Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: Hudson Taylor 2

Hudson Taylor’s Letter and the Opening of the Eyes of the Heart

September 4, 1869, 37 years old, found a letter on the table in Chungcheong from John McCarthy, a fellow missionary. God used that letter to revolutionize Hudson Taylor's life. When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Word of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.

Now notice some things from that sentence. That's a very important sentence. Notice some things. He was not changed by new information. Taylor knew his Bible. Good night, he read his Bible faithfully from 17 to 37.

He knew his Bible. He knew Keswick teaching. That year, 1869, Robert Pearsall Smith, the guy who totally made shipwreck of his faith, nevertheless was writing on the higher life in Revival magazine, was being read by all the missionaries in the China Inland Mission.

That six months before this happened, he had read those articles. All the missionaries were reading those articles. Those articles are the ones who caused McCarthy to have an experience that caused him to write the letter that Hudson read that caused him to have this experience.

So there's no new information going on here. We've all experienced this. You know something. You've read this book hundreds of times. A book, a verse in John 15 or Philippians 4, and one day, maybe you just lost your daughter, son, wife, the doctors just told you you have cancer, and the verse explodes with glory.

You wonder, what? Why didn't this happen before? God is God. So this is not unusual. We've all had this kind of scale lifting. The Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.

He knew it, and now he knows it better, different, more power, more deep, more thorough, more high, more lasting, more. That's what he's saying. As I have never known it before, he knew it before, and then he says the Holy Spirit just gave him new eyes.

And that's exactly the way he understood it. He understood it, he said so repeatedly in terms of Ephesians 118. Paul prays that the eyes of your heart, your Christian heart, your Christian heart, your born-again heart, your Christ-indwelt heart, that the eyes of your hearts would be enlightened, that you would know.

No, you know. You already know. No, you don't already know. As you might know, that's what he's praying. You know your hope. You know your inheritance. You know the power that raised Jesus from the dead.

You know. You don't know. As you might know, if you did, he wouldn't pray that. He's praying for Christians. He knows then, we know now. There's more. We all live at levels that are disappointing to ourselves.

All of us. As I read this letter from McCarthy, I saw it all. I looked to Jesus and saw, and when I saw, oh how joy flowed, that he had said, I will never leave thee. I saw, not only that Jesus will never leave me, but that I am a member of his body.

Like, really? This is not new information. I saw that I was a member of his body, of his flesh, of his bones. The vine is not the root merely, but the all root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit, and Jesus is not that alone.

He is soil and sunshine and air and flowers and 10 ,000 times more than we have ever dreamed, wished, or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth. So you can see what happened. He just saw like he'd never seen before.

It was a miracle of eyes of the heart being opened to a deeper level of taste of union with Christ. The sweetest part, he said, if one may speak of one part being sweeter than another, is the rest which full identification with Christ brings.

The Exchanged Life and Union with Christ

The experience came to be known as the exchanged life. So you read biography after biography, and they all have a chapter called the exchanged life, and that comes from Colossians 2 .20. I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And then if you think Keswick people overstate things, Paul just said, no longer I who lives, and now he says, the life I now live, I live by faith in this indwelling Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

That's the experience that just exploded for him. And along with the new sight of Christ's fullness and his union with Christ, there was a new yieldedness. Quote, surrender to Christ he had long known.

This is from his son writing about him. Surrender to Christ he had long known, but this was more. This was a new yieldedness, a glad, unreserved handing over of self and everything to him. This new yieldedness was so powerful, so sweet, so supernatural that it rose up like an indictment of all of his vain strivings to have it.

When you have been swept up into the arms of Jesus, all previous efforts to jump in seem vain. At the heart of the discovery was the full fruit of the vine, abiding, not striving, he said. At the heart of the discovery was that this fruit comes from abiding, not striving.

Here's what he said, and this is typical Keswick language now, of which we must be careful, and he will be told so by his fellow worker. To let my loving Savior work in me, his will, let him, let him work in me, his will, my sanctification is what I would live for by his grace.

Abiding, not striving, not struggling, looking off unto him, trusting him for present power, resting in the love of an almighty Savior. Now that consciousness of resting was the spring from which power came.

Let then, he said, let us not seek, let us not wait, let us not pursue, but accept by the Savior's word, ye are branches. Now I remember the days when I used to read things like that, and I'd just scoff.

I'd say, but the Bible says seek, Bible says ask, the Bible says pursue unbiblical, next book. I don't, I'm not so quick anymore. After, after watching his life, and after seeing his testimony from the end, he's not stupid.

He knows that's what the Bible says. So I asked myself last night, as this, this is a new little section from last night. I asked myself, okay, suppose I'm hungry for a greater portion of peace, a greater portion of tenderness, a greater portion of kindness, a greater portion of sweet enjoyment of Jesus with total authenticity, and not watching myself enjoy, but just enjoying.

Suppose I get on my knees, and I'm going to give five minutes of prayer to seeking this, waiting for this, pursuing this. Now, if I were on my knees, and Hudson Taylor saw me there pleading for five minutes for that, I don't think he would criticize me.

But suppose the Savior, at minute four and a half of my pleading, walks up to me with a tray, and on it is called peace, kindness, gentleness, enjoyment of me with authenticity, what you've been asking for.

And he goes like this, and I say, oh God, can't you please, I pray, amen. I turn and walk right by the tray, and I go over to my computer, start working on my message, this message. Do you think that might be what Hudson Taylor means when he says, stop seeking, stop waiting, stop pursuing, accept.

I mean, what is faith? I mean, what is that last moment of the connection of an answered prayer? What's it like? Isn't it like, okay, off the tray, take it. And isn't there in some of us a sense that he never answers my prayers.

I'm supposed to pray, I'm going to pray, and now I'm done, and maybe while I'm working on this message, something will happen to me. That's what I think he probably would say if he were watching me, and I stood up, and the tray were in front of me, called, you are my branches.

I am your savior, your love, your bread, your life. I am all. What is it going to take? He would say, resting, abiding, enjoying, receiving, and I'm not spanking you, because this is a miracle. Act the miracle.

Act the miracle. Receive. You've got to work this through, guys. You've got to work this through. There's more here than cynics see. Work, he said, is the outcome of effort. Fruit is the outcome of life.

A bad man may do good work, but a bad tree can't bear good fruit. How to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the faithful one. Now, I know this problem was that. We're coming, we're coming, but before we just write him off, I'm pleading with you, think this through.

Unlike many who claim the higher life experience, Hudson Taylor, Hudson's didn't, his experience didