It was said that Spurgeon was once walking with a friend down the street when they came upon a drunken homeless man prostrated on the street. Spurgeon’s friend proceeded to make some snide remark about the poor soul. He turned to see if Spurgeon would join in the heckling, yet he saw tears running down Spurgeon’s face and heard the great preacher say, “But for the grace of God, there would I be.”

I’m not sure about you, but I find stories in Scripture of God’s judgment to be quite dangerous for a similar reason. We can smell the sulfurous smoke falling on Sodom and snidely say, “That was deserved,” all the while I believe God’s means for this story to lead us to say with the Prince of Preachers, “But for the grace of God, there would I be.”

To help us do just that I want to consider two truths about God’s relation to man according to our passage.

How God Relates to Man

Our sin demands God’s retribution. This is the first step in what it means to be a Christian, to understand our sin deserves death. And Jesus says the story of Sodom is there to serve as an example and warning to us. As we read earlier tonight in Luke 17 the day of Jesus’s return will be a day of Sodom-like destruction for all who reject him as King. Oh, how I pray that we’d all today feel afresh the force of God’s justice—retribution we deserve. We must know the full terror of God’s wrath in order to love the full treasure of God’s mercy. Which leads to the second point . . .

Our rescue depends on God’s mercy. Look back at 19:16, “But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.” Mercy rescues. Are you lingering today? Lingering in unbelief and unrepentance? Maybe you are lingering in secret sin or worldly fear. Oh, linger no more as you see tonight the retribution and rescue of God. His mercy is available through Christ, because the same wrath of that consumed Sodom crushed the Son. God’s judgment fell on His Son in the ultimate act of mercy to us.

But God’s rescue doesn’t stop at the cross. Our Lord continues to rescue us each day as he intercedes for us on high. Remember Abraham’s intercession back in chapter 18. The Bible gives unusual prominence to Abraham’s relationship with God, he is regularly called “the friend of God,” but our text tells us the “friend of God” is unable to fully intercede for Sodom—his intercession 19:29 tells us saved Lot, but not the city. Where the friend of God’s intercession was limited, the Son of God’s intercession is unlimited. It is unlimited because He didn’t just turn away God’s wrath due to us, instead He turned it into Himself. And thus the book of Hebrews says, “He always lives to make intercession for,” us, to plead our case, to rescue us.

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea.
A great high Priest whose Name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me.

So we need not run in terror from God’s justice, we can instead trust the justice He poured out on Jesus in order so save us. Our God is the Lord of justice.

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “Lot,” on Genesis 18-19.

So, here’s where we stand on the promises of chapter 12 by the end of chapter 14. Abram’s name is great, but he still has no family. This now becomes the central issue of chapters 15-17 as we see “The Covenant.”

The Covenant

Some time after the defeat of the rebel kings God speaks to Abram in a vision. Notice what God says in 15:1, “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” What’s Abram’s fear? That he has no son. Such a fear is mostly lost in our culture, but few fears were greater in the ancient world than having no heir. Abram says in 15:2-3 that God hadn’t yet given him offspring and so the heir of his house would just be servant Eliezer. Look at how God comforts him in 15:5, “’Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” It’s seems like this illustration of the promise is just what Abram needed for 15:6 says, “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” From this point on in Scripture Abram becomes the epitome of faith as Paul consistently uses this verse to prove justification by faith alone. Faith, according to Genesis 15:6, is readiness to accept God’s promise.

Abram’s faith is small though for he asks how will he know he can take God at His word (15:8). God says get a cow, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon. Abram get them and cuts all but the birds in half—a covenant service is about to happen. Like He did with Adam, God causes a deep sleep to fall over Abram. And God says, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.” But God would eventually deliver them. Why the four-century-long wait to gain the promised land? Look at 15:16, “And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” What an amazing statement. God is making His chosen people wait for the promise so that the sin of those filling the land would be so great He could not but wipe them away. What patience this ought to instill in us when we see enemies of God flaunting their success and apparent security. It could just be God is waiting until their sin is complete to send forth His wrath. Our God is trustworthy and terrifying.

What comes in 15:17 is among the most astonishing verses in all of Scripture. Look at what happens, “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram.” A covenant is a binding agreement sealed with an oath, not unlike marriage is a binding agreements sealed with vows—“till death do us part.” In the Ancient Near Eastern world parties of a covenant would often pass through a cut animal to signify “may such a thing be done to me if I break the covenant.” What’s astonishing about this is that only God, the smoke and fire were a theophany, makes the covenant. It’s His initiative and His gift. The God who cannot die says, “May I die if I don’t fulfill my promises.” This is how sure His grace to Abram is.

