February 7, 2009

• Why do biography? To see Whitefield, Piper & the rest of us are bad & only One is good

  In his biographical message on George Whitefield, "I Will Not Be a Velvet-Mouthed Preacher," John Piper describes Whitefield as "a contradictory figure." (Aren't we all?)

  

  While Whitefield advocated for the legalization of slavery and later was a slave owner, he was also an outspoken supporter of the education and evangelization of slaves and he fervently engaged in evangelizing the slave population, which put him at odds with many fellow slave owners. You can find more details about all this in Piper's message.

  Here are some excerpts from the audio of Piper's message.

  From Georgia to North Carolina to Philadelphia, Whitefield sowed the seeds of equality through heartfelt evangelism and advocacy for education and fundraising—blind as he was to the contradiction of buying and selling slaves.
  
  Let me close one of his [Whitefield's] sermons [“The Lord Our Righteousness”] the way he did.
  
  

  Here, then, I conclude; but I must not forget the poor negroes: no, I must not. Jesus Christ has died for them, as well as for others. Nor do I mention you last, because I despise your souls, but because I would have what I shall say make the deeper impression upon your hearts. O that you would seek the Lord to be your righteousness! Who knows but he may be found of you? For in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female, bond nor free; even you may be the children of God, if you believe in Jesus. . . . Christ Jesus is the same now as he was yesterday, and will wash you in his own blood. Go home then, turn the word of the text into a prayer, and entreat the Lord to be your righteousness. Even so. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly in all our souls. Amen. Lord Jesus, amen, and amen!

  
  That kind of preaching infuriated slave owners. One wonders if there wasn't rumbling around in Whitefield's own soul, "Something's wrong" because he really did perceive that such radical evangelism implied things that he didn't stand for.

  He went public with his censures of slave owners. “God has a quarrel with you” for treating slaves “as though they were Brutes.” If these slaves were to rise up in rebellion, “all good Men must acknowledge the judgment would be just."

  That's incendiary. It's just a hundred years too early. . . .

  Apparently Whitefield did not understand the implications of what he was saying . . . . I'm not making any excuses here. . . . For all his imperfections and blindness and the contradictions in his life, that were all undermining slavery as he evangelized and educated, they [the slaves] loved him. More than any other 18th century figure, Whitefield established the Christian faith in the slave community. Whatever else he failed in, they were thankful for that.
  
  So, the greatest preacher of the 18th century, and perhaps the greatest preacher in the history of the church, was a contradictory figure. He confessed that there was sin remaining in him. When he died . . . the slave community were the most prominent grieving people at his funeral—thousands of them. He had treated them like people within the cultural expectations that they on their horizons could see.
  
  He knew that he was a sinner and he would have confessed, "If you do your biography, John Piper, year after year after year what you will find is sinners, that’s all you will find. Except for one – JESUS CHRIST.”
   
  So grant, O God, that all of our study of history will reveal the goodness of a Whitefield that can only be explained in terms of the transformation that he experienced in the new birth. And the sin of the Whitefield which points away from himself to the grace on which he depended and the righteousness of another who alone was righteous that was counted as his.
  
  I close with this quote from Whitefield:
  
  

  “I know no other reason,” he said, “why Jesus has put me into the ministry, than because I am the chief of sinners, and therefore fittest to preach free grace to a world lying in the wicked one.”
  

  
  Father in heaven, we don’t want to be naïve about history or about the saints or about ourselves. We are not here to lift up models which save us by winning our imitation. They don’t. They save us by pointing us to One who is perfect and whose righteousness by faith is credited to our account. So even the sin of your servant has directed me to you, just like his devotion and just like his unbelievable natural capacities. So I thank you for George Whitefield. I thank you for the grace that saved him. I thank you for the Christ without and the Christ within, and I grieve that he was not a better man. And I am very slow to point my finger because what will be said of my faults when the whole is known? So humble us under Your mighty hand and empower us to be faithful in this glorious Gospel for which he lived and in which he died. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

  In other words, what John Piper is reminding us is that George Whitefield, Piper himself and the rest of us are all sinners who have fallen short (and will continue to fall short) of the glory of God. To put it bluntly, Whitefield, Piper and the rest of us are bad...

  Yet, there is the Good News! God sent His only begotten Son so we might be counted as good and be made good through Jesus' righteousness. God sent Jesus to reconcile bad people like us to God. Bad people who were helpless, hopeless and powerless sinners, bad people who were enemies of God. This is the "Amazing Grace" John Newton wrote of, the grace "that saved a wretch like me." For all of us who in Christ, God has justified us. He no longer counts our sins against us; our sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ. He no longer see our badness but instead sees Jesus' blood and righteousness and goodness. And then through His Holy Spirit, God puts the nature of Jesus into us to begin to sanctify us, to transform us into the image of Jesus, to make us good.

  He died that we might be forgiv’n,
  He died to make us good...

  (Cecil F. Alexander, "There Is a Green Hill" - 1847)

  Let us never forget God's undeserved love, mercy and grace that reaches down to save bad people to the uttermost, people like you and people like me.

  If you've not yet accepted God's love for you in Jesus Christ, will you do so today? No matter how bad you are, or how bad you think you are, through the gift of His Son, God has made a way for you to come to Him, to have your sins washed away and to receive a new heart along with His power to live a good life.

  If you have already received God's love for you in Jesus Christ, if you haven't done so yet today, would you please take some time to give thanks and praise to God for sending His Son to bring you back to God, and to thank and praise your Redeemer, the Lamb of God, who lived a perfect life and died on the cross in our place; the One who was buried and rose again and has now ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father? Will you not rejoice in and thank God for His unspeakable gift to you?

  And let us not forget that along with His gift of reconciliation, God has also committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. To whom might God be directing you to speak about this glorious Gospel in the coming week?

  Please note: John Piper has been preaching biographical messages like the one he gave on Whitefield since 1988. Piper has taught on Luther, Calvin, Bunyan, Wilberforce, etc., etc. I've listened to almost all of them and I highly recommend your listening to them as well as reading Christian biography. You can find links to all Piper's biographical messages here.

  You may also be interested in reading my other post on Piper's Whitefield message here.

  Bonus: Can you name the various people in the Youtube video? (There are a few I don't know...)

  
  
  

  • 10:56 AM
  • 8 Comments