Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, as perhaps you
know, there are a number of meetings in
different parts of Britain today in commemoration of
the death of John Knox.
There are meetings in St. Andrews, in Scotland,
in Edinburgh, and in other places, but I
can say with the utmost sincerity that this
is the meeting that I should have wished
to come to before any of those other
meetings.
The Evangelical Library, through these many years, has
done more, I believe, to propagate and to
maintain the principles and the testimony of John
Knox than any other agency of its kind,
and we are conscious of that as we
gather this evening.
I think we are giving testimony to that
fact by our meeting, and we come together
surely in the presence of God, remembering a
man who was but an earthen vessel such
as we, and yet in whose heart the
Spirit of God burns, and we thus meet
to thank God and to pray that that
same fire may be kindled in us, even
at this time.
Now, as you know, we live in a
day of very general ignorance of church history,
and yet amidst all that ignorance, there is
one thing that is commonly remembered about John
Knox, and that is that his name has
generally been treated with disfavor and with criticism.
I suppose that there is no figure in
the whole of British church history who has
been accorded such enduring hostility as Knox.
It was true even in his own day.
He was reviled, threatened, burned in effigy, exiled,
nearly assassinated on more than one occasion.
All manner of language was applied to him,
that knave Knox, that crafty little fox, men
said, that Puritan Knox, and so on.
On one occasion when his life was imperiled,
he was compelled to leave Edinburgh, and as
he was leaving, he was hooted and jeered
by the people.
He said the despiteful tongues of the wicked
railed upon us, calling us traitors and heretics.
We would never have believed that our natural
countrymen and women could have wished our destruction
so unmercifully.
And after his death, the enmity continued in
that great conference at Hampton Court in the
1st of England, blamed all the troubles of
Puritanism on John Knox.
A hundred years after Knox's death, his books
were prohibited by Parliament, one of them was
solemnly burned in public.
And even in the year 1739, people thought
that it was sufficient condemnation of the preaching
of George Whitefield to say that it was
an echo of the doctrine of John Knox.
And in more recent times, the same phenomena
has been seen.
It's only a matter of a few years
ago that the Edinburgh Corporation actually took up
the gravestone of Knox, so that the site
is now completely obliterated there in Parliament Square
in Edinburgh.
And as you know, even this year, John
Knox was not considered a fit subject for
a commemoration postage stamp.
So it has gone through the centuries.
And in the face of so much criticism,
it would be a natural reaction, would it
not, for us to consider spending some time
in defending the name of Knox.
Well, that is not what we mean to
do.
That would not even be in the spirit
of John Knox himself.
On one occasion, he wrote to a friend,
the days are so wicked that I dare
make special commendations to no man.
John Knox believed that if there were to
be any commendation, they must wait the day
of Jesus Christ.
And that in the meantime, we have more
urgent work to do.
So I don't mention at the outset this
common reaction to Knox.
I don't mention it in order to go
pass on to make any defense with him,
not at all.
But I think we should, and we must,
draw a lesson from it which will set
our thoughts in the right direction.
Bear in mind that this patron to Knox
did not appear until he was more than
30 years of age.
I suppose when he was 31 or 32.
Until that time, he was, as he would
have said himself, a dumb dog, a priest
in the church, and therefore one who ought
to have stood for his master's honor, one
who should have defended that truth when it
was assailed, and yet who did not.
When Knox, in his early 30s, was brought
to a knowledge of the gospel of Christ,
then he began to pray as he gives
us his word.
Oh Lord, eternal, move and govern my tongue
to speak by truth.
And it was as that prayer was heard,
that Knox's days of peace with the world
were ended.
You may recall that when he was called
to the work of the ministry in the
castle of St. Andrews in 1547, little congregation
of men and women, they said one to
another, Master George Wishart never spoke so plainly,
and yet he was burned, even so will
Knox be.
Their prophecy of course was wrong, but the
principle was right.
The more plainly truth is spoken in the
world, the more enmity will be revealed against
it, and that not because of any misunderstanding
or any mere ignorance or superstition, but because
in this fallen world, men have received the
character of the God of this world, the
first deceiver, and that character was summed up
by our Lord in the words, he abode
not in the truth, because there is no
truth in him.
Therefore let that truth be proclaimed abroad, and
its ambassadors will receive the tribulation and the
opposition of the world.
What then is the lesson?
The lesson my friends is surely this, that
the struggle of the church is a struggle
not with flesh and blood, it is a
struggle between light and darkness, against principalities and
powers, a conflict between the seed of the
woman and the seed of the serpent.
There is an invisible conflict taking place, that
is the whole meaning of the reformation.
Up until the mid-16th century, Satan reigned
as an angel of light, even in the
professing church.
