Most, if not all, Protestant countries are experiencing increasing ungodliness. This expresses itself in a secular outlook which is more and more pervasive. The Bible is increasingly treated as out of date, a book that is quite irrelevant in this scientific age. The question may be asked: Is there any hope that such a dire situation will be transformed? And the answer must be, Yes; for the God who made the world still reigns over everything in it, including the hearts of those who try to ignore Him so wilfully and yet rebel against Him so determinedly. Yes, is the answer of the Bible; its authority remains unchanged, in spite of the extent to which that authority is rejected today, even within the professing Church.
What then does this generation need? It needs God to work in mercy – in particular, to bring His Word to bear with power on the minds and hearts of sinners. And He is able to do so, on a great scale. Even when spiritual conditions were as dreadful as they were in Jeremiah’s time, he could remember the Lord’s power in creating the heaven and the earth and then state in prayer: “There is nothing too hard for Thee” (Jer 32:17).
The infinite power of God to draw sinners out of Satan’s kingdom into His own was clearly seen in Thessalonica. After Paul and Silas arrived there, Paul spent time in the Jewish synagogues on their next three Sabbaths, proving not only that Jesus was the Messiah, but also that He “must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead” (Acts 17:3). Obviously Paul was doing so on the basis of the Old Testament Scriptures.
In spite of the widespread opposition which resulted in Paul and Silas having to flee the city, “some of them believed” there. This could not have been the result of mere human power; if God’s power was not involved, they would all have gone on resisting the gospel. In any case, Paul disclaimed such power when he stated, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Cor 3:6). Yes, he preached the gospel and his fellow worker Apollos went on preaching after him, but there could be no spiritual effect unless the Holy Spirit applied to individual souls the truths that were proclaimed. Commenting on this verse, Charles Hodge draws this conclusion:
“Ministers are nothing. They are the instruments in the hands of God. He only is to be looked up to as the source of truth, of strength, or of success.”1
Writing later to the Thessalonians, Paul reminds them: “Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Th 1:9), and he must here be referring to Gentile converts rather than Jews, because the latter would not have been outward idolaters. We may also note that God is described as “living and true”; as A S Patterson, a minister in Glasgow in the nineteenth century, points out, “in contradistinction to the gods of the heathen, as lifeless images and false divinities”.2 And James Fergusson, a seventeenth-century minister of Kilwinning, in Ayrshire, remarks that “it will not prove a powerful and gracious work of the gospel upon a man’s heart that he forsake his idols, except he also turn to God, and bestow upon Him that inward respect, external worship, pains and diligence, which he did formerly give unto them; otherwise . . . he doth only change his service but not his master, he serveth Satan and some one or other of his own lusts still”.3
Paul had already emphasised the source of the power that resulted in such effects on the hearts and lives of believers in Thessalonica, both Jews and Gentiles: “Our gospel [that is, the gospel of Jesus Christ as preached by Paul and Silas] came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance” (1 Th 1:5). Of necessity, their preaching had to be expressed in human words but, in the absence of divine power, these words (as already noted) could make no saving impression on anyone in Thessalonica, or anywhere else; it was the power of the Holy Spirit applying these words to their minds and hearts that brought people there to believe the gospel and turn from their idols to the living and true God.
The “assurance” with which they received the gospel meant that “they cordially and confidently believed the words addressed to them – they received those words as ‘faithful saying[s], and worthy of all acceptation’ . . . That gospel is meant to smite and to soften the heart of adamant. It is meant to stamp on that broken and melted heart the very image of the Father and the Son. It is meant to exalt the faculties, to remove the corruptions, and to relieve the sorrows of the soul. In the genuine convert these glorious ends are gained – and how [this takes place] is intimated in this and a multitude of other texts. The Holy Spirit induces the sinner to receive the gospel in the exercise of faith.”4 This takes place only by divine power.
1Charles Hodge, 1 Corinthians, Banner of Truth 1964 reprint.
2A S Patterson, Commentaries on 1 Thessalonians, James and 1 John, Edinburgh, 1857, p 29.
3James Fergusson, the Epistles of Paul, Banner of Truth 1978 reprint, p 390, doctrine 6.
4Patterson, Commentaries, pp 20-21.
