Welcome to the 2014 Shepherds
Conference, The Grand Itinerant, How the Preaching Ministry of
George Whitefield Sparked the Great Awakening. Steve Lawson.
Well, in this session we want to talk about George Whitefield,
the great itinerant. And George Whitefield is someone
that everyone in this room needs to know about. We all need an
IV hookup of George Whitefield. I believe that it can be argued
that George Whitefield was the greatest evangelist since the
Apostle Paul. And I say that on the basis of
the purity of his message and the breadth of the influence
and impact that came from this man. And yet strangely, Martin
Lloyd-Jones has said that George Whitefield is the most neglected
man in the whole of church history, close quote. So I would put it
this way, George Whitefield is the greatest story you've never
heard. This 2014 is the 300-year anniversary
of the birth of George Whitefield. He was an extraordinary man,
he was an extraordinary preacher, and he brought an extraordinary
message. If John Calvin was the greatest
theologian that God has ever given to the church, he If Jonathan
Edwards was the greatest philosopher God has ever given to the church,
if Charles Haddon Spurgeon was the greatest pastor, preacher,
evangelist that God has ever given to the church, then I think
it is indisputable that George Whitefield was the greatest itinerant
preacher that God has ever given to the church. This man was an
evangelistic force, the likes of which we may never see again. Whitefield reached both sides
of the Atlantic Ocean with the preaching of the gospel and he
went from London all the way up to Edinburgh and from Savannah
all the way up to Boston. In fact, his preaching went all
the way up to the state of Maine. There has never been an evangelistic
preacher like George Whitefield and he was the single instrument
whom God used so mightily, literally to take one side of the Atlantic
with one hand and the colonies with the other hand. and be the
chief instrument to bring about a great revival. In fact, the
revival was so great here in the 1740s that I believe it is
arguably the greatest movement of the Spirit of God on American
soil, and George Whitefield was the primary preacher whom God
used in those electrifying days. Whitefield's labors and his work,
he was unceasing. In his lifetime, he preached
some 18,000 sermons. And there were many sermons that
he preached after the sermon. If he would preach to 30,000
people, often there would be 2 or 3,000 people who would remain
and he would preach another sermon to them. The total of that was
approximately 30,000 sermons. in a little more than 30 years. You can do the math on that,
but that's two to three sermons a day for over three decades. There has never been such a tireless
preacher as George Whitefield. It is said that he preached face
to face to some ten million people. And here in the colonies, it
was estimated that some 80 percent of all of the colonists in the
1740s and 50s had seen George Whitefield face to face as he
was preaching. Far more people saw George Whitefield
than ever saw George Washington. He was the unifying force in
all of the colonies before our nation was birthed. When he came to Philadelphia,
Philadelphia was a city of 13,000 people. As he began to preach
there, he preached to 6,000 people in the mornings. He preached
to 8,000 people in the evenings. Almost the entire population
of Philadelphia turning out to hear his preaching. The crowds
continued to grow to 10,000 people and on the last message that
Whitefield gave on one of his visits to Philadelphia. He preached
to 25,000 people, that is double the population of the city of
Philadelphia at that time. Benjamin Franklin was the one
who was doing the math and scientifically documenting how many people were
listening to George Whitefield preach. When he went to New York
City, he preached to 8,000 people in a field. Fifteen thousand
people on a Sunday morning, and then that Sunday afternoon, he
preached to twenty thousand people. He went to Boston. There he preached
to the largest gathering that had ever come together in the
colonies. In one place, thirty thousand
people in Boston gathered at the Boston Commons to hear George
Whitefield preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. He crossed the
Atlantic Ocean thirteen times. Each trip took two to four months. He spent almost three years of
his life just on a ship crossing the Atlantic. He made 15 trips
to Scotland to preach, two trips to Ireland. He traveled twice
to Wales, to Gibraltar, to Bermuda, to Holland. The man really had
a world ministry at a time when virtually no one traveled out
of their own city. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said,
Often as I have read his life, I am conscious of distinct quickenings."
In other words, just to read the story of Whitefield, Spurgeon
said, it put life into my soul, just to read about Whitefield.
