This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “II Timothy” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, March 27, 1988.
About this sermon
‘Become like little children’ suffers a real misuse, and Gilbert Tennent’s shift in the pulpit from exegesis toward personal experience fed a broader problem. Paul puts real weight on scholarship in 2:15 and 4:13, asking for his books and parchments even from prison. The pastoral epistles give anti-intellectualism no support.
Sermon transcript
Our scripture reading this morning is from the second of Paul’s letters to Timothy. We are in the second chapter, we are at verse fourteen. Then we will look at a verse in chapter four. We will begin with 2 Timothy 2, 14 to the end of that chapter. Of these things put them in remembrance. charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
But shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase unto more ungodliness, and their word will eat as doth a canker, of whom Hymenaeus and Philetus, who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is already past, and overthrow the faith of some.
Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal. The Lord knoweth them that are his, and Let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity, that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor sanctified and suitable for the master’s use and prepared unto every good work.
Fleeing also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strides. And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God for adventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. And then in the fourth chapter, the thirteenth The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments.
Pray with me now. Father, if our hearts are stirred, we rush to your word, for we know that your word is our life. More than the meat that is on our table, more than the drink that is on that table as well, so is your word to us, our life, our nourishment. our strength. Father, may we be well fed today. And Lord, may the proof that we have fed well be the fact that we are living the word, not just hearing it. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.
We have idealized the children of Palm Sunday. Unfortunately, we have taken those children and utilized them improperly. As if with the yet young and unformed minds As if eschewing and avoiding knowledge, we were to be children all our lives. We are in trouble. The Church is in trouble. I belong to the preacher’s union and the preacher’s union is in trouble because we have concluded things improperly with regard to the children and with regard to the use of our minds and our intelligence. in 1740.
Let your minds do a little traveling now. 1740 is the year. We are in a southeastern Pennsylvania town by the name of Nottingham. we are worshiping at the Presbyterian Church. Those gathered with us this morning have come to listen to a unique minister. One who has crossed the Jordan. No, I guess it’s the Delaware. He’s come from New Jersey. and the Presbytery of New Brunswick.
His name is Gilbert Tennant, T-E-N-N-A-N-T. He is the son of William Tennant, who organized the famous Log College in New Jersey in 1728. out of which eventually arose Princeton University. Now, Gilbert is a disciple of George Witsy, a revivalist from England, who in so many ways, together with Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Massachusetts, is at the center of what has become known as The great awakening. Is a little bit of your American history coming back to you this morning? Well, anyway. In 1740, Gilbert Tennant preaches in that Nottingham Presbyterian Church.
His message is entitled, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry. He’s speaking specifically of unconverted Presbyterian ministers. Already he has become famous, and that is why the Church is full. He has become famous for his fiery sermons in which he has challenged his hearers repeatedly by telling them, no one ever became a Christian without first passing through the terror of realizing that he was not a Christian. Mere acceptance of Mere belief in the Bible and its doctrine of salvation is not enough, said Gilbert Tennant.
One has to experience personally a new birth, that is, a new birth that can actually be chronicled as to date and to the specifics of its occurrence. It can be recited, reversed, and recorded. Kenneth was bringing pressure to bear upon congregations and upon local boards of elders to examine not only those coming into the church, but those already in the church about the genuineness of their own personal experience of regeneration. Now, I hope you see the problem. not that we could ever be against regeneration, against being born again.
Far be it from Christ’s church to neglect to preach regeneration, that you must be born again. Equally, far be it from Christ’s church to coddle those who ignore or deny the significance of Christ’s words, you must be born again. Indeed, we here in this church add our amen to those words of Jesus. Unless you are born again, unless you are born from above, you will not, you cannot see the kingdom of God. In fact, Let me press presently those words of Jesus upon you.
If you are sitting here this morning and you are holding on to the old life like some sort of modern-day Nicodemus, turn from that old life now to the new. That old life, be it as religious as was the religion and religion of Nicodemus, it will not save you. Trust in Christ, only in him, and if you will, then God’s words of assurance will come to you, establishing you in the knowledge that you are in fact born again. But don’t you see, what is at the center of your trust and what is at the center of God’s assurance to you is that old, old story of Jesus and His love.
