bringing the sermon full circle and preparing to transition into group discussion

So I want to close the way I opened. And then I want to just. I want to discuss and I want to hear from you guys what resonated with you guys, what struck out to you guys. So the hymn from the beginning. When free grace awoke me by light from on high. Then legal fears shook me. I trembled to die. No refuge, no safety in self could I see. Jehovah said, canu, my Savior must be. My terrors all vanished before the sweet name. My guilty fears banished with boldness. I. I came to drink at the fountain, life giving and free. Jehovah said, kenu is all things to me.

31 · Cohen closes in prayer, echoing Psalm 63 and confessing the congregation's need for greater awareness of God's glory

So let me pray and then we'll talk about this, Your God. Psalm 63 says, you are our God. Lord, we earnestly seek you. Our souls thirst for you. Our flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Lord, we confess. I confess that I don't live my life as greatly in the glory of who you are and what you've done for me. Lord, I thank you, thank you that it doesn't count on me or my righteousness. Thank you, Jehovah Tsikinu, that you are all things in salvation and in life to me and to us. So I just pray that you would awaken in us more and more every day, freshly your greatness and your glory and your salvation. Help us to take ten looks at you for every one look at ourselves. And Lord, would that just seep out of us as we go throughout our days. So we thank you for this time. Pray you bless us now. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.