Lord, we thank You for this precious testimony that we have been able to partake of this morning—the testimony of Your death at the table, and the testimony of this young man’s life. Lord, what a blessing.
Lord, what a blessing of Your love that You display to us in this very present age. And Lord, now, as we consider Your Word and see Your love made manifest throughout the ages, we pray that it would capture our hearts in a very fresh and living way. We commit ourselves unto You in Your precious name. Amen.
I feel, after what Jay had to share, that I am kind of giving the second message, or just a little supplement. You know, we thank the Lord. Some can say things in a couple of minutes; it takes some of us an hour. The Lord’s faithfulness in life is so rich. And so, thank you.
Can we turn to Revelation 3? Revelation 3, reading verses 1 through 6:
“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write:
He who has the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars, saith these things:
I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.
Be thou watchful, and establish the things that remain, which were ready to die: for I have found no works of thine perfected before My God.
Remember therefore how thou hast received and didst hear, and keep it, and repent.
If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
But thou hast a few names in Sardis that did not defile their garments: and they shall walk with Me in white; for they are worthy.
He that overcometh shall thus be arrayed in white garments; and I will in no wise blot his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.”
A couple of other Scriptures: Ephesians 2, verses 14 through 16:
“For He is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition,
Having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that He might create in Himself of the two one new man, so making peace;
And might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.”
Verse 16 is a tremendous verse on the work of the cross. Not only was the cross there for our blood—the blood was shed so that our sins were washed away—but there was a reconciliation accomplished. Those who were separated and divided were brought into one new man through the work of God at Calvary. We rejoice in Him.
Another Scripture: Matthew 28, the very familiar Scripture called the Great Commission. Matthew 28, verse 19:
“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”
“Go therefore, and make disciples of all the nations.” We will fellowship more about that later.
Finally, in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 30:
“But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.”
And in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 11:
“And such were some of you: but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.”
As we look at those two verses from Corinthians, they speak of our being justified and our being sanctified, and both are in the past tense. It is not that we are trying to become justified or trying to become sanctified. Because of the work that the Lord did at the cross, and because we have been brought into Him through our acceptance of and belief in Him, we are justified and sanctified by faith. We thank the Lord for that.
Now, as we come to this last part of the letter to the church in Sardis, we will be looking at the eighteenth century today. We have said that one of the characteristics of the church in Sardis is that it represents the Protestant system beginning after the Reformation with Martin Luther.
There is this continual ebb and flow throughout church history. There is a great revival, but then there is a falling back. There is a going forward, and then a falling back. We will continue to see some of that today. But we thank the Lord that, in His faithfulness, that going forward is always a step further. It is a fuller revelation of Himself, a display and recovery of more and more of the wonderful truths that we have in our precious Lord.
Now we want first to fellowship around a brother whose name many people have heard throughout the centuries: Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.
As a child, his nickname was Lutz—L-U-T-Z. I called him “little Lutz” throughout school; he was Lutz. But he was born into a royal family in the Empire of Saxony. His father died, and his mother remarried a couple of years later, so he was raised by his grandmother.
His grandmother was a very godly woman, and she desired that this child would grow up under the right godly influence. So, in 1710, he was sent away to a school in Halle. It was run by the Pietist August Francke. Remember, last time, when we shared about the seventeenth century, we spoke of this school that was started for the training of young men to follow the pious belief.
While he was there, the Lord continued to form within his heart a greater and fuller hunger for Himself, simply focusing upon our Lord Jesus. Zinzendorf was always desiring fellowship with other believers. At the age of fifteen, he gathered a group of believers together and formed the Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed.
The purpose was simply that they would be devoted to the Lord, willing to fall into the ground and die, and that in the simplicity of their little faith the Lord could use them in their lives.
One of the privileges that Zinzendorf had while he was at school in Halle was that the school had started sending out missionaries. A couple of missionaries had gone out, one to India and another through Africa, and they would come back at times and share. This really burned within Zinzendorf a hunger for the gospel.