It was his lies that were taught in
the name of Christ.
It was he who was worshipped in the
prevailing idolatry, and men were led blindfold to
their ruin.
And it was when that fact was singled
out and identified, it was when men as
not, pointed to the professing church as the
synagogue of Satan, it was then that the
phenomena that we read of in the book
of Revelation chapter 12 and verse 12 was
seen again.
The devil is come down amongst you having
great wrath for he knoweth that he hath
but a short time.
I draw this lesson at the outset because
I think it at once justifies what we
are seeking to do in our meeting.
If the reformation was just a stage in
human history and development, if it was merely
the result of the collision of political and
religious and social thought, if it was simply
a difference of opinion and even of belief,
then it would be, surely it would be,
a matter of historical interest, but it would
be nothing more.
But that is not what we believe.
With the word of God as our standpoint,
we believe that the reformation was but part
of that enduring conflict between these two kingdoms,
between light and dark, and therefore the truths
which then prevailed, the promises which then were
depended upon, and promises which were vindicated, these
have the same force and validity in our
day as they did then.
If it is a spiritual conflict, if it
has not so much to do with men
and with the mere scenery of this world,
but it has to do with these spiritual
demonic powers and the truth of God, then
I say it is at once something which
is contemporary with us.
We have to take the same weapon and
the same truth, and in doing so know
that they are potent and have the same
force as in Knox's day.
That surely is the way in which we
must approach our subject.
Now in the little while that we have,
I want to try to split the remaining
time between giving you an account of Knox's
life, and then passing on to some main
broad lessons to be deduced from it.
Let us start in the year that I
mentioned, the year 1547.
20 years before that date, the New Testament
had first been introduced, the first English printed
New Testament, into this country, into England and
into Scotland, smuggled in from Flanders.
It was of course William Tyndale's New Testament.
That book brought into Scotland new light and
power, and into England also.
There followed then bitter persecution in both realms.
Now, we haven't time to stop on the
state of Scotland before the Reformation.
I believe that it will be familiar enough
to many of you.
Suffice it to say that the church was
dominated by covetous, fat, often immoral ecclesiastics, and
the civil power was corrupt, and these two
powers, ecclesiastical and civil, united their strength and
power against the gospel of Christ.
I speak now of Scotland.
After 1542, Scotland was without a king.
James V died after the battle of Solway
Moss.
His wife, the Queen Mother Mary of Guise,
a Frenchwoman of the great Catholic house of
Guise, became then and thereafter the titular head
of the realm.
But there was great confusion, and Mary of
Guise of course had at her elbow the
whole power of France.
There was thus not simply the church and
the government against the gospel, but the French
nation also.
Persecution then reigned.
Patrick Hamilton went to his martyrdom, George Wishart
followed, and many a score of other men
and women.
In 1546, the year before the date I
gave you of Knox's call to the ministry,
in 1546 a little band of desperate Protestants
broke into the castle of St. Andrews, secured
it as a refuge, and put to death
the cardinal Beaton.
That monster as he was put him to
death.
It was then in the following year that
Knox put refuge in that castle with two
or three boys whom he was tutoring.
There he was called by these Protestants to
begin the work of preaching the evangelism.
It was a work that lasted but a
few months at that time.
He was seized by the French forces.
The French navy arrived, blockaded, the castle gave
up.
Knox then was taken for 19 months, chained
to an oar in a galley, half naked,
oftentimes half dead.
As he later wrote, drinking the bitter cup
of corporal death until 1549.
1549 by the intervention apparently of the English
government, he was released and then it was
that his true preaching work began.
Now whatever else you remember, seek to remember
this division of John Knox's life.
From 1549, you have a period of 10
years.
From about the age in Knox's life of
35 to 45, 10 years.
1549 to 1559, the years of his exile.
Then the second point, 1559 to 1561, the
years of the great victory of the gospel
in Scotland.
Then 1561 to his death, as you've been
reminded on this very day, 1572, from the
age of 47 to 57, the last great
struggle to maintain what had been won in
Scotland.
Let me just say a few words on
these three theories.
These years of exile from 1549, he came
to England.
England now under the government of the young
Edward VI, pious, earnest, well-instructed Christian, with
a privy council that was concerned also to
forward the Protestant religion.
Knox was singled out to be sent to
possibly the darkest part of the whole country,
the northeast.
Northumberland, Berwick, Newcastle, that area north of Newcastle,
that was his area.
And in that area, the people that sat
in dark saw a great light.
He began to preach in Berwick, a wild
border town, half English perhaps, half Scots.
Brutal, backward, full of violence and immorality, the
gospel of Christ was heard.
And it was heard with effectual power in
many hearts.
