Kennystix's podcast
Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Vision
Father, my longings for these brothers as they listened is fed by my amazement that Andrew Fuller is speaking 192 years after he died, which he totally did not expect. Lord, what might you be pleased to do through these brothers that they totally do not expect you to do because they're simply faithful? And so I ask, Lord, that the ripple effect of Andrew Fuller's life go on and on, and I ask you that the ripple effect of these lives be far wider and deeper and longer than any of them dreams. Father, would you breathe upon it just like you took five loaves and two fish, prayed over them, and 5,000 people were totally unexpectedly fed by them. Father, Andrew Fuller served in a community of 3,000 people, had a church of a couple hundred, and that's all he ever had. And I'm reading him today. Lord, be pleased to do exceedingly abundantly for the glory of Christ, for the good of the nations, for the good of our churches more than we could dream. I ask in Jesus' name, amen. It's totally possible that before Jesus comes back, the impact of Andrew Fuller will be greater and different than it is today, 192 years after his death. My assessment of his impact today is that it is largely owing, and rightly so, to his life and thoughts impact upon the modern missionary movements, beginning with the sending of William Carey and his team in 1793. William Carey was the morning star of the modern missionary movement. Between 1793 and 1865, a missionary movement led by William Carey was unleashed, which was greater than anything the world had seen up till that time, and by which all of the coastlands of the world were reached. In 1865, Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission, not coastland, but Inland Mission. Between the years 1865 and 1934, another wave was unleashed and virtually all of the inlans and all of the countries were reached by 1974, the date of the Lausanne World Council of Missions. In 1934, Cameron Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators, not to focus on the coastlands and not to focus on the inlans, but to strip the missionary cause of its geographical focus and to focus on peoples, languages and dialects and cultures. And that's the wave in which we find ourselves in the center of, and if you want to be a part of it, you can be, or you can ignore it and not be a part of it. Philip Jenkins describes the unique situation of our day in the next Christendom as the shift of the center of gravity of missions from Europe and America south and east. I recommend an article in this week's Christianity Today interviewing Andrew Walls, who a little differently from Jenkins book talks about a multi-centric mission where it won't be just south or east or European or western. It will be all over the world, all learning from each other. Areas that were once mission fields are now centers of great Christian influence and major missionary sending forces. You won't read about it in any secular history book or hear about it on any nightly news, but judged by almost any standard, the modern missionary movement of the last 200 years launched with William Carey has been the most important development in history in the last 200 years. Stephen Neal in his history of Christian missions wrote this, "The cool and rational 18th century, the century that ended with William Carey's departure was hardly a promising seedbed for Christian growth, but out of it came a greater outburst of Christian missionary enterprise than had been seen in all the centuries before." Now how did that happen? How did the cool, rational 18th century produce a movement the greatest in history, in missions in which you find yourself and of which you could be a part, how did that happen? Well, God's judgments are inscrutable, His ways are higher than our ways, and the 10,000 ways that He brought it about, we cannot begin to document, but we can see some of them. And I want to talk about one of them, a very, very crucial one of them, perhaps without which it wouldn't have happened, namely the life of Andrew Fuller. How did that mission released in 1793 come about? How did God unleash a Christ-exalting gospel-advancing, church-expanding, evil-confronting, Satan-conquering, culture-transforming, soul-saving, hell-robbing, Christian-refreshing, truth-intensifying, missionary movement? And this is another message I don't have time to give, but why did I include in that list of adjectives Christian-refreshing and truth-intensifying missionary movement? The reason is, and this is just a big long footnote, the reason is because not only did Andrew Fuller's life move towards the sending of missionaries, but his engagement in the missionary enterprise by his own testimony was his deliverance from longstanding depression, end of sermon. That's a footnote in here. The here is this 33-page manuscript I have here, which has all these juicy quotes in it that I'm going to give you. And you don't have to write them down because God willing, this will be up on the Internet tomorrow morning. Lord willing, we'll see if we can make that happen. So just relax, think, write down questions that you can ask at the question time tomorrow. The reason I said at the beginning that it is possible that before Jesus comes back, the life and thought of Andrew Fuller will have greater and different significance than he does today is because three volumes of his writings are in print. We don't have them for sale because they cost $120, but buy them anyway if you're interested in what I say today. He is an extraordinarily brilliant theologian. So quite apart from the fact that his life and thought, among other things, unleashed the William Carey beginning of the modern missionary movement, what he said insightfully and biblically about so many things in its own right will go on having an impact upon the church and who knows what God may breathe upon, a century from now in causing someone to read the gospel worthy of all acceptation and explode with effect upon the 22nd century world. We don't know about such things. God may do it or he may use you to do it in a way you never dreamed. His impact has been, will be far beyond a little pastorate in Kettering, England, 3,000 people, 32-year investment in the pastorate in Kettering. What an amazing thing God did. So the modern missionary movement and released through his life and his thought in a way along with other things that was extraordinary. Andrew Fuller died May 7, 1815, age 61, relevant, that's how old I am. So if I were to drop dead while I'm speaking, I would be in good company because I've had way more than I deserve, including so many things, including you. He'd been a pastor for 32 years at Kettering some years before that in Sohem. Before that a boy growing up on a farm with his parents, devout, Baptist parents, no formal theological education whatsoever. And yet the number one theologian among the particular Baptists, that is the Calvinistic Baptist of his day, 17 years old, begins to preach and so on, and then they call him to be their pastor when he was 21 years old, and then he moves to Kettering where he spent the rest of his ministry. The year after he became a pastor, he married Sarah Gardner, 1776, a date that means something