Spurgeon said, other men seem to be only half alive, but Whitefield
was all life, fire, wind, force. My model if I have such a thing
and do subordination to my Lord is George Whitefield. With unequaled
footsteps, I must follow His glorious track. Unquote. Spurgeon had only one mentor
in the ministry and that was George Whitefield. In fact, there
is one of Spurgeon's books on Whitefield's sermons and when
you open it up on the inside, Spurgeon in his own handwriting
wrote, C.H. Spurgeon, who admires Whitefield
as the chief of preachers. So Spurgeon, who is known as
the Prince of Preachers, called Whitefield the Chief of Preachers. J.C. Ryle, that great Englishman
from the nineteenth century, writes, I believe no English
preacher has ever possessed such a combination of excellent qualifications
as Whitefield. Whitefield, I repeat, stands
alone. Now what is interesting is, Ryle
was a contemporary of Spurgeon. And even as Ryle preached in
the day of Spurgeon, he nevertheless said, Whitfield stands alone
as the greatest preacher of the English language who has ever
lived. Robert Murray McShane, the favorite son of Scotland
who gave himself for the cause of the gospel, so zealous, he
burned out at age 29. McChain said, oh for one of Whitefield's
weeks in London. In other words, if I could just
live one week of Whitefield's life, I would be so fulfilled. Martin Lloyd-Jones, that great
preacher from Westminster chapels, stood in awe and spoke in awe
of Whitefield. Lord Jones said, George Whitefield
is beyond question the greatest English preacher of all time. This man was simply a phenomenon. Lord Jones went on to say, other
men merely existed. Whitefield lived. Edwin Dargan,
historian of preachers has said, the history of preaching since
the Apostles And that covers a pretty long period of time.
The history of preaching since the Apostles does not contain
a worthier name than George Whitefield. Let me just give us a brief overview
of his life. I would love to spend my time
here today. giving you a more detailed summary
of Whitefield's life. I just preached in my church
on a Wednesday night two weeks ago and I just took one year
out of the life of George Whitefield and just said, let's get on a
horse with Whitefield and just travel with Whitefield for just
one year and try to keep pace with this grand evangelist. But let me just give a quick
overview of his life. He was born in 1714 in Gloucester,
England. He attended Oxford where he joined
the Holy Club which was a small group Bible study. John Wesley
was a member. Charles Wesley was a member.
There were about eight or nine of them and they met for regular
prayer and Bible study and fasting and to do service in the name
of the Lord. No one in this group was converted.
Whitefield was lost, both the Wesleys were lost, and Charles
Wesley, the great hymn writer, handed Whitefield a book by Henry
Scroogle, a Scottish preacher, entitled The Life of God and
the Soul of a Man. It was a book on regeneration. It was a book on the new birth.
And Whitefield saw what he had never seen before, that salvation
is not by his own efforts to pull himself up to find acceptance
with God. Salvation is what God does in
the soul of a man. And he read, except you be born
again, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. And Whitefield
sought the Lord and God birthed him into the kingdom at age 21. Whitefield, after that, graduated
from Oxford. A few doors began to open for
him to preach And from the very first sermon he ever preached
at age 21, over the next two years, it was the most extraordinary
thing as Whitefield came out of nowhere and within two years,
by the time he was 23 years old, his preaching had electrified
England. He was a man on the move for
God. He received a letter from the Wesleys who were in Georgia
on a missions trip, inviting him to come. The Wesleys are
still unconverted. They're still lost on the mission
field. Whitefield comes to the states,
comes to the colonies, he sees the needs, he decides in his
heart that he will plant an orphanage and he will spend the rest of
his life basically raising money to pay for the orphanage. Whitefield
gets on a ship, goes back to England to raise the money for
the orphanage. And as he comes back, he discovers
the Wesley's are converted and they begin preaching, you must
be born again. Except a man be born again, he
shall not see the kingdom of heaven. Whitefield began to say
that even the clergy in the churches of England need to be born again.
And he called the pastors into account as he saw dead religion
in England. And suddenly, church doors began
to close to Whitefield. There were no invitations anymore
to preach in the churches. And Whitefield made one of the
most daring decisions. In some ways, evangelicalism
pivoted with this decision that he would go into the open fields
of England and begin to preach the gospel under the open sky. He began outside of Bristol where
George Mueller would later reside. And from the very beginning of
his open field preaching, the hand of God was upon him. And
as he preached the Word of God, people began to be converted.
