One of the preacher's best friends, over ther last decades, has been the Irish preacher, teacher, and writer Alec Motyer [maw-TEER], who passed into his rest last week. I call him one of the preacher's best friends because his commentaries have been so helpful to so many pastors and teachers of the Bible. Terry Johnson recently wrote of Motyer that:
He holds the distinction, along with John Stott, of writing commentaries about which one may say, "If I have his, I have all I need."
That's tall cotton! But it is what Johnson wrote, otherwise, (in a recent personal remembrance) that moved me to go online and hear Motyer's voice for myself, for the first time, this week, in the preached word. Johnson called Motyer and J.I. Packer "simply the most godly men I have ever known." More tall Cotton! And the little anectdotes and "Motyerisms" that Johnson passed on from his studies under Motyer nearly 40 years ago add to the impression beautifully.
So, I'm placing this little marker here to encourage you to go and read Johnson's piece. It seems to me a marvelous portrait of what a man of God can and should be. And I'll also point you to the sermon I listened to yesterday afternoon, on Acts 16, as marvelous confirmation that this was, indeed, a man of God. The sermon - with its simple exhortation to begin and continue and go on in God's work in "the place of prayer" - has stuck with me in ways that not many sermons do.
Thank God for Alec Motyer, and for those like him. May He give us more of them.
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