Yet, no child has yet come. So Abram and Sarai take matters into their own hands. Look at 16:2, “And Sarai said to Abram, ‘Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.’” Just as Adam should have rebuke Eve for handing him the forbidden fruit, Abram should have rebuked his wife for taking the matter of children into her own hands. Yet, just like Adam, he listens to his wife’s dubious council and proceeds to have a child by Hagar—ten years after he first heard God’s call. Once the child is conceived Sarai proceeds to despise Abram and Hagar for the very thing she wanted to happen. Unrepentance means never taking responsibility. Sarai treats Hagar so harshly that Hagar flees with the boy to “a spring of water in the wilderness.” You see in 16:7 that the angel of the LORD arrives. He comforts the mistreated servant saying in 16:11, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael because the LORD has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him.” The child is eventually born and the story goes silent for thirteen years.

The Sign of the Covenant

One can only wonder what must have run through Abram’s mind all those years as he only got older and older, with each passing year making the birth of a son seemingly more impossible. When Abram is 99 years old God shows back up and look at what he says in 17:1-2, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and my multiply you greatly.” God goes on to say that He’s changing Abram’s name to Abraham, for he would be the father of many nations, and God will establish with Abraham “an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” Abraham must prove his faith in the covenant by walking in obedience to the covenant’s condition: circumcision. Every male in his household from henceforth must be circumcised. Circumcision functions as a concrete reminder to Abraham this his children were the result of the grace of God, not Abraham’s own reproductive power.

What then about the promise of offspring? Now 25 years after the call Abraham has Ishmael, but look at 17:16. God is going to do something in Abram’s wife. Her name will change from Sarai to Sarah and God says, “I will give her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her . . . kings of nations shall come from her.” With happy incredulity Abraham laughs aloud at the thought have a 100-year-old man and 90-year-old woman having a son, why not just let the line come through Ishmael? God’s says—sovereign election is on full display here—in 17:21, “I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.” God gave a promise to Abraham, Abraham waited for twenty-five years, and now he has a name for that promise: a covenant with Isaac. Our God is Lord of the covenant.

The Fragrance of Grace

Last Friday I spent a good portion of the day laying down some fresh mulch in all the beds of our house. I got the mulch from a new place and it didn’t take me long to recognize this mulch had a very distinct, earthy smell to it. Later on in the day I was out running and as I came down the street I could smell the mulch some thirty yards away. Every time I’ve walked outside this week or opened our garage door it’s only been a matter of seconds before the whiff of mulch flew by on the breeze. For better or worse, our house seems to have a fragrance about it.

Did you notice the fragrance of Genesis 12-17, the distinct spiritual smell that permeates the entire account? What is it? God’s grace as expressed through His abundant promises to Abraham. To know God is to know grace, to be God’s people is to be recipients of grace, to live by faith is to live in grace. As we close let’s do so by noticing the two distinct, but inseparable truths of grace we find permeating this story of Abraham.

Nothing can earn the favor of God’s promise. There is not one thing in the entire story that Abraham did to earn the favor of God’s promise. He simply is a humble, faithful vessel God calls and covenants with in sovereign grace. The plan Sarah hatched cannot earn the promise, it’s simply an example that human attempts to receive God’s grace will fail in the end. Is there anywhere in your life you are striving to earn the favor of God’s promise? I pray tonight you are challenged and comforted by the reality that God’s promise is never earned, it is only received by faith.

Nothing can stop the fulfillment of God’s promise. Not one man’s failure of faith, nor the opposition of unbelieving kings. The wave of sovereign grace will flow where it will and nothing can stop it. If you’re a Christian, God’s faithfulness to His promises of grace is something on which you can stake your life. If you’re not a Christian, it’s the same for you. You see the promise wouldn’t come to full fruition until God sent His Son Jesus Christ. For Jesus is the true and better Abraham, who answered the call of God to leave the comfortable and familiar home of heaven and go out into the world to create a new people of God. And through faith, turning from your sin and trusting in Christ, you too can be part of the family of God.

Through Christ God is creating a new covenant people, giving them a promised inheritance in heaven, and using them to accomplish a global purpose. This we are to do by forsaking all to follow God and bring blessing to the nations by preaching the gospel of Jesus to the nations. God’s covenant people are to be heralds of the covenant relationship found in Christ alone. Our God is Lord of the covenant.

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “Abraham,” on Genesis 12-17.

Matthew Henry once said of Genesis 3, “The story of this chapter is perhaps as sad a story as any we have in all the Bible . . . We have here an account of the sin and misery of our first parents, the wrath and curse of God against them, the peace of the creation disturbed, and its beauty stained and sullied, all bad, very bad. O that our hearts were deeply affected with this record!”

