(soft music) - Hello, this is Pastor John. I get to start this episode by talking about another Pastor John, John Newton. Newton was a key leader in England in the 18th century, as you know, the author of the incredibly popular hymn, "Amazing Grace." Newton was a former captain of a slave trading ship and was dramatically converted from this life of sin and eventually helped William Wilberforce in the British slave trade.

So I wanted to take a moment to introduce you to a new book about a part of Newton's life that goes overlooked. His 40 plus years in pastoral ministry and the amazing ministry of writing letters to people in need. The book is written by Tony Reinke, the host of this podcast.

Tony calls his book "Pastoral Synthesis." He wants you to be pastored by John Newton. And so he gathered up all of Newton's many published letters about a thousand of them in various collections, many of them preserved in old, rare, fragile volumes in libraries around the world. He found them, studied them, and then identified Newton's key answers to the perennial questions of the Christian life.

And then Tony wrote all his findings into a guided tour of Newton's thought. It's a kind of "Ask Pastor John Newton." The book releases this week. It's titled "Newton on the Christian Life to Live as Christ." I commend it very highly. (upbeat music) What is the key to ministry longevity?

There is a key, and John Piper finds it in the ministry legacy of John Newton. Here's how Pastor John Piper explained it in his 2001 biographical message. - Newton's realism about the limits of this life. Oh, how helpful it is to hear his realism. Only so much is possible in a fallen world.

We groan waiting for the redemption of our bodies. And if we don't realize the limits of our ministry, we will absolutely go crazy trying to fix the world and fix everybody. He said, "My course of study, like that of a surgeon, has been principally in walking the hospital." He did not, however, become cynical as he walked the hospital and saw the irremedial diseases of bedlam.

The word bedlam comes from insane asylum hospital in his day. He said, "I endeavor to walk through the world as a physician goes through bedlam. The patients make noise, pester him with impertinence, hinder him in his business, but he does the best he can and gets through." I read that last November or somewhere, and I just said, "Thank you, thank you.

That's all I do. I just do the best I can, get through, get through this mess, get through that mess, get through this mess. Thank you, Newton. Thank you for telling me that's the way you did your ministry." You just walk through an insane asylum, and you're pestered by this person and grabbed by that person, and you reach out, you touch, you pray, you bless, you call, you get criticism, you didn't call soon enough, you didn't say this, and you just look up and say, "Sinner, though I am, I did the best I could.

I'm gonna keep going." And that's the key. Realism keeps you going. Perfectionism wipes you out. So have Newton's realism. Here's the picture. He had to put it in a picture, right? It's so beautiful. He's standing at his window, looking out on the sun about to come up. The day is now breaking.

How beautiful its appearance. How welcome the expectation of the approaching sun. It is this thought makes the dawn agreeable that it is the presage of a brighter light. Otherwise, if we expect no more day than in this minute, we should rather complain of darkness than rejoice in the early beauties of the morning.

Thus the life of grace is the dawn of immortality, beautiful beyond expression, if compared with the night of thick darkness, which formerly covered us, yet faint and indistinct and unsatisfying in comparison to the glory that will be revealed. Compared with the present condition only, there's a lot of darkness left, but the sun's rising in your life.

It's rising in your life. And the glory is gonna be beautiful. So be realistic, folks. We groan inwardly, waiting our adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. Our groaning in this life will never end. There will be mental illness. There will be physical illness. There will be church disputes.

There will be marital stresses. There will be wayward children till Jesus comes. And if we can't model our way through the insane asylum of this world, we will quit. Let's help each other, not quit. Newton has helped me. I wanna help you. That's one route. The next route is his humility and gratitude.

He was overwhelmed by amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. With lying, but now I see. Till the day he died, he never ceased to be blown away by the fact that he had been saved and made a preacher of the gospel that he once labored to destroy and mock.

He wrote his own epitaph. Read it on his grave, which is now in Olden. They used to be in London. They moved it so a subway could go through underneath the church. John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.

Near 16 years at Olden in Bucks, and, and they left the number blank, years at this church in St. Mary's, Woolnoth. He was overwhelmed by this, and he wrote, and he didn't see how anybody could know how he was saved and not treat others with kindness. He said, "A humble under such a sense of much forgiveness to himself, he finds it easy to forgive others." If you're a hard pastor, you don't properly know what's happened to you.

If you're a hard pastor, your first reaction is a hard reaction. You are not duly feeling the wonder that you are saved. - That was from John Piper's 2001 message to pastors titled, "John Newton, The Tough Roots of His Habitual Tenderness." You can find the full audio recording of this message at desiringgod.org.

And special thanks to cellist Patricia White for her beautiful rendition of "Amazing Grace" off her album, "Bestow My Soul," which we are using in this episode. And a special thank you to Pastor John himself for promoting my new book here and for writing the foreword. You can find the book online and you can actually read the foreword for free right now at desiringgod.org/newton.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast. (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music) (soft music)