My subject this morning is preaching in decay
and in revival.
And I want us to begin in the
month of April in the year 1712, and
in a country church in the northwest of
England, Matthew Henry was conducting a funeral service.
The deceased man had been the minister of
the congregation and had died at the age
of 51.
And Matthew Henry, who ministered in the neighborhood,
was called to take this funeral service.
And he preached on the text in Philippians
chapter 2 and verse 27, Lest I should
have sorrow upon sorrow.
And speaking in this year, 1712, Matthew Henry
spoke of the many reasons that God's people
had for sorrow.
In the first instance, he said, because of
the death and the passing of so many
faithful ministers.
In little more than seven years, he says,
about 17 dissenting ministers have been removed.
And another grief was the state of the
nation.
Rivers of tears should run down our eyes,
because there are so few that keep God's
law and so many who break it.
And above all, he says, we should mourn
the state of Christ's cause.
It may justly grieve us to see not
only how iniquity abounds, but how the love
of many waxes cold.
Love to their God, to their Bibles, to
their brethren.
Devout affections ebb and abate.
The kindness of our youth is forgotten.
It is our sorrow to see so little
of the power of Godliness among those who
retain the form of it.
Well, in that year, 1712, there were sadder
things still to come.
But Matthew Henry did not live to see
them.
He was, I suppose you might say, the
last of the Puritans, certainly the last of
the old Puritan leaders.
And he died at the age of 52,
just two years later, in the summer of
the year 1714.
And six months after Matthew Henry died, a
baby was born in the Bell Inn in
Gloucester and named George Whitfield.
And the boundaries of our period today are
the birth of Matthew Henry in 1662 and
the death of George Whitfield in 1770.
And in that period of time, we have,
I think, all the great lessons concerning preaching
eminently shown in that epoch of history.
Now, when Matthew Henry was born in 1662,
Puritan preaching had passed its ascendancy.
It had probably passed it 20 or 15
years before his death, before his birth.
But from the time of Matthew Henry's birth
in 1662, there was a dramatic decline in
the preaching of the Word of God.
There were various causes for that.
You will remember that the king on the
throne in 1662 was Charles II, supported by
a parliament that was filled with enmity in
many instances against living Christianity.
And so on the 24th of August in
1662, the Act of Uniformity came into force
which ejected 2,000 ministers from their churches,
from schools, from the universities, and overnight, as
it were, countless congregations were deprived of ministers.
It was as though a light had gone
out.
And right down until 1688, those ejected ministers,
who were now called dissenters, were in many
instances the subject of persecution, severe persecution.
And simultaneously, there were a series of catastrophes
in the nation.
In the year 1665, for example, in London,
100,000 people died of the plague in
a comparatively small city.
10,000 people in one week.
And the next year, there came the Great
Fire of London.
When that fire began, there were 97 churches
standing in the city of London, churches that
had had in their pulpits most of the
great Puritan leaders.
When that fire was burnt out, there were
only 10 churches still standing in the city
of London.
And yet, despite those things and others, the
persecution of Christians continued.
Many pastors and preachers spent long years in
prison.
John Bunyan, you recall, spent 12 years in
prison.
Others died in prison.
A conventical act was passed, the result of
which meant that if Christians met, as they
often did during the night or an early
morning, and if they were found in their
meetings, they were severely fined.
And someone has calculated that between 10 to
14 million pounds, say 20 to 28 million
dollars, was spent in fines by the dissenters
in that period.
Now, that's in the currency of that time.
An enormous amount of money that greatly weakened
the evangelical cause.
And the reason for this hatred of the
gospel is put in a few sentences by
William Jenkin, one of the great Puritans who
wrote that commentary on Jude which has been
reprinted.
William Jenkin died in prison in London and
he said, The true reason of Satan's peculiar
rage against saints is because they have that
faith delivered to them which is the bane
and battery of his kingdom.