When Snakes Slink and Speak

We are told, “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.” The word “crafty” in 3:1 sounds almost identical to the word “naked” in 2:25. The apparent wordplay in these verses implies that Adam and Eve were oblivious to evil, not knowing where the dangers lay. The snake thus slinks up to Eve and begins to—amazingly!—speak. We know nothing about where the snake came from, but the New Testament makes clear that the serpent is none other than the vaunted foe of God and God’s people, Satan (Rev. 12:9).

In high school I found Anatomy a most difficult subject. Memorizing all those bones, muscles, and anatomical information overtaxed my limited memory. While I loathed the anatomical memorization required at the time, I’ve since come to see how beneficial, particularly as I played sports, the knowledge was. Well, I want us to enter into a spiritual anatomy session for a moment as we observe, from Genesis 3:1-5, “The Anatomy of Temptation.”

The Anatomy of Temptation

The first point to see is it’s a temptation to doubt God’s word. Notice the second half of 3:1, “He said to the woman, “Did God actually say . . .?” “The incredulous tone — ‘Did God actually say . . .?” — ­­is both disturbing and flattering: it smuggles in the assumption that God’s word is subject to our judgment.”

The second part of the temptation is to downplay God’s goodness. The serpent asks, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Nope, that’s not what God said at all. Look back to 2:16-17 to see what God actually said, “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” Eve evidently heard about this command from Adam and so she repeats it in 3:2, but adds God saying in 3:3, “neither shall you touch it, lest you die.” Satan tempts Eve to doubt God’s word, downplay God’s goodness, and thirdly . . . deny God’s justice. Look at 3:4-5, “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” “Not only,” Satan says, “will God not judge you unto death—it’s surely significant that the first heresy in the Bible is there’s no judgment for sin—He actually isn’t just at all, He’s just jealous. He doesn’t want you to be like Him.”

Do you see the irony in Satan’s words? Chapter 1 announced that only man and woman were created in the image of God, they were already “like” God. But Eve listens to the creature instead of the Creator and follows her impressions instead of God’s instructions. Notice 3:6, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” We might want to ask, “Where was Adam in all of this?” He was right next to Eve. As God’s vice-regent on the earth Adam should have told the snake to be quiet, stepped on its head, and stopped Eve’s hand when she reached for the fruit. Yet, instead he reaches for the fruit when she offers and he too eats. Sin has a way of not only involving others, but getting others to validate your sing by them sinning with you.

As it always does, sin promises much but actually offers little. Satan said, “Eat, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.” But look at what happened when their eyes did open in 3:7, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.” Can’t you just picture the serpent’s devilish smile as Adam and Eve sewed together their makeshift clothes? Far from being just like God, they go from being unashamed to totally ashamed.

An Anatomy of Autonomy

What then is at the root of this spiritual anatomy lesson? I believe it’s this: the root of all sin is autonomy. It’s the refusal to live under God’s lordship and submit to His word. It’s to live like we are in charge, like we are Lord, like we are autonomous—separate—from God’s lordship. This is a spiritual anatomy lesson to memorize. Where are you currently being tempted to doubt God’s word, downplay His goodness, or deny His justice? Wherever that may be, Genesis three tells us Satan may be speaking and autonomy is probably creeping.

What we now see as this sad story continues is sin always leads to shame and shrinking away from God in fear. Notice 3:8 tells us upon hearing God walking in the garden, “the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God.” God says to Adam, “Where are you?” Adam responds, “I hid when I heard you because I was naked.” Look at 3:11 as God asks, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Then ensues the original blame game. Adam says in 3:12 that it was Eve’s fault, and Eve says in 3:13 it was the serpent’s fault.

And so it was that Satan’s temptation unraveled everything.

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “The Beginning of the End,” on Genesis 3.

Genesis chapters 1-2 may have the unfortunate distinction of simultaneously being the best-known and most debated chapters in the whole Bible. One commentator says, “From what appears to be a fairly simple, brief, chronological account of how creation came into being comes an array of complicated, extended explanations of what ‘really’ happened.” My aim tonight is to try and recover something of the simple beauty of our text. It’s so easy, as we shall soon see, for most people today to get caught up in how this happened and totally miss the wonder of what happened. The main point I want us to see tonight is this: Our God is Lord over all. 

The Story of Creation

1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Right from the outset we see that this story of creation is utterly different from all rival religions is it tells us one God created everything and He created it from nothing.

One of the many interested things about this text is how sevens arrange the whole structure. 1:1 consists of seven Hebrew words, the are seven units, there are multiples of seven in God’s creation of heaven and earth, and there are seven divine fiats, “Let there be.” As many of you know, in the Hebrew culture seven was the number of perfection.

Like a master potter God is getting ready to create His universal masterpiece. Just like a potter starts by putting together a lump of clay, God starts, notice 1:2, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” As a mother bird hovers of her children, the Spirit hovered over the formless void. And then the real Big Bang happened: God spoke. Look at 1:3, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” What can we say about these days of creation?