At this point in history, there were not many missionaries going out. In fact, there were about zero. But there was a hunger in his heart being created for the lost. It was really burning, and he continued to pray about it before the Lord.
As he grew older, when he became about sixteen years old, his guardian enrolled him at the University of Wittenberg. Wittenberg was the center of Lutheran orthodoxy. So, you had two things going on in Germany at this time: the Pietist movement and Lutheran orthodoxy. Zinzendorf was placed right in the middle of both of these.
Actually, his guardian sent him to Wittenberg because he thought he was becoming too zealous for the Lord. He wanted him to go to Wittenberg to kind of cool it for a while and to be exposed to a broader, more acceptable form of religion.
But actually, it only solidified his convictions. They would challenge him on what he believed, and he would challenge them on what they believed. His beliefs were always supported by the Word of God. The Word of God continued to be found within his heart. It was not other men’s teaching or intellectual rationalization, but there was a solidifying within his heart of what the true gospel was.
The biggest lesson that Zinzendorf saw while he was at Wittenberg was this: if you pull back all of the orthodoxy and compare it to the Pietists, there is one common bond that they have. Do you know what that one common bond is? The simple belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He set it upon his heart that if he could somehow get believers to focus upon the Lord Jesus Christ—not focus upon their teachings or beliefs, but simply come back to looking upon our Lord Jesus Christ as the center, focal point, and basis for unity—then believers would not have to be as divided as they were. They could experience the oneness that they have in Christ.
This was a seventeen-year-old young man saying this. Remember that age: seventeen years old. He was seeing that there is a oneness that we have in the Lord. If we can put aside the peripheral things and simply come back, allowing Him to be our foundation, then we can know that oneness.
He tried desperately to get the president of Wittenberg University and the president of the school in Halle to come together, but it never worked out. Yet that burden came within his heart for the unity of believers, with our precious Lord Jesus Christ as our ground.
After he finished his studies, it was common during that time for those in the royal court to take a grand tour of Europe. Many have heard this story before, but as Zinzendorf went on that tour, he visited a museum in Düsseldorf. There was a painting there called Ecce Homo, or Behold the Man.
It was a picture of our Lord with a crown of thorns upon His head, the blood coming down, and a sorrowful face. As Zinzendorf stood and looked at this picture, there was an inscription below it:
“I have done this for thee; what hast thou done for Me?”
“I have done all this for you. What have you done for Me?” It captured his heart. At that point he said, “Lord, You have done so much for me. What really have I ever done for You?”
At the end of that day, as he was back in his hotel—well, they did not have motels and hotels then, did they? A hotel, boarding house—he afresh gave himself to the Lord. Not only in the spirit of Him being Lord, but he gave himself to be about his Master’s use, to really serve the Lord.
He knew he could not do it in himself, but he wanted to be of use to the Lord and to serve Him the rest of his days. From that point on, there was a zeal within his life. Whenever he came to a point of discouragement, questioning, or doubting, he would pause and think back upon that picture.
It was like the old story: “Here I raise mine Ebenezer.” That was the turning point of his life, and he always had that to look back to.
You know, the Lord sometimes does things in our lives, and at times we can forget about them. It is good, at times—even though I am not much for doing this—to keep a diary. It is good to remember the points in our life when the Lord has met us. The enemy, and our own minds, have a tendency to wash those promises away.
In times of confusion and doubt, which we all have, we need to be able to reflect: “This is what the Lord said. This is the truth. From this point on, this is where I go.” Zinzendorf had that in his life. He had that measuring point where the Lord had met him, where he had given himself to the Lord, and where he was going on.
After he finished his tour, Zinzendorf was obliged to serve the empire. He had been preparing to be a lawyer in Dresden. But at that point he also reached the age of maturity, so he purchased a piece of property from his grandmother.
His desire in purchasing that property was that persecuted brethren from all kinds of backgrounds would have a place they could come to as a haven. He desired that the place would be called Bethel, a place of refreshing open to all.
He purchased the property in April, and word got around. Within the next month, a brother named Christian David came to Dresden and asked Zinzendorf about the property. Zinzendorf said, “Yes, I bought this property.” Christian David said, “Some of us are being persecuted. Can we go there?” And he said, “Yes.” He opened his estate to Christian David.
