Introduction

The title of this teaching is taken from a letter that Samuel Rutherford wrote to a former parishioner, Lady Boyd, after he had been exiled and banned from preaching.

“I am persuaded that He shall return again in glory to this land… O sun, return to darkened Britain! O fairest among all the sons of men, O most excellent One, come home again! Come home and win the praises and blessings of the mourners in Zion, the prisoners of hope, that wait for Thee! I know that He can also triumph in suffering, and weep and reign, and die and triumph, and remain in prison and yet subdue His enemies; but how happy were I to see the coronation-day of Christ and cry with shouting, till the earth should ring, ‘Let Jesus, our King, live and reign, for evermore!’” Samuel Rutherford, 1637 (Letters of Samuel Rutherford, page 412).

This morning I hope to tell the story of how night fell in Britain and how the sun rose there again.

This is not so much a church history class as it is an examination of how God works in the world: how he has worked in the past, how he is working now, how he has promised that he will continue to work until he returns again. For that reason, and because such an examination necessarily involves our own lives and histories, the topic is also very personal. It is the telling of the story that has no end and in which we ourselves are characters: the story of God’s redemption of his people in Christ Jesus for the praise of the glory of his grace.

Let’s get our bearings:

• What: The Evangelical Revival (In America called “The First Great Awakening”)

• When: 1730s - 1770s

• Where: England

• Who: George Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Wesley (Jonathan Edwards in the colonies)

• Why: Because while our creeds and confessions are seventeenth century, our world and experience is eighteenth century. Our beliefs are 17th century but our lives are eighteenth century.

I have three goals for this morning:

First: I want to expand ever so slightly our definition of revival.

Second, I want to look at the period before the Evangelical Revival and see how Christians planted and watered the soil in faith for what God would ultimately give the growth to; and

Third, I want to look at the Evangelical Revival, itself, and see what we might learn from its leaders.

I want to start with this definition of revival.

Revival is a sovereign gift from God in which, for a special season, His normal and true work of advancing His kingdom is sped up or quickened so that more is accomplished through His servants in a shorter period of time. (Robert Davis Smart, “Pentecostal Outpourings: Revival and the Reformed Tradition”)

I appreciate this definition because it demystifies what a revival is. A revival isn’t where everything gets a little crazy. A revival isn’t where everyone loses their minds. No, a revival is simply a dramatic change in the speed and intensity of what God is and always has done in and through his church. It is not a dramatic change in the thing, itself, that is happening. It is a change of degree not of type. It is a dramatic increase in fruitfulness not a change in the faithfulness God requires of us to bring about that fruitfulness. Our fundamental marching orders do not change in times of revival - only the speed of our advancement.

I also appreciate this definition because it expands the different kinds of work or activity or progress that can happen in a revival. Look again at that definition: Revival is God’s “normal and true work of advancing his kingdom”.

Well, what kind of things constitute God’s normal and true work? Jesus tells us in the Great Commission:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matt 28:18-20)

We preach the gospel and baptize converts (evangelism).

We make disciples and teach them to observe (personal holiness).

We teach what Christ has commanded (doctrine).

Each individual Christian and the Church as a whole is increasing in our knowledge and understanding of God; each individual Christian and the Church as a whole is increasing in holiness and Godliness; each individual Christian and the Church as a whole is working to steward and exercise dominion and Christ’s rule over our laws and culture. This is the normal and true work of kingdom advancement that is and has happened all the time. In times of revival, it all just happens fast.

This is what I meant by our first goal, of expanding our definition of revival just a little bit. Revival isn’t when all the normal stuff gets a little “whoo-whoo." It's when the normal stuff goes “whoosh!”

The Rise and Fall of Evangelical England (1534 - 1660)

By way of example, I want us to consider the period of English history that preceded the Evangelical Revival. This is an era that most of us are probably at least somewhat familiar with but probably wouldn’t have termed a revival.

The period of English history from 1534 - 1688 is absolutely fascinating. And for English-speaking Reformed Protestants, like ourselves, it’s not just interesting it’s basically our own family history.

Using our expanded definition of what a revival is, I want to argue that the period of the English Reformation from roughly 1534 - 1600 represented a Great Revival of Doctrine, a revival of Biblical understanding and the knowledge of God.