They came under deep conviction of their sin. He preached the
cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and he called sinners to faith
in Jesus Christ and there began to be a great movement of God's
Spirit there in England. In 1739, in one summer in London,
one summer in London, it is estimated. that he preached to one million
people in all of the different venues in which he preached at. The people would gather in large
parks. The upper crust would go into
their clubs and their nice places of recreation. And the common
people and the riffraff of the English society had no place
to go but to these common areas that were like parks and there
would be thousands of them that would converge and gather on
holidays and on weekends. Whitefield made the decision
that he would go into these commons and that he would begin preaching
the gospel. And his friends told him, you'll
never come out alive because there were the riffraff of society,
the hooligans. It was like a state fair. There were bear wrestlers, there
were cockfights, there were all kinds of carnival games and all
kinds of mischief. And Whitefield said, no, I must
go in. And it was so crowded, he couldn't even walk in and
they would pass him overhead like a wave at a football game. And they would pass Whitefield
in and he would stand on a rock wall and he would stand up before
the thousands, as many as 80,000 people. Whitefield would stand
up on a rock wall and say, I've come here today to talk to you
about your soul. And he would preach the gospel
of Jesus Christ. And there was an extraordinary
response. No one has ever done this before. This was before football stadiums.
This was before one of these electrical microphones that sometimes
work. And Whitefield was blessed by
God with a voice that would project. And so, after the summer of 1739,
at the height of his popularity at age 23 and 24, Whitefield
gets on a ship and leaves England riding this tidal wave of popularity
and decides he'll come to the colonies and he will go to the
major cities of the colonies and he will do the very same
thing. And so Whitefield comes to the
colonies, his preaching tour of 1740 is to be regarded as
the greatest preaching tour of any preacher since the missionary
journeys of the Apostle Paul. And I don't think that can be
disputed. Whitefield preached in Philadelphia, in Boston, in
New York. He went up and down the eastern
sea coast multiple times and God began to stir the hearts
of the settlers here in America and it was an extraordinary thing. I wish I had the time just to
speak on the Great Awakening. And what God did through His
preaching, as Jonathan Edwards was in one place, Northampton,
but it was Whitefield who was going up and down the colonies
and spreading what God was doing. As a result of that, one-tenth
of the population of the colonies, it is estimated, were converted. Almost 50,000 people were saved. Three hundred plus new churches
were planted. as the preaching of Whitefield
shook the colonies and took the colonies by storm. He would make
multiple trips across the Atlantic. I told you a total of 13 trips.
His final trip back to the states was in 1769. He would die in
1740. He is buried in Newburyport,
Massachusetts. He was such a preacher, he said,
I want to die while I'm preaching in the pulpit. And I want you
to bury me under that pulpit. And today, George Whitefield
is buried under the pulpit in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I've
stood in that pulpit and preached and lectured. When he died, there
were so many people in ships trying to get to his funeral,
there was no room for any more ships into the port at Newburyport. There were services held on both
sides of the Atlantic. John Wesley preached his memorial
service in England. And John Wesley said, there has
never been a greater preacher of the gospel since the Apostles
than George Whitefield. John Newton who wrote Amazing
Grace was a contemporary and he was asked, who is the greatest
preacher you have ever heard? And without a moment's delay,
he said, that's easy, it is George Whitefield. If you were to ask
me the second greatest preacher I've ever heard, that would be
a hard question to answer. But George Whitefield is the
greatest preacher I have ever heard. So what was it about George
Whitefield that caused him to be such an effective instrument
in the hand of God? In the time that remains, I want
to set before you seven qualities about George Whitefield. And
I pray that for every man here today, these seven qualities
will be written upon your heart, will be etched into your soul.
These need to be true of every one of us here today. And I have
written a book on George Whitefield that is available at this conference.
You can buy the book and you can read about the biography
and you can read about different aspects of his life. But right
now, I just want to boil it down to the bottom line. Now, seven
qualities about George Whitefield, why God so greatly used this
man according to God's sovereign purposes and pleasures. Number
one, and this has to be number one, Whitefield had an uncommon
piety. And by piety, I mean he was a
man who was...who had a heart that was on fire for God. There
was a depth about his devotion for the Lord Jesus Christ. His godliness exceeded his giftedness
and his giftedness was unequaled. Just to read the journals and
the letters of Whitefield is like reading devotional classics. As soon as he was converted,
he immediately began to read the Word of God and pour over
the Word of God. And Arnold Dallimore who has
written a two-volume biography on Whitefield says, we can visualize
Whitefield at five in the morning in his room over Harris' bookstore. He is on his knees. And by the
way, Whitefield studied the Bible on his knees. He is on His knees
with His Bible, His Greek New Testament and a volume of Matthew
Henry spread before Him. With intense concentration, He
pours over a portion in English, studies its words and tenses
in the Greek and then considers Matthew Henry's exposition of
the whole. He would pray over every line
and every word of the Scripture and feast His mind upon the Word
of God. Whitefield said, I began to read
the Holy Scriptures on my knees. This proved meat indeed and drink
indeed to my soul. I daily received fresh light
and power from above. He was rooted and grounded in
the Word of God. Along with that, he was a man
of prayer. The Bible is God speaking to
us. Prayer is when we speak to God. It's a two-way communication. And Whitefield was a man of great
prayer and he said, we can preach the gospel of Christ no further
than we have experienced the power of it in our own hearts.