Christian David was coming from Moravia. There is a little map on page three where you can see some of these different places. Halle was where Zinzendorf had attended school, and Wittenberg was where he later studied. Then he served in Dresden. The place that he purchased was called Herrnhut.
Zinzendorf did not name it Herrnhut. He was not even there when Christian David arrived. But his servant, who was watching over the property, said, “Here is a piece of land that you all can use. We will pray that all of you who come will be under the Lord’s watch.”
Herrnhut means “under the Lord’s watch.” It can also carry the thought of being “on watch for the Lord.” So it is not only being under the Lord’s watch, but also being on watch for the Lord.
Christian David came from Moravia. We call the ones from Herrnhut Moravians, but Herrnhut itself is not in Moravia. The Moravians came and moved there, along with those from Bohemia and other places—persecuted ones from many different backgrounds.
Last time, we shared about a brother named John Comenius. He had prayed, when his flock was persecuted and forced to leave the area of Bohemia, that there would be a hidden seed planted there. Out of that hidden seed, the Lord would carry on His testimony.
Christian David was one of the descendants of Comenius’s coworkers. He was part of that hidden seed. In the midst of severe persecution, the Lord preserved that seed for one hundred years to carry on His testimony. Then they were brought to this place of Herrnhut.
Herrnhut continued to grow. Persecuted ones from many places came—whether Lutheran, Catholic, Protestant, or from other backgrounds. Within a couple of years, about three hundred brothers and sisters had gathered there.
During this time of gathering, however, you had three hundred people coming together: former Catholics, former Lutherans, and people from all these different groups. It was not the community of brotherly love that everyone had desired. Somebody said it was a “nest of sects.”
They were together arguing over their different doctrines and beliefs. They were free from persecution, but they were not free from themselves. There was a lot of dissension, and this caused Zinzendorf a great deal of grief. His desire was not simply that they would have a place free from persecution, but that they would have a place of being one in the Lord and experiencing the love of God.
So Zinzendorf and some of the others began praying. They prayed for a couple of years for direction on what to do. Finally, on May 12, 1727, Zinzendorf gathered all the brethren together for them, on a voluntary basis, to reconsider what the Lord had done for them and to enter into what was called a brotherly agreement.
As he shared with them, he spoke about all the different sects they had been involved in. He said, in essence, that sects involve a lot of knowledge, but they do not involve love. Most sects come out of knowledge, but true Christianity comes out of love.
He was trying to draw the brethren back to the ground of Christ. In this, he captured their hearts. They saw there was something they were missing. They entered into this voluntary brotherly agreement to renounce self-love, live in unity, and really pray for revival and renewing.
They knew that, even though they were making this commitment, unless the Lord came in in a very mighty and powerful way and made it real to them, they could not maintain this unity. They could try to maintain it outwardly for a little while, but unless the Lord did something, there was no way they could maintain it.
As they were praying together, they were led for the first time to celebrate the Lord’s table on August 13, 1727.
As they shared the Lord’s table, the Lord moved in a powerful way. They had all been reading the Scriptures and considering what the Lord’s death had meant. In a mighty way, during this meeting as they gathered around the Lord’s table, the Lord’s presence was made ever so real.
The Lord came in afresh and showed them how they had been reconciled together in the Lord, all that the Lord had done at Calvary. He showed them not only how He had loved them individually, but how He also loved the church and died for them as one. Out of that death, they were brought forth into one new man.
The Holy Spirit came in in a mighty way and moved among them so that they were brought to their knees. They were brought to a place of embracing those whom they had been trying to slaughter with words for years. The Lutherans and all the others laid their differences aside.
They saw that one thing was necessary, one thing was needful: simply the beauty of our Lord, and that we are one in the Lord. His love came in and outpoured itself in a very fresh and new way.
Christian David wrote:
“It is truly a miracle of God that out of so many kinds of sects—Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Separatists, and the like—we could have been melted into one by the love of God.”
