Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: Andrew Fuller 1

Let's pray together.

Father, my longings for these brothers, as they listen, is fed by my amazement that Andrew Fuller is speaking 192 years after he died, which he totally did not expect. Lord, what might you be pleased to do through these brothers that they totally do not expect you to do, because they're simply faithful?

And so I ask, Lord, that the ripple effect of Andrew Fuller's life go on and on, and I ask you that the ripple effect of these lives be far wider and deeper and longer than any of them dreams. Father, would you breathe upon it, just like you took five loaves and two fish, prayed over them, and 5 ,000 people were totally, unexpectedly fed by them?

Father, Andrew Fuller served in a community of 3 ,000 people, had a church of a couple hundred, and that's all he ever had. And I'm reading him today. Lord, be pleased to do exceedingly abundantly for the glory of Christ, for the good of the nations, for the good of our churches, more than we could dream.

I ask in Jesus' name, amen. It's totally possible that before Jesus comes back, the impact of Andrew Fuller will be greater and different than it is today, 192 years after his death. My assessment of his impact today is that it is largely owing, and rightly so, to his life and thoughts' impact upon the modern missionary movements, beginning with the sending of William Carey and his team in 1793.

William Carey was the morning star of the modern missionary movement. Between 1793 and 1865, a missionary movement led by William Carey was unleashed, which was greater than anything the world had seen up until that time, and by which all of the coastlands of the world were reached.

In 1865, Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission, not coastland, but inland mission. Between the years 1865 and 1934, another wave was unleashed, and virtually all of the inlands and all of the countries were reached by 1974, the date of the Lausanne World Council of Missions.

In 1934, Cameron Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators, not to focus on the coastlands and not to focus on the inlands, but to strip the missionary cause of its geographical focus and to focus on peoples, languages, and dialects, and cultures.

And that's the wave in which we find ourselves in the center of. And if you want to be a part of it, you can be, or you can ignore it and not be a part of it. Philip Jenkins describes the unique situation of our day in his The Next Christendom as the shift of the center of gravity of missions from Europe and America, south and east.

I recommend an article in this week's Christianity Today interviewing Andrew Walls, who, a little differently from Jenkins' book, talks about a multi-centric mission where it won't be just south or east or European or Western.

It will be all over the world, all learning from each other. Areas that were once mission fields are now centers of great Christian influence and major missionary sending forces. You won't read about it in any secular history book or hear about it on any nightly news, but judged by almost any standard, the modern missionary movement of the last 200 years launched with William Carey has been the most important development in history in the last 200 years.

Stephen Neal, in his history of Christian missions, wrote this. The cool and rational 18th century. The century that ended with William Carey's departure was hardly a promising seedbed for Christian growth.

But out of it came a greater outburst of Christian missionary enterprise than had been seen in all the centuries before. Now, how did that happen? How did the cool, rational 18th century produce a movement, the greatest in history in missions and in which you find yourself and of which you could be a part?

How did that happen? Well, God's judgments are inscrutable. His ways are higher than our ways. And the 10 ,000 ways that he brought it about, we cannot begin to document, but we can see some of them. And I want to talk about one of them, a very, very crucial one of them, perhaps without which it wouldn't have happened, namely the life of Andrew Fuller.

How did that mission, released in 1793, come about? How did God unleash a Christ-exalting, gospel-advancing, church-expanding, evil-confronting, Satan-conquering, culture-transforming, soul-saving, hell-robbing, Christian-refreshing, truth-intensifying missionary movement?

And this is another message I don't have time to give, but why did I include in that list of adjectives Christian-refreshing and truth-intensifying missionary movement? The reason is, and this is just a big, long footnote, the reason is because not only did Andrew Fuller's life move towards the sending of missionaries, but his engagement in the missionary enterprise, by his own testimony, was his deliverance from long-standing depression.

End of sermon. That's a footnote in here. The here is this 33-page manuscript I have here, which has all these juicy quotes in it that I'm going to give you. And you don't have to write them down because, God willing, this will be up on the internet tomorrow morning.