to Americans, just clue you into what's going on in the world. America's becoming independent this year when he married Sarah Gardner 16 years later. She dies and in that 16 years she had 11 children and eight of them died. Two months before she died, fuller together with Ryland and Carrie and the others, a little band of Baptist pastors founded the Baptist Missionary Society and then she died. And I thought to myself so often that way, the greatest birth, the greatest triumphs and the greatest losses back to back, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone and if it dies, could unleash two centuries of stunning missionary enterprise. So during those 40 years of pastoral ministry and soham and Kettering, he tried to do far more than one man can do well. He tried to raise a family, three kids instead of 11, he tried to pastor church, he tried to engage the destructive doctrinal errors of his day with writing and he led the Baptist Missionary Society which was founded in 1792. He regularly felt absolutely overwhelmed. He wrote a letter in 1801, born 1754, so you can do the math as we do these things, 47 years old, he wrote this, "Samuel Pierce's memoirs are now loudly called for," meaning everybody wants me to write them because he's part of this band and I know him well. "I sit down almost in despair. My wife looks at me with a tear ready to drop and says, 'My dear, you have hardly time to speak to me. My friends at home are kind but they also say, 'You have no time to see us or know us and you will soon be worn out.'" Amidst all this, there is come to Scotland, come to Portsmouth, come to Plymouth, come to Bristol. So a little band of brothers, Baptist pastors, tiny little churches, burning with zeal for the global cause of God, found this mission society in 1792, October 2, and fuller, more than them all, felt the burden that when William Carey, John Thomas, get on that boat with their wives and go never to return, not a single furlough, he felt the burden unbelievably. He had done this in a long time. You've heard the phrase, perhaps you know it comes from Fuller, that we at home are rope holders, it comes from Fuller, and I'll give you the situation and the quote from which it comes. Our undertaking in India, this is Fuller talking, our undertaking in India really appeared to me on its commencement to be somewhat like a few men who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating into a deep mind which had never been explored. We had no one to guide us, and while we were thus deliberating, Carey, as it were said, "Well, I will go down if you will hold the rope." But before he went down, he as it seemed to me, took an oath from each of us at the mouth of the pit to this effect that while we lived, we should never let go the rope. So for 21 years, Fuller served as the general secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society and held that rope more firmly, more zealously than anyone else held it with greater conscientiousness and a greater sense of responsibility, "I've got to raise this money. I've got to raise prayer support." So when you heard those words in his desperation, "Come to Bristol, come to Portsmouth, come to Plymouth, come to Scotland." Those are people who believe in the mission saying, "Come talk to our people, come speak to our churches, come inspire our people. You're a good speaker, we need you to come." He went five times to Scotland. He traveled continuously, speaking to race, support from the mission. He wrote for the periodical accounts. He wrote for the Baptist General Annual Register. He wrote for the Evangelical magazine. He wrote for the Baptist magazine. He had the lead role in choosing more missionaries to go out and interviewing them. He carried an extensive correspondence between himself and the missionaries as well as to people at home. All of that, while knowing his pastoral work was suffering. He didn't have any assistant until 1810, five years before he died. He got an assistant, John Hall. I'm sorry, 1811, four years before he died. October 19, 1794, he lamented in a letter to John Ryland how the mission work was compromising his pastoral labor. He said, "I long to visit my congregation that I may know of their spiritual concerns and preach to their cases." There are some amazing quotes where he tips his heart hand about the affection that he had for his people. Here's one. He's writing to one of the wavered members. When a parent loses a child, and you know what kind of experience he's talking out of, when a parent loses a child, nothing but the recovery of that child can heal the wound. If he could have many other children that would not do it, thus it is with me towards you, nothing but your return to God and the church can heal this one. Pressed on faithfully feeding his flock in expository preaching in and out, in and out. Beginning in April 1790, he preached successfully through Psalms, Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, Hagai, Zechariah, Malachi, Isis, Matthew, Luke, John, Revelation, Acts, and 1 Corinthians up to chapter 4 verse 5. The people in his little church did not seem, history is nice sometimes, to begrudge their pastors wider ministry for the missionary society, the young Deacon wrote two weeks before Fuller's death as they saw he was almost gone, he wrote this in his diary, "What a loss as individuals and as a church we are going to sustain, Him that has so long fed us with the bread of life that has so affectionately, so faithfully, so fervently counseled and exhorted and reproved and animated by doctrine, by precept, by example, the people of his charge, him who has lived so much for others shall we no more hear his voice." So if that was representative, the people had a large affection for him in spite of his inadequacies as an overworked pastor. When he was home from his travels, it was one form of work for another. His wife Anne, he married again in 1794, Anne Coles, his wife Anne told him that he had allowed no time for recreation, and Fuller answered, "Oh no, all my recreation is change of work," his son, Gunton, 1815, just a few months before his death said that he was still working, "upwards of twelve hours a day," close quote. And woven into all of that faithful, persevering, pastoral, missionary, writing, labor, making his perseverance, all the more astonishing was the suffering and the loss that he endured. Eight children died, his first wife died, July 10, 1792, just before she died. He wrote, "My family afflictions have almost overwhelmed me. But as yet before me I know not, for about a month past, the affliction of my dear companion has been extremely heavy." And then July 25, "Oh my God, my soul is cast down within me, the afflictions of my family seem too heavy for me, O Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me." And then she died, August 23, 1792, having lost eight of her children, and he wrote these lines for her in poem, "The tender parent wails no more her loss, nor labors more beneath life's heavy load, the anxious soul released from fears and woes has found her home, her children, and her God." So there's the personal pastoral, missionary context of Fuller's engagement with spiritual and doctoral errors of his day. For all of his activism, and he was very, very activist, it