I have given them thy word, said Christ,
and the world hath hated them.
And another Puritan writing on the same subject
says, Satan labours with might and maim, with
rage and fury, by imprisonment, by banishment, by
fire and faggot, to eradicate and to destroy
Christ's kingdom and interest out of the world.
Either by falling upon the church in general
or upon her lights and guides and watchmen
in particular.
Remove the watchmen and the garrison is easily
surprised and taken.
And therefore Satan, sometimes in his persecutions, aims
chiefly at pious, learned, painful and zealous ministers.
Because they, most of all, like burning and
shining lights, dispel the darkness of his kingdom.
Well, the Puritan preaching continued despite the persecution,
but the congregations were greatly reduced in size
and when liberty at last was restored in
the year 1688, the spiritual force of the
Puritan movement was broken.
It seemed to have gone in great measure.
Between 1688 and 1730 in London, there was
only one new dissenting building put up.
Some others were enlarged, but speaking generally, the
cause of evangelical religion went backwards.
One writer speaking of the dissenters, he says
they went to their little meeting houses, they
heard their preachers, they paid them perhaps as
well as they could and were satisfied.
If they thought much of the deadness and
ignorance and corruption around them, it must have
seemed too great to be removed.
Now, what were the reasons why the successors
of the great Puritans of the mid-17th
century, what are the reasons why the pulpit
declined as it did?
Let me just suggest a few reasons to
you before we move on.
One reason, I believe, was that in the
later 17th century, there was a growing tendency
for ministers to be over-occupied in controversies
between Christians.
Now, when Christians are in controversy with the
world, the gospel never suffers.
But when Christians are in controversy with one
another, it's very often the case that the
gospel does begin to suffer.
Matthew Henry testified, I am most in my
element when I am preaching Jesus Christ and
him crucified.
But he complained of the readiness with which
too many fell into disputes.
And he says, multitudes lose the power of
godliness while they are eagerly contesting about the
forms, the form of words, the form of
worship, the form of government.
And he is reflecting there upon a tendency
that was certainly present in his day.
And Harold Harris, one of the Welsh evangelical
leaders of the following century who grew up
as a child close to dissenting congregations, he
said, they were very ready to debate with
me concerning outward things, but no one told
me that I was on the way to
hell.
The distracting influence of controversy.
Secondly, this decay of preaching was influenced undoubtedly
by the spirit of the age.
I mentioned yesterday morning Lawrence Chatterton of Emanuel
College, Cambridge.
I also mentioned Thomas Hooker who was a
fellow of Emanuel College.
Emanuel was the great nursery of the Puritans.
It was, if you like, the sort of
Geneva of 17th century England.
That one college did more than any other,
both for this side of the Atlantic and
for the British side in raising men for
the ministry.
And, as so often happens, it was in
that very college that the philosophy began that
did such damage in the nation.
What is known as Cambridge Platonism, which meant
briefly that the revelation of Scripture is not
to be denied, but it has to be
supplemented with reason.
And, of course, the next stage was that
reason made unnecessary in great measure Scripture at
all.
And so they developed the whole idea that
Christianity is not a doctrinal system, but rather
it is a scheme of morality.
And when we speak of faith, personal faith,
we really mean sincerity.
And so in the 18th century there came
the whole notion of Christianity as a scheme
of morality.
And the work of the Holy Spirit in
conviction of sin, in giving assurance of salvation,
that was altogether passed over.
And along with that, there was in the
universities and in the theatres and in the
literature of the day there was a prolonged
and sustained attack upon experimental religion.
It was ridiculed.
It was held up to laughter.
There was a magazine called The Spectator which
published 20,000 copies every week.
And that, with great literary giants like Addison
writing in it, that magazine continually ridiculed anything
like unction or zeal in religion.
The great virtue of the day was to
be broad-minded and to be charitable.
Matitudinarianism, as it's later been called.