One morning when I was a seventeen year old I went over to a friend’s house for a Bible study he promised “would rock my world.” I showed up at 7:30am and he proceeded to indeed rock my world for three hours as he tried to convince me what the Bible really says about the days of creation. Were they literal twenty-four hour days? Not so, he said. Each day was ages and ages long for the Hebrew word for day (yom) is occasionally used to speak of a epoch or era. While he did blow my mind, I was—and still am—unconvinced. Many mentors in ministry and scholars I hold in high esteem find some variation of the day-age theory satisfying and others see the days as a God accommodating to our finite understanding by using our seven-day week as analogous to His work in creation. I find no satisfying exegetical reasons to doubt God actually did created everything in one week, as we would understand a week full of twenty-four hour days. I understand many Christians struggle to reconcile supposed scientific fact with Scripture. But we must decide in our minds that science cannot account for a supernatural God and science can never be the guide for how we understand this supernatural God. Also, our Bible is not a scientific document, it God’s revelation of Himself. So if you go looking for answers to scientific questions in the Bible you probably won’t find what you are looking for. But you will find a God to adore. For however long is actually took Him to do it, this God created everything!

Let’s run through the days of creation quickly now. What’s already been said in 1:2 is vital to understanding what God was doing in the six days of creation, “The earth was without form and void.” There was a formlessness and emptiness in the world. So God goes about giving the world form and fullness, what I’m calling days of preparation and days of saturation. Days 1-3 are ones of preparation for days 4-6 that will give saturation to the earth.

So God separates light and dark on day 1 and then fills it with the lights of day and night on day 4. God separates sea and sky on day 2 and then fills it with creatures of water and air on day 5. He prepares a fertile land on day 3 and then saturates is with creatures of the land on day 6.

But something unique and extraordinary happened on day six, look at 1:26-27, “Then God said, “Let us (I think this is probably an implicit reference to the Trinity) make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

²⁷ So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”

In all of this creative work only man and woman bear the image of God. Man and woman are clearly the crown of God’s creation. What’s interesting is that in the Ancient Near Eastern world kings were said to be images of their god, but here we find God every man and women is imago Dei. In the ancient world “a ruler’s image was set up in the distant parts of his kingdom to indicate his authority reached there.” What then does it mean to be created in the image of God? Human beings are made in God’s image in that they are to rule the world for God.

Look at how God confirms this in 1:28, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” This is the creation mandate: Human beings are God’s vice-regents on earth, called to the responsibility and privilege of subduing the world for God.

Many people have said that the creation of man represents the climax of Scripture, but I actually think it’s what happens on day seven. Notice 2:1-3, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. ² And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. ³ So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” This is the true climax of the story of creation: God rest from his work. Not because He was tired, for God can never tire, but because His work was complete, it was perfect. What God sets out to do, He will do, and He will do it perfectly. Our God is Lord over all.

There is a pattern of God’s redemptive-creational work we need to see. Out of the chaos He brings life and He brings rest. This is what happened with the nation of Israel. Out of the chaos of slavery in Egypt, God brought them life and rest in the Promised Land. It’s not different in our day. Out of the chaos of sin God brings life and rest in Jesus Christ. Remember what He said? “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” If you are not a Christian, rest from your sin is found in Jesus alone. He lived the perfect life, died a sacrificial death, and rose victoriously over the grave to give you perfect, eternal rest. It can be yours tonight if your turn from your sin and trust in His work.

What Does Genesis 1-2 Tell Us About God?

God reigns as the sovereign King. He is the supreme Creator, righteous Judge, and merciful Father. He alone creates and thus reigns over creation. There may, as we will see next week, be rebels in God’s kingdom, there are not rivals.

God rules by His sovereign word. Our LORD God creates and commands. By His word He brought all things into being and by His word He rules over His people.

What Does Genesis 1-2 Tell Us About Man?

Man is utterly reliant upon God. His power alone brought us into the world, thus it’s by His power alone we can live in the world. Our physical fragility and spiritual vulnerability scream out just how reliant upon God we are.

Man is ultimately responsible to God. He created His people in His image to enjoy His grace and commanded them to extend His glory to the ends of the earth. Ultimate accountability belongs to Him alone.

This then is the simple, yet glorious truth, which sets the stage for all human history and eventual eternity: Our God is Lord over all.

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “The Life and Ministry of Hudson Taylor.”

He arrives in China, finds a rebellion in full force, currency in great inflation, and much of the missionary community looking down on him for they had little respect for the Chinese Evangelization Society. Taylor only added fuel to their scornful fire when he made the decision to dress in Chinese clothes and grow a pigtail like the Chinese men wore; respectable Europeans would never steep so low—including the missionaries. Taylor had little money, terrible communications with London (it would take at least four months to send a letter and get a reply), but he wasn’t deterred. In the six months it took him to learn the language he found himself separating from, what he deemed, the “worldly” missionary culture saturating China. Almost all the missionaries were living in one of the five “treaty ports,” spending most of their time with English businessmen or diplomats who needed their translation services.