He said, be much in secret prayer, converse less with men and talk
more with God. That would be a good admonition
for every one of us here today. to talk more to God and less
to men and yet Whitefield was the greatest evangelist who spoke
to more men about the gospel than virtually anyone who has
lived. He said, once we spent a whole night in prayer and many
a time at midnight and one in the morning after I have been
wearied, almost to death in preaching. God imparted new life to my soul
and enabled me to intercede with Him for an hour and half an hour
and two hours into the night. How many times I've gone back
to my hotel room after preaching in the morning and preaching
in the evening and go back and just want to collapse. But for
Whitefield, as he was tired and would go back to where he was
staying, it would be time for him to launch into seasons of
prayer that God would energize his soul. Whitefield said, live
near to Christ. Hunger and thirst daily after
the righteousness of Christ. Lloyd-Jones said of Whitefield,
no man ever knew more of the love of Christ than this man.
Lloyd-Jones was not a man just to toss out bouquets of praise
without careful thought. That very sharp-minded Lloyd-Jones,
the doctor, and yet he said, in all of church history, I do
not believe anyone has ever known more the love of Christ than
George Whitefield. That's where it started for Whitefield
and this is where it must start for every one of us. It begins
with our personal walk with the Lord and the depth of our soul
with God and the purity of our own lives and what we are when
we're alone with God in prayer, that's where it began with Whitefield
and that is where it must begin with us. Second, not only this
uncommon piety, but second, he had an uncompromising gospel. J.C. Ryle said of his preaching. Few men have ever given their
hearers so much wheat and so little chaff. He did not get
up to talk about His party, or His cause, or His interests,
or His office. He was perpetually telling you
about your sins, and your heart, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and
your need of repentance, and your need of faith and holiness.
He was often saying, oh, the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He said, I must be excused if
I mention it so many times in my sermon. And as he preached
the gospel, there were the three R's of that Methodist movement.
ruined by sin, redeemed by the Savior, regenerated by the Spirit. Those three points, Whitefield
drove home again and again and again. First of all, ruined by
sin. Any evangelist knows and every
Christian worker knows no one can be saved until they're lost.
And they must know that they're lost. And there is no good news
until we preach the bad news. It is the bad news that makes
the good news great news. And Whitefield was preaching
that the whole human race is ruined by sin. Whitefield said,
we are all chargeable with original sin and the sin of our first
parents. Whitefield was strong on preaching
the fall of the human race in Adam and that when Adam sinned,
we all sinned and we entered this human race already separated
from God before we even came out of our mother's womb. Whitefield
proclaimed, you are lost, undone without Christ and if He is not
glorified in your salvation, He will be glorified in your
damnation. If He does not come and make
His abode in your hearts, you must take up an eternal bode
with the devil and his angels. Whitefield said, unless you receive
the Spirit of Christ, you are reprobates and you cannot be
saved. He was strong on sin. He did
not sugarcoat His message. He said, for how do you know,
O man, but the next step that you take will be into hell? Death
may seize you. Judgment will find you. And the
great gulf will be fixed between you and the endless glory forever
and ever. Oh, think of these things, all
yet who are unwilling to walk with God. But after he would
preach ruined by sin, he would make his way to the cross and
he would begin to magnify and lift high the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ and especially his sin-bearing substitutionary death
upon Calvary's cross. He said, I never preach better
than when I stand at the foot of the cross. Listen to one excerpt
from Whitefield's preaching as he would preach the cross of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Our mountains of sin must all
fall on this great Zerubbabel. On Him God the Father has laid
the iniquities of all that shall believe on Him. And in His body
He bore their sin on that tree. There, there by faith, O mourners
in Zion. May you see your Savior hanging
with arms stretched out and hear Him as it were speaking to your
souls. Behold how I have loved you.
