It should not be necessary for a history
teacher to express his appreciation for a church
that commemorates Reformation Month.
I very much appreciate the fact of this
commemoration, the concern for the memory and the
contribution of those of former centuries who hazarded
their lives for the gospel's sake.
It's a special joy to be here.
I appreciate your presence for the good group
that was here Wednesday night and the opportunity
of sharing in this special month.
I feel very much the stanza that began,
that we sang a few moments ago, we
rest on thee, our sense of weakness feeling.
I very much feel that.
I'm very much more comfortable coming as a
figure from a different century than I am
invading the sacred desk.
I say it again, I very much am
sobered by the responsibility that the pulpit ministry
represents and I do not approach it lightly.
Over these recent years, I have shared with
you the lives of 16th century figures, John
Knox in Scotland, again this coming Wednesday, Martin
Luther from Germany, William Tyndall, I think last
year, Mr. Latimer last week, Mr. Bunyan, John
Bunyan, a few years ago from the 17th
century, and Charles Spurgeon from the 19th century.
That leaves the 18th century untouched.
It was touched some time ago when Dr.
Abrams presented Jonathan Edwards in this country.
I want to observe something of the 18th
century English figure of whom there were two
important ones, of course, John Wesley, George Whitefield.
And just by way of introduction, let me
remind you of the fact that each of
these Reformers, your pastor already in his opening
prayer this evening, went through my entire introduction
when he introduced the three doctrinal principles of
the Reformation.
And our souls rejoiced with the recollection and
with the repetition.
Justification by faith only, plus nothing.
The priesthood of every believer.
Immediate access to the throne of God through
no man, with one mediator only, the man
Christ Jesus.
And then the absolute and final authority of
the word of God, the scriptures.
How central was the scriptures to each of
these men, both in his conversion and in
his subsequent ministry.
It was embraced as the word of God
from heaven to men.
And it was the power of God.
And it was that which turned countries and
soon continents from ignorance to understanding.
This evidence on the authority of the scripture
is suggested in a quotation from John Wesley.
I read this many years ago, and it
struck me then as I pray it will
strike us now.
I have thought, John Wesley said in the
18th century, in an England that had become
so secular and rationalist that one historian said
it was almost as if Christianity had been
proved to be a myth.
So little was the gospel believed in England.
In England, from which much of our gospel
has come, from the British Isles I'll include,
the Scots and the Irish, yes.
The country which came through its pilgrims and
its Puritans to this land and brought us
the gospel, and yet how much that had
faded in the very land from which they
came.
And while in Latimer's words he prayed that
that candle that they lit at their death
would not be put out, though it has
flickered often, still God has been faithful.
I have thought, Wesley wrote, I am a
creature of a day passing through life as
an arrow through the air.
I am a spirit come from God.
I want to know one thing, the way
to heaven, how to land safely on that
happy shore.
God himself has condescended to teach me the
way.
For this very end he came from heaven.
He hath written it down in a book.
Oh, give me that book.
At any price, give me the book of
God.
I have it.
Here is knowledge enough for me.
Let me be a man of one book.
Those are Wesley's words.
They were not always his words.
Born the eldest son of a family of
nineteen to a poor pastor in the Church
of England.
Only six of those nineteen children lived to
become adults.
Brother to Charles, who was to be the
hymn writer.
In childhood snatched from the burning when enemies
of his father burned down the parsonage, and
the little boy John was discovered in an
upper floor in the midst of the flames
and rescued.
A special concern of his mother, Susanna, who
was specially concerned for all her children, reared
them carefully, reared them spiritually, reared them with
concern for their coming to the knowledge of
Christ.
As a young adult choosing to follow his
father's path, entering Oxford University to become a
priest-pastor in the Church of England.
There becoming part of a holy club, a
group of men students who sought to spend
certain hours of the days of certain weeks,
of certain days of the week, doing good
works, ministering to those in need, visiting in
prisons, which were terrible places in that day,
which were places where the insane and debtors
and criminals were indiscriminately housed together.
And ministering to those in various kinds of
needs, seeking by good works to earn favor
with heaven, desiring to know how to be
accepted above, but having no peace in the
fulfillment of these duties.
Ordained a minister, briefly assisted in his father's
parish, and then went across the sea to
something called Georgia, where a colony had been
established by Oglethorpe, and where an orphanage was
begun.
And one of John Wesley's purposes was to
convert the Indians.
He crossed the sea, he arrived on this
shore, was met by a Moravian missionary, Spangenberg
his name, and was greeted with the words,
Welcome, do you know Jesus Christ?