Spangenberg wrote that they were “baptized by the Holy Spirit Himself into the fresh awareness of His love.”
David Nitschmann wrote:
“From that time on, Herrnhut became a living testimony, a congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Zinzendorf himself referred to this in his diaries as the Pentecost of Herrnhut.
Out of this, the United Brethren, who had apparently died, were reborn. There was a rebirth of this testimony from hundreds of years in the past. One has described it almost as the phoenix rising out of the ashes.
As they came back to seeing what was done at the Lord’s table, the reality of it captured their hearts. They saw afresh how Calvary preceded Pentecost. They were looking for a blessing and an outpouring, yet they had forgotten that before this they had to realize all that the Lord had done for them at Calvary.
It was out of Calvary and the completed work of our Lord there that the Lord could bring forth a Pentecost.
Brothers and sisters, as we see all the great divisions and everything within Christianity today, even within our own hearts, we need to consider this. We sit around this room very nicely, and we get along cordially for this hour or so, but we have room for improvement in relating to one another.
How often do we see this tremendous work done at the cross of Calvary, and the oneness that we display every Sunday when we take the table? We see the table as speaking of our sins being washed away, and it does, and I thank the Lord for that. But there is a far greater testimony too.
Not only has the table testified that our sins are washed away, but it has testified that we are reconciled to God. In Him, we are one. All the gates of hell are trying to come against us, brothers and sisters, to tear us apart. But in Him, we are one.
It does not matter whether you are fifteen years old or eighty-five. It all starts back at Calvary, and out of that we can go forward in the days ahead. Next year, we are going to talk about foundations. What is our one foundation? It is Jesus Christ our Lord.
Would we all, even during this week, pray for a fresh awakening within our hearts concerning the table of the Lord, concerning remembering Him as we come together each Lord’s Day? What a privilege we have.
When these believers came together at the table, all the other things fell aside: their petty beliefs, personality differences, and all their little doctrinal matters—“I think it should be done this way. I think it should be done this way.” It all fell aside.
The table had a way of putting things back in perspective, of refocusing upon what this is really about. May the Lord touch our hearts afresh in that way too, that we would know what this is really about.
That in this day we might be a living testimony unto Him, that He would be satisfied, and that we could see more of the glorious Lord that we have and experience more of Him.
As these brethren went forth from this, one thing that came out of this time was that within a couple of weeks the Lord had touched twenty-four brothers and twenty-four sisters to start praying together around the clock—not only for themselves, but also for the whole body of Christ and for the world.
They prayed that believers would be reconciled in a very real way and that the gospel would go forth. This prayer meeting began among these twenty-four, with each one taking different hours. It lasted for one hundred years: one hundred years of praying twenty-four hours a day.
It grew. This was not something they worked up in themselves. You cannot do that in your own strength. It is only by the grace of God. But out of their being given to Him, He put it in their hearts and gave them the grace. They prayed together in this way for over one hundred years.
As you look at the Moravian movement, we often talk about next generations. When you are talking about one hundred years, you have a couple of generations there. There are lessons that we can learn related to others entering in and going on from generation to generation.
One thing that occurred out of this prayer meeting was that they prayed in a greater way for the Lord not only to bring believers back into the oneness they had in Him, but also for the gospel to go forth.
In 1731, Zinzendorf was in Copenhagen for the inauguration of the king there. He met a slave from the West Indies. As he talked with this slave, he saw the great need for the gospel in the West Indies. He invited the slave to come back and share with the brethren in Herrnhut, and he did.
Two brothers, after hearing the slave’s testimony, were deeply convicted and wanted to go out. But Zinzendorf, in his wisdom, and the other brethren said, “No. We need to pray about it.”
They prayed together for one whole year about whether they should go, who would be sent, and where they would go. In our modern day and way of thinking, it is hard for us to imagine praying for a year about something like this. We hear something and want to go: “Yes, we are ready.” But they wanted to pray for a year.
The Lord, in His sovereignty, confirmed it. He raised up two men, Dober and Nitschmann, to go out as the first missionaries to the West Indies.