Preaching The Gospel in Unreached Places

So, much like the apostle Paul, Taylor struck out on a series of ten extended evangelistic journeys to the interior, taking the gospel to places where it had never been heard. All this last about four years. On January 20, 1858, he married another missionary Maria Dyer. They were married for twelve years. When Maria died at age 33, she had given birth to eight children. Three died at birth, two in childhood and those that lived to adulthood all became missionaries with the mission their father had founded, the China Inland Mission. I did the math on this. From age 26-38 every 1.5 years Hudson Taylor has a child and every 2 years a child or his wife dies. Can you imagine the pain? Here’s what he said about suffering:

It is in the path of obedience and self-denying service that God reveals Himself most intimately to His children. When it costs most we find the greatest joy. We find the darkest hours the brightest, and the greatest loss the highest gain. While the sorrow is short lived, and will soon pass away, the joy is far more exceeding, and it is eternal.

In 1860 Taylor came down with what probably was hepatitis, and he and his family set sail for England. This medical sojourn was one that deeply grieved Taylor, believing it to be a major setback to the work he’d begun in China. Yet, in God’s providence it would bring the most “decisive event” in his life. Which is a wonderful reminder for us. Perceived setbacks are often the occasions for God’s unusual providential mercy. During this four-year respite Taylor translated the Bible into Mandarin, studied to become a midwife, and urged greater awareness for God’s work in China.

What then is the decisive event? Over the course of the same period in which our country was fighting the Civil War, the Spirit was putting in Taylor’s a vision that would change the history of the largest nation on earth. Here’s how Taylor wrote about the event:

On Sunday, June 25th, 1865, unable to bear the sight of a congregation of a thousand or more Christian people rejoicing in their own security, while millions were perishing for lack of knowledge, I wandered out on the sands alone, in great spiritual agony; and there the LORD conquered my unbelief, and I surrendered myself to GOD for this service (the founding of the China Inland Mission). I told Him that all the responsibility as to issues and consequences must rest with Him; that as His servant, it was mine to obey and to follow Him — His, to direct, to care for, and to guide me and those who might labour with me.

This was the birthplace of the China Inland Mission. Taylor was 33 years old. On May 26, the following year (1866) Hudson, Maria, and their children sailed with the largest group of missionaries that had ever sailed to China—sixteen besides themselves. Overnight the mission force in China expanded 25%.

Four years later (1870) Taylor’s son Samuel died, then daughter Noel died, and on July 23 his wife Maria died of cholera. She was 33, and he was 38. A year later, Taylor sailed for England again, and while he was there he married Jennie Faulding, they would be married for 33 years until her death in 1904. In 1900 the brutal Boxer Rebellion raged against all Christians and foreigners in China. 58 adults and 21 children of the China Inland Mission were killed, more than any other agency. Five years later Taylor died at the age of 73, buried at Zhenjiang by the side of Maria and his four children who had died in China.

The Legacy of Hudson Taylor

At the time of Hudson Taylor’s death, the China Inland Mission was an international body with 825 missionaries living in all eighteen provinces of China with more than 300 mission stations, more than 500 local Chinese helpers, and 25,000 Christian converts. This year marks the 150^th anniversary of the mission Hudson Taylor founded. In 1900, there were 100,000 Christians in China, and today there are probably around 150,000,000.

Full of Faith and Powerful in Prayer

I choose this year to think about Hudson Taylor for two reasons. First, he is a man unlike us. He’s from outside our tradition and with whom we would probably have some significant disagreements—particularly as it relates to sanctification. But he’s nevertheless a man we can lean much from. It’s surely a mark of maturity and humility that people you don’t totally agree with can still teach your mind and transform your heart. Secondly, he is a man like us. This fact struck me powerfully throughout my recent study of Taylor’s life. He was not like his friend Charles Spurgeon, who had a photographic memory and a command of rhetoric the envy of every preaching. He was not like the great evangelist George Whitefield, so gifted in oratory it was said he could make crowds weep simply with how he said the word, “Mesopotamia.” Nor was he like William Carey, the founder of the modern missions movement, a polyglot who translated the Bible into some 29 different regional dialects.

No, Hudson Taylor was remarkably ordinary in his gifting. He had no formal education, but he did have a deep love for the Lord. He had no unusual mental faculties, but he did have a passion for God’s word. He had no unusual power in preaching, but he did have supreme trust in His God. Why then, under God’s providence, was this man so enormously effective? Here’s my answer: he was a man full of faith and persistent in prayer. These two are distinct, but they go hand in hand.