Lord willing, we'll see if we can make that happen. So just relax, think, write down questions that you can ask at the question time tomorrow. The reason I said at the beginning that it is possible that before Jesus comes back, the life and thought of Andrew Fuller will have greater and different significance than it does today is because three volumes of his writings are in print.

We don't have them for sale because they cost $120, but buy them anyway, if you're interested in what I say today. He is an extraordinarily brilliant theologian. So quite apart from the fact that his life and thought, among other things, unleashed the William Carey, beginning of the modern missionary movement, what he said, insightfully and biblically, about so many things in its own right will go on having an impact upon the church.

And who knows what God may breathe upon a century from now in causing someone to read the gospel worthy of all acceptation and explode with effect upon the 22nd century world. We don't know about such things.

God may do it or he may use you to do it in a way you never dreamed. His impact has been, will be far beyond a little pastorate in Kettering, England. 3000 people, 32 year investment in the pastorate in Kettering.

What an amazing thing God did. So the modern missionary movement and released through his life and his thought in a way, along with other things that was extraordinary. Andrew Fuller died May 7, 1815, age 61.

Relevant. That's how old I am. So if I were to drop dead while I'm speaking, I would be in good company because I've had way more than I deserve, including so many things, including you. He'd been a pastor for 32 years at Kettering.

Some years before that in Soham. Before that, a boy growing up on a farm with his parents, devout Baptist parents. No formal theological education whatsoever. And yet the number one theologian among the particular Baptists, that is the Calvinistic Baptists of his day, 17 years old, begins to preach in Soham.

And then they call him to be their pastor when he was 21 years old. And then he moves to Kettering where he spent the rest of his ministry. The year after he became a pastor, he married Sarah Gardner, 1776.

A date that means something to Americans. Just clue you in to what's going on in the world. America's becoming independent this year when he marries Sarah Gardner. 16 years later, she dies. And in that 16 years, she had 11 children and eight of them died.

Two months before she died, Fuller, together with Ryland and Carrie and the others, a little band of Baptist pastors, founded the Baptist Missionary Society. And then she died. And I thought to myself, so often that way.

The greatest birth, the greatest triumphs and the greatest losses back to back. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. And if it dies, could unleash two centuries of stunning missionary enterprise.

So during those 40 years of pastoral ministry in Soham and Kettering, he tried to do far more than one man can do well. He tried to raise a family, three kids instead of 11. He tried to pastor a church.

He tried to engage the destructive doctrinal errors of his day with writing. And he led the Baptist Missionary Society, which was founded in 1792. He regularly felt absolutely overwhelmed. He wrote a letter in 1801, born 1754.

So you can do the math as we do these things, 47 years old.

He wrote this.

Samuel Pierce's memoirs are now loudly called for, meaning everybody wants me to write them because he's part of this band and I know him well. I sit down almost in despair. My wife looks at me with a tear ready to drop and says, my dear, you have hardly time to speak to me.

My friends at home are kind, but they they also say you have no time to see us or know us and you will soon be worn out. Amidst all this, there is come to Scotland, come to Portsmouth, come to Plymouth, come to Bristol.

So a little band of brothers, Baptist pastors, tiny little churches. Burning with zeal for the global cause of God found this mission society in 1792, October 2. And Fuller, more than them all, felt the burden that when William Carey, John Thomas, get on that boat with their wives and go never to return, not a single furlough.

He felt the burden unbelievably. Nobody had done this in a long time. You've heard the phrase. Perhaps, you know, it comes from Fuller that we at home are rope holders. It comes from Fuller and I'll give you the situation and the quote from which it comes.

Our undertaking in India. This is fuller talking. Our undertaking in India really appeared to me on its commencement to be somewhat like a few men who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating into a deep mine which had never been explored.

We had no one to guide us. And while we were thus deliberating, Carey, as it were, said, Well, I will go down if you will hold the rope. But before he went down, he, as it seemed to me, took an oath from each of us at the mouth of the pit to this effect that while we lived, we should never let go the rope.