was his controversies, his doctrinal writing controversies that did the most to unleash or prepare a platform for the unleashing of the missionary movement, and that's what I want to focus the rest of our time on. He was, as one biographer said, preeminently the thinker. No movement can go far without a thinker. So among the particular Baptist, the Calvinistic Baptist of his day, he was the preeminent thinker. So this author and I am tracing the rise of the William Carey wave of the modern missionary movement to Andrew Fuller's thinking, his intellectual laborers as a pastor to confront hyper-Calvinism and Sandamanianism. They weren't the only two. You could add "socinianism," I mean, this man was battling on front after front after front, only what I hope you'll take away is these battles were not the least ingrown. They were global in their impact. His heart burned, that there be a heart for missions and a gospel for missions, and wherever he saw errors that would compromise that, that's where he took up battle. We do have this book in the bookstore. I recommend it. I read it right through. It's called the armies of the Lamb, the spirituality of Andrew Fuller, a great flavor. So if you just want a short paperback flavor of the man, go ahead and pick that up. I recommend it to you. And then if you have $120 to spare, you can go to Amazon or someplace and get the three volumes. So my aim now is to describe for you this pastor's engagement with these two deadly errors of his day. One called high Calvinism, we call it hyper-Calvinism. He used the word "hyper" a few times I saw, but mainly it's almost always high Calvinism, the other is Sandomanianism, which I'll explain when we get there. And in both cases, the battles were distinctively exegetical and doctrinal, even though their important outcomes were experiential and globally practical. Now this thinking, this engagement didn't come out of nowhere, you've read enough history to know, nobody comes out of nowhere. He came out of his century with manifold influences, I'll mention a few. Besides the one I referred to from Neil, the cool, rational 18th century, we're talking about David Hume, Britain, Rousseau, France, Tom Paine, America. These were the vintage secular, cool, rational, philosophic killers of evangelical thought, which dominated the intellectual life of the 18th century. That's what Stephen Neil was talking about. How in the world did that produce William Carey? Well, they didn't, but there was another thing happening, and you know what it is. It was George Whitfield and John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards. That's the other thing that was going on during the 18th century, and Fuller was deeply immersed in the Great Awakening, writings coming over from Jonathan Edwards and Whitfield and Wesley crisscrossing the nation and Fuller being born in the prime of all that in 1754. The particular Baptist that he was born into did not like any of those people. Wesley of course was not a Calvinist, that's his problem. Whitfield's Calvinism was very suspect because he was so indiscriminate in his evangelistic preaching. They complained of his Arminian dialect. I remember the first message I ever gave after coming to the Baptist General Conference, 1980, I think it was Omaha, Nebraska, and I preached at an assembly about this size on Hebrews 6, and a man took me aside at the end and said, "Brother, welcome to the conference, but you're going to have to be careful of your Arminian views in this conference." I wish you had to be careful of your Arminian views in this conference. So he had an Arminian dialect, this Calvinist Whitfield, and he was suspect among the particular Baptist. Kerry said that after he had come to sow him, he'd learned to preach from John Eve, his pastor, a high Calvinist, hyper-Calvinist. He said, "I had little or nothing to say to the unconverted," and the greatest theological achievement of Andrew Fuller was to see and then defend and then spread the truth that historical biblical Calvinism embraced the full free offer of the gospel to all people without exception. That was his great achievement because the church into which he was born didn't believe that, and he had to wrestle to get free. So he immersed himself in the scriptures, remember, totally self-educated, no formal theological training. He immersed himself in the scriptures, and he immersed himself in the historical tradition of Calvinism, Augustine, Calvin, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, the Bible, always preeminent. This is what makes him so readable and useful today. You're not just going to go get a rehash of some secondary theology, you get a man wrestling with the Bible, and whenever you can get into a book where a man is honestly, deeply, intensely wrestling with God's Word, you're going to get benefit 500,000 years later, doesn't make any difference. Here's what he wrote about his allegiance to the Bible, "Lord, thou hast given me a determination to take up no principle at second hand, but to search for everything at the pure fountain of thy Word." That's one of the main reasons he's still readable and freshly relevant today. Now, he was wide open about who his mentors were and who his influence was. You read his writing, he doesn't try to hide anything or make himself look more original than he was. We need to know who these people were, you already know who they are, you just don't know the connection perhaps. He searched the scriptures and he searched the history of doctrine to find whether or not high Calvinism was so, was biblical or not. Now what was it? It was the view that opposed the offering of the gospel to all men or the urging of all men to repent and believe and it said that the reason was it could not be the duty of unregenerate men to believe on Jesus and therefore one should not tell them to believe on Jesus because it was not their duty to do so because the Bible makes clear the unregenerate the natural man cannot receive or respond to the things of the Spirit. Here's Fuller's way of describing hyper-Calvinism. Now please, you men should know this, so let me say it's obvious, but the way people out in the boondocks use the term hyper-Calvinism am hyper-Calvinist. They just mean really Calvinist. That's not historically the meaning of the term, it was a very technical term in the late 18th century and here is Fuller's explanation of it. Neither Augustine nor Calvin who each in his day defended predestination and the other doctrines connected with it ever appear to have thought of denying it, to be the duty of every sinner who has heard the gospel to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. Neither did the other reformers nor the Puritans of the 16th century nor the Divines of the Synod of Dort who opposed Arminius nor any of the denominations of the 17th century so far as I have any acquaintance with in their writings so much as hesitate upon this subject. In other words, he couldn't find high Calvinism anywhere except in the particular Baptist. So he was surprised, like where did this come from? Didn't come from the Bible, didn't come from Augustine, didn't come from Calvin, didn't come from the Puritans, what in the world are we dealing with here? John Calvin played a relatively minor role in