This work of the Spirit, let us remind ourselves, is indeed powerful, totally beyond what any human being can bring about, though God is very often pleased to use ministers, in particular, as instruments. As Paul reminded the believers in Corinth: “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor 1:21). As an instrument of saving sinners, human preaching would be altogether foolish if it was never accompanied by the irresistible power of the Holy Spirit. But it is God’s good pleasure to use the words spoken by sinful men, in preaching, to call sinners effectually into His kingdom. So Paul gave thanks unceasingly that sinners in Thessalonica “received the word of God”, which they heard from Paul and others, “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually” worked in those who believed in that city (1 Th 2:13).
This power is still exercised today, whenever the Lord, through the Spirit, calls a sinner effectually from the broad way that leads to destruction and makes that person willing and able to look to Christ and to walk on the narrow way to everlasting life. Yet how desirable that this power would be exercised on a far larger scale! How encouraging it is to read the accounts of powerful effects on multitudes of sinners, during times of revival. In the eighteenth century, there were remarkable instances of such powerful effects – notably, but by no means exclusively, in Kilsyth and Cambuslang.
An instance when it was specially obvious that the power to save was from God, not from man, occurred in the parish of Cadder, north of Glasgow, probably in 1742. James Warden had been inducted there in 1731 and he preached occasionally to the people of Auchinloch, a village at one extremity of the parish, but he became very discouraged because of how few people attended. On one occasion, when he had intimated that he intended to preach in the village, he added that “it was scarcely worthwhile to give such notice, as the people seemed to be unconcerned about the meeting, but that he would, God willing, give them another opportunity. He went with very low expectations; but, finding a large meeting, he [wished] that he had been more fully prepared, and had misgivings about the work. He took for his text: ‘Unto you, O men, I call; and My voice is to the sons of man’ (Prov 8:4). The audience was melted under the Word, and a good number dated their conversion from that sermon.”
But perhaps it was not when they first believed, for James Robe, then minister of Kilsyth, states that “about 14 were brought under great concern about their [spiritual] state”. Yet he later wrote that, “according to information which he had from Mr Warden, above a hundred had been awakened”.5 In whatever way these seemingly-contradictory figures might be reconciled if we knew all the facts, it was unlikely that Warden’s underprepared sermon would do much good, and the reason why much good was done lay in the fact that “the power of the Lord was present to heal” the people (Lk 5:17), or at least to begin a work of grace in their hearts.
5Quotations from D Macfarlan, The Revivals of the Eighteenth Century, Free Presbyterian Publications 1988 reprint, p 231. (Here the parish is named Calder.)
One might have thought that older, experienced ministers might be most used by the Most High in times of revival. Yet this is not necessarily so. Take, for instance, the preaching of William C Burns at a communion season in Kilsyth in 1839. Burns was then just 24 and later became a missionary to China. At one service Burns referred to a remarkable revival on the Monday of a much earlier communion season, at the Kirk of Shotts in 1630 under the preaching of young John Livingstone. Burns recorded, “Just when I was speaking of the occasion and the nature of this wonderful address”, by Livingstone, “I felt my own soul moved in a manner so remarkable that I was led, like Mr Livingstone, to plead with the unconverted before me instantly to close with God’s offers of mercy, and continued to do so until the power of the Lord’s Spirit became so mighty upon their souls as to carry all before it, like the rushing mighty wind of Pentecost!”6
We may note how careful Burns – who was also much used in Dundee during Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s absence – was to attribute the effects of his preaching to the Holy Spirit. And this is the power that is necessary today if people are to be brought to Christ in large numbers. Certainly other acts of God’s providence will be necessary if many are to be brought into contact with the truth and delivered from their present total carelessness about spiritual things, but the God who can bless the preaching of His Word can bless efforts made to bring sinners to hear that preaching.
Clearly we cannot too much emphasise the need for God’s powerful voice to sound in the hearts of sinners if they are to turn to Him one at a time or in multitudes. But God lays a particular duty on His people in connection with their hope for spiritual blessing, and that is to pray. Paul asked the Thessalonians: “Brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you” (2 Th 3:1). He had seen the effects of the gospel in that city, and he knew how necessary it was that they would plead for him and his preaching of the gospel in other places also. So today, in a generation when most people do what is right in their own eyes and despise the commands that God has revealed for their good, earnest prayer is required. We are to plead that the pure gospel would be proclaimed everywhere – not in word only, but also in the power of the Holy Spirit.
6Quoted in “William C Burns” by R Strang Miller, in Five Pioneer Missionaries, Banner of Truth, 1965, pp 105-6.