And anything to do with emotion in religion
was a great evil.
Now the dissenting congregations lived in the middle
of that atmosphere.
And they did not capitulate to it entirely,
but they were subtly influenced by it.
They felt that if they were to have
any credibility at all, they had to some
extent to move with the times.
They had to show a more tolerant spirit
than had been seen in an earlier generation.
And the direct result was that preaching declined.
The zeal of the Puritans was almost as
unknown says one writer, as it was unimitated.
And Charles Miles says, in less than half
a century, the doctrines of the great founders
of Presbyterianism could scarcely be heard from any
Presbyterian pulpit in England.
The Puritan doctrine remained in literature in an
occasional pulpit, but otherwise its power was gone.
The influence of the times A second reason.
A third reason, the last, which really explains,
I think, the other two.
And you will find it dealt with at
length in that great work by John Owen,
The Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the
Gospel.
A book that he wrote in 1676 and
which is found in volume 7 of his
works.
He says many things about the state of
preaching, but if you read the ninth chapter
of that great work, you will see that
under the title of Defects in Teachers of
Religion, under that title, Owen goes to the
root of the existing weakness.
And he argues that preaching will only be
effective to the extent in which the power
of the gospel abides in the hearts of
those who are in the ministerial office.
And where the Holy Spirit's influence declines and
when heart religion languishes, says Owen, preaching will
cease to do its true work.
And he said there was only one remedy.
When God shall be pleased to give unto
the people who are called by His name
in a more abundant manner pastors after His
own heart, to feed them with knowledge and
understanding, when He shall revive and increase a
holy, humble, zealous, self-denying, powerful ministry by
a more plentiful effusion of His Spirit from
above, then, and not until then, may we
hope to see the pristine glory and beauty
of our religion restored to its primitive state
and condition.
And John Owen was absolutely right in those
words.
He didn't live to see it.
But the evangelical revival began with preachers.
And it began with preachers not where they
might have been expected to appear, but as
you know, it began with preachers in that
church where the lights had gone out in
1662, in the Church of England.
The church where preaching was so cold and
dead.
I could pause to say a few things
about the nature of the Anglican preaching at
that date, but I think I must hurry
on.
Except perhaps to mention one rather amusing thing
that I read recently.
Among the critics of Anglican preaching was the
diarist Samuel Pepys.
Samuel Pepys, who by men of the world
is reckoned to be some authority.
This Canon Overton who writes a book on
the period was rather disturbed at the damaging
nature of Pepys' criticism and he responded to
it in this way.
He said that Pepys was really no authority
on preaching because in all solemnity he writes
in his book he frequently slept all through
the sermon.
And of course thousands of others did the
same.
King George and Queen Caroline it was said
used to talk about politics when the sermon
was being preached in the Royal Chapel.
And the people loved to have it so.
Another writer says, the people far preferred the
chatty, easy going parson.
The preacher who allowed them to live as
they might choose.
Who did not preach too censoriously about sin.
And who professed to give them with the
sanction of the state and all the bishops
an easy entrance to heaven after death.
He was the preacher for them.
Now that was the general state of preaching
particularly in Anglicanism before the 1730s.
And then in the 1730s there came so
unexpectedly and suddenly this great change.
A new phenomenon.
And the phenomenon was that people who had
given up listening to sermons or had slept
through sermons now began sometimes in great numbers
to wait upon the preaching of the Word
of God.
In the year 1739 in the first few
weeks of that year George Whitfield who was
then 24 he preached 30 times.
And on a very famous day in church
history it ought to be ringed on all
our calendars to be remembered.
On the 17th of February 1739 George Whitfield
for the first time preached in the open
air at a place called Rose Green near
Bristol to a company of miners.
You remember how as he preached that day
their blackened faces began to be streaked white
as tears fell.
1739 John Wesley from April 1739 to the
end of the year preached some 500 sermons.
And henceforth these two men and others with
them gave their lives to the preaching of
the Gospel.