shaping Fuller's thinking directly. He was immersed in Puritans mainly and quoted from Charnock and Goodwin and Bunyan and Owen way more than he quoted from Calvin. Quotes from Calvin are very few and far between in his writings. By his own testimony, John Owen ranks first in his affections. Here's what he said, "I never met with anything of importance in his writings on which I saw any reason to disagree so far from it that I know of no writer for whom I have so great and esteem." Which surprises people in view of Jonathan Edwards' impact on his life. So he just said, "I have no greater esteem for any writer than for John Owen." Now, almost everybody who does serious study of Andrew Fuller agrees, the greatest impact was Jonathan Edwards. And that is not necessarily contradictory. That you learned very decisive breakthrough insights from man does not necessarily endear your heart to him like it does to John Owen, perhaps. So I'm not saying there's a contradiction here, just know there's a distinction in the historical understanding of Andrew Fuller. John Owen ranked in his own mind highest in his affections and esteem and externally at least myself included, believe he got his breakthrough for sentimentism and his breakthrough for hyper-Calvinism from Jonathan Edwards. Actually, he got it from the Bible and he had some categories supplied for it with Jonathan Edwards. And he admits that he got very decisive things from Edwards, the key that unlocked the door out of hyper-Calvinistic reasoning and out of Sandomanianism, which I haven't explained yet. David Bebington has written one of the most paradigm shaping books about evangelicalism in Britain and he says, "Johnathan Edwards stands at the headwaters of the 18th century evangelicalism." In other words, he sees Edwards as the spring from which everything is flowing in the 18th century and would trace evangelicalism as we know it today back to Jonathan Edwards. That is certainly true for Andrew Fuller. He was a spring from which Fuller drank deeply and which helped him get free. Let me give you a flavor. I love this quote. This is about my favorite quote of Andrew Fuller concerning Jonathan Edwards. He gave this May 7, 1815, just ten days before he died. We have heard some who have been giving out of light that if Sutcliffe, now that's one of his band of brothers, if Sutcliffe and some others had preached more of Christ and less of Jonathan Edwards, they would have been more useful. If those who talked thus preached Christ half as much as Jonathan Edwards did and were half as useful as he was, their usefulness would be double what it is. It's kind of the way his mind worked. I think I agree with that. He was born 1754, four years before Edwards died and the same year that Freedom of the Wheel was published, Edwards philosophically most important book and the one that contained the key which the particular Baptist like Fuller read with Rallis, which set them free to be not hyper-Calvinists. The hyper-Calvinist reasoning went something like this, again the words of Andrew Fuller. It is absurd and cruel to require of any man what is beyond his power to perform. And as the scripture declares that, quote, "No man can come to Christ except the Father draw him," and that, quote, "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. It is concluded by the hyper-Calvinist that these are things to which the sinner, while unregenerate, is under no obligation. There's the key. Once you cannot, as an unregenerate man, do an act which only regenerate man can do, it would be cruel and false, contradictory to require it to say it is an obligation of the unregenerate man to do an act of regenerate man, believe. Andrew said it is a kind of maxim with such persons that none can be obliged to act spiritually but spiritual men. That's hyper-Calvinism in the sentence. None can be obliged to act spiritually but spiritual men. So you do not indiscriminately say to an audience that has unspiritual people in it, your duty is to believe. You never would say that. It's not their duty. They're not obliged to. The practical conclusion that they drew was that faith in Christ is not a duty for the non-elect, it's not a duty for the unregenerate, and therefore you never call for faith indiscriminately. You never stand before a group of people, whether in Britain or India, and say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." You never exhort, plead, call, command, urge. One of the hyper-Calvinists, namely John Martin, wrote, pastor of Grafton Street, Westminster, "Sitters, in my opinion," he said, "are more frequently converted and believers more commonly edified by a narrative of facts concerning Jesus Christ and by a clear, connected statement of the doctrines of grace and blessings of the gospel than by all the expectations and expostulations that were ever invented." The fact is, however, hyper-Calvinists were not passionately telling the gospel story. Even in indicative format, leave off all the imperatives. They weren't going to end you to tell the story. It had infected everything. Peter Morton points out, "The prevalence of high Calvinism had not only led to a refusal to offer Christ, but also to a general suspicion of all human means, such as ministerial training and associating." The trickle-down effect of this error was unpredictively vast. The effect of this rationalistic distortion of biblical Calvinism was that the churches were lifeless and the domination of the particular Baptist were dying. Now, Fuller, who only knew high Calvinism in his early ministry said in 1774, "I thirst not for some years, address an invitation to the unconverted to come to Jesus." And he went on to say, "I conceive there is scarcely a minister amongst us whose preaching has not been more or less influenced by the lethargic systems of the age." There's a great phrase, "the lethargic systems of the age." And the price had been huge. In 1718, the particular Baptist had 220 congregations, and 40 years later, they had 150. They were dying under this rationalistic abuse of biblical Calvinism. So if you ask, "Well, how did anybody ever get saved in that kind of thinking or ministry?" The answer was, it's very crucial, that God here and there would awaken a warrant of faith in your heart, warrant of faith. Now what was that? A warrant of faith could be various things. The illustration that Fuller gives from his own life was at age 13, a warrant of faith was talked about in terms of a text of Scripture being suddenly, strongly impressed upon your heart so that you felt something had happened to you. Then knowing that something had happened to you, you had a warrant to believe you might be regenerated and regenerate people can believe and therefore you now had a duty to believe. That's the way the sequence went. You waited until you saw warrants of faith spontaneously rising and when there was a warrant of faith, then faith would become a duty. And what he saw was that high Calvinism had shifted the meaning of faith from focusing on the objective person and promise of Christ onto the subjective state of our own hearts. This is deadly. In other words, saving faith became faith that I am experiencing or generating work. Faith that I am elect or as Fuller put it, the high Calvinist said that faith is to believe