The Faith Missions Movement

Taylor is perhaps most famous for giving birth to the faith missions movement. Much like his personal hero George Mueller he never solicited funds for his mission work. Convicted in his conscience that he should never ask for money, but instead trust in God’s provision alone through prayer, he lived a life of untold number of occasions where God’s generosity flowed in just in time and in greater abundance than necessary. He famously said, “Depend upon it, GOD’S work done in GOD’S way will never lack GOD’S supplies,” he meant every kind of needed supply, both money and health and faith and peace and strength. Lest we think he had something like a gift of faith, Taylor was actually adamant that he didn’t.

Taylor’s faith was even what precipitated his break with the China Evangelization Society, who was borrowing money to fund its missionaries. And so when he founded the China Inland Mission he required that the missionaries would have no guaranteed salaries, they were not to appeal for funds, and they were to adopt Chinese dress and press the gospel to the interior. He believed mission efforts should be directed on the field, not from a far off place like London, and thus Taylor was to be the leader and settle all disputes. Not everyone appreciated his leadership and the demands he made on himself and everyone else. One missionary in that early group accused him of tyranny and had to be dismissed.

We must remember that rigorous devotion to convictions of conscience (where in the Bible does it say you can’t ask for money?) can often disrupt Christian unity. Might there be any place in your life where your convictions of conscience might be prone to distraction or disruption?

So he was a man full of faith and totally persistent in prayer. From the time he felt called to China until the end of his life he woke at 5am to pray. He said later in his life, “For as long as I’ve been alive the sun has never risen in China without finding me in prayer.” We often view prayer as a duty, but for Hudson Taylor it was a necessity. It was as necessary for his soul as breathing was for his body. His private prayer life was doubtless reflected in his public prayers. Someone present at a meeting Taylor led wrote, “His appearance did not impress me. He was slightly built, and spoke in a gentle voice. Like most young men, I suppose I associated power with noise, and looked for great physical presence in a leader. But when he said, ‘Let us pray,’ and proceeded to lead the meeting in prayer, my ideas underwent a change. I had never heard any one pray like that. There was a simplicity, a tenderness, a boldness, a power that hushed and subdued one, and made it clear that God had admitted him into the inner circle of His friendship. He spoke with God face to face, as a man talk[s] with his friend.”

Here then is the main point I want us to see from Hudson Taylor as Mission Month 2015 come to a close: full faith and persistent prayer give supernatural power to disciple-making. Taylor’s life was a living testimony to that truth. I pray this brief glimpse of his life and ministry would lead us to imitate the same. May God give us a fullness of faith and persistence in prayer in our efforts to make disciples of all nations.

Romans 3:23-25 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” Of particular interest to me right now is Jesus’ work of propitiation.

You Can Be Saved . . . From What?

I sometimes wonder if the Bible uses these complex words as means to evangelism. Use the word propitiation in a sentence this next week and see if the immediate question isn’t, “What does that mean?” To which you can respond, “Well, I’m glad you asked.” And you can begin to speak the gospel to them, for propitiation means to satisfy the demands of God’s wrath.

Christians have always struggled with how to talk about God’s wrath. A storm of controversy arose over the Revised Standard Version when the middle of the 20^th century for they chose not to employ the word propitiation because the translation committee said people in this age do not like words like that. Last year a mainline Presbyterian denomination yanked a hymn out of their hymnal because it spoke about Jesus satisfying God’s wrath. Even the NIV translation mutes the truth somewhat by translating 3:25 as, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement.”

Divine Medicine for the Soul

Propitiation is a divine medicine, and just because you don’t like the taste doesn’t mean you don’t need it. Oh, how glorious the cross of Christ becomes when we understand it was there God’s wrath was satisfied! That’s what Jesus saved us from—God’s wrath. There’s a peculiar beauty in God putting forward Jesus as a propitiation. Throughout the ages pagan religions have practiced propitiation. But propitiation was something the people did in order to spiritually bribe away their gods’ anger. Yet, the Christian faith says God, not people, offers the propitiatory sacrifice. God saves us from Himself in order to save us to Himself. Notice the stunning mercy of God revealed in propitiation as 3:25 continues, “God put [Jesus] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” So, the Bible is saying that God left the sins of former generations unpunished, not because He was unjust, but because in His divine forbearance He would pour out the wrath their sin deserved on His Son.

Are you not amazed by this? What incredible news! You, I, we all should be punished and suffer the fury of God’s wrath, but if have faith in Jesus, what we discover is not that our sin goes unpunished, but that Jesus bore it for us. Beware of meditation on propitiation, for it may just reduce you to tears at the righteousness and love of God shown in His Son. In other words, you should do this quite often.