The wife of the governor of the nearby
Norham castle, Elizabeth Bowes, was converted.
So also was her daughter Marjorie, later to
become Knox's wife.
These were the first fruits of Knox's ministry.
But of course he made many bitter enemies.
The mayor of Newcastle for one, and then
the powerful Bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstall, a
man who had refused help to Tyndale more
than 20 years earlier.
Thus Knox was summoned before the council of
the north, April the 4th in 1550, to
give an account of his doings and his
preaching.
You may read that in his works.
I think it is one of the finest
pieces of work that Knox ever did.
He defended himself by demonstrating that the mass
is idolatry.
And he based his proof upon the principle
that nothing in his religion will God admit
without his own words.
It was a tremendous defense and a burning
charge even delivered to the men assembled before
him.
Many of them bishops and ecclesiastes.
At one point in this address, Knox was
demonstrating the necessity of acting only upon God's
word.
He drew the illustration from Nadab and Abihu
that we read of in the Old Testament.
Who instead of burning the true fire upon
the altar of burnt sacrifice, burnt their strange
fire to God and were judged.
Knox then began to speak about the true
fire.
And turning to the bishops he said this
to them.
Oh bishops, ye should have kept this fire.
At morn and at evening ought ye to
have laid faggots thereupon.
Yourselves ought to have cleansed and carried away
the ashes.
But God shall behold you.
And a little later in this same address
he cried out, Oh God eternal, hast thou
laid none other burden upon our backs than
Jesus Christ laid by his words?
Then who hath burdened us with all these
ceremonies, prescribed fasting, compelled chastity, unlawful vows, invocation
of saints, and with the idolatry of the
mass, the devil, the devil brethren, invented all
these burdens to depress imprudent men to perdition.
Knox was preserved, he had friends, including even
the young king himself.
But it was not thought expedient to keep
him in the north.
In the early 1550s he came down to
London.
Many a time did he preach here in
this city before the king, before the court.
Preaching often with tremendous effect and influence.
There is that famous occasion in 1552 when
the second book of common prayer was decided
upon, passed, ratified, actually being printed.
But to Knox it was not thorough.
There were points in it which were but
relics of the old corrupt church, and therefore
he specified one or two of these points.
With such authority the printers were commanded to
stop their work until the matter could be
reviewed and certain alterations made.
It was at this time that he was
brought before even the Privy Council in London.
And of course there were many Protestants there,
and professing evangelicals, and they said gravely to
Knox how sorry they were that his mind
was contrary to the common order, the common
opinion.
I am much more sorry, said Knox, that
the common order should be contrary to the
institution of Jesus Christ.
He had refused, you remember the bishopric of
Rochester, he had refused also a living in
London.
On the grounds that ministers were not given
authority to separate the leper from the sound,
to separate the wheat and the chaff, which,
said Knox, is a main part of the
minister's office.
Then the next year, 1553, came that great
blow, the death of Edward VI.
He was but 16, and he was taken
home to glory.
Listen to Knox writing of it in his
history of the Reformation in Scotland.
After the death of this most virtuous prince,
of whom the godless people of England for
the most part were not worthy, Satan intended
nothing less than that the light of Jesus
Christ utterly to have been extinguished within this
whole isle of Britain.
For after him was raised up in God's
hottest pleasure that idolatrous Jezebel, mischievous Mary of
the Spaniards blood, a cruel persecutor of God's
people.
And he goes on to describe the years
that followed.
The years that followed indeed were the hardest
years in Knox's life.
1553 to 1559, he recrossed the English Channel,
less than 10 groats in his pocket, he
said, homeless, wandering exile, first in Frankfurt, then
in Geneva.
And sorrows were multiplied to him, separated from
the woman to whom he was betrothed, not
to see her for more than three years,
Marjorie Burns.
Hearing the news of the fiery persecution in
England, gradually those dreadful numbers accumulate, more than
280 burned to death in England and Wales,
some of them, indeed many of them, Knox's
personal friends.
Then an even greater blow for him.
These were men who had died in faith,
but up in Northumberland and Berwick and Newcastle,
word came that before the threats of violence
and death, many, it seemed almost all, had
given way and returned to the old religion.
These were tremendous temptations for Knox.
He tells us that sometimes he touched the
very bottom of hell.
He was indeed a man who sowed in
tears in these years.
And it was in the depth of this
sorrow that the burden for his own country,
for Scotland, increased.
The words of the Apostle Paul in the
epistle to the Romans became his own experience,
to be willing to be made a curse.
For my brethren's sake, he speaks to us
of the, let me read you his words.
I feel, he says, writing at this time,
I feel a sob and a groan, willing
that Christ Jesus might openly be preached in
my native country, although it should be with
the loss of my wretched life.