the goodness of their state. Faith was to believe the goodness of their state, which leads, of course, to the high Calvinist position. Here's the way he drew out the logic. If this be saving faith, to believe that I'm in a good state, if this be saving faith, it must inevitably follow that it is not the duty of the unconverted center, for they are not in a good state and nobody is obliged to believe a lie. But if it can be proved that the proper object of saving faith is not our being interested in Christ, having an interest in Christ, but the glorious gospel of the ever-blessed God, which is true, whether we believe it or not, a contrary inference must be drawn for it is admitted on all hands that it is the duty of every man to believe what God reveals. In fact, Fuller goes on to show, "Nothing can be the object of faith except what God has revealed in his word, but the interest that any individual has in Christ is not revealed. The scriptures always represent faith as terminating on something outside of us, namely on Christ and the truths concerning him. The person, blood, righteousness of Christ, revealed in the scriptures as the way of sinners, acceptance with God, are properly speaking the objects of our faith, for without such a revelation, it were impossible to believe in them. That for which we ought to have trusted in him," and this is crucial, as you men preach. That for which we ought to have trusted in him was the obtaining of mercy in case he applied for it. For this, there was complete warrant in the gospel declaration. In other words, we should not say to unbelievers, "Wait until you feel a warrant of faith so that you can trust in that." Rather, we should say this, "Christ is the glorious divine Son of God. His death and resurrection are sufficient to govern all your sins. He promises to receive everyone who comes to him and he promises to forgive all those who trust in him, therefore come to him, trust him, you will be saved if you wonder, if you are elect or if you are regenerate, cease wandering and do what Christ has commanded you to do. Receive him, trust in him, cast yourself upon him for his promised mercy and you will prove to be elect and to be regenerate. Fuller is a Calvinist. He says the Scriptures clearly ascribe both repentance and faith wherever they exist to a divine influence. He believes in irresistible grace, but what he's arguing against is that one has to know before he believes that grace is being exerted upon him. Here's a great quote on that, "Whatever necessity there may be for a change of heart in order for one to believe, it is neither necessary nor possible that the party should be conscious of it till he has believed. It is necessary that the eyes of the blind man should be opened before he can see, but it is neither necessary nor possible for him to know that his eyes are open till he does see." That's good, that's really good. Fuller said, "Fastly refuses to let ostensible Calvinistic or Armenian logic override the Bible." And isn't it ironic, I bet some of you have picked this up already, isn't it ironic that high Calvinism and Armenianism are here standing on exactly the same logic? And he saw this, he pointed it out. Both high Calvinism and Armenianism argue it is absurd and cruel to require of any man what is beyond his power to perform. And then he quotes, "They are agreed in making the grace of God necessary to the accountableness of sinners with regard to spiritual obedience. The one high Calvinists plead for graceless sinners being free from obligation. The other Armenians admit of the obligation but found it on the notion of universal grace. Both are agreed that where there is no grace there is no duty, but if grace be the ground of obligation it is no more grace but debt." Close quote, this is a very, very thoughtful, uneducated pastor. This is profound, I commend this man's wrestling's to you. The whole weight of this objection he says, the whole weight of this objection rests upon the supposition that we do not stand in need of the Holy Spirit to enable us to comply with our duty, in other words, high Calvinists and Armenians reject the all famous sentence of St. Augustine, "Graduate you wish and command what you will." Can I say that right, maybe I didn't, let me read it. Command what you wish and give what you command, that's Augustine. Fuller says, "To me it appears that the necessity of divine influence and even a change of heart prior to believing is perfectly consistent with its being the immediate duty of the unregenerate to believe." Now that's because he was so biblical, he would not let so-called logic drive him away from that. So here's what he writes, "The same things are required to show that God gives what he commands and he has a right to command what we ought to give even if we're unable to do it and then give it." Here's his defense, "The same things are required in one place in the Bible which are promised in another, "Only fear the Lord and serve him in truth with all your heart." I will put the fear in their hearts that they shall not turn from me. So in one place, the command to fear, in another place, I'll put the fear in. When the sacred writers speak of the divine precepts, they neither disown them nor infer from them self-sufficiency to conform to them, but turn them into prayer. Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently, O, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes." In fine, the scriptures uniformly teach us that all our sufficiency to do good or to abstain from evil is from above repentance and faith, therefore may be duties notwithstanding there being the gifts of God. Now, in his most famous book on this issue, "The Gospel Worthy of All Exceptation" Fuller piles text on text on text to show that it is the duty of unbelievers to believe the duty of the unregenerate to believe. These are his final court of appeal. However, it helps. Once you have made your commitment on the basis of Bible to fly in the face of high Calvinist so-called logic or Armenian so-called logic, it helps to have Jonathan Edwards come along and say it really is rational. And he found Edwards' distinction between natural inability and moral inability tremendously helpful. And I'll just mention how, and we'll move on to sandamaniism. Remember, the logic went like this, "It is absurd and cruel to require of any man what is beyond his power, his ability to perform." And in response to that, Fuller got his key insight from Edwards who distinguished natural inability, which is what? Natural inability is the owing, is owing to the lack of rational faculties, in other words, you're insane or you're an imbecile or you're a tiny baby, bodily powers like your hands are handcuffed behind your back with steel and you're commanded to play the piano or external advantages like you're on the other side of the globe and you've never heard of the gospel and you're supposed to believe the gospel. You won't be damned for not believing the gospel, you'll be damned for not believing what you see. That's the way. I saw it in text like Romans 2, 12, "For all who have sinned without the law, perished without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law." She's a principle there. So natural inability is lack of rational faculties, bodily