If you are not a Christian, what will you do with all this news—bad and good? Your sin deserves God’s wrath and will receive God’s wrath for all eternity, but salvation is offered to you tonight in the gracious gift of Jesus Christ. If would but place your faith in Him and His work on the cross, acceptance and freedom and salvation are yours forever. In His death you can find life.

So while many people today don’t want to sing it, we can pour forth in glad praise the words,

And on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “Disciple-Making & Jesus,” on Romans 3:24-25.

Several years ago I dad found out, as I like to say, he had the gout. Gout is a complex form of arthritis, which gives birth to sudden and severe attacks of pain in the joints. My dad proceeded to do what I’m sure anyone would do, he scoured around to find all the information he could on treating gout. He consulted with his doctor, others who’d had it, and everything the Internet had to offer. Before the diagnosis he had no interest in the treatment whatsoever, but after the diagnosis he was consumed with the answer to his problem.

And so it is with sin. To see the nature of sin is to see the need for a Savior. This is why we must speak clearly and boldly about the nature of sin. If someone doesn’t know about their problem of sin, why would they have any interest in a Savior? Truly understanding the plight of sin gives you a longing for a powerful Savior.

If you are not a Christian, I pray you would see the true nature of your sin, it’s power and penalty. You need the bad news in order to love the good news. Good news, notice, that comes in 3:24-25, where Paul says, “[Sinners] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” Faith in redemption of Jesus, which came when He died on a cross, can you be yours tonight if you would just turn from your sin and trust in this Savior.

Here are three final implications that a full understanding of sin brings to our disciple-making.

Understanding the nature of sin brings . . .

Earnestness in disciple-making. If every person in the world lives under the power and penalty of sin, should there not be earnestness in our disciple-making efforts? One of the greatest schemes of Satan is to not only make us complacent about our own sin, but also to that of others’ sin. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Nothing can be more cruel than that leniency that abandons others to their sin.” If you’ve found your soul in a season of leniency towards sin, pray for God in His grace to forgive you and renew your understanding of sin’s danger, and awaken you to Spirit-wrought, Word-shaped earnestness in disciple-making at home, at work, and in the world.

Seriousness in disciple-making. The labor of making disciples is concerned with matters of eternal weight; sin is no mere thing to rifle with. I think the nature of our conscience reveals the seriousness with which we treat sin. The more biblically tender our conscience the more serious our understanding of sin. What does your conscience say about the seriousness of sin?

Happiness in disciple-making. We should not be surprised by our sin. It’s the condition in which we were born and would have been content to stay if God, through Christ, hadn’t made our dead hearts alive. That we are sinful is not surprising, but that God has saved us is totally astonishing. When was the last time your salvation surprised you? Happiness grows when we understand He has saved us in order to bear witness to His glory, glory revealed at the cross of Christ. So then the work of disciple-making is a profound privilege and happy responsibility. The most faithful disciple-makers I’ve ever met are those happiest in Christ.

Let us see afresh the totality and vanity of sin. May it lead us to earnestness, seriousness, and happiness in our disciple-making. For sin shows us our need for a Savior.

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “Disciple-Making & Sin,” on Romans 3:23.

Our second son, Owen Paul, is such a joy in our home. He is never short on imagination or personality. For so long the first thing he’s done after waking up each morning is put on a Buzz Lightyear costume that I’ve taken to calling him, “Buzz” all the time. One of Buzz’s current traits is that he can easily become distracted. We set him off to clean his room or do some chore, and he seemingly disappears for an unusual amount of time. We eventually find him preoccupied with something—usually a toy or game—other than what he was supposed to be doing.

The Concentration of Faithful Ministry

Something quite similar is happening in Acts 6. The apostles’ preoccupation with serving tables is endangering their original marching orders from Christ. What should the apostles be giving their time to? Look at 6:4, “But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

If 6:2-3 give us insight into what a healthy deacon body looks like, 6:4 gives us the priorities of pastoral ministry: praying and preaching. To read the rest of the New Testament, particularly the pastoral letters to Timothy and Titus, is to see this bear out. Faithful pastors and elders are those devoted, like the apostles they emulate to some degree, “ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

If the great danger threatening the church in this passage was distraction—distraction from occupying their ministry with that which is of first importance. And this Satanic scheme makes so much sense doesn’t it? If faith comes by hearing and preaching is the ordinary way God gives life to His people and grows His church, why wouldn’t the Enemy want to distract pastors from praying and preaching? Why wouldn’t he want to distract some of you from devoting yourselves to the praying and preaching ministry of the church each week in gathered worship? A distracted church is a powerless church.