Now let me just give you a few
eyewitness accounts of this new preaching.
What was it that made it so different
to the preaching that had been long customary?
There was a man in the midlands of
England called Joseph Williams.
He was a businessman a very level-headed
middle-aged man.
He had been a Christian for a number
of years.
He was a dissenter.
He was a prayerful man.
And when he heard of what was happening
in Bristol he decided, wise man that he
was, to go and see for himself.
And the day he got to Bristol at
the very moment actually he arrived Charles Wesley
was leading the service in the open air.
Williams says, I found him standing on a
table in an erect posture with his hands
and eyes lifted up to heaven in prayer.
He prayed with uncommon fervor and fluency and
variety of expression.
He then preached about an hour in such
a manner as I scarce ever heard any
man preach.
Though I have heard many a finer sermon
according to the common taste, I never heard
any man discover such evident signs of vehement
desire or labor so earnestly to convince his
hearers that they were all by nature in
a sinful, lost and undone state.
And then he showed how great a change
faith in Christ would produce in the whole
man.
And with uncommon fervor he acquitted himself as
an ambassador of Christ.
And so Williams goes on.
I can't read it all.
But later in the day Williams found himself
in a prayer meeting where these others were
also present.
Never, he said, never did I hear such
praying.
Never did I see or hear such evident
marks of fervency in the service of God.
And then after speaking a bit more about
this prayer meeting, he says, if there is
any such thing as heavenly music upon earth,
I heard it there.
If there be such an enjoyment, such an
attainment as heaven upon earth, numbers in that
society seem to possess it.
And as for my own part, I do
not remember my heart to have been so
lifted up in divine love and praise as
it was then for many years past.
Well, there are many descriptions of the preaching
of George Whitefield.
I never saw, said one witness, I never
saw in my life such an attentive audience.
All that he said was demonstration and life
and power.
Another said, he appeared to speak of divine
realities.
He appeared to speak of spiritual and divine
things as awful realities.
And one minister who heard Whitefield and was
present in a service, he wrote afterwards, my
inmost soul is penetrated with an overwhelming sense
of the power and the presence of God
who has visited us with an effusion of
His Spirit in a very eminent manner.
Mr. Whitefield's words seemed to cut like a
sword.
Oh, with what eloquence and energy and melting
tenderness did he beseech sinners to be reconciled
to God.
And when the sermon was ended, the people
seemed chained to the ground.
And then this sentence of John Newton, converted,
you remember, in the 1750s, found himself in
London early one morning and for the first
time he went to Whitefield's Tabernacle.
They had an early morning service about six
o'clock in the morning.
When John Newton got there, he found about
a thousand people gathered and he doesn't say
much about the sermon or anything, but this
is what he says, Never before had I
such an idea and foretaste of the business
of heaven.
The business of heaven.
Then later on he heard Whitefield and he
describes his sermon and having described it, he
goes on to say, Something like this was
his plan, but the power and the warmth
with which he treated it, I can by
no means express, though I hope I feel
the influence of it still.
Now, the leading preachers of the evangelical revival
were men of very different characters and personalities,
as Mr. Martin said the other evening.
Umption in preaching may show itself in many
different outward ways, but this same spiritual reality
was present through their preaching.
Just a few words about Daniel Rowland.
Christmas Evans, the great Baptist preacher, as a
young man, went to hear Daniel Rowland preach
in Llangistu in Wales where Rowland was minister.
He says, There was a sort of vehement
flame transforming and driving away the earthly dead
and careless spirit and the people, the congregation,
drew nigh it seemed in the cloud to
Christ and to Moses and Elijah and eternity
and its realities rushed into their minds.
The story is told, Daniel Rowland was once
preaching at his chapel, the windows on the
west and the windows on the east and
as he began preaching, the sun was coming
through the eastern windows of the chapel before
the sermon was ended that day.