powers, external advantages. No excuse. I mean, that creates an excuse not to do what you're commanded to do if those things are standing in the way. However, moral inability was different from that. Moral inability was owing entirely to your dis-inclination to do what you're commanded to do. If your will is so criminally adverse to the one telling you to do something, you can't do it. And that can't is as real as the, "I can't, my hands are tied behind my back," but they are morally different. And the moral inability does not remove obligation, but the natural inability removes obligation. He found this distinction very, very helpful. And so have I over the years. Here's what he wrote. There is an essential difference between inability, which is independent of the inclination and one that is owing to nothing else. It is just as impossible for any person to do that which he has no mind to do as to perform that which surpasses his natural powers. And hence, it is that the same terms are used in the one case than the other. He is used in both cases even though they're very different morally speaking. So the all-important conclusion from this exegetical, doctrinal, theological, controversial labor was enormously practical. Here's what he wrote, "I believe it is the duty of every minister of Christ plainly and faithfully to preach the gospel to all who will hear it. And as I believe, as I believe it, the inability of men to do spiritual things, to be wholly of a moral and therefore of a criminal kind and that it is their duty to love the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in Him for salvation, though they do not. I therefore believe free and solemn addresses, invitations, calls, warnings to them to be not only consistent but directly adapted as means in the hand of the Spirit of God to bring them to Christ. I consider it as part of my duty that I could not omit them without being guilty of the blood of their souls." So Fuller's engagement at the intellectual, rigorous level as a pastor and a family man might seem misplaced. Your wife says you have no time for recreation. The price was high in his church and in his family, but the fruit was incalculably great. No one else was on the horizon to do this among the particular Baptists. To defeat the church destroying evangelism, hindering, missions killing, doctrine, exegetical mumbo jumbo and ostensible logic of high Calvinism, Fuller did it and in doing it, in doing it, the platform that he set was the platform from which William Carey was launched. I'm personally not going to throw any stones at the man that I may owe my very life to. More briefly and finally, Sandomanianism, before we draw out a few practical applications for us, Fuller's response to this deadening movement called Sandomanianism of his day was part of the platform. In other words, not only do you need a worthy gospel, rightly understood and freely offered, but you need life, you need spiritual life, you need vital faith and high Calvinism was killing this and Sandomanianism was killing this, and that's where we turn now. We go in to see what the problem was. It all revolved around and is so unbelievably relevant today, can't believe it. It all revolved around the nature of justifying faith. I went to the Hidal blog of our Scott Park yesterday. Those of you who are aware, no, there's been a debate there between him and Doug Wilson. It's like the 18th century, it's just plucked right out of the 18th century. The issues are the same issues. The language is the same language. The federal vision and Westminster West, it's the same kind of issue. Now, neither of these guys is the Sandomanian as I understand them, but they're talking to each other about this issue, and therefore, history is relevant. Biography is relevant. I hope you don't have to meet the stresses of this day doctrinally without some roots. I really hope you don't, and if you're like Fuller and you've had no formal education, don't fret, just get educated, start reading, go deep. Robert Sandeman, born 1718, spread the teaching that justifying faith is the mind's passive persuasion that the gospel statements are true. The minds, not the hearts, passive, not active, persuasion, not conviction are true. The notion of the truth of gospel sentences is lodged, passive verb, is lodged in the mind, and you are justified. It's on his gravestone. The distinguishing mark of the system, Fuller said, was relating to the nature of justifying faith. This Mr. Sandeman constantly represents as the bare belief of the bare truth, by which definition he intends, as it would seem, to exclude from it everything pertaining to the will and the affections except as fruits from it. Everyone says he who obtains a just notion of the person in the work of Christ, or whose notion corresponds to what is testified of him, is justified, and finds peace with God simply by that notion, close quote, continuing Fuller's quote. This notion he considers as the effect of truth being impressed upon the mind, and denies that the mind is active in it, quote, this is not quote from Mr. Sandeman. He who maintains that we are justified only by faith and at the same time affirms that faith is a work exerted by the mind, undoubtedly maintains, if he has any meaning to his words, that we are justified by a work exerted by the human mind. In other words, Sandeman is burdened to protect justification by faith alone, and he believes that if faith is defined as a movement of the mind or the will or the heart, an act, a movement toward, it's a work. It has to be completely passive, involve no exercises of the will or the mind to protect the doctrine from being justification by works. Implicit then, just follow out his logic, implicit then is that faith is not virtuous. It does not partake of any goodness or newness of the soul, therefore, you see how the logic is working, oh, learn a lesson about logic here, it isn't logic, it's just the way humans think, therefore, in the chain of Sandamanian logic, therefore regeneration does not precede faith. The renewed heart does not precede and give rise to faith, else faith would be virtuous and we would be justified by virtue. So faith now is defined as being perfectly consistent with total enmity against God. That's where logic will take you, if you let it run wild without scripture governance. Now what was his key text? You know what his key text would be, if you just think about it for a moment, his key text is Romans 4-5 and it looks like it works. The one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, so he argues that this term, the justification of the ungodly means there can be no godliness, no virtue, no renewal, no activity, no quality about faith that has any goodness in it. Otherwise God is not justifying the ungodly, he's justifying the godly. So he has to define faith as passive persuasion of the truth in which the mind is not active. So faith can coexist with ungodliness and be a part of ungodliness. Now Andrew Fuller saw the effects of this. They took trips to Scotland and he and his friends, they'd look at each other and say that they would ask, "Do you have an appropriate place for the affections?" And the answer would come back, there's such big. John Gill said, got a quote here, John Gill was along with John Bryan, one