Behold my hands and my feet. Look into my wounded side and
see a heart flaming with love. Come into my arms, O sinners,
the Lord is crying out to you. Come wash your souls in my heart's
blood. See, there is a fountain opened
up for all sin and uncleanness. See, O guilty souls, how the
wrath of God is now abiding on you. Come, haste away and hide
yourselves in the cleft of His wounds. For I am wounded for
your transgressions. I am dying that you may live
forever. As Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, so I here am lifted up upon this tree.
See how I've become a curse for you. The chastisement of your
peace is upon Me. I am scourged and wounded and
crucified that you by My stripes may be healed." Oh, look unto
Me, all you trembling sinners to the ends of the earth. Look
unto Me and be saved. He was a powerful evangelist
who lifted high the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as
he did, he bid people to come this moment by faith and to believe
in Christ. He went on to preach the new
birth and this was one of the distinguishing qualities of the
Great Awakening that went beyond even the Reformation. The Reformation
was anchored in justification by faith. But Whitefield went
yet further and said, where did that faith come from? It is the
result of the new birth. And you must be born again from
above. Whitefield said, the doctrine
of regeneration is the very hinge on which the salvation of us
turns. A woman once came to him after
hearing him preach incessantly the new birth, you must be born
again." And she said, Mr. Whitefield, why do you keep saying
to us, you must be born again? And he said, dear woman, because
you must be born again. In a letter to Benjamin Franklin
dated August 17, 1752, Whitefield wrote this to Benjamin Franklin. as you have made a pretty considerable
progress in the mysteries of electricity. I would now humbly
recommend to your diligent, unprejudiced pursuit the study of the mystery
of the new birth." And he was always pressing his hearers to
the new birth. Arnold Dallimore said, throughout
these sermons there runs one great scriptural truth, the truth
indicated by Whitefield when he summarized his early ministry,
in effect saying, the doctrine of the new birth made its way
like lightning into the hearer's consciences. That is what he
was preaching again and again. And it was said, if you stopped
the average man on the streets of London and asked him, what
is the message of George Whitefield, the answer would have been unanimous. He says, you must be born again. That is his uncompromising gospel. He preached the pure blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. the sin-bearing, substitutionary,
vicarious death of Christ and the absolute necessity of the
sovereign movement of the Holy Spirit to birth sinners into
the kingdom of heaven. And number three, he preached
with an unquenchable passion. He was on fire. It was a day
in which preaching had degenerated into a dry ritual of the preacher
just reading his sermon notes with a monotone voice. The Anglican ministers of the
day were dignified and controlled and even stuffy in their preaching.
They were stoic. They were cold. And Whitefield
burst onto the scene preaching. Whitefield came exhorting and
pleading and wooing and calling and begging and weeping and inviting
and summoning people to respond to the gospel of Christ. Whitfield
stood out in his day as one, not merely one mind reaching
another mind, but his heart making a claim on your heart and challenging
your will to believe on Christ. He literally bled the truth. When he came to Northampton and
preached in Jonathan Edwards' church, he preached four times
over the weekend. And Jonathan Edwards sat on the
front pew and as Whitefield preached, Edwards just wept like a baby
on the front row under the power of the preaching of George Whitefield. Those who heard Whitefield preach
said, I could hardly bear such unreserved use of tears and the
scope he gave to his feelings, for sometimes he wept and stamped
loudly and passionately and was frequently overcome that we would
suspect he would never recover. John Wesley said, the fervency
of his zeal, unequal since the days of the apostles. John Carrick
has written a book, The Imperative of Preaching, and in it he says,
as Whitefield preached, his whole person became alive in a powerful
movement of body, the expression of his countenance and the modulation
of his voice. J.I. Packer added that Whitefield
preached with arms lifted and foot-stomping passion with an
overflow of compassionate affection. In that day, Anglican preaching
was the bland leading the bland. And we have a lot of that today
as well, and how we need men in the pulpit to be on fire for
God, to preach the Word of God. And Whitefield is an example
to us of what it looks like for a man to be consumed with his
calling. Amos Billings Lee, a biographer
said, Whitfield was a flame on fire. Lloyd-Jones said, the thing
that characterized the preaching of Whitfield was the zeal, the
fire, the passion, the flame. He was a most convicting and
alarming preacher. J.C. Ryle noted the sermon had
been entombed as a religious art form and Whitfield rescued
preaching. He made it what it ought to have
been all along, a desperate plea to a perishing people, a confrontation
with the Word of the living God. And all of this arising out of
His deep convictions. I've spoken with Dr. MacArthur
before. What is it that creates convictions? Or what is it that
creates passion in the preacher? It's not trumped up. It is the
depth of one's convictions in the Word of God that releases
the energy of passion. Listen to Whitefield, if I had
come to speak to you in my own name, you might rest your elbows
upon your knees and your heads on your hands and sleep and once