The first rays of sun were coming through
the western windows of the church.
The people, says Christmas Evans, they drew near
to eternity and its realities rushed into their
minds.
Thomas Charles, the man who was to be
the great leader of revival in North Wales,
he says, I went to hear Mr. Rowland
preach at the new chapel, Llangistu.
His text was Hebrews 4.15. A day
much to be remembered by me as long
as I live.
Ever since that happy day, I have lived
in a new heaven and a new earth.
It was the day of his conversion.
I had such a view of Christ as
our high priest of His love, compassion, power
and all sufficiency as filled my soul with
astonishment, with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
My mind was overwhelmed and overpowered with amazement.
The truths exhibited appeared too wonderfully gracious to
be believed.
I could not believe for very joy the
glorious scenes which then opened to my eyes
will abundantly satisfy my soul millions of years
hence in the contemplation of.
Now then, some lessons to be drawn from
this revival of preaching.
And the first lesson is this.
As one reads about Whitefield and Rowlands and
the Wesleys and many others, there is surely
the striking impression of the resemblance between this
preaching and the preaching of the book of
the Acts of the Apostles.
The preaching in the book of Acts was
doctrinal and it was powerful.
It was bold, soul-piercing, awe-inspiring, convicting,
warm.
All the things which we read about these
men, there is a very distinct resemblance so
that even men who have no real sympathy
with the evangelical revival have been forced to
admit there is some kind of parallel.
Now, how do we explain that parallel?
Well, many of the clergy of the time
explained it as a delusion.
Fanaticism.
They argued that what happened in the Acts
of the Apostles could not happen in the
18th century.
That it was one thing at Caesarea for
the Holy Ghost to fall upon all those
that heard the Word, but that wasn't to
be expected in London.
It might have been necessary in Jerusalem that
multitudes would be pricked in their hearts and
cry, what shall we do?
That could not happen in 1739.
It belonged only to the foundation of the
church and the resemblance to the apostolic age
was only, as I say, the delusion of
fanaticism.
There were many, sadly, who said that.
And the other alternative was just this.
And it was the testimony, unitedly of all
these preachers, that any success and influence that
they had was due only to the Spirit
of God moving again on the face of
the waters.
It was God's Spirit.
And surely it is very striking that this
awakening did not begin because of a new
program.
It didn't begin because men had new views.
It began because something happened to these men.
They were themselves convicted.
They began to long for holiness.
They were converted.
They gave themselves earnestly to seek God for
themselves and for others.
And what happened after that was spontaneous.
They didn't plan it.
If George Whitefield had had a diary for
the year 1739, he wouldn't have had written
on February the 17th, Preach at Rose Green
Bristol.
It didn't happen that way.
It began because, as John Owen had said
way back in 1676, this will come with
a new, a more plentiful diffusion of God's
Spirit from above.
Now, there are plenty of records to show
in private the springs of what happened in
public.
For example, on January the 1st, 1739, Whitefield
and the Wesleys and some other Christians spent
the evening together in London.
George Whitefield had a bad head cold that
night.
But as they spoke together and began to
pray together, the hours speedily passed.
And John Wesley says, about three in the
morning, as we were continuing intent in prayer,
the power of God came mightily upon us,
insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy,
and others fell to the ground.
And as soon as we recovered a little
from our awe and amazement at the presence
of the Divine Majesty, we broke out with
one voice, we praise Thee, O God, we
acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.
Speaking of these same days, Whitefield says, it
was a Pentecost season indeed.
Sometimes whole nights were spent in prayer.
Often those that met were filled as with
new wine.
And often have I seen them overwhelmed with
the Divine Presence and heard them cry out,
will God indeed dwell with men upon earth?
And what made these men different preachers was
just that their experience was so different.
They had a full assurance of salvation.
In great measure they lost the fear of
man.
They had that boldness which results from the
conviction that they stood in the presence of
Christ.