He began to pray to God that he
might be given but 40 days to preach
in Scotland.
But 40 days liberty for the gospel to
be heard in that land.
I cannot stop on the sorrows of those
dark years.
But in the midst of them, there were
two great encouragements.
The first was his own little congregation.
As I mentioned, he went to Geneva.
There in Geneva, there were between 100 and
150 English people, men, women and children, refugees,
exiles.
Some of them, indeed most of them, eminent
Christians.
That little congregation became, as it were, the
first reformed Puritan congregation, the leading congregation of
the many that were to follow in England
and Scotland.
There it was that the Genevan Bible was
worked upon, translated, produced in 1560.
The Genevan service book drawn up in this
little congregation.
You may read of this with great pleasure
in Mr. Lupton's books, which I hope you
have seen on this subject.
There are now four volumes on the Genevan
Bible.
This was one great encouragement in these years.
The Genevan Bible, I need not remind you,
I hope, was later the Bible of England
and the Bible of Scotland until well into
the next century.
The second encouragement, he had a brief, hurried
visit to his own land, to Scotland, as
a fugitive, a price on his head, persecuted
and hunted if they could but lay their
hands on him, but sheltered in the castles
of certain of the Protestant nobility, the Earl
of Argyll and others who had been converted.
And Knox saw what he had not seen
before in Scotland, the thirst for the gospel,
the power of the spirit evidently awakening the
people so that they were willing at the
imperil of their lives to assemble in little
villages and hamlets and in the open air
to hear the word of God.
There were several conversions, perhaps indeed very many,
we do not know the numbers, one of
them to give you a characteristic instance, one
of them was the wife of an Edinburgh
Burgess, Elizabeth Adamson, an old lady apparently, came
to hear Knox preaching in East Lothian, set
at liberty, filled with praise and but shortly
afterwards called to her account.
Dying in Edinburgh, visited of course as usual
by the priests, carrying their sacraments and so
on.
Go forth, she said, ye sergeants of Satan,
and began to speak to them of the
gospel that she enjoyed and told them that
the pains that wracked her body were nothing
to the pains of conscience that had been
quelled by the precious blood of Jesus Christ,
Knox says, they went out saying that she
raved.
Knox, you may read it in Knox's history
of the reformation, they departed alleging that she
raved and whispered not what she said and
she short thereafter slept in the Lord Jesus,
to no small comfort of those that saw
her blessed departing, this we could not omit,
he says, of this worthy woman.
Here then were these two great encouragements in
the midst of those terrible years.
We must pass on then quickly.
On May the 2nd, 1569, Knox came back
to Scotland and came to remain.
The very day that he arrived in Scotland,
the day he arrived in Edinburgh, was the
day that the bishops and other priests had
assembled in that same city, in the monastery
of the Blackfriars, to discuss certain reformation of
the church.
They also were getting a little uneasy.
You may judge what kind of reformation they
intended from the following.
These were certain things that they decided upon.
That none should enjoy benefits, ecclesiastical, except he
be a priest.
That if any priest were found in open
adultery, for the first fault he should lose
a third of his benefits.
None should put his own son in his
own benefits.
These men weren't supposed to have any sons.
Cardinal Beaton had eight.
These were their morals, this was their reformation.
They were in the very midst of these
discussions when a messenger came in that Knox
was back in Scotland.
We read that they rose hastily from their
table and discontinued their meeting.
There was a remarkable providence in the very
date of Knox's arrival, May the 2nd.
Eight days later the Protestant preachers had been
commanded to appear at Stirling before the Queen
Regent, Mary of Guise.
Knox had come back to lead.
A congregation had been formed, it was really
a band, a church, a united body of
men and women who now took up arms
to defend themselves against the murderous persecution which
had gone on.
They determined that they would not send their
preachers to Stirling but they would go with
them.
The message went to the Queen.
She did not want to see the whole
congregation.
There began then this great collision.
It went on for over a year.
The Queen had more than 4,000 French
troops to back her besides many Catholic nobility
in Scotland.
The summer of 1559 was the most extraordinary
summer in Scotland.
I suppose there was none other ever like
it.
It reminds me of a statement that a
man made in Ulster in the year 1859,
the year of the great revival in Ulster.
This minister said it would have been worth
living 10,000 years in obscurity to have
been permitted to see the last six months
of 1859 in Ulster.
That was equally true of 1559 in Scotland.
Knox was given his 40 days and more
preaching in Perth, preaching through Fife, preaching in
St Andrews, the very citadel, the bastion of
Roman power, preaching though the Archbishop threatened he
would be shot on sight.
That great scene painted by Sir David Wilkie
with Knox leaning out of the pulpit of
the Duchess of Argyll in front of the
pulpit of baby in her arms.