There was one condition upon which they could go out. As they were going as missionaries to the slaves in the West Indies, the only way they could go was if they themselves became slaves.
So Dober agreed that he would be sold into slavery so that he could go and minister to the slaves in the West Indies.
That is hard to comprehend. You talk about counting the cost of laying down your life. Here was one saying, “I will be sold as a slave.” The life of a slave in the West Indies was not good. We cannot even imagine it. We see terrible conditions today, but back in 1730, I cannot imagine what it would have been like.
Yet the Lord could call them in such a way, and Dober had such a burden that he went out and was sold into slavery. He went to the West Indies and ministered there. There were those who were saved, and some who were saved went back to Herrnhut as the firstfruits of those who had fallen into the ground and died so that the Lord’s gospel might go forth.
There is a map in your handout showing the Moravian missions. We see that they went to the West Indies in 1732, and at the same time some went up to Greenland.
About 1735, a total of twenty-nine had gone out to the West Indies to serve their Lord. Out of those twenty-nine, twenty-two had died. But they continued to go forth.
The tide of missionary zeal continued to grow in Herrnhut. They went to Greenland, Lapland, Georgia, Surinam, Africa, Amsterdam, the Jewish quarters, Algeria, North America, Ceylon, Romania, and Constantinople.
More than seventy Moravian missionaries from a community of not more than six hundred were on the mission field in 1742. For you mathematicians, that is one in every nine. It is actually one in every eight and a half, but that half person is always tough, so it is one in every nine.
Just stop and think a minute. This was in the 1700s. As we look upon the whole world, we know that Christianity started around that little area in the Middle East and spread throughout the first century into Greece and Italy.
But later, Islam came in and pretty much wiped out Christianity from much of that area. Really, throughout Europe and England, through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was about the only place where Christianity was found compared to the whole world.
It is amazing that the Great Commission in Matthew 28 was to go to all the nations, and yet, as we look throughout the world, it had not been done. Christianity was largely in one area.
But then, within one hundred and fifty to two hundred years, starting with the Moravians and then many others, we can see the gospel going forth throughout the whole world.
When they went to these places back then, it was not like getting on a great jumbo jet and being there in a day or so. Today we can be anywhere in the world the next day. But back then it would take months and years, at times, to get places. Those called into the Himalayas and into southern Africa went at great cost.
It is hard to think that, within sixteen hundred years, the gospel had spread only from here to here, and then within one hundred and fifty years it was getting throughout the whole world.
The Moravians and Zinzendorf were greatly used by the Lord to recover the whole thought related to missions and to allow brethren to see again, in a very fresh way, a burden for the gospel.
In the past, the burden for the gospel had been lost. But as they came together in a greater way, the more they saw of their Lord Jesus Christ—not only in bringing them together in oneness and unity—the more they followed the Lord, the greater their burden for the lost became.
When we pray about seeing the Lord more, the more we see of Him, one of the responses within our hearts will be a greater care for those who do not have Him. We will see His love not only for ourselves, but for the whole world. This was rekindled afresh through the Moravians.
We thank the Lord that He used them to bring about this whole area of the gospel going forth. But He was also bringing it about that this gospel work came forth out of a group of brothers and sisters who were there as a base to pray for them.
When you talk about missionaries going throughout the world, there is a need for a base. The word base gets used because there is a need for great prayer. The Moravians were noted for their prayer.
They did not do anything independently, but they submitted their thoughts to one another. Together, they prayed. One of the things the Moravians were really doing, in essence, was recovering corporate prayer.
They did not act independently. When they had a burden, they came and submitted it to the brothers and sisters. Sometimes they had to pray for a year for an answer. But in that final amen, they went forth in the power of His resurrected life.
Through submitting things to one another and not acting independently, they also maintained the unity of the brethren in the bond of peace. They were not trying to have their own agenda going forward. There was a unity that was maintained.
It is amazing how one of the most practical ways of maintaining unity among the brethren is through prayer. If we are divided, if we are in a situation where there is not a spirit of oneness, or if we do not know the Lord’s mind, we come together, lay it at the Lord’s feet, and allow Him to bring it forth. There is a spirit of unity that goes forth.