And I would argue that the period of English Puritanism in the 1600s represented a Great Revival of Personal Holiness, one of practice and morality and ethics.

[Nota Bene: And I would argue that the English Civil War and Interregnum represented an attempt to bring about by human means a Great Revival of Governance, where the secular law of the land would be submitted to the rule of Christ in England. Whether that attempt represented a thwarted revival or a sinful rebellion that God would ultimately judge, what happened in 1660 is indisputable: Evangelical Puritanism was destroyed.]

Darkest Britain: Cultural and Spiritual Exile (1660 - 1730)

1. Cultural Exile (1660 - 1689)

   1. With the Act of Uniformity (1662) the pipeline of influence, patronage, prestige, power, wealth, education, cultural influence etc. was cut-off.

   2. They lived off the grain stored in the garners for all those years

   3. No longer are the different sects equal, vertical, monoliths; there is now a very real class divide. There are severe practical consequences for being a nonconformist.

   4. Prior to the Restoration, Calvinist and Puritan sects had access to wealth, prestige, institutions, education, land, political power that was similar to the Established Church. After 1660, all of that changed. After the Restoration the nonconformists were practically outlawed and even after the Glorious Revolution, they were still locked out of all that.

   5. The leading lights: Puritanism died when this generation died

      1. Bunyan

      2. Owen

      3. Baxter

2. Spiritual Exile (1690 - 1730)

   1. They had won the battle (toleration) but they had lost the war. Widespread, culturally dominant, evangelical Christianity was a dead-letter. No one cared. The culture was utterly exhausted by 150 years of theological whiplash and political war. One of the great ironies is that peace came to the dissenters only when the State became essentially secular. The peace was purchased at the cost of the nation’s soul. This was the moment when liberalism began. When people talk about liberalism they mean (whether they know it or not) everything that came after 1688 and the Act of Toleration.

   2. Two responses:

      1. Samuel Wesley (1662 - 1732)

         1. He abandoned his family and church for long periods; was financially irresponsible and often in jail; and he was selfishly ambitious, wasting his time writing bad poetry (“Maggots”) and an exegetical work on the Book of Job in Latin.

      2. Susanna Wesley (1669 - 1742)

         1. One of 25 children herself; she had 19. She was smart and precocious as a child.

         2. She was a kind of Deborah: Led a large Bible study to supplement the bad teaching they were all getting. Both impressive and a blessing and yet also a sign of how degenerated and spiritual poor the era was that the men weren’t leading.

         3. She was a kind of Hannaa: In an age when “the word of God was rare and there was no frequent vision” she prayed and was faithful and through her children had a massive influence.

         4. She was a kind of David: sometimes we are meant to simply prepare for a great work to be accomplished after we die. David gathered the materials for the temple that Solomon would build. Susanna prepared the hearts of her children that would lead the great revival.

   3. Lessons from the Wesleys and Whitefield

      1. Concentric Circles of Influence and Growth

         1. The Individual

            1. Every conversion, each individual instance of salvation, whether your own or of the one you have long prayed for, is a miraculous, stupifying instance of revival at the individual level. I’ll expand it further: every extraordinary leap forward in our knowledge and understanding of God; every great leap forward in Godliness and personal holiness is an instance of personal revival. And all the great revivals of the world have ever been is when tens of thousands of personal revivals happen at the same time and place.

            2. “I think that the sense of our wants, when we have a restlessness and a sort of spiritual impatience under them, and can make a din, because we want Him who our souls loveth, is that which maketh an open door to Christ. And when we think we are going backward, because we feel deadness, we are going forward; for the more sense, the more life’; and no sense argueth no life.” Samuel Rutherford (Complete Letters, pg. 453)

         2. The Family

            1. Susanna Wesley a model

            2. Faithfulness in small things. “Feed my sheep”

         3. Friends

            1. Whitefield and Wesley met at Oxford (the Holy Club)

         4. Education

            1. Their education prepared them intellectually

            2. Their education opened doors in society

The Sun Returned: The Great Evangelical Revival (1730 - 1770)

1. Numbers

   1. All this background has been laid for this reason: to remind you how desperate the situation was so that you can marvel at how great a miracle it was. The politics had been lost, but souls were ready to be won. It was then that men began to call on the name of the Lord

   2. How many got Saved? One source said well over a million; another source said between 500k-600k. Given the total population size, this is a giant proportion of the country.