You know the picture I'm sure.
He was preaching in the very centre of
the forces and the powers of darkness.
And there it was at that time.
Before the reformation was established in Scotland that
14 priests made confession of faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ.
The word of God grew mightily and prevailed.
Knox came to Edinburgh, was called to the
charge of St Giles and so it went
on.
There was only one great setback.
It occurred late in the November or early
I should say in November of 1559.
The Queen Regent now had retired to Leith,
which is now a suburb of Edinburgh.
Then it was a separate fortress.
She had her army in Leith, her last
garrison, powerful as they were.
Early in November they sallied forth out of
Leith and attacked the Protestant forces and people,
putting several to death.
This little defeat, for it was only that,
was sufficient to break the spirit of a
number of these Protestants.
Indeed the whole Protestant armed congregation withdrew out
of Edinburgh to Stirling.
It was at this time that those words
were spoken, which I mentioned at the outset,
when the people who were still largely Catholic
cheered at Knox.
Knox went after the congregation to Stirling.
And it said that he continued with the
text, following the text of his previous Sunday's
ministry.
It was in the 80th Psalm.
And he so preached to the congregation in
Stirling.
They were filled with resolution and confidence and
faith.
Listen to Knox's closing words in that sermon.
Yea, he said, whatsoever shall become of us
and of our mortal carcasses, I doubt not,
but this cause in despite of Satan shall
prevail in the realm of Scotland.
For as it is the eternal truth of
the eternal God, so shall it once prevail
howsoever for a time it may be denied.
And with such words as these, the Protestant
congregation was rallied.
They went back.
The following year the French forces were utterly
defeated, withdrew forever from Scotland.
English aid was sent.
The Scottish Parliament was convened.
The Pope was forever rejected in all his
rule and government in this realm.
National confession of faith was drawn up by
six men.
Indeed there were only six Reformed preachers then
in the whole land, but six of them
drew up that great national confession and then
the book of discipline.
It was, as John Calvin himself wrote from
Geneva to Knox, it was an incredible success.
We wonder, says Calvin, at success incredible in
so short a time.
And Knox writing his history of the Reformation
explains that success.
He begins by quoting a verse from the
Geneva Bible.
They that wait upon the Lord shall renew
their strength.
They shall lift up the wings as the
eagles.
They shall run and not be weary.
They shall walk and not faint.
This promise has been performed for us, professors
of Christ Jesus within this realm of Scotland.
For what was our force or strength?
What was our number?
Yea, what wisdom or worldly policy was unto
us to have brought to a good end
so great an enterprise?
To what confusion, he says, and fear were
idolaters, adulterers, and all public transgressors of God's
commandments within so short a time brought?
For what adulterer, what fornicator, what known mass
mongerer, doth have been seen in public within
any reformed town within this realm?
These were the years of victory.
A church founded, reformed according to God's word
on new foundations and a land cleansed as
it was by this mighty power of the
Spirit of God.
The last ten years, just a word on
that.
Forty-seven years of age, ten more years
to live.
The greatest struggle in many ways had knocked
his life.
Just when it seemed that victory had been
wholly achieved, then of course it was.
But the forces of darkness regathered themselves.
Right across Europe, a reaction had set in.
The papal power was refurbishing its weapons and
all eyes were turned upon Britain.
If the Protestant faith could be crushed in
Britain, it could be crushed surely in the
whole of Europe.
And it was upon Scotland in particular that
their eyes were turned.
For here at last was a Catholic sovereign,
Mary Queen of Scots, came back from France
to Scotland in 1561, full of guile, subtlety,
beauty, able to flatter, to bribe, to mislead,
wielding great power and wielding it with one
end in view, that this reformed church in
Scotland should be brought to an end.
That the altars and the mass and the
whole religion of the former years should be
restored and re-established in Scotland.
And not only in Scotland, but then Mary
might take her rightful place over the throne
of England.
And this whole island once again be reunited
with the papacy.
That was the purpose.
Indeed undisguised as we now see it from
the correspondence and the literature which exists, but
at that time cunningly disguised.
And so much so that many of the
Protestant leaders and the nobility were deceived by
it, taken in by Mary's astuteness and particularly
by her flattery and the way in which
she won them.
And how often Knox had to stand alone,
dragged as he was even from his bed
to give an account of his preaching.
Fettered and yet to the end, faithful to
the word of God and holding the common
people to the gospel.
And the people under the leadership of Knox
held the day.
Much more indeed could be said of those
last years of struggle, but you must read
the books that were given out earlier in
the meeting.
Let us come then to this second part
and indeed perhaps the most important part of
all.
What lessons are we to draw from Knox,
his ministry and history?