in a while look up and say, why does this babbler talk on? But
I have not come to you in My name, no, I have come to you
in the name of the Lord God Almighty." And then he would bring his hand
down and people's heads would snap up, just like yours just
did. And then Whitefield would say,
I have waked you up, have I? I meant to do it. I have not
come here to preach to stocks and stones. I have come to you
in the name of the Lord God of hosts and I must and I will have
an audience." David Hume, the great agnostic, went to hear
Whitefield preach once in Edinburgh and someone stopped Hume and
said, I didn't think you believed the Bible. Hume said, I don't
but Whitefield does. When you're on fire, men will
come to watch you burn. Even moths are drawn to the flame. Now there's a fourth aspect that
I want you to know about Whitefield. He had an unrivaled theology. And by that I mean he was thoroughly
Reformed and he was staunchly Calvinistic. He had a towering
view of the supreme authority of God. He believed in the great
doctrines of election and predestination. And yet, as we will see in a
moment, he was a fiery evangelist. And it is the Calvinistic evangelist
who alone plays with a full deck. He has every truth at his disposal. And Jack Packer said, Whitfield
possessed a classic Augustinian frame of sovereign grace. Lee Gattis, a compiler of his
sermons said, Whitfield was a firm believer in the Reformed doctrine
of salvation. Mark Knoll concurs, Whitfield
preached on the bound will, the electing power of God, definite
atonement, all themes of traditional Calvinism. Whitefield said, I
embrace the Calvinistic scheme not because of Calvin but Jesus
Christ taught it to me. In an early letter to John Wesley,
Whitefield wrote, I never read anything Calvin wrote. My doctrines
I have from Christ and His apostles. I have been taught them of God.
He said, nothing but the doctrines of the Reformation can set my
soul on fire. He believed in total depravity.
He said, man is nothing and he has a free will to go to hell
but none to heaven. He would say to his listeners,
you are in a state of damnation. I tell you, oh man, I tell you,
oh woman, you are a dead man. You are a dead woman. No, you
are a damned man and a damned woman without a new heart. He
preached unconditional election. He said, we are gods by eternal
decree and eternal election. They are given by the sheep which
Thou hast given Me, they are given by God the Father to Jesus
Christ from all eternity. He preached the definite atonement.
He believed that, well, in His own words, Christ purchased those
whom He calls His own. He identified them with His own
blood. He redeemed them with His own
blood so that they are not only His by eternal election, but
also His by actual redemption. He preached the effectual call
of God. He said, oh, that He may call
you by His Spirit and make you a willing people in the day of
His power. For I know my calling will not
do unless God by His effectual grace compel you to come in. He believed in preserving grace,
the preservation of the saints. He says some talk of being justified
at the day of judgment. That is nonsense. If we are not
justified here, we shall not be justified there. He preached
the supreme authority of God in salvation, that He will have
mercy upon whom He will have mercy, He will harden whom He
will harden. He believed God was the potter
and the human race is the clay, and that He has made some for
eternal destruction and He has made some for eternal salvation. Number five, he possessed an
unrelenting evangelism. And here is where these two great
truths come hand in hand, a transcendent theology and an evangelistic
passion. This is why Spurgeon modeled
his ministry after Whitefield. Whitefield was a harvester of
souls. He was a fisher of men and he
was constantly getting in the ship and going out into the open
sea and casting his net that he might catch sinners. He said,
the whole world is now my parish. Wherever my master calls me,
I'm ready to go and preach the everlasting gospel. He said,
O Lord, give me souls or take my soul. He was so evangelistic. J.C. Ryle said, the modern revivalist
may be surprised to hear that Whitfield called no one to the
altar, did nothing to encourage emotional excitement, and preached
that true revival could be measured only by whether people grew increasingly
into the likeness of Jesus. Listen to him plead this excerpt
out of his sermon, and if you want to read just one sermon
by Whitefield, read the conversion of Zacchaeus. After I read the
conversion of Zacchaeus, I thought, I've never preached a day in
my life. This is what preaching looks like, feels like, tastes
like. In this sermon he said, I offer
you salvation this day, and here the free offer of the gospel
to everyone. I offer you salvation this day. The door of mercy is not yet
shut. There does yet remain a sacrifice
for sin for all who will accept the Lord Jesus Christ. He will
embrace you in the arms of His love. Oh, turn to Him. Turn in
a sense of your unworthiness. Tell Him how polluted you are,
how vile you are, how faithless you are. Just believe in Him. Oh, I fear you that the Lord
Jesus will not accept you. Your sins will be no hindrance,
your unworthiness no hindrance. He is pleased to see you come
and lie at His feet, pleading His promises. He will not send
you away. No, He will receive you and bless
you. Oh, do not put a slide on infinite
love. He only wants you to believe
on Him that you might be saved. This, this is all the dear Savior
desires. that you may leave your sins
to sit down eternally with Him at the married supper of the
Lamb. Let me beseech you to come to Jesus Christ. I invite you
all to come to Christ and receive Him as your Lord and Savior.