2. Characteristics of the Revival

   1. Personal salvation, not political power

      1. Success wasn’t measured in what Parliament or the King or archbishop did. What mattered was the individual soul.

   2. Dramatic encounters of the Holy Spirit

      1. Earlier when I described what I take to be the three main forms of revival (revival of understanding; revival of holiness; revival of conversion) I didn’t mention what to many of us might be the most obvious: Charismatic Revival. I left out charismatic revivals because of this: the Holy Spirit’s work is obstetric. When a woman is in labor, she’s not glad to see the doctor because she wants to hang out with the doctor, she’s glad to see the doctor because he’s going to deliver the baby! The Holy Spirit’s work is like that. It is the helper. It brings other things to pass, it is not the thing itself. The Holy Spirit’s dramatic outpouring occurs in every single revival, yet is itself never the full attention. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are always FOR SOMETHING. In each of those revivals, the Holy Spirit is experienced in new and powerful ways, as a helper and aid to those other things. In that sense every revival is a Charismatic revival, in another, no revival is exclusively about the Charismata.

         1. Dad’s story about a leadership meeting in the 1990s and the feeling of God’s awesome holiness. “I wanted to get lower. I wanted to get underneath the carpet.”

         2. (Whitfield’s letter Fetter Lane Society)

THE new year was ushered in by a very extraordinary service held in the evening of New Year's Day, 1739. Messrs. Hall, Kinchin, Ingham, Whitefield, Hutchins, and the two brothers Wesley were present at a love-feast at Fetter Lane, with about sixty others, the number of the Fetter Lane Society at that time. 'About three o'clock in the morning,' Wesley says, 'as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.' Whitefield, writing of this day, says that he received the Holy Sacrament, preached twice and expounded twice, and found this to be the happiest New Year's Day that he ever saw; and afterwards adds that he spent the whole night in close prayer, psalms, and thanksgivings with the Fetter Lane Society. Nor was this the only all-night service they held, for on January 5, he writes again, 'Held a Conference at Islington 'concerning many things, of importance, with seven ministers of Jesus Christ, despised Methodists, whom God in his providence brought together. We continued in fasting and prayer till three o'clock, and then parted with a full conviction that God was about to do great things among us; and again, on Sunday 7, preached twice, expounded to three Societies, and afterwards spent the whole night in prayer and thanksgiving at Fetter Lane.'

3. Ecumenicalism

   1. The movement split across, not along, denominational lines (in the same way that they did during the Great Persecution). It wasn’t Established Church v. Dissenters; it was evangelicals against non-evangelicals.

4. Separation not be creed but by conviction

   1. The wealthy and powerful will always be allergic to enthusiasm, fanaticism, personal disclosure, etc.

   2. Even within the Established Church, there was a divide (as evidenced by Welsey and Whitefield)

5. Hymns

   1. Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

   2. Charles Wesley (1707-1788)

   3. John Newton (1725-1807

   4. William Cowper (1731 - 1800)

   5. Handel’s Messiah (1741) (in the same way that Paradise Lost reflected the highly literate Puritan age, Messiah is a high-cultural reflection of a highly musical Evangelical age)

Conclusion

Christians are faced with a dilemma whenever the thing they are used to God doing stops being the thing that God is doing. If you came to Christ during a revival and then the revival stops, what are you going to do? If you came to Christ in ordinary times and then revival comes, what are you going to do?

At dad’s retirement he addressed members of our old church in Ohio who were there during the exciting times and then he also addressed the members of our church whose experience has been more ordinary.

“What a time that was. A church birthed in the midst of revival that was, at times, breathtaking. And God did a special work there. And to be a pastor in this church, which was not exactly birthed in the midst of revival. But what we did in Ohio was done here: we did two things. We preached the Word and we prayed. And even though we didn’t see as many spectacular things here we nonetheless have seen the grace of God and how he has built us together, worked in individual lives and families. And you all have experienced the grace of God and I am grateful.” (Retirement sermon by Phil Sasser, December 18, 2018).