And John Wesley replied, I know he is
the Savior of the world.
And his greeter replied, But do you know
that he is your Savior?
And to this John Wesley was yet silent,
much busy in the work of the ministry,
but ignorant of the gospel of redeeming grace.
He knew it in his head, he knew
it not in his heart.
Labored fruitlessly and acted in some respect unwisely,
soon saw the wisdom of returning to England,
but depressed and in a sense of failure,
crossing the ocean and meeting ship storm at
sea and route home.
Observing the contrast between the stability and the
peaceful quiet of certain Moravians aboard the ship,
kneeling in prayer on the deck while he
was fearful of dying.
He who had been serving God in so
many ways for so many years was in
terror, and these had something that he had
not.
Seeking them out after arriving safely in England,
he who had kept and was to keep
for the remainder of his days a detailed
journal of every day, John Wesley, in his
own words, recorded on a certain day, on
a Wednesday on the 24th of May in
1738, and these are his words, I went
very unwillingly to a meeting of the Moravians
on Aldersgate Street.
And there, while listening to one reading from
Martin Luther's commentary on the Epistle to the
Romans, wherein he spoke of the redemption that
Christ wrought for the sins of man, I
felt my heart strangely warmed and knew that
Christ had died for my sins.
Even mine, and saved me from the law
of sin and death.
And the rest of his story is that,
that which I first felt, I went forth
to preach.
And he went forth to preach it.
And now a message.
He had heard from the word of God
through a reformer of the 16th century, another
generation, another century, another land, and another servant
who was to be used of God to
bring revival to his land.
We would differ in many respects, many of
us, from some of his theological interpretations.
God used him in his time, in his
place, honored his faithfulness as he communicated the
message of the gospel which he had first
felt, and it was more than feeling.
And it was this man who repeated what
I read a few moments ago.
Went forth to preach, found pulpits closed to
him, his own father's pulpit closed to him,
because this was a startling message, an undesired
message that was being proclaimed.
And everybody remembers he went out and stood
on his father's tombstone and said, this will
be my pulpit.
And if the parishes of the Church of
England are closed to me, the world will
be my parish.
And he preached up and down the British
Isles on horseback, studying, writing, preparing sermons, all
as he was on horseback.
It was almost as if his horse knew
the way and took his rider to the
place.
Many stories told of highwaymen who accosted him
along the way, and how he dealt with
them.
On one occasion a highwayman sought to rob
him, and Wesley proceeded to say to him,
how glad I am that I have so
little to give you.
And how glad I am that what little
I have, I love so little.
And how glad I am that it is
you who are robbing me, rather than I
robbing you.
For I would be in grave risk of
judgment of God if I were robbing you.
And he proceeded to describe the issues at
hand to the highwayman, who then got off
his own horse, gave Wesley some money, and
rode away.
And Wesley thanked God for his provision.
Preserving England from the destruction that France was
to know in that same century, God used
a man who lived in every decade of
the 18th century.
He was born in 1703.
He died in 1791.
He lived 88 years in each decade of
the century.
He died with the stanza of one of
his brother's hymns on his lips, I the
chief of sinners am, but Jesus died for
me.
This man, whom God used, said, God himself
has condescended to teach me the way, for
this very end he came from heaven.
He hath written it down in a book,
O give me that book.
I find in this brief paragraph of Wesley
two texts.
They are familiar to you.
Turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter 21.
David is fleeing from Saul.
David having been the occasion for a murderous
jealousy formed in Saul.
David having enjoyed a sweet fellowship and friendship
with Jonathan the son of Saul.
David concluding the need to flee from Saul.
Coming to nob to Ahimelech the priest.
And in verse 8 of 1 Samuel 21,
David said to Ahimelech, And is there not
here under thine hand spear or sword?
For I have neither brought my sword nor
my weapons with me, because the king's business
required haste.
And the priest said, The sword of Goliath
the Philistine whom thou slewest in the valley
of Elah, behold it is here wrapped in
a cloth behind the ephod.
And if thou wilt take that, take it,
for there is no other save that here.
And David said, There is none like that,
give it me.
The book of God which Wesley recognized was
to be the goal of his life and
the tool of his ministry.
Of which he said, Give me that book.
David says, There is none like it, give
it me.
There is none like it.
There is none like it for its divinity
of origin.
It is the book of God, revealed by
God.
Using men as the spirit of God bore
them along, moved them.
Was it men who wrote the book of
God?
Or was it God, the spirit of God
who wrote the book?