So for 21 years, Fuller served as the general secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society and held that rope more firmly, more zealously than anyone else held it with greater conscientiousness and a greater sense of responsibility.

I've got to raise this money. I've got to raise prayer support. So when you heard those words in his desperation, come to Bristol, come to Portsmouth, come to Plymouth, come to Scotland. Those are people who believe in the mission saying, come talk to our people, come speak to our churches, come inspire our people.

You're a good speaker. We need you to come. He went five times to Scotland. He traveled continuously speaking to raise support for the mission. He wrote for the periodical accounts. He wrote for the Baptist General Annual Register.

He wrote for the Evangelical Magazine. He wrote for the Baptist Magazine. He had the lead role in choosing more missionaries to go out and interviewing them. He carried an extensive correspondence between himself and the missionaries, as well as to people at home.

All of that, while knowing his pastoral work was suffering, he didn't have any assistant until 1810. Five years before he died, he got an assistant, John Hall. I'm sorry, 1811, four years before he died.

October 1794, he lamented in a letter to John Ryland how the mission work was compromising his pastoral labor. He said, I long to visit my congregation that I may know of their spiritual concerns and preach to their cases.

There are some amazing quotes where he tips his heart hand about the affection that he had for his people.

Here's one.

When he's writing to one of the wavered members, when a parent loses a child. And you know what kind of experience he's talking out of. When a parent loses a child, nothing but the recovery of that child can heal the wound.

If he could have many other children that would not do it, thus it is with me towards you. Nothing but your return to God and the church can heal this wound. He pressed on faithfully feeding his flock in expository preaching in and out, in and out.

Beginning in April 1790, he preached successfully through Psalms, Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Genesis, Matthew, Luke, John, Revelation, Acts, and first Corinthians up to chapter four, verse five.

The people in his church, little church, did not seem history is nice sometimes to begrudge their pastors wider ministry for the missionary society. A young deacon wrote two weeks before Fuller's death as they saw he was almost gone.

He wrote this in his diary. What a loss as individuals and as a church we are going to sustain. Him that has so long fed us with the bread of life, that has so affectionately, so faithfully, so fervently counseled and exhorted and reproved and animated by doctrine, by precept, by example, the people of his charge.

Him who has lived so much for others, shall we no more hear his voice. So if that was representative, the people had a large affection for him in spite of his inadequacies as an overworked pastor. When he was home from his travels, it was one form of work for another.

His wife, Ann, he married again in 1794, Ann Coles. His wife, Ann, told him that he had allowed no time for recreation. And Fuller answered, oh no, all my recreation is change of work. His son, Gunton, 1815, just a few months before his death, said that he was still working, quote, upwards of 12 hours a day, close quote.

And woven into all of that faithful, persevering, pastoral, missionary, writing labor, making his perseverance all the more astonishing was the suffering and the loss that he endured. Eight children died, his first wife died July 10, 1792, just before she died.

He wrote, my family afflictions have almost overwhelmed me. What is yet before me, I know not. For about a month past, the affliction of my dear companion has been extremely heavy. Then July 25. Oh, my God, my soul is cast down within me.

The afflictions of my family seem too heavy for me. Oh, Lord, I am oppressed. Undertake for me. And then she died August 23, 1792, having lost eight of her children. And he wrote these lines for her. Upon the tear, the tender parent wails no more her loss.

Nor labors more beneath life's heavy load. The anxious soul released from fears and woes has found her home. Her children and her God. So there's the personal pastoral missionary context of Fuller's engagement with spiritual and doctrinal errors of his day for all of his activism.

And he was very, very activistic. It was his controversies. His doctrinal writing controversies that did the most to unleash or prepare a platform for the unleash unleashing of the missionary movement.

And that's what I want to focus the rest of our time on. He was, as one biographer said, preeminently the thinker. No movement can go far without a thinker. So among the particular Baptist, the Calvinistic Baptist of his day, he was the preeminent thinker.

