The Possibilities of the Classics

Our first sermon series of 2010 is entitled

"The Possibilities of the Classics."

If God is willing I will preach 6 messages originally preached by 6 well known preachers circa late 1800's and early 1900's. I won't be reading their sermons, I will simply take their sermon points and relate some of their thoughts, quotes and stories to 2010. I think you will be stunned by the timeliness of their words to our needs.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow."

I have shared a few of the following verses with you throughout 2009--now please consider them as we look back at what a group of ministers were sowing into our generation:

Don't skip past these verses or take them lightly...you will miss a huge blessing!

2 Kings 15

12 So the word of the LORD spoken to Jehu was fulfilled: "Your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation."

1 Chronicles 16
15 He remembers his covenant forever,
the word he commanded, for a thousand generations
JOB 42

16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation.

PSALM 22:30

30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.

Psalm 78

4 We will not hide them from their children;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.

Psalm 78

6 so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.

Lamentations 5

19 You, O LORD, reign forever;
your throne endures from generation to generation.


JOEL 1

3 Tell it to your children,
and let your children tell it to their children,
and their children to the next generation.

EPHESIANS 3

21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.


So, as we prepare go back in time, we have an advantage of a very clear picture of our current generation.
We are now preaching and providing a way for the generations to come. Let us honor those who prepared a way for us as we study their messages unto the 4th Generation.
Perhaps as we study previous generations, we can plant a proper seed to the generations that follow us.

Here's the line-up...(God willing)

JANUARY 10, 2010

"Paul's First Prayer"

CHARLES SPURGEON


Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) was England's best-known preacher for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1854, just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon, then only 20, became pastor of London's famed New Park Street Church (formerly pastored by the famous Baptist theologian John Gill). The congregation quickly outgrew their building, moved to Exeter Hall, then to Surrey Music Hall. In these venues Spurgeon frequently preached to audiences numbering more than 10,000—all in the days before electronic amplification. In 1861 the congregation moved permanently to the newly constructed Metropolitan Tabernacle.

JANUARY 17, 2010

"The Pleiades and Orion"

T. DEWITT TALMAGE

If Charles Spurgeon was the “Prince of Preachers,” then T. DeWitt Talmage must be considered as one of the princes of the American pulpit. In fact, Spurgeon stated of Talmage’s ministry: “His sermons take hold of my inmost soul. The Lord is with the mighty man. I am astonished when God blesses me but not surprised when He blesses him.” He was probably the most spectacular pulpit orator of his time—and one of the most widely read.

Like Spurgeon, Talmage’s ministry was multiplied not only from the pulpit to immense congregations, but in the printed pages of newspaper and in the making of many books. His sermons appeared in 3,000 newspapers and magazines a week, and he is said to have had 25 million readers.

And for 25 years, Talmage – a Presbyterian – filled the 4,000 to 5,000 seat auditorium of his Brooklyn church, as well as auditoriums across America and the British Isles. He counted converts to Christ in the thousands annually.

He was the founding editor of Christian Herald, and continued as editor of this widely circulated Protestant religious journal from 1877 until his death in 1902.

January 24, 2010

"God Given Faith"

SMITH WIGGLESWORTH

Smith Wigglesworth was born on June 8, 1859 in Menston, Yorkshire, England, to an impoverished family. As a small child, he worked in the fields pulling turnips alongside his mother; he also worked in factories. During his childhood, he was illiterate.

Nominally a Methodist, he became a born again Christian at age eight. His grandmother was a devout Methodist; his parents, John and Martha, were not practicing Christians although they took young Smith to Methodist and Anglican churches on regular occasions. He was confirmed by a Bishop in the Church of England, baptized by immersion in the Baptist Church and had the grounding in Bible teaching in the Plymouth Brethren while learning the plumbing trade as an apprentice from a man in the Brethren movement.[1]

Wigglesworth married Polly Featherstone in 1882. At the time of their marriage, she was a preacher with the Salvation Army, and had come to the attention of General William Booth. They had one daughter, Alice, and four sons, Seth, Harold, Ernest and George. Polly died in 1913.[2]

Wigglesworth learned to read after he married Polly; she taught him to read the Bible. He often stated that it was the only book he ever read, and did not permit newspapers in his home, preferring the Bible to be their only reading material.

Wigglesworth worked as a plumber, but he abandoned this trade because he was too busy for it after he started preaching. In 1907 Wigglesworth visited Alexander Boddy during the Sunderland Revival, and following a laying-on of hands from Alexander's wife Mary Boddy he experienced speaking in tongues (glossolalia). He worked with the Assemblies of God.