Well I think in the first place we
ought to ask the question.
What was the content of the preaching of
Knox and of his colleagues?
It was first of all a proclamation of
the evangel, as they called it, of the
glad tidings that God through Jesus Christ saved
sinners and he saved sinners by reckoning to
them, though they be ungodly, the righteousness of
his Son, the Immaculate Lamb of God.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, says Knox, is the
only sacrifice acceptable in the sight of God
the Father for the offenses of all believers.
This was the note of their preaching, first
of all, the words of George Wishart, which
he translated from the Helvetic Confession.
God is friendly minded towards sinners.
Friendly minded.
John Knox, as he describes his preaching in
that visit in 1555, he says according to
the grace given unto him, he opened more
fully the fountain of God's mercies.
And again, speaking of this gospel of grace,
he says, so tender was God's care over
them, who shamefully put to death Christ Jesus
upon a cross, that before their polluted and
wicked hands were externally almost washed from his
blood, he sent unto them the message of
reconciliation.
And yet with this gospel preaching, there was
another emphasis bound up with it.
And for this emphasis, Knox has been so
often criticized and condemned.
It is said that he was too much
of an Old Testament prophet.
That he dwelt too much upon the judgment
and the severity of God.
What are we to say to that charge?
We are to understand, my friends, that Knox
rightly discerned the nature of the mission to
which he had been called.
And knew that that truth was essential to
the furtherance of the gospel in that day.
Bear in mind the state of the people
to whom he preached.
They had been subjected through countless years to
error.
Their consciences were drugged.
Drugged by that whole man-made system of
ceremony, of works, of penances, of all those
sacraments which were supposed to shield them from
any peril and spiritual danger.
They were lulled to sleep in self-righteousness,
in self-dependence, in a refuge of lies,
with no consciousness of the reality of their
position exposed as they were to the wrath
and to the judgment of God.
It was then necessary, as Knox saw, to
preach to men that outside of Christ there
is nothing but wrath.
And that he did preach.
And Knox saw and believed that there is
nothing more cruel in the world than a
religion which betrays the souls of men.
He has been accused of blind and narrow
hate.
The charge is true.
He hated that which destroyed precious souls.
He hated that system which had blinded people
to the necessity of faith and salvation by
the blood of Jesus Christ.
A.
Hodge of Princeton wrote these words and I
think they are relevant at this point.
He said, Is it not the last refinement
of cruelty to administer to bewildered sinners moral
anesthetics, assuring them of an eternal hope only
that they may meet the vengeance of God's
eternal fire?
That was what religion had done before the
reformation.
It had given men moral anesthetics which drugged
them in the face of eternity.
And Knox knew that the only way for
men to be delivered from that was for
them to see themselves in the burning light
of God's holiness, that they might fly to
the Lamb of God.
So it was that he announced again in
this land, as Paul had announced before, that
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
Let me give you but a few words.
Knox says, By the brightness of God's scriptures,
we are brought to the feeling of God's
wrath and anger which by our manifold offenses
we have justly provoked against ourselves.
Which revelation and conviction God sends not of
a purpose to confound us, but of very
love by which he has concluded our salvation
to stand in Jesus Christ.
Or take this that he addressed to the
nobles of Scotland, having spoken to them of
the gospel and of their responsibility to obey
it.
He went on, My words are sharp, but
consider, my lords, that they are not mine,
but that they are the threatenings of the
omnipotent, who assuredly will perform the voices of
his prophets, howsoever carnal men despise his admonitions.
The sword of God's wrath is already drawn,
which of necessity must need strike, when grace
offered is obstinately refused.
You have been long in bondage of the
devil, blindness, error, and idolatry prevailing against the
simple truth of God in your realm, in
which God has made you princes and rulers.
But now doth God of his great mercy
call you to repentance, before he pour forth
the uttermost of his vengeance.
He crieth to your ears that your religion
is nothing but idolatry.
He accuses you of the blood of his
saints, which hath been shed by your permission,
assistance, and power.
Of these horrible crimes doth now God accuse
you, not of purpose to condemn you, but
mercifully to absolve you and pardon you, as
sometime he did those whom Peter accused to
have killed the Son of God.
I think that is representative of John Knox's
preaching.
My second lesson in a few words.
The policy of Knox's reformation, it can be
stated very simply.
What was his vision?
What were the foundational truths upon which he
worked?
There were just two.
The first, the principle of entire universal obedience
to the word of God, no matter what
the cost, no matter what the consequences.
That was the first platform of his reformation.
That the rule of God's word in doctrine,
in worship, in practice should be laid to
everything.
The second, that the church above all must
see that she offends not her God and
her Saviour.
These were his two principles.
And upon these master principles, that great work
of reformation proceeded.