And the unction of the Spirit was a
reality of which they were conscious.
George Whitefield says, I knew by happy experience
what our Lord meant by saying, he that
believeth on me, out of his belly shall
flow rivers of living water.
And so they went on to say that
preachers will do no good unless in a
real sense they bear likeness to the one
whom they preach.
That is to say, as Jesus preached with
authority and not as the scribes, so, said
these men, by the anointing of his Spirit,
we also must speak.
George Whitefield, the first time he preached in
Stockton, in Glasgow, preached on the text the
Spirit of the Lord is upon me because
he has anointed me to preach the Gospel.
Well, he preached the Gospel gloriously and fully
and pressed it upon all the people.
But before he ended his sermon, he turned
to the ministers who were present and the
theological students who were present and he said,
see whether you feel these truths you are
preaching to your congregations or not.
It will be poor, dry, sapless stuff and
your people will go out of church as
cold as they came in.
Accept your ministry, be attended with the power
of God.
When shall we hear or see such a
day in Scotland?
Until we find a stirring of the work
of God among ministers, we cannot expect to
find it among the people.
Pray, he says, pray the Lord of the
harvest.
Pray for students that when they come out,
they may say the Spirit of the Lord
is upon me.
And when, says Whitefield, when it is upon
them, the whole world will be set on
fire of love.
I wish well for this poor kingdom, but
this will never be until the Spirit of
God is poured out upon the sons of
the prophets.
So Whitefield.
And George, I'm sorry, and John Wesley, preaching
in Oxford on August the 24th in 1744,
one of the boldest sermons preached in the
18th century.
You'll find a good lengthy account of it
in J.C. Ryle's 18th Century Leaders.
Amidst all the dignities of the university, the
dons and the professors and the graduates, he
spoke from the text, and when they had
prayed, the place wherein they were assembled was
shaken and they were all filled with the
Holy Ghost and with boldness.
John Wesley preached that text in Oxford with
great plainness.
It was the last time he was ever
asked to preach there.
Which illustrates, of course, that these men were
not interested in what the world calls influence.
They believed in practice as well as in
theory that all success depends upon God.
And though they might be called madmen and
enthusiasts, they knew that it was man-centered
religion which had been the death of preaching.
George Whitfield said very boldly to Bishop Warburton,
one of the great so-called scholars of
his day, Whitfield said, as far as perverted
reason and disguised sophistry could carry him, he
has robbed the church of its promised comforter
and thereby he has left us without any
supernatural influence or divine operations whatsoever.
Now, if you read that great book of
John Owens on the nature and causes of
apostasy, Owens says that the real heart reasons
for apostasy are pride and vanity and carelessness
and the love of the world.
And these were the things which were broken
through in the 1730s.
A new impulse ran through Christians.
The head of the church gave new life
to the body and a new era had
begun.
The parallel then with the apostolic era.
And the second lesson to which I hasten
on is this.
The very apparent connection between the preaching of
these men and the great theme of their
preaching and their personal private lives.
What they were in public was the result
of what they were in private.
The apostle Paul says he determined to know
nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
Paul spoke like that because of his personal
conviction of the worth of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
We sang those beautiful words of Charles Wesley,
Thou O Christ art all I want more
than all in Thee I find.
That was the keynote of these men.
They were not faultless.
They were not delivered from some mistakes and
sometimes even from errors.
But as you look at them, the first
thing that strikes you is that in their
personal lives they were supremely devoted to the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And they did not simply profess to believe
in the love of Christ.
They actually enjoyed that love.
They were conscious of it.
They could say with the apostle Paul the
love of Christ constrains us.
They had foretastes of glory.
Many foretastes.
They used to love the hymn of Isaac
Watts.
The men of grace have found glory begun
below.
George Whitefield speaks on various occasions of acting
under immediate views of a happy eternity.