And the answer of course is yes.
God used human agency to accomplish divine purpose.
A mystery this, we will not comprehend it
in this world.
Unique, none like it, alone, revealed by God.
The word of God, not the word of
men.
There is none like it for universality of
its message.
It is not limited to a people, to
a time, to a place, to a nation.
It is not limited to just a certain
circumstance.
It is of universal.
It is not just for certain people.
The invitation is to all who will, as
the spirit of God moves the heart of
men.
There is none like it for its power
to heal the sickness of the soul.
The sin problem, nothing else will settle.
And Wesley's remembrance of his heart, strangely warmed,
has been the experience of millions by the
grace of God.
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
How do I know of the blood of
Jesus?
From the blessed book.
This unique book that is powerful.
It gives life.
It does not command deeds.
It gives life.
It enables, and then it requires.
Augustine said, command what thou wilt, he said
to God.
Give what thou commandest.
If God gives what he commands, if he
enables, if he empowers what he requires.
The religions of man and all the religions
of the world are of man under Satan's
inspiration.
God is not the author of religion, I
think.
God gave revelation.
He is the God who is.
He is the only living God.
And he has spoken.
And what he has given is life.
He enables us to do what he requires
us to do.
The religions of the world say, do and
thou shalt live.
The gospel gives us first life, and then
tells us what to do.
But our doing accomplishes no living.
Our doing has no value for eternal life.
And this Wesley learned as many others.
Not only the power to heal the sin
sickness of the soul, but the power to
transform the life that follows.
What a testimony is a redeemed soul, a
changed life to a world who seeks evidence
of reality and truth.
A world that has observed hypocrisy and sham
so many times to see something genuine made
possible by the power of the living God
and the spirit of God working through the
word of God in a child of God.
None like it for the knowledge of the
Holy One.
The knowledge of the Holy One.
What would we know of this God apart
from this book?
The heavens declare the glory of God, but
the book of God shows me his love.
Would I know of his love and of
the redemption for my sin, but for the
book?
None like it for ease of access.
Oh, for us that's true.
For so many millions of others, for so
many centuries of time, in so many parts
of the world that has not been true.
Ease of access.
Take and read.
It costs us so little.
But I hope you gain some appreciation through
the lives of some like William Tyndale and
others of the cost that others have paid
that we might be able to have it
at so little cost.
And it is true, and we must constantly
guard against the truth that what we obtain
so lightly we tend to regard so poorly.
We should, as we handle the book of
God, be conscious of what it has cost
faithful men and realize how very small portions
of it in their own language is treasure
to peoples who have not known it and
in whose languages it has not formerly been
available.
Ease of access.
God did not put his book in a
high place or in a locked cabinet with
a spotlight on it to be adored.
It is made accessible to those who will
know it.
None like it, I say, for the simplicity
of its message.
Trust.
Look.
Believe.
Take.
Come.
Lean.
Those are simple invitations.
Those are one-syllable words.
They require little of climbing intellectually.
The simplicity of the message, all the profoundness
of the truths that make the simplicity of
the message possible.
I do not discount the cost of the
gospel to the Father and the Son.
But how simple.
None like it for ease of understanding.
He that runneth may read.
Remember Psalm 19.
Turn there, would you?
Psalm 19.
There is a beautiful poetic litany in the
middle that begins in verse 7.
Psalm 19.
Verse 7.
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting
the soul.
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making
wise the simple.
Making wise the simple.
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing
the heart.
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening
the eyes.
And the fear of the Lord is clean,
enduring forever.
The judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
yea, than much fine gold.
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
There is none like it for its sufficiency
for life.
It contains all things needful for this life
and the life to come.
Wesley had it right.
Here is knowledge enough for me, he said.
Let me be the man of one book.
There is nothing like it for a balm
in sorrow and suffering.
In times of soul sorrow and loss and
reversal, men do not want the platitudes of
men or the poetry of men.
They want the solace of that balm of
Gilead.
There is nothing that is alive as the
book of God is alive.
There is nothing that speaks to the soul
as the word of God to the soul
of the saint.
As a balm in times of sorrow, there
is none like it for the certainty of
its promises.
Which of its promises has failed?
Which word of God have you trusted and
found wanting?
Certainty of its promises.
The word of God is true.
None like it for fulfilled prophecy.
That which is not yet fulfilled is but
history that hasn't happened yet.
It is just as sure as that which
has.
What a marvelous thing it is that God
used a heathen emperor, Augustus Caesar, to carry
out his own will, Caesar's will, and yet
to fulfill the very literal prophetic word of
the prophet Micah centuries before that the Messiah
should be born in Bethlehem.