of the two high Calvinists. You know that sentimentism is just a sub-group of high Calvinists. John Gill said, "Christian joy is to be experienced, not expressed." This is another practical outcropping of these things, that life becomes so intellectualized that the churches die, missions shrivels up, evangelism shrivels up, and the churches start falling away, all in the name of supposed doctrinal, logical faithfulness. So what is Fuller's response? This man loves missions. He is a post-millennial lover of the triumph of Jesus. I'm not, I'm just a lover of the triumph of Jesus. Very optimistic, pre-millennialist, who wants to be a part of what God's doing today around the world to reach the unreached peoples of the world. So he was a lover and he wanted to see Christ's message go and he saw sentimentism killing the faith and the life and he saw hyper-Calvinism killing the gospel and its offer and family man though he was, pastor though he was, he took up arms and destroyed these two. He did. They do not exist significantly after Andrew Fuller. He wiped them clean except little outcroppings here and there because he applied his exegetical rigor so faithfully. So what was his response? He compiles 100 pages of small print argument in 12 letters called strictures on sentimentianism. And he points out, for example, that faith is a kind of work. John 628, Jesus said, they said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent. He observes that it is the uniform witness of scripture that, quote, without repentance there is no forgiveness, no repentance, no forgiveness. If forgiveness and justification are all bound up and repentance must precede, then you've got to have a change before that happens. He also shows that the meaning of faith over and over again in the Bible is paralleled with things that involve the movement of the soul, the activity of the soul, virtuous things like receiving Christ and coming to Christ and so on. Hundreds of pages, 100 pages of remarkably dense argumentation from the Bible. He denies that faith is a mere passive persuasion of the mind, but asserts that it is the holy fruit of regenerations. If you wonder why holy faith is in the title of this talk, now you're there. Faith is holy, it's not ungodly, it's holy, it's a beautiful thing, it's a glorious thing, it's a right thing, it grows out of the new heart of regeneration and participates in the newness of regeneration. So how does he reconcile? What does he do with Romans 4, 5? And here's his answer. His term, ungodly in Romans 4, 5, I apprehend, is not designed in the passage under consideration to express the actual state of mind, which the party at the time possesses but the character under which God considers him in bestowing the blessing of justification upon him. Whatever be the present state of the sinner's mind, whether he be a haughty Pharisee or a humble publican, if he possesses nothing which can in any degree balance the curse which stands against him or at all operate as a ground of acceptance with God, he must be justified if at all as unworthy, ungodly and holy out of regard to the righteousness of the mediator. In other words, he uses an analogy of a magnet, this is so helpful to me. That's distinction on these next two minutes or at the center have been the most helpful thing on this issue that I read. How faith does and can have qualities about it which are good but our justification not rest in that goodness. Here's what he said, "Whatever holiness there is in faith, it is not this but the obedience of Christ that constitutes our justifying righteousness. Whatever other properties a magnet may possess, they may be gray, may be heavy. Whatever other properties a magnet may possess, it is as pointing invariably to the north that it guides the mariner. Whatever other properties faith may possess, it is as receiving Christ and bringing us into union with him that it justifies." That may be the most important thing I say today. He points out that faith is unique. This is so helpful. I hadn't seen this as clearly either. Faith is unique among all the graces in the renewed heart. He can listen to the Holy Spirit, love, joy, others. It's unique. It is a peculiarly receiving grace. Here's what he says. "Thus it is that justification is ascribed to faith because it is by faith that we receive Christ, and thus it is by faith only, not by any other grace. Faith is peculiarly a receiving grace, which none other is, were we said to be justified by repentance or by love or by any other grace. It would convey to us the idea of something good in us being the consideration on which the blessing was bestowed, but justification by faith conveys no such idea. On the contrary, it leads the mind directly to Christ in the same manner as saying of a person that he lives by begging leads to the idea of his being living on what he freely received." I'm putting a little parenthesis here, Spurgeon counsels against continually teaching your children first to love Jesus instead of trusting him. It's really common when you're talking to little children, love Jesus, love Jesus, love Jesus. He says, "It's going to go bad if you don't put trust Jesus in their vocabulary fundamentally and essentially." Trusting him is looking away from yourself to him. Loving constantly feels like I've got to do more here, whereas trust is all in the other directions. It's not an accident that the Bible chooses the term "faith" to make it that act of the soul by which we are justified, that whatever we possess, he says, we make nothing of it as the ground of acceptance, counting all things but loss and dung that we may win and be found in him. So faith is a duty, faith is an act of the soul, it is good, it's a good effect of regeneration and yet, he says, "It is not as such, it's not as its goodness, it's not as such, but as uniting to Christ and deriving righteousness from him that it justifies." So he concludes his book, "The Gospel of Worthy of All Acceptation" with a reference back to the New Testament preachers like this, "The ground on which they took their stand was cursed is everyone who continued not in all things written in the book of the law to do them." There's a good place to stand, brothers. Right there, cursed is everyone who does not obey the law perfectly, cursed is that one, now you've got to have a solution and it will not be in lawkeeping. Hence, he goes on, "Hence they inferred the impossibility of the sinner being justified in any other way than for the sake of him who was made a curse for them." And hence, it clearly follows that whatever holiness any sinner may possess before, in or after believing, it is of no account, whatever as a ground of acceptance with God. Which means that God justifies us under the consideration of our unworthiness, our ungodliness because of Christ, not under the consideration of our holiness, whatever it is, and whenever it is. In this way, Fuller is able to retain the crucial middle communion of faith as a holy acting of the soul, an outflowing of regeneration, and yet, say with Paul to the one who does not work, not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Some of the matter is that Fuller had one enemy, namely, global unbelief in Jesus Christ. India, unbelief was the issue, unbelief in China, unbelief