We haven't time to linger on them.
Perhaps you may give me a moment as
I say just perhaps a word on these
two.
Entire obedience to the word of God, there
is no exemption for any party.
Thus though Knox preached to Mary of Guise,
or to Mary Queen of Scots, or though
he wrote to Elizabeth Queen of England, it
was always in the same terms.
They were accountable to God.
They were not given leave as he told
Mary Queen of Scots.
They were not given leave to offend God's
majesty.
You remember how on one occasion the Queen's
secretary stopped Knox as he was standing before
the Queen defending himself on charges.
Stop he said.
You forget yourself.
You are not now in your pulpit.
I answered Knox in the place where duty
requires me to speak the truth.
Deny it who will.
This was Knox.
The truth is to be heard.
It is to be preached.
No matter who may deny it.
Take this sentence in a letter that he
wrote to Queen Elizabeth of England.
If I should flatter your grace, I were
no friend but a deceivable traitor.
And therefore of conscience I am compelled to
say that neither the consent of people, the
process of time, nor multitude of men can
establish a law which God shall approve.
But whatsoever he approves by his eternal word,
that shall be approved.
And whatsoever he condemns shall be condemned.
No all men in the earth should hazard
a justification of the same.
And it was through John Knox and the
English Puritans that there was built into the
constitution of our nation.
The truth that there can be no neutrality
for civil magistrates in the light of God's
word.
We still have in our statute books a
Protestant constitution.
Greatly though it is despised.
Why is it there?
It is there because men like Knox preached
that Jesus Christ is the prince of the
kings of the earth.
And that therefore that governments have sacred authority.
They also must bow before the scepter of
Christ.
And that lands that do not obey that
word will be brought to law.
They preached that.
Men believed it.
And it needs my friends preaching today in
the words of Abraham Kuyper of the Netherlands.
Words which are very reminiscent of Knox.
God, said Kuyper, is not to be treated
by governments merely as one who is to
be dragged to their help in the hour
of national need.
On the contrary, God in his majesty must
flame before the eyes of every nation.
For God created the nations.
They exist for him.
They are his own.
And therefore all these nations and in them
all humanity must exist for his glory.
That was the Puritan vision for this island.
It was that which led them in their
pioneering into education, into schooling, into many other
realms.
It was the vision of the truth of
the word of God in its entirety must
dominate and subdue our society under the scepter
of Jesus Christ.
A word then on the second principle of
reform.
If the church seeks the honor of God,
if she seeks to avoid offending him, then
there is no human aid that she requires.
And there is no human opposition that will
overcome her.
If she is but faithful to God, if
she honors him, then indeed her work will
be done.
Listen to Knox, dear brethren, consider with me
that the things which to men seem most
impossible are easy to our God to bring
to pass.
If we will refuse ourselves and only give
obedience to his command.
When John Knox spoke of discipline as the
mark of the church, it was in this
context.
When John Knox said that it is better
to have no ministers than to have ministers
who compromise the truth or are worldly men.
He spoke in this context that the church
is the place where God's glory dwells.
And it is there that his honor has
to be held precious.
It is not a sanctuary for the worldly.
And if it becomes that, then it becomes
an offense in the sight of almighty God.
As that old Roman church had become, a
very Ichabod in which God's glory had departed.
That, Knox would say, could be true of
us, can be true of any.
If we fail in obedience and faithfulness to
his word, then there is nothing in this
world and nor all the aid of men
that can maintain that church.
This was his great principle of reformation.
Well, as we close my last point now,
just a few briefest words on Knox's character.
What can be said in a few words,
but let me just sketch just a few
things and then we'll end.
What is it that impresses you about Knox
as you read of him, as you hear
of him?
I am struck by his long continued suffering.
And in the midst of that suffering, that
diligence, that energy, that sense of exhilaration which
came from his faith.
We must not suppose he was a strong
man.
He never recovered from those years in the
galley.
He had stone in the kidney before he
was 40 years of age.
Suffered desperately from sleeplessness at night.
Then we have heard of his loneliness, of
those years when friends were taken from him
by death, separated from his wife.
Then she was taken at the early age
of 25 or perhaps it was 26.
Incredible were his sufferings.
Enormous was the hatred that was rigged upon
him.
And in the midst of it all, he
was given as one old Scots minister put
it, a divine and a heroic spirit.
Much could be said of his humility.
He was a man that was nothing in
his own eyes.
It hath pleased God he says of his
super abundant grace to make me most wretched
of many thousands of witness, minister and preacher.
He was a man of strong feeling.
When he preached he could say as he
did say on more than one occasion, I
quake, I fear, I tremble.
He preached as Bunyan who smartingly did feel
and the people felt.