We will devote “ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” Oh, how we can’t—I can’t—forget the first side of the apostle’s devotion. Charles Bridges, in his classic work The Christian Ministry, wrote, “‘The spirit of our ministry is a spirit of prayer.’ Prayer is the ornament of the priesthood, the leading feature of our character. Without prayer, the minister is of no use to the church, nor of any advantage to mankind . . . It is prayer alone that gives the whole strength and efficacy to our different administrations . . . Prayer therefore is one half of our ministry; and it gives to the other half all its power and success.” I am incredibly thankful to serve in a church where preaching is valued, encouraged, and prayed for. I frequently get text messages and emails from you expressing encouragements about and prayers for this pulpit. From Acts 6:4 let me also ask, as I’m sure you are doing, to not forget to pray that your elders would be men of prayer.

A Biblical Pattern

Few things bring greater anxiety and expected stress in my life than returning home with self-assembly furniture . . . particularly from Ikea. Their “how-to/assembly” guides have no words, just pictorial steps that cause non-mechanical people like me to labor and toil far too long on a piece of furniture that sure looks like it should come together in a matter of minutes—not a matter of hours. From my perspective, the builder and the building guide cannot be trusted.

It seems to me that Satan wants us to believe something similar when it comes to the church: that the builder and the building guide cannot be trusted. Yet, the first seven verses of Acts 6 announce the builder (Jesus) and the building guide (His Word) are worthy of full trust—of total devotion. We can delight in and rest on the pattern of ministry according to Acts 6:1-7 Jesus’ promise that He will build His church (Matt. 16:18) through His word (Eph. 5:26).

As we conclude I want to point out a few pillars, according to Acts 6, of a church living in a faithful pattern of ministry.

Pillars of Faithful Ministry

A Word-centered ministry. I’m sure we’ve said enough on this point already, but the labor of ministry is to always keep God’s word at the center. The greatest threat to healthy ministry is anything that steals the centrality of the word—for the Word brings life and power to God’s people.

A Spirit-empowered ministry. To read the book of Acts to see a church empowered by God’s Spirit. A constant key to perpetuating unity and delight in a local church is members growing in the fullness of the Spirit. Is there anywhere in your life where you sense growing power from the spirit? It seems that few things test out the true spirit of a church as there life of prayer. Prayer-filled churches are Spirit-empowered churches.

A compassion-saturated ministry. Some people think the apostles acts in this text as though compassionate care of the widows is unimportant. But that’s not the case at all. They lead the church to ensure the widows needs are met. Devotion to God’s word is never severed from compassion towards God’s people.

A gospel-advancing ministry. We keep the Word central, long for the Spirit’s power, and fill our hearts with compassion in order to see the gospel advance in our lives, church, city, and world.

This then is the pattern of ministry we must pursue. One centered on God’s word, empowered by God’s spirit, saturated with compassion for one another, and advancing the gospel for God’s glory in all nations.

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “The Pattern of Ministry,” on Acts 6:1-7.

Every time one of our children goes in for their annual checkup our pediatrician will humorously—yet carefully—work through a “Development Report Card.” Haddon’s 18-month report card said in the Development Comments, “Great job at growing up.” He evidently achieved all of the medical milestones.

Have you ever considered how concerned God is with our spiritual development and growth in godliness? Over the last four months we’ve journeyed as a people through the book of 1 John and the apostle has given us a clear chart on what kind of spiritual growth ought to be normal in our life together. We know he wants us to have growing assurance, and as we begin to close I want to think about from our text particular marks of growing assurance. Three marks by which we can examine our corporate growth.

Marks of Growing Assurance

Growing trust in God’s word. I told you all the way back in January, when we started our series in this letter, that John is surely an apostle for our time. In an age that demands acceptance of virtually every view, an age that up until just recently celebrated doubt and rebelled against absolute truth, John speaks with total, trustful certainty. The drumbeat of our text and his message is, “We know.”

Where might you be tempted to doubt God’s word? Are there any truths, commands, or promises where you are not taking God at His word?

To grow in assurance is to have growing trust in God’s word. A second mark is . . .

Growing confidence in God’s spirit. Our text says “everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning,” and that Jesus “protects” us and “has given us understanding.” All of this happens through the work of His Spirit. Are you confident in God’s spirit? Is secret sin threatening to undo you? Is consistent weariness stealing hope? John means to inject our souls not only with ever deepening trust in God’s word, but ever increasing confidence in the Spirit who resides in us.

A final mark of growing assurance is . . .

Growing joy in God’s son. This is the chief mark. John said in chapter one that one reason he wrote this letter is so that “our joy may be complete.” John continually defends the truth of Christ and exalts in the glory of Christ because, as 5:20 says, “He is the true God and eternal life.” What brings you ultimate joy? What person, place, or people—no matter the difficulty plaguing you at the moment—can seem to lift your spirit in an instance? Oh, how I long for us to increasingly say, individually and corporately, “Jesus is our supreme joy.”

Growing assurance means growing trust in God’s word, growing confidence in God’s spirit, and growing joy in God’s son.

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “The Love of Assurance,” on 1 John 5:13-21.