Who was responsible for bringing Joseph and Mary
to Bethlehem when, in that beautiful phrase that
only mothers can understand, the days were accomplished
that she should be delivered?
Who brought them to Bethlehem, I say?
Was it the Spirit of God?
Was it Augustus Caesar?
Again, the answer is yes.
Again, a mystery.
Again, God using human agency to accomplish divine
purpose.
I'm sure Augustus Caesar never heard of Micah,
let alone chapter 5, verse 2.
And yet God used him, all ignorance that
he was being used, accomplishing his own will,
census to which to base taxes.
I say none like it for fulfilled prophecy.
None like it says a treasury of wisdom.
A treasury of wisdom.
What is wisdom?
What did the philosophers desire to find answers
to?
But the origin, the purpose, the destiny of
man.
And what is the highest good?
Where have I come from?
Why am I here?
Where am I going?
And what's the best way to get there?
And what book of man can answer that
question?
And what answers of man will hold in
the end for a treasury of wisdom?
Therefore, I should be concerned, incidentally, that my
children, my grandchildren, your children, your grandchildren be
taught by those who have embraced that treasury
of wisdom.
For the answers they will give to those
ultimate questions, which are for time and for
eternity, will be very different from those of
the world.
None like it for the principles of life
it presents.
For every station of life, for every circumstance
of life, for the employer and the employee,
for the servant and the master, for the
sovereign and the subject, for the parent and
the child, for the brother, the sister.
In every situation, in every circumstance, it has
answers.
None like it for the eternity of its
endurance.
It is the indestructible book.
It is the anvil against which all the
hammers of man are broken.
It will endure.
The word of God faileth not.
It endureth.
It will be fulfilled.
It is true.
It is righteous altogether.
None like it for the purity of truth
it proclaims.
It tells it as it is.
It glosses not over.
It presents the feet of clay, the faults
of the faithful, as well as their strengths.
It appeals because of its honesty, its integrity,
its truthfulness.
None like it for instruction in righteousness, how
to live, who has failed by following its
precepts, who can fail by obeying the word
of the living God.
None like it for the sharpness of its
conviction.
Nathan's finger in David's face.
Thou art the man.
It does not mince.
It does not dance around.
It comes to the point.
It tells it in a convicting tone.
Yet none like it for its beauty and
restraint of language and yet directness of word.
It gives no uncertain sound.
It says the soul that sinneth it shall
die.
It says ye must be born again.
And it tells us how.
None like it, I say.
Unique.
This text.
David's word.
There is none like that.
Give it me.
I see a second text in Wesley's word
and for just a moment I comment on
it.
Wesley said, I repeat, I have thought I
am a creature of a day passing through
life as an arrow through the air.
I stop there.
An arrow through the air.
That reminds you, I think also, of the
word of James chapter 4 when he asks,
will you turn there?
James 4.
What does the man say if he is
persecuted?
In one text he flees to another.
Go to now, verse 13, James 4, 13.
Go to now, ye that say, today or
tomorrow we will go into such a city
and continue there a year and buy and
sell and get gain.
Whereas ye know not what shall be on
the morrow.
For what is your life?
It is even a vapor that appeareth for
a little time and then vanisheth away.
But ye ought to say, if the Lord
will, we shall live and do this or
that.
What is your life?
And James answers it as the Spirit of
God supplies it.
It is even a vapor.
Job says something similar in his chapter 7.
He says, for my life is but wind.
And wind is not very substantial.
Oh, it has consequence, but we cannot tell
where it listeth and whither it goeth.
Wesley says, I am passing through life as
an arrow through the air.
Now it is because life is but a
vapor that for Wesley it was so important
to know that book.
It is because our life is but a
fleeting thing that we cannot afford ignorance or
long delay in action upon the word of
the living God.
It is even a vapor.
There are not many more insubstantial things that
we can imagine than a vapor.
We look at life as a large slice
of time.
We live a lifetime, we say.
I hesitate to get this personal, but I
am yielding to the hesitation.
It did not bother me to turn 20.
It did not bother me to turn 30.
I was not even bothered turning 40.
Life was supposed to begin then, according to
somebody's opinion.
It bothered me to turn 50, because I
teach history and I deal in centuries, and
a half century had a strongly solid ring
to it.
That gave me pause.
And then, a decade later, I thought, the
days of our years are threescore.
And that itself was sobering.
And I turned 60.
And now, though it's none of your business,
I'm almost through the end ten.