But when we start concentrating upon our experience and the special, even dramatic, features of our conversions. When we start to make the criteria for entrance into the church, or entrance into heaven, or even when we start to make our experience the basis of our assurance before God, then it is no longer Jesus’ story that I love to tell, but my own.
My story doesn’t save anybody. I do not know how long it will take the evangelical world to wake up to that fact. Your story saves no one. It is only the story of Jesus. that saves. I rejoice that I have a story to tell about myself and I am glad that you do too. But I cannot and neither can you allow those stories to eclipse the story of Jesus.
Now, Mr. Tenet wanted a vibrant church. He had had enough of presumptuous Presbyterians. He had had enough of dead orthodoxy of what he judged to be a lifelessness. In the church. He had had enough of pious Presbyterians, in his estimation, dozing on their way to hell. However correct he was in his assessment, he was wrong in his solution, and when the ministers would not move in keeping with his prodding, he attacked them in the most vicious way. They, with their parishioners, he judged, were hellbound. The unconverted church was served by an unconverted ministry. Well, in time, The church straightened Mr tenet and the whole mess out best. But unfortunately the damage had already been done.
You see Mr tenet’s position had the effect not only of making judgment about the ministry generally but judgment also as to who might be fit for that ministry. As there had been a shift in the consideration. With regard to the person in the pew, so there was a shift with regard to the person in the pulpit. The weight shifted from a competence with regard to the traditional disciplines, which were seen as essential for the preparation for the gospel ministry.
Enough of this about biblical languages, enough about this exactness concerning knowledge of scripture, knowledge of doctrine, knowledge of the history of the church, enough of these intellectual exercises. What was needed now was an accounting of one’s conversion and also one’s calling to office.
When were you called? And how are we to deny these wide-eyed, energetic, even magnetic dynamos who can give us a blow-by-blow account of their personal call from Christ as if he came personally to them, calling them to serve? They don’t have to know anything. They just have to have the right experience. Forget those essentials that the church had come to insist upon. That hard work of learning and training.
The man obviously has the electricity. So how can we deny him? One hundred and seventy years later, the Presbyterian Church in this country was faced with a genuinely unconverted ministry. This ministry was not just stuffy. It wasn’t just dead in the manner that Gilbert Tenet had judged it, this ministry reeked of unbelief. It was guilty of denying the essential and fundamental truths of the faith.
But you know what? Strange as it may seem, this unconverted ministry was the great, great, great grandchild of Gilbert Tennant. How is it possible? Certainly, Gilbert Tennant was orthodox in his beliefs. He held on to the truth of Scripture, did he not? How is it possible that these folks in this century could be the descendants of him?
Well, in wrongly assessing things in his own day and in wrongly charging the ministry of his time, Tenet actually aided and abetted an ignorant ministry that was to come in the years that followed. Knowledge became optional. Intelligence became an obstacle itself. Objective truth gave way to subjective feelings, and in time, both liberals and conservatives, in their ignorance, were embracing a version of Christianity that was generally hostile to historical research, verification, and objective truth. Gone was the whole dimension of mental sweat when it came to religion. Hail the dawning of the age of warm and fuzzy feelings.
In 1909, J. Gresham Machen was outraged with the changes at Princeton Seminary because he judged the ghost of Gilbert Kennett was still haunting the hall. And the result was assuredly a cadre of ministry pumped full of all kinds of the main material which without any real assimilation or any intellectual work of any kind they would come out again upon their unfortunate congregations. Let me tell you. The conclusion of an ignorant ministry is an ignorant church.