And so this author and I am tracing the rise of the William Carey wave of the modern missionary movement to Andrew Fuller's thinking. His intellectual labors as a pastor to confront hyper-Calvinism and Sandemanianism.

They weren't the only two. You could add Socinianism. I mean, this man was battling on front after front after front. Only what I hope you'll take away is these battles were not the least ingrown. They were global in their impact.

His heart burned that there be a heart for missions and a gospel for missions. And wherever he saw errors that would compromise that, that's where he took up battle. We do have this book in the bookstore.

I recommend it. I read it right through. These are his letters. It's called The Armies of the Lamb, The Spirituality of Andrew Fuller. A great flavor. So if you just want a short paperback flavor of the man, go ahead and pick that up.

I recommend it to you. And then if you have $120 to spare, you can go to Amazon or someplace and get the three volumes. So my aim now is to describe for you this pastor's engagement with these two deadly errors of his day.

One called High Calvinism. We call it Hyper Calvinism. He used the word hyper a few times I saw, but mainly it's almost always High Calvinism. And the other is Sandemanianism, which I'll explain when we get there.

And in both cases, the battles were distinctively exegetical and doctrinal, even though their important outcomes were experiential and globally practical. Now, this thinking, this engagement didn't come out of nowhere.

You've read enough history to know nobody comes out of nowhere. He came out of his century with manifold influences. I'll mention a few. Besides the the one I referred to from Neil, the cool, rational 18th century, we're talking about David Hume, Britain, Rousseau, France, Tom Paine, America.

These were the vintage, secular, cool, rational, philosophic killers of evangelical thought, which dominated the intellectual life of the 18th century. That's what Stephen Neal was talking about. How in the world did that produce William Carey?

Well, they didn't. But there was another thing happening. And you know what it is. It was George Whitefield and John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards. That's the other thing that was going on during the 18th century.

And Fuller was deeply immersed in the Great Awakening. Writings coming over from Jonathan Edwards and Whitefield and Wesley crisscrossing the nation and Fuller being born in the prime of all that in 1754.

The particular Baptists that he was born into did not like any of those people. Wesley, of course, was not a Calvinist. That's his problem. Whitefield's Calvinism was very suspect because he was so indiscriminate in his evangelistic preaching.

They complained of his Arminian dialect. I remember the first message I ever gave after coming to the Baptist General Conference, 1980, I think it was, Omaha, Nebraska. And I preached at an assembly about this size on Hebrews 6.

And a man took me aside at the end and said, Brother, welcome to the conference, but you're going to have to be careful of your Arminian views in this conference. I wish you had to be careful of your Arminian views in this conference.

So he had an Arminian dialect, this Calvinist Whitefield. And he was suspect among the particular Baptists. Cary said that after he had come to Soham, he'd learned to preach from John Eve, his pastor, a high Calvinist, hyper Calvinist.

He said, I had little or nothing to say to the unconverted. And the greatest theological achievement of Andrew Fuller was to see and then defend and then spread the truth that historical, biblical Calvinism embraced the full, free offer of the gospel to all people without exception.

That was his great achievement because the church into which he was born didn't believe that and he had to wrestle to get free. So he immersed himself in the scriptures. Remember, totally self-educated, no formal theological training.

He immersed himself in the scriptures and he immersed himself in the historical tradition of Calvinism, Augustine, Calvin, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, the Bible, always preeminent. This is what makes him so readable and useful today.

You're not just going to go get a rehash of some secondary theology. You get a man wrestling with the Bible. And whenever you can get into a book where a man is honestly, deeply, intensely wrestling with God's word, you're going to get benefit.

Five hundred thousand years later doesn't make any difference. Here's what he wrote about his allegiance to the Bible. Lord, thou hast given me a determination to take up no principle at second hand, but to search for everything at the pure fountain of thy word.

That's one of the main reasons he's still readable and freshly relevant today.