Aldersgate The Dawning of Revival

May 22, 1988 - Today is Pentecost Sunday - the 250th Anniversary of Wesley's Aldersgate-Street "heart warming" experience.

Romans 1:16,17 "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written:*'But the righteous man shall live by faith.'" (*Habakkuk 2:4)

Introduction:

There is nothing quite so predictable and at the same time unique as the rising of the sun. It came up at exactly 5:17 a.m. here in Boston today, although no one in Boston saw it because it is cloudy and raining. No one doubts it came up— for it is daylight. And not very many people cared about the exact time, although technically at 5:16 it had not yet risen, and at 5:18 the sunrise was history.

The rising of the sun was preceded by light, growing almost imperceptibly from total darkness to full gray daylight. The exact beginning of the light just before sunrise is almost impossible to trace with the naked eye, and varies with the atmosphere, and, in fact, with the latitude. In equatorial latitudes dawn and dusk are brief and darkness and light occur with surprising suddenness. In polar regions twilight lingers.

Sunrise, for the people called Methodists, and many others, including the holiness groups, dawned when one man of God discovered for himself that we could be saved and we could know it! John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed at 8:45 p.m., Wednesday, May 24, 1738. Let me tell you about the dawning of that sunrise, as I understand it, and of the clouds or fog that obscured some of the light in the dawning of that sunrise.

The story of Wesley's search for assurance is fascinating, and quite well documented:

He was born into a poor clergyman's home, and from an early age had the conviction that God had his hand on his life.

Cutting the story short, in 1725 he was ordained a priest in the Church of England. The Aldersgate experienced marked a high point in his experience after 13 years of disciplined living in the priesthood:

There are some mis-perceptions about his up-bringing: He did have a godly mother— but with no teaching of assurance, for Susannah Wesley herself only came to know assurance September 3, 1739, more than a year after Aldersgate!

Certainly in his seeking after God and God's will Wesley held nothing back. He was in earnest— and if works would bring salvation and assurance, Wesley would have been saved over and over again.

But there came to the Wesley brothers the slow persuasion that salvation is by faith alone. They slowly began to know the relinquishing of the 'wealth' of acquired righteousness. On Whitsunday, May 21, 1738, Charles Wesley believed and was assured of his salvation. The following Wednesday John Wesley followed his younger brother. [Look with me at this experience of the assurance of salvation:]

I. THE EXPERIENCE OF SALVATION

GOD HONORS THE HUNGER AND THIRST FOR HIM THAT HE PLACES WITHIN US, BUT THERE IS A PLACE, ALSO, FOR US TO ATTEND TO THAT HUNGER

1. THE INNER PERSUASION: there was an instant of sun-rise (SON-rise!) Here are Wesley's own words:

   5/24/1738 "In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate-Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

2. But this new assurance was NOT a simple, cloud-free sunrise; and it was NOT unchallenged, emotionally. I have read many, many accounts of Wesley's conversion. I do not recall any that go on with what immediately follows in his Journal. Here is the very next paragraph, on that same meeting in Aldersgate:

   5/24/'38 "I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there, what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, 'This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?' Then I was taught, that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our salvation: But that, as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdeth them, according to the counsels of his own will."

   [Then, later that same day, after he had gone to his own home, he wrote:]

   "After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations; but cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and He 'sent me help from his holy place.'

   Then, the next day after the 'sunrise' come these words:

   Thursday 5/25/1738 ".. the enemy injected a fear, 'If thou dost believe, why is there not a more sensible change?' I answered (yet not I,) 'That I known not. But this I know, I have 'now peace with God.' And I sin not today, and Jesus my Master has forbid me to take thought for the morrow. " 'But is not any sort of fear,' continued the tempter, 'a proof that thou dost not believe?' I desired my Master to answer for me; and opened his Book upon those words of St. Paul, 'Without were fightings, within were fears.' Then, inferred I, well may fears be within me; but I must go on and tread them under my feet.

   And the next day:

   Friday 5/26/1738 "My soul continued in peace, but yet in heaviness because of manifold temptations.

   Sunday 5/28/1738 "I waked in peace, but not in joy."

   Monday 5/29/1738 "I was often tempted to doubt."

   Why am I telling you this, to discredit Wesley? Far, far from it! Wesley's usefulness to God and the kingdom are beyond question. But I am bringing this to your attention so that you can see that the greatest exponent of 'know-so salvation' came to his own assurance by way of doubts and struggles and extreme honesty, as well as by dint of single-minded desire to live for God and with God!

3. Wesley thus had both sympathy and advice for others; as well as the insistence that none be satisfied short of the witness of the Spirit;

   Monday November 19, 1739 "I earnestly exhorted those who had believed, to beware of two opposite extremes, -the one, the thinking while they were in light and joy, that the work was ended, when it was just begun; the other, the thinking when they were in heaviness, that it was not begun, because they found it was not ended."

II. THE PRACTICE OF GODLY LIVING

GOD USES THE LIFE THAT HE INHABITS, BUT HE IS MORE CONCERNED WITH FAITHFULNESS THAN HE IS WITH THE 'BELLS AND WHISTLES' OF OUR EMOTIONS

1. God honors those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. John Wesley was a seeker!
2. Wesley was led as he obeyed . . . not by human programming, nor by deliberate design; although this did not keep Wesley from being as methodical and as well-disciplined as he knew how to be: a round-robin circuit of all Britain, year after year.
3. God begins to use JW in preaching out in the streets and fields, and a revival begins while preaching in a prison:

   Thursday 4/26/1739 "While I was preaching at Newgate (a prison in Bristol), on these words, 'He that believeth hath everlasting life.' I was insensibly led, without any previous design, to declare strongly and explicitly, that God willeth 'all men to be' thus 'saved;' and to pray that, 'if this were not the truth of God, he would not suffer the blind to go out of the way; but if it were, he would bear witness to his word.' Immediately one, and another, and another sunk to the earth: They dropped on every side as thunderstruck. (A spiritual awakening was on at Newgate that reformed the prison!)

   Sunday 5/13/1739 My ordinary employment, in public, was now as follows: Preaching an average of 22 times per week!

[Transition: But where does this Wesley study have to do with our world on this Pentecost Sunday in 1988 in 'post-Christian America?']

III. GOD IS NOT FRUSTRATED...

...WITH THE EVILS OF OUR AGE, BUT CAN IT BE THAT HE IS FRUSTRATED WITH THE LEVEL OF HUNGER AND THIRST AFTER HIM ON THE PART OF HIS PEOPLE?

1. Wesley's England was at least as barbarous as our own country today! There was rigid class discrimination; there was wide-spread brutality; there were debtors' prisons and capital punishment for minor offenses.
2. When he died Wesley had not conquered all ills— but God in John Wesley had made a difference!
3. AND WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE! Jesus: Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled! Where, really, is our hunger? We, too, can make a difference in our world. We cannot all be John Wesley. But we can be saved and know it!

This way of living the Spirit-filled life— cannot be by dint of merit; we do not simply come to the place where we 'deserve' to be filled.

But it does not come to the casual seeker, either.

Conclusion: Has the Sun of righteousness risen in your life, to take the central place in everything you are and do? If we were as concerned to let Jesus Christ dominate us as Wesley was, do you think we could come to the assurance that our lives are truly His? Do you believe we could make a difference?

Malachi 4:1,2

"For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall."

Let's keep looking with FAITH for the rising of the Sun!

#190 - A Charge to Keep I Have