I share this because, to me, it is one of the most critical elements about our Wednesday night prayer times. It is not just coming to pray. It is coming to pray that the unity of the brethren would be maintained—not only here, but as we pray for many other localities and for those going on in the Lord’s work around the world.
May it go forth under the headship and lordship of our Christ.
I mentioned that the Moravians continued on for several generations. What was their secret?
As it was written in several of their diaries, their secret for going on through several generations was not in their work. It was not in their service. It was not even in their being together.
The elemental, elementary, fundamental secret for them being able to go on together was to call upon each individual life to have a living, daily relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
As individuals had that living relationship with the Lord, as individuals had dealings with the Lord, the Lord led them on together. There was a balance between individual responsibility and the fruit of corporateness in going on together.
It was not merely to go on together as a group. Their goal was for each individual to know and have a living relationship with the Lord. In His headship, He would lead them on—and He did. He led them all together as a testimony unto Him.
That is why it says in the letters to the churches in Revelation, “He that hath an ear.” It is an individual calling, brothers and sisters. It is a call to each one of us that our ears would be opened, that we could hear what He says unto us at this point in time.
May we have that individual heart. As we pray for those who are younger than us, what is our prayer? Our prayer is that they would have that specific, personal, individual relationship with the Lord. As that is experienced in their lives, we will all go on together.
One of the men greatly influenced by this Moravian movement was our brother John Wesley. Wesley was in England at this time, and the chart on page four shows many of the similarities between what was going on in Germany and what was going on in England.
John Wesley’s mother, Susanna, was at times more famous than he was. John was the fifteenth of nineteen children, and his father was an Anglican rector. I would encourage you to read about Susanna Wesley. Every mother needs to read about Susanna Wesley.
He was raised in a very godly home and trained in a godly way. As he grew, he knew throughout his life that he wanted to serve the Lord.
There were different books that he read which deeply affected him. Even though he knew he wanted to serve the Lord, he knew, even into his twenties, that he was not saved. But he knew that he wanted to be saved. It is interesting to read Wesley’s biography and see the different wrestlings within his life.
In 1735, when he was about thirty-two years old, he came to the United States. On the ship to America, he had some Moravians aboard.
There was a time when they were worshiping together, and a tremendous storm came in. A wave engulfed the whole ship. It broke one of the sails—one of those posts that stick up. I was in the Navy, but I do not know what that thing is called. A mast, yes. But the wave engulfed the whole ship.
The congregation was basically divided into two groups: the English and the German Moravians. As soon as the wave engulfed the ship, the English were running for cover. They were hollering, screaming, and panicking. The Germans just stood there, singing on and praising the Lord.
They were sure. These Moravians were sure. It did not shake them. Wesley went over afterward and asked one of the brethren, “Weren’t you afraid?” He said, “No.”
Wesley said, “Aren’t you afraid to die?” The brother said, “No. Why should I be afraid to die? Whether I live or whether I die, it is all for the Lord.”
Wesley said in his journal, “I did not have that assurance in my heart.” He was out preaching, and he continued on. He was in the States, wrestling to meet the Lord.
Finally, as he went back to England, he wrote in his diary: “I went to America to save the Indians; but who is there to save me?” The Lord had put a restlessness within his heart.
When he got back to England, he sought out some Moravians. He met a brother named Peter Böhler and was fellowshipping with him. Wesley said, “How can I keep on preaching? I am not even saved. I do not have the faith.”
When Wesley asked, “Should I leave off preaching?” Böhler, in his wisdom, said, “By no means.” Wesley said, “Well, what can I preach?” Böhler said, “Preach faith until you have it, and then, because you have it, you will preach it.”
He encouraged him to go on because he saw something. Wesley went on and kept preaching. He actually went to a jail and preached to somebody who was about to be executed. That person was saved, and Wesley was shocked that this man had been saved through his preaching when Wesley himself did not yet have assurance.