And so we need to say, speaking of
this connection between their personal private lives and
their preaching, we need to say and to
note that the striking thing is that they
did not set out to be great preachers.
They did not even set out to obtain
a revival.
What they set out to do preeminently was
individually and personally to be real Christians.
That was their goal.
And it was as they sought that goal
that God gave them so many other blessings.
Their overriding concern was to know Christ and
to be like the Lord Jesus Christ.
They did not call prayer meetings to gain
results.
They prayed in the first instance for fellowship
with God.
They were not in the first instance interested
in numbers.
George Whitefield once having preached to several thousand
people, when the sermon was over, the comment
that he makes is, I myself was so
overpowered with a sense of God's love that
it almost took my life away.
Now a few quotations from Whitefield to illustrate
this devotion to Christ.
When he was 25 years old, a minister
in South Carolina who met him said, he
appears to me to be full of love
of God and to be fired with extraordinary
zeal for the cause of Christ.
His head, his heart, his hands seem to
be full of Christ's business.
Whitefield said himself, oh for a thousand lives
to spend for Jesus.
And as he grew older, we find him
writing, there is nothing I dread more than
having my heart drawn away by earthly objects.
When that time comes, it will be all
over with me indeed.
I must bid farewell to zeal and fervency
of spirit.
My blood runs cold at the very thought.
At the age of 36, he says to
a friend, I long to be on the
stretch for him who was stretched upon the
cursed tree for ill and hell deserving me.
And again, oh that I may be enabled
to the end to evidence that nothing but
a pure disinterested love to Christ and souls
caused me to begin and go on and
hold out.
At 43, he writes, what can reconcile us
to stay longer on earth for the prospect
of seeing the kingdom of the Lord Jesus
advanced?
People spoke of the ardent love he showed
to Christ, but that's not what Whitfield felt.
Age 48, he says, oh that I had
done more for the blessed Jesus.
Oh that I could think more of what
he had done for me.
On his 52nd birthday, he wrote, oh loving,
ever loving, altogether lovely Jesus, how little, yea,
how very little have I done and suffered
for thee.
I am ashamed of myself.
Tomorrow, God willing, I intend to take a
sacrament upon it that I will begin to
begin to be a Christian.
George Whitfield, age 52, I will begin to
begin to be a Christian.
And bear in mind that when the evangelical
revival began, there was a great deal of
professional religion and the clergy were paid to
preach.
And they preached too often because it was
their profession.
And here were men, like the Wesleys and
Whitfield, who were not paid to preach.
Who, because they preached, were disowned and put
out of churches.
And sometimes mobbed and repeatedly attacked and ridiculed
and slandered.
They gained nothing in the way of this
world's goods by their preaching.
But they gained, as they believed, something far
more.
The opportunity to make the Lord Jesus Christ
known.
One American said of Whitfield, he had such
a sense of the incomparable excellence of the
person of Christ that he could never say
enough of him.
And then, before I leave Whitfield, just remember
that Saturday in Massachusetts, September the 29th in
1770, George Whitfield preaching in a little country
village in Massachusetts on that Saturday afternoon.
Before he preached, one of his friends advised
him that he was more fit to go
to bed than to preach.
And Whitfield didn't exactly respond directly to his
friend, but he was overheard to say, Lord
Jesus, I am weary, I am weary in
thy work, but not of it.
And he preached for two hours that afternoon.
And he went on after the sermon was
finished to new report to the manse of
Jonathan Parsons, his old friend of the days
of the Great Awakening.
And he found the house full of people
hoping he would preach that night.
Well, Whitfield was given his supper.
And at the end of that supper, even
Whitfield, the day's work that he had already
done, was exhausted and admitted that he must
go to bed.
So when he was asked to preach to
the people, he declined.
He was given his candle and he began
his ascent of the staircase in Parsons' home.
But as he did so, his eye caught
the sign of the people who were gathered
around the porch and also many in the
house.
And he stood still.