He is ready to receive you now. I invite you to come to Him that
you might find rest for your souls. He will rejoice over you
when you come. He will be glad. He calls you
by His ministers as they preach. Oh, come to Him. He is laboring
to bring you back from sin and from Satan unto Himself. Open the doors of your heart
and let the King of glory come in. My heart is full, it is quite
full, but I must speak or I shall burst. What do you think? Your soul is of no value? Do
you esteem them as not worth saving? Are your pleasures worth
more than your soul? Had you rather regard the diversions
of this life as more important than the salvation of your soul?
If so, you will never be partakers with Him in His glory. But if
you come unto Him, He will supply you with His grace and bring
you to glory hereafter. And there you may sing praises
and hallelujahs to the Lamb forever. Oh, may this be the happy end
of all who hear me this day. His heart was larger than the
colonies. He was on fire with the truth
of the gospel. And he was begging and pleading
with sinners to come to Christ. I fear we're too proud to beg
anymore. How we must be like Whitefield
and be like our Lord Jesus Christ who says, come unto me, all you
who are weary and heavy laden. If any man thirst, let him come
unto me and drink. Lloyd-Jones said, let us, I hope,
once and forever put an end to the lie which says that Calvinism
and an interest in evangelism are not compatible. Lloyd-Jones
said, Spurgeon, the greatest evangelist of the last century
confesses that he had modeled himself on George Whitefield
and he too believed in the sovereignty of God. Number six. He had an unquenchable
drive. George Whitefield was truly a
man possessed with an indomitable spirit. It was difficult to find
any figure in church history, regardless of the century, who
was so thoroughly spent in preaching. As Whitefield, he threw himself
into his work. If denied access to a church
pulpit, he would preach in the open field. If persecuted by
an angry mob, he would withstand all the threats and continue
to preach. He would crisscross one continent and get on a ship
and sail to the next continent. Whitefield said, I am never better
than when I am on the full stretch for God. In other words, I am
at my best for God when I'm on the full sprint. Whitefield said,
I am continually hurried and scarce have time to eat bread.
He said, fear not your weak soul, your weak body. We are immortal
until our work is done. Christ's laborers must live by
miracle. If not, I must not live at all."
He says, oh my, continual vomitings, and there is only one cure, and
that is the pulpit. The pulpit was killing him, but
the pulpit was reviving him as well. Whitefield said, the more
we do, the more we may do. Every act strengthens the habit. The best preparation for preaching
on Sunday is to preach every day of the week. He said, I am
honored by having stones, dirt, rotten eggs, pieces of dead cats
thrown at me. I wish I had time to go into
all of the barrage of opposition that lined up against Whitefield
as he would preach in the open field. People would literally
throw dead animals at him. They would hire trumpeters to
try to drown him out. They would take animal blood
and try to sling it on him while he was preaching. There were
numerous assassination attempts. But the man would not stop preaching
the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I would rather wear
out than rust out. He said, I preach as a dying
man to dying men. May I die preaching. Ryle said
of him, he was a man of imminent self-denial. His style of living
was simple. A remarkable moderation in eating
and drinking, an early riser, getting up at four o'clock in
the morning, retiring by ten o'clock. Arnold Dallimore in
his two-volume biography of Whitefield says, it's hard to even go from
year to year to year in writing his biography because every year
is the same. He's just constantly on the go
for God. storming the gates of hell, preaching
the gospel of Jesus Christ. Before he preached his last sermon,
Whitefield said, Lord Jesus, I am weary in Your work, but
I am not weary of Your work. And if I have not yet finished
my course, let me go and preach for You one more time in the
fields and then call me home. He was a driven indefatigable
man who gave himself perhaps as no one in church history to
preach the gospel. Finally, he had an unleashed
power. How can anyone live like this?