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

"The Great Duty of Family Religion"

GEORGE WHITEFIELD

"Whitefield was a celebrity in his time and is considered by many to be the founder of the Evangelical movement."[3] Whitefield preached his first sermon in the Crypt Church in his home town of Gloucester a week after his ordination. He had earlier become the leader of the Holy Club at Oxford when the Wesley brothers departed for Georgia. He adopted the practice of Hywel Harris of preaching in the open-air at Hanham Mount, near Kingswood, Bristol. In 1738, before going to America, where he became parish priest of Savannah, Georgia he invited John Wesley to preach in the open-air for the first time at Kingswood and then Blackheath, London. After a short stay in Georgia he returned home in the following year to receive priest's orders, resuming his open-air evangelistic activities.

Three churches were established in England in his name: one in Bristol and two others, the "Moorfields Tabernacle" and the "Tottenham Court Road Chapel", in London. Later the society meeting at the second Kingswood School at Kingswood, a town on the eastern edge of Bristol, was also called Whitefield's Tabernacle. Whitefield acted as chaplain to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon and some of his followers joined the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, whose chapels were paid for at her sole expense and where a form of Calvinistic Methodism similar to Whitefield's could be spread. Many of these chapels were built in the English counties and Wales, and one was erected in London — the Spa Fields Chapel.

In 1739 Whitefield returned to England to raise funds to establish the Bethesda Orphanage, which is the oldest extant charity in North America. On returning to North America he preached a series of revivals that came to be known as the Great Awakening of 1740. He preached nearly every day for months to large crowds of sometimes several thousand people as he travelled throughout the colonies, especially New England. His journey on horseback from New York City to Charleston was the longest then undertaken in North America by a white man.

Like his contemporary and acquaintance, Jonathan Edwards, Whitefield preached with a staunchly Calvinist theology that was in line with the "moderate Calvinism" of the Thirty-nine Articles. While explicitly affirming God's sole agency in salvation, Whitefield would freely offer the Gospel, saying near the end of most of his published sermons something like: "Come poor, lost, undone sinner, come just as you are to Christ."

He had the face of a frontiersman and the voice of a gold bell; sonorous, dramatic, fluent, he was, first of all, an orator for God; few other evangelists had his speech. He poured forth torrents, deluges of words, flinging glory and singing phrases like a spendthrift; there was glow and warmth and color in every syllable. He played upon the heartstrings like an artist. One writer described him as the cultured Billy Sunday of his time. Many of his critics found fault with his methods; buy they could not deny his mastery, nor could they successfully cloud his dynamic loyalty to his Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ.

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

"The Use of Money"

JOHN WESLEY

(28 June [O.S. 17 June] 1703 – 2 March 1791) was an Anglican cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, with founding the English Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield. In contrast to George Whitefield's Calvinism (which later led to the forming of the Calvinistic Methodists), Wesley embraced Arminianism. Methodism in both forms was a highly successful evangelical movement in the United Kingdom, which encouraged people to experience Jesus Christ personally.

Wesley helped to organize and form societies of Christians throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland as small groups that developed intensive, personal accountability, discipleship and religious instruction among members. His great contribution was to appoint itinerant, unordained preachers who travelled widely to evangelise and care for people in the societies. Young men who acted as their assistants were called "exhorters" who functioned in a similar fashion to the twelve apostles after the ascension of Jesus.

Under Wesley's direction, Methodists became leaders in many social justice issues of the day, including the prison reform and abolitionism movements. Wesley's contribution as a theologian was to propose a system of opposing theological stances. His greatest theological achievement was his promotion of what he termed "Christian Perfection", or holiness of heart and life. Wesley held that, in this life, Christians could come to a state in which the love of God, or perfect love, reigned supreme in their hearts. His evangelical theology, especially his understanding of Christian perfection, was firmly grounded in his sacramental theology. He continually insisted on the general use of the means of grace (prayer, scripture, meditation, Holy Communion, etc.) as the means by which God sanctifies and transforms the believer.

John Wesley was among the first to preach for slaves rights attracting significant opposition.

Throughout his life, Wesley remained within the Church of England and insisted that his movement was well within the bounds of the Anglican tradition. His maverick use of church policy put him at odds with many within the Church of England, though toward the end of his life he was widely respected.

February 21, 2010

"The Kingdom of God"

ANDREW MURRAY

May 9, 1828(1828-05-09) – January 18, 1917 (aged 88), was a South African writer, teacher, and Christian pastor. Murray considered missions to be "the chief end of the church."
Andrew pastored churches in Bloemfontein, Worcester, Cape Town and Wellington, all in South Africa. He was a champion of the South African Revival of 1860.

In 1889, he was one of the founders of the South African General Mission (SAGM), along with Martha Osborn and Spencer Walton. After Martha Osborn married George Howe, they formed the South East Africa General Mission (SEAGM) in 1891. SAGM and SEAGM merged in 1894. Because its ministry had spread into other African countries, the mission's name was changed to Africa Evangelical Fellowship (AEF) in 1965. AEF joined with SIM in 1998 and continues to this day.


I am so excited about what God will do with us in 2010.

It's the Year of Possibilities.

I pray God's blessings upon you and your generations to come.

Pastor Steve