Parents in our time have become quite mouthy. They insist upon intelligence in education. Let the school where they send their children falter but a bit in providing their darlings with less than the very best in learning. and they are at the doors beating them down, if not beating the teachers up. People are outraged in our time because of general incompetence. They take on all the professions, not just the educators, but the liars and the doctors and the auto mechanics. The doctor better know what he’s doing, they say, or I’ll sue. But those same parents and those same people will accept any demonstration of blatant spiritual idiocy spewed forth from their pulpits. In fact, I’m convinced that the church In many instances, prefers ministers who don’t know anything.
Better that we be a lot of useful it is. To quote a few distractors of President Reagan. Paul says to Timothy. That’s the King James translation. The new American standard is be diligent. The Greek word used there means make a make a dent to present yourself approved to God, a workman who does not need to be ashamed handling accurately handling rightly the word of truth. Paul is a sworn enemy of ignorant He is the sworn enemy of an ignorant and mentally indolent minister.
And what he advised Timothy, he lived himself. In that fourth chapter, the thirteenth verse, he gives Timothy specific instructions to bring in his books and the parchments when he comes to him at Rome. Paul never stopped studying himself. He never stopped exerting himself. He was diligent. He made haste as a competent and energetic workman for the Lord, rightly dividing the word of truth until the end. Unfortunately, To too many ministers and too many ministers in the OPC, the end came when they closed the last book that they were studying in their seminary days. If they cracked them even then. For what is happening in our seminaries is a travesty.
You don’t pass, you don’t fail courses any longer in seminary. You don’t receive failing grades. Why such a judgment would mean that we then were saying that you weren’t called. Paul was no enemy of intellectual rigor. But looking out on the church today Paul would undoubtedly be himself. I couldn’t avoid that. Presently.
He could hear a candidate for the ministry. Be so unprepared that he could not identify a single Israelite He could hear a candidate for the ministry, incapable of listing the books of the Bible in order. A candidate for the ministry who could not give you the opening line of any psalm, including A candidate for the ministry who could not tell you the reason why the church split East and West, who could not give you a cogent, intelligent rendition of the doctrine of justification. He could visit a prestigious church in Pittsburgh and hear a distinguished doctor of divinity, no candidate now, this is a man in office, this is a man who’s risen to the heights. He could hear a distinguished doctor of divinity tell his congregation that the reason why Judas betrayed Jesus was because there was a failure of ministry by the other eleven, to him personally. and they pay this man.
He could hear a dynamic minister tell a worshipful audience, speaking of Paul now. He could hear, Paul could hear a dynamic minister tell a worshipful audience that he, Paul, never talked about walking, but always running, because we are into energetic pursuit. Paul almost always talked about walking, but very seldomly talked about running. It is conceivable that after witnessing such nonsense, the Apostle Paul would sit down and write his own sermon entitled The Danger of a Devastatingly Ignorant Ministry.
The bane of the twentieth-century church, of twentieth-century Presbyterianism, is not that we don’t have ministers that look nice, that sound good, that make a good impression. that have a knack for church management, who can give you a rundown of all the statistics in the community, who can tell you where you ought to put the next Burger King, because they’ve done all their demographics.
The ministers we have can do all of that, but they don’t know anything truly about God. They don’t know their church doctrine, they don’t know their church history, they don’t know their Bibles, and they don’t know how to use Now, admittedly, in keeping with the Apostle Paul himself, knowledge without love puffs up. There is nothing more insufferable than arrogant religious know-it-all. But at the same time, to cultivate ignorance and even to reward it with office is false. will be disaster. God helps. Now I said this before, I’ll say it again, we don’t give grades in church.
But being a Christian does demand some mental effort. It demands it on the part of the ministry, and it demands it on the part of the people. Now, I’m trying to do my job, and I want you to try to do yours. Our Father, we know that we are to love you and serve you with all of our minds. We pray, our Father, that we would not become lazy, we would not shelve our brains, when it comes to our faith. And please help the church and refresh your church, not with an arrogant approach and attitude towards learning, but an attitude that is informed by a proper godliness and zeal. We are varying abilities. But to the best of our abilities, let us apply ourselves. Truly, we should study, be diligent, make haste to present ourselves unto the Lord. Workman approved of him needing not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
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