He yearned, he wept, he was swept with
indignation of the outrage done to men sold
by that system which stood against him.
Yes indeed he had the spirit of his
master who on that occasion of which we
read in John 2 drove those money changers
out of his father's temple who had made
a house of prayer a den of thieves.
This spirit was in John Knox, a man
of burning love and devotion, a man of
far-sighted vision.
You ought to rejoice that if you are
fortunate enough to be able to procure one
of John Knox's volumes from the Evangelical Library,
you ought to rejoice that you'll be able
to read it because you shouldn't simply assume
that.
Knox was a Scotsman as I don't need
to tell you, but he did not write
in Scots.
That is the point for which we should
be grateful.
If he had written in the old Scots,
well then it would have hardly mattered whether
they were in the library or not, neither
you nor I would have read them.
But he wrote in English and the Geneva
Bible was written in English and he did
that because he had a vision of future
years and future centuries.
John Knox spoke of the unflamed love and
unity among all those that yearn for the
reign of Christ in Britain.
Patriot though he was, there was something far
more important than patriotism.
John Knox was no Scottish nationalist or anything
like it.
He was a Christian with a vision of
a unity of the whole Reformed Churches and
that affected his work.
It affected even the way he wrote and
the language in which he wrote.
We should thank God that he was given
such far-sighted vision and we should take
up that same vision and prayer ourselves in
this day for the unity of the one
Church.
What then is the last point on Knox's
character?
It is simply this.
To me the most outstanding thing of all
is the faith, the invincible faith he had
in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When you bear in mind the utter corruption
of the church of that day, its power,
its wealth, how long it had prevailed, how
deep its roots went, no wonder they were
staggered at the immensity of the work they
had to do.
I stood this morning in Westminster Cathedral.
Take a look at that.
Then remember a day when such buildings and
incense and all that goes with it were
all over the land.
How did those Christians believe that all that
could be brought down?
Only in one way, through the power of
the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the
church.
This is the heart of Knox.
This is what he speaks of again and
again.
He did nothing.
He did, he said, but distribute the bread
which Jesus Christ gave to him.
And it was because Christ blessed the bread
of life that souls were saved and the
church advanced.
I did but distribute the bread as of
Jesus Christ.
I sought neither preeminence, glory, nor riches.
My honor was that Jesus Christ should reign.
O brethren, these words were addressed to the
Christians in London in the midst of the
persecution of Mary Tudor.
O brethren, he says to them, is not
the devil, the prince of this world, vanquished
and cast out?
Has not Christ Jesus, for whom we suffer,
made conquest of him?
Has he not, in despite of Satan's malice,
carried our flesh up to glory and shall
not our champion return?
We know that he shall stand then with
Christ Jesus in this day of his battle
which shall be short and the victory everlasting.
For the Lord himself shall come in our
defense with his mighty power.
He shall give us the victory when the
battle is most strong against us.
These and many other words you will find
in Knox.
He believed that Christ was personally engaged to
defend his cause to promote his own glory.
I cannot end without but reminding you of
that story which we find in John Bunyan
and which I think sums it all up
so well.
Christian and hopeful were traveling on their way
but fall asleep on the ground of giant
despair.
Awaking they find that they are in the
hands of this giant.
So they are taken to Doubting Castle, put,
says Bunyan, in a stinking dungeon.
What misery and lamentation!
What fears possess their hearts!
Would it be they think one to another?
Would it be that perhaps one day giant
despair will die in one of his fits?
Or perhaps he will fail to lock one
of those horrid doors that bar the way?
These were their thoughts.
Then they were taken out into the yard
of the castle, shown the bones of men
who had been torn to pieces, said the
giant by his power.
That would be their end too.
So they went back shaking and quivering to
their dungeon.
And Bunyan says about midnight on the Saturday
evening, Christian and hopeful began to pray and
continued till near the break of day.
And a little while before it was dawn,
says Bunyan, Christian got up as a man
half amazed and he said, oh what a
fool I've been!
Still I here in this stinking dungeon when
I might as well have my liberty.
For, he says, I have in my bosom
a key called promise which is able to
open every lock in Doubting Castle.
I said hopeful, that's good news my brother,
pull it out of thy bosom and try.
And they did.
And is not that just what we read
in Hebrews chapter 11?
Of that great company who through faith subdued
kingdoms and wrought righteousness and obtained promises and
quenched the violence of the fire and out
of weakness were made strong.
They were but using the key called promise.
And that key opened every lock.
It was the key that John Knox used.
It is the key which is handed down
to us.
It is because that key exists that the
evangelical library by God's grace continues in its
work.
May God bless that work.
May he bless us in our several lives
and in our churches and revive his work
in this our day.
Amen.