How can anyone preach like this? How can anyone push himself on
horseback, on ships with the threat of Indian raids? with
assassination attempts, sleeping in unknown places along the way,
riding by horseback through the night, sleeping in people's kitchens,
being pushed overhead into large crowds, preaching to multiple
thousands of people, draining every ounce of energy out of
him. There is only one way. And that
is with the unleashed power of the Holy Spirit of God within
George Whitefield. The ability lay not in Whitefield,
but in the God of Whitefield, who endued him with supernatural
power. Dallimore writes, Whitefield's
effectiveness lay not in his eloquence or zeal. In raising
up Whitefield, God granted him and his ministry a mighty infusion
of the Holy Spirit and it was the divine power which was the
secret of his success. Lloyd-Jones commenting on Whitefield
said, there is a tremendous difference between merely uttering truths
and preaching. You may have an orthodox message
but it does not follow that you are preaching. Orthodoxy is not
enough. There were other orthodox men
in Whitefield's time and they were comparatively useless. You
can have a dead orthodoxy. Lloyd-Jones went on to explain
that it was the power of God upon the life of Whitefield that
continued to drive him forward. An interesting story, Samuel
Davies who followed Jonathan Edwards as president of Princeton
after Edwards died, sought to raise money for the College of
New Jersey before it became Princeton. He got on a ship and sailed to
England to raise money for the college that would become Princeton.
He suffered many storms on the Atlantic Sea and almost went
down. When he finally arrived in England,
the first question was, is Mr. Whitefield in town? To his delight,
he was told Whitefield would be preaching the next morning
in Moorfields. And by the way, the businessmen
gathered their money and built three different churches for
Whitefield so that whenever he was in town in London, or elsewhere,
there would be a pulpit for Whitefield to preach in as he would winter
in London. So, it was said to Samuel Davies,
yes, Whitefield, it will be preaching the next morning in Moorfields.
Davies writes of the account of hearing Whitefield. It became
clear to me quite soon in the service, after listening to Whitefield
preach, that he must have had an exceptionally busy week. Obviously
he must not have had time to prepare his sermon properly.
From the standpoint of construction and ordering of thought, it was
very deficient and defective. It was a poor sermon, but the
unction that attended it was such that I would gladly risk
the rigors of shipwreck in the Atlantic many times over in order
just to come under its gracious influence." It was the hand of God upon Whitefield
and the power of the Holy Spirit that so energized and enabled
and empowered Whitefield that he became, I believe, the strongest
and the greatest evangelist who ever lived. I conclude with this. In Arnold Dallimore's biography
of Whitefield, he makes a passionate plea to the reader. It is a passionate
plea that I make to you as we bring this to conclusion. Dallimore,
as he thinks of Whitefield, Says, this book is written in the desire
perhaps in a measure of inner certainty that we shall see the
great head of the church once more bring into being his special
instruments of revival. That he will again raise up unto
himself certain young men whom he will use in his glorious employ. And what manner of men will they
be? Men mighty in the scriptures
like Whitefield. their lives dominated by a sense
of the greatness and the majesty and the holiness of God. And
their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the
doctrines of sovereign grace. They will be men who have learned
what it is to die to self. to human aims and personal ambitions,
men who are willing to be fools for Christ's sake, who will bear
reproach and falsehood, men who will labor and suffer, men whose
supreme desire will be not to earn earth's accolades but to
win the master's approbation when they appear before His awesome
judgment seat. They will be men who will preach
with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes. and upon whose ministries
God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, this book goes forth with the earnest prayer that
admits the rampant iniquity and glaring apostasy of the century. God will use it towards the raising
up of such men and toward the granting of a mighty revival.
Such was witnessed over 200 years ago. May God raise up men out
of this room. May God raise up men who will
preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, whose lives
are dominated by the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Men who
have a fire in their bones. Men who believe in the book and
the blood. Men who will herald the message
of Jesus Christ far and wide. And men who would be willing
to go anywhere, anytime, pay any price. in order to reach
the lost with the gospel of Jesus Christ. May God give us George
Whitefields again in this generation. God bless you. You're dismissed.