And halfway up the staircase began to preach
to them.
Went on, it said, preaching until the candle
was burnt down to the bottom of its
socket.
And at five o'clock the next morning,
George Whitfield was dead.
Fifty-five years of age, beginning to be
a Christian, loving the Lord Jesus Christ.
Whitfield's great friend, William Grimshaw, says, preaching is
health and food and physic to me.
There is a very great need of preaching
now and our Master well deserves it and
infinitely more.
The point then that these men's personal lives
are the explanation why in their preaching they
made so much of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let me just mention one other man.
A man called Paul Greenwood.
I'm sure his name is unknown today.
He was just an itinerant in the northeast
of England.
A plain Methodist preacher.
In the year 1767 he was overtaken with
fever and he died as a result of
that fever.
And it was said that on the last
night of his life he was delirious.
And yet, says somebody who was with him,
in all his conversation he was spiritual and
heavenly.
The last night of his life he preached
and prayed the whole time until daybreak appeared
in the morning.
He then said, another sun shall arise.
Christ, the sun of righteousness with healing in
his wings.
And immediately he fell asleep in the Lord.
That's a Methodist preacher.
Preached all night and prayed and as the
sun arose in the morning fell asleep in
the Lord.
The last point then.
This preaching shows us that there is no
real preaching unless there is this element of
feeling.
The very thing that was so opposed by
the latitudinarians.
Preaching is not simply teaching.
We've already said this, have we not, in
various sessions.
James Durham the Puritan says preaching is called
persuading, testifying, beseeching, entreating, or requesting, exhorting.
Richard Sibbes says to preach is to woo.
And true revival is something which urges and
compels and pleads in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Before the evangelical revival preaching left people unmoved
and untouched.
And they were unmoved because ministers with cold
lips spoke out of cold hearts.
And the prevailing theology justified the cold hearts.
George Whitfield said, I am persuaded the generality
of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt
Christ.
The reason why congregations have been so dead
is because they have dead men preaching to
them.
Oh Lord, that Thou would quicken and revive
them.
How can the dead beget living children?
It is true indeed, he says, that God
may convert even by the devil if he
so chooses.
And he may by them convert ministers, but
I believe he seldom makes use of either
for his purpose.
No, he chooses vessels made meat by the
operation of his blessed spirit.
And Whitfield and these brethren they did not
pursue feelings or emotion or tears.
What feeling they had it seems to me
was the result of their own communion with
Christ.
It was the overflow through them of the
compassion with which Jesus himself looks upon the
multitude.
Their feelings resembled those of the Savior.
William Cooper or Pauper has those stanzas on
Whitfield.
And he says much about Whitfield's Christ-likeness.
And he has those beautiful lines.
He loved the world that hated him.
The tear which fell upon his Bible was
sincere.
And as we read of these men it
seems to me that there is a danger
in our day of our being like the
priests and the Levites who when they saw
that poor man by the wayside passed by
on the other side.
Or like Simon the Pharisee when he saw
the extravagance of the woman who washed Christ's
feet with tears and wiped them with the
hairs of her head.
They were Simon was unable to appreciate what
that meant.
And is it not true my brethren that
as we read these things the great danger
may be that we read them as past
history.
And even admire them as that.
But somehow we do not understand why such
devotion to Christ should be needed.
And if George Whitefield were to be present
to address us this day I am sure
he would tell us that we need to
cease from man and that we certainly do
not need his presence here.
But what we need is to realize that
the one who clothed them with authority and
grace is the ever living head of the
church who lives to give pastors and teachers.
Who lives to fulfill what John Owen said
in 1676.
To give a more plentiful effusion of the
Spirit.
And Whitefield then would have called upon us
to go to him and to plead with
him.
And he would have assured us that we
would not plead in vain.
Let us then my brethren as we think
of these things afresh, thank God that he
has given us in history also this guidance
which speaks to us even at the present
hour.