I'm in the last year of that decade.
And the old man said, I can count.
And if the days of our years are
threescore years and ten.
And I say that because it was only
yesterday that I felt like some of you
young people.
I sat in the midst of young people
all around me.
They were relatively young as this evening began.
I was in the midst of it.
I had horns behind me.
I had strings in front of me on
one side.
Brass on another side.
Organ on my...
And I was...
And I had the angelic choirs surrounding me.
And it was all directed at me.
And your pastor.
And Dr. Gingrey.
And I thought of youth.
And I thought of how short a time
ago it was when I was numbered so.
And how quickly the years have passed.
And the lifetime so suddenly spent.
It can't be imagined by those in their
youth.
And it sounds like old fogies talking.
And they say, it seems like time has
flown.
Well, it's faster than that.
And Wesley said, I am a creature of
a day passing through life as an arrow
through the air.
The longest life in nature is yet but
a vapor that appeareth for a little time.
We assume there is time ahead.
But we are reminded to boast not ourselves
of tomorrow.
For we know not what a day may
bring forth.
God is gracious to give us this moment.
To give us this moment to consider the
brevity of life.
At best, the longest life.
Is but a vapor.
Insubstantial.
Constantly diminishing.
Not expected to remain.
A vapor is constantly disappearing.
It's temporary.
Cannot be called back.
It often carries an evidence of something else.
It often carries a fragrance.
A savor of life unto life or of
death unto death.
And it is created.
It is not spontaneous.
It does not appear of itself.
Nor has your life been a spontaneous thing.
An unplanned thing.
An unknown thing to God.
You and I are.
We don't have.
We are.
Immortal souls.
We will live somewhere forever.
It was this concern that drove Wesley to
say, I want to know one thing.
The way to heaven.
How to land safely on that happy shore.
And God himself has written it down in
a book.
And this book is accessible to you today.
Its truth is unique in all the ways
we've remembered.
But life is fleeting.
As an arrow or a vapor through the
air.
Have you ever appealed to the spirit of
God?
To apply this book of God.
The message of this book.
To the need of your sin sick soul.
The spirit of God is eager.
Is willing.
Is alive.
Uses his word.
And offers to those who will receive.
There is none like it.
May the cry of your soul.
Saint and sinner.
Be given me.
That book.
Let's bow our heads in prayer.
Let's all pray.
Let's take
a moment before the throne of God.
To still our hearts.
Many questions.
Have been brought to our souls tonight.
They demand urgently.
An answer.
I trust this evening.
That you've come to know John Wesley's Savior.
I trust that you've come to know that.
Strange warming of the heart.
That glorious transformation of the life.
That being born again.
You must be born again.
I want to ask you tonight to make
sure that you're sealed.
Make sure that you know Christ.
Biblically.
And if you are a Christian.
My, how this challenges the heart.
There is no book like this.
Yet in Spurgeon's.
Immortal description.
Of people who hypocritically say they have a
Bible.
They believe it.
But they hardly ever touch it.
It sits on a shelf gathering dust.
You can take your finger and trace the
word damnation.
And the dust on its cover.
There is none like it.
Give it me.
A man of one book.
May God bless his word to our hearts.
If you're not saved, we're here to help
you.
We'll be happy to open the scriptures.
And to point you to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
If you'd like to talk with Dr. Pinozian.
Or with me.
We invite you to remain and let's open
the book.
Of God together.
I trust you'll seek and find.
The Savior.
He is surely worth finding.
May God bless his word.
To all our hearts.
For his name's sake.
Our gracious God and our Father in heaven.
We rejoice this evening.
In the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We thank thee that the God.
Of John Wesley is our God.
The Holy Spirit.
Who wrought upon his heart savingly.
Still works.
The same today.
We thank thee our Father that the power.
That blessed his ministry.
Is still available to the people of God.
In the church of Christ today.
We thank thee for all that thou didst
through.
The Wesleys and Whitfield.
And others see it through their ministry.
Saving England from the catastrophe.
Of revolution.
And blessing it.
With the glory of revival.
Lord we thank thee for the memory of
it.
And we make bold to pray.
Oh Lord.
Do again in our day.
A work of such surpassing grace.
In this day of a return to rationalism
and secularism.
In this day of the flourishing of false
religion.
We pray.
For a mighty visitation of God.
And for a glorious demonstration.
Of the power of the gospel.
We believe that thou art able.
We cry to thee.
That thou wilt abundantly hear.
And answer prayer.
We ask in Jesus name.
Amen.