in the New Hebrides, unbelief in Pakistan, this was the great enemy, and he saw that the victory was in the gospel, and in people so wrought upon with vital faith that they were willing to lay down their lives to take it everywhere, and therefore, there were obstacles to the victorious gospel. Canadianism stripping the soul of its life and vitality and joy and high Calvinism stripping the gospel of its universal applicability and its obligation to be spoken to all people. The Spirit in the bride says, "Come," and let the one who hears say, "Come," and let the one who starts to come, let the one who desires to take the water of life without price come. So what shall we learn in conclusion? Just a few closing applications. What shall we learn from this man and his ministry? We should learn the vital link between the doctrinal faithfulness of the church and the cause of world missions. The main impulse today is all in the other direction. Where you turn today is pressure not to dispute about doctrinal matters because you're gonna wreck missions if you do. How many times has it been said, "Would you stop raising those questions and be about mission?" At best is historically naive and at worst is a cloak for uninhibited error spreading. So I long for you and me in our day to stop wasting our lives and to give ourselves to global missions. In whatever way in your church you see it hindered. It won't be the same. You're not gonna go on a crusade against stand of manianism. What will you do though? What will you do to get out of the way the hindrances of your people to be engaged in missions? I don't care how far out of the boondocks in America you live and how far away from an ocean are people amazingly they have come home to us on the Internet in almost every other way. One crucial lesson we should learn from Andrew Fuller's life is that exegetical and doctrinal defense of justifying faith and gospel preaching did not hinder but advanced great missionary enterprises and the experience of the soul and the right thinking about the gospel unleashed a great world missionary movement. Here's another thing, beware of the deadly mistake of drawing wrong inferences from texts based on superficial claims of logic. If God justifies the ungodly then faith must be ungodly. If the natural man cannot receive the message of the cross don't urge him to receive it. It would be pointless and cruel. Real logic is not the enemy of exegesis but more errors than we know flow from the claim of logic to contradict the Bible. Here are a few. If God is love there cannot be predestination. If Stephen says Israel has resisted God then God cannot overcome the rebellion irresistibly. If men are accountable for their choices they must be ultimately self-determining. If God is good innocent people wouldn't suffer so much. If God rules all things including sin he must be a sinner. If God rules all things there's no point in praying. If God threatens a person with not entering the kingdom he can't have eternal security. If Christ died for all he cannot have purchased anything particular for the elect. And on and on and on false logic draws inferences that the Bible doesn't draw. I get so tired. Actually I don't hear it as much anymore so I'm not as tired as I used to be. I used to get so tired of people saying that Calvinism is logic-driven rather than exegetical. My whole life proves the opposite. I just can't believe when Armenians say that. I was saying excuse me now why is it that you believe you must have free will in order to be accountable? Why is that? Never do they quote you a verse. Zero. Never. If you believe there's a verse that teaches that you come tell me I'll never say this again. If there's one there. I mean you may tell me and there's not one there. Never ever ever does an Armenian say well the reason I believe that in order to be responsible you have to have free will is because it says so here the reason is logic. Armenianism is born of carnal logic it isn't true. And if we were more biblical, if we were saturated by the Bible, I read these things you know where I'm taken to task by people who are ready why not Calvinism all this stuff has to come on a verse on a verse give me a verse and says well he's love and so that can be true. Well how do you know how do you know what love and God does? The Bible has to tell you the way God's love works. There is I'm done I've got two paragraphs to go. There is a kind of inner logic to Fuller's life and battles and global fruitfulness and here it is inner logic to his life and effect. His engagement with Sandamanianism highlights the importance of vital authentic spiritual experience over against sterile intellectualistic faith. That's one piece. His engagement with hyper-Calvinism highlights the importance of objective gospel truth. That's another piece. So authentic biblical experience vitality and getting the gospel and its display right that's objective. So you know I got subjective objective authentic subjective experience of God plus authentic objective truth of God leads to authentic practical mission for God. That's my burden I don't really care too much at one level about the persuasion concerning these arguments. I care tremendously whether that happens for the sake of global missions. Only faith plus worthy gospel yields world vision. So my concluding exhortation brothers is this, devote yourselves to experiencing Christ in the gospel biblically and authentically. Don't settle for inferences. Know him. Don't let him go. Take hold of his robe in the text and don't let him go. Know him. Know him. Experience Christ. He's alive. His spirit has been sent. Know him. Secondly, devote yourself to understanding Christ, understanding Christ in the gospel biblically and authentically and then oh Christ, may you ignite this experience and this understanding both biblically both exegetically grounded may you grant that they come together in such a way that we not waste our lives but like Andrew Fuller engage in the cause of world evangelization for the glory of Jesus, let's pray. Father in heaven, I plead with you that you would take these words concerning your servant Andrew Fuller and shape us to be the kind of shepherds. He was so imperfect, imperfect dad, imperfect pastor, imperfect missions leader, imperfect writer and you used him and that's where we are. We feel inadequate as fathers and we feel adequate as husbands and we feel inadequate as pastors and we don't know much but oh God, if you would take the five loaves and two fish that we now put in your hand, what might you be pleased to do? Would you cause this conference to William Mackenzie's message and RC Sproul's message and to Beatty's message to come together with the kind of conflagration in our souls and our churches so that mission to the unreached peoples of the world would come to pass. We want to see your kingdom come, we want to see your name be hallowed, we want to see your will be done on earth the way it's done in heaven. So move us forward toward that end, I pray in Jesus' name, Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Andrew Fuller shows us that getting Christian experience biblically right and getting the gospel biblically right are essential for the power and perseverance and fruitfulness of world missions.