This was in March 1738, and Wesley continued wrestling within himself. Finally, on May 24, he wrote:
“I was strongly convinced that the cause of the restlessness was my unbelief, and that the gaining of a true living faith was the one thing needful for me.”
He continued:
“In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.”
Because the Moravians were not of the Church of England, they could not preach at that time. They could read other sermons or books. That night, they were reading Luther’s commentary on Romans, and the brother was just reading the introduction.
Wesley wrote:
“About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.
I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation;
And an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
He was thirty-five years old. He had already been ordained in the Anglican Church for ten years or so. Finally, he met the Lord. Through this experience, he continued to go forth teaching in a new way: justification by faith, sanctification by faith, and this whole area of new birth.
Wesley’s life was transformed, and he went forth transforming lives over the next half century. It is said that Wesley traveled 250,000 miles on horseback and preached 40,000 sermons. That is roughly three a day.
He also served in a great deal of pastoral care. If you read Wesley’s journals—they are classics, if you can find an abridged version—you can read through some of his daily activities.
I think it was on his eighty-second birthday that he said something to this effect: “I rose at four o’clock for prayer. I preached at five o’clock. I had a Bible study at seven o’clock. I preached again at ten o’clock. We had lunch and fellowship together. I preached at three o’clock. I went to the next town and preached at six o’clock.” That was on his eighty-second birthday. He can put us to shame, right?
In doing this, Wesley also caused a lot of trouble for the Church of England. They basically threw him out of the church and said, “You cannot preach this stuff here. You have to go outside.”
Actually, his first sermon outside was preached from his father’s tombstone in the churchyard. He started outdoor preaching. George Whitefield invited him to come to Bristol in 1739, and the two of them worked together in preaching for many years.
Eventually Wesley and Whitefield divided in some matters, and much has been written about how different they were and about the great divisions. Now, they were different people. If you look at the way they were raised and their early lives, they were totally different.
But these two men stayed friends throughout their whole lives. There was a contrast in the way they spoke. Wesley was the intellectual, very doctrinally oriented. He would sit there calmly and declare what the Word was saying.
Whitefield was dramatic and emotional. He was hopping around, crying, and screaming. You had a contrast between the two: one very calm and collected, just speaking the truth; the other very eloquent and emotional, moving all around.
But they had the same results. It did not matter what the style was. The message ended up being the same, and there were the same results.
Even in the way they preached, they were different. Wesley leaned more toward the Arminian side, and Whitefield leaned more toward the Calvinist side.
I like the way one brother wrote it. He said that if Wesley was preaching with the Arminian emphasis, many chose to follow the Lord. If Whitefield was preaching with the Calvinist emphasis, many came to know that the Lord had chosen them. Either way, the gospel was going forth.
Brothers and sisters, in our own personal nature, many times we let our own personalities become involved in choosing the ministers we like—whether they are a little quieter or more emotional. But the key is the message that is going forth.
They had the same results. Thousands were saved. It is a beautiful story: George Whitefield used to preach to the coal miners. He would stand in the open air, and thousands of miners from the Bristol area would come out of their coal mines covered from head to toe in black coal dust.
He would start preaching on the hillside. He said he could tell when his message was getting through because he would see zebras in the crowd. The zebras came as the tears started coming from their eyes, washing the coal dust away and leaving light streaks down their faces.
He knew his message was getting through. He continued to labor on and on.
It is a shame that the followers of Wesley and the followers of Whitefield never got along with each other very well. Wesley and Whitefield stayed friends their whole lives.
Someone was asking Wesley, trying to set him up: “What do you think of George Whitefield? How is it going to be when you all get to heaven?”
John Wesley, in his latter years, looked down at him and said, “You know, when we are all in heaven before that great throne, I will be so far in the back that I will barely be able to see my brother’s head. He will be so close to the throne.”
They did not let their doctrinal differences divide them. Some of their followers did, but they did not. They maintained unity because they saw what it was all about.
They saw that in this age, where there had been much confusion over the issue of salvation, there was a need for clarity: justification by faith and salvation through the conviction of sin.
There was great preaching on the conviction of sin by both of them. They saw that through that conviction of sin, salvation was coming, and that you were justified by faith.
They also made it very clear that after you are justified, we are called to lead a holy life. But that holy life is the fruit of our inward sanctification. We have been sanctified, set apart in the Lord. As a result of that—as the fruit of that life—we live a holy life unto Him.
It is not our works that make us holy. He has made us holy, and because we are holy, we live a holy life. We still need to be reminded of that today.
So often we fall into the trap of trying to live the holy life and trying to be better for the Lord so that He can use us. May we see our position in Him: we are justified not because of anything we have done, but because of His love.
If we are believers in Christ, we are sanctified. We are made holy unto Him. Out of that holiness, He has called us to live a holy life.
One of the things Wesley is noted for—and his brother Charles in particular—is the hymns that came about. If you look on page six, this eighteenth century was called the Golden Age of Hymns.
It is amazing, if you read this later, how many hymns familiar to us today came from this period. It is kind of like an honor roll of hymns. It was said that for every one person Wesley won through his preaching, ten were won through the music.
They put a message into the hymns. It was not just a pretty song to satisfy the heart. There was a message, a truth, being proclaimed, and the music was used to draw people to the Lord.
Charles Wesley wrote over 6,500 hymns. We sang several eighteenth-century hymns today. Richard started us off this morning with “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” We sang “Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending,” and “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.”
“I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord” was written by a man named Timothy Dwight. Has anybody ever heard that name? Timothy Dwight was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards. His mother was Jonathan Edwards’s daughter. He was chaplain to George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
In 1795, he became president of Yale University for the rest of his life. While he was president of Yale, he wrote this hymn, “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord.”
He was used greatly by the Lord as president of Yale. He transformed that school, and there was a spiritual awakening, leading many students away from the intellectual rationalizations that were going on at the time and back to a real spiritual awakening in New England.
One thing not widely known about Timothy Dwight is that, for the last forty years of his life, while he was president of Yale, he suffered from smallpox contracted during the Revolutionary War. He could never read for more than fifteen minutes at a time because the pain was so excruciating.
He lived in continual pain and agony, yet he did not allow that to keep him from serving the Lord and singing of the Lord’s glorious kingdom—of how much he loved His kingdom and loved His church.
It was a tremendous century, that eighteenth century. At the end of it, the Industrial Revolution came, along with many other changes that we will see as we go into the church of Philadelphia and look at the nineteenth century.
But just to reiterate, as we look back at this time during the eighteenth century, we look at the Moravian church and see that the Lord brought forth and recovered a reality within the Lord’s table—everything that it speaks of.
He recovered the reality of the fullness that this table speaks of and how precious it was to Him. The Lord recovered a missionary zeal for the lost, not only near them, but throughout the world.
The Lord raised up generations to go forward by pointing out the significance of the individual believer’s daily walk. We thank the Lord too that, through the Wesleys and Whitefield, the areas of justification by faith and sanctification by faith were clarified in a way that had never been done before, in a way that is very helpful to us in our lives.
During this eighteenth century, there were also great awakenings here in the United States. There are some handouts that you have about that. That is American history, so I do not need to go over that, since everybody has already learned that in school.
We thank the Lord that He continues to work. We thank the Lord that He loves His church, and that throughout all the centuries He continues to raise up a people who will bear the faithful standard of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May we be encouraged in these things, that He is continuing to do a work within our hearts. Can we pray?
Lord, we thank You for the marvelous way You do work. We thank You, Lord, so much for how these ones loved not their lives unto death, that they were forsaking the riches of this world—whether they were counts, doctors, lawyers, whatever. They were forsaking all and following You, Lord.
Lord, continue to burn these lessons within our hearts. Lord, would we allow You to work within us too in a way that we could see the greatness of the call that You have upon our lives?
Lord, help us individually to maintain that daily, personal relationship with You. Daily, Lord, may we know the freshness and power of Your great life.
We thank You, Lord, for the call that You have upon us. We thank You, Lord, that we know it is You who have called us, and You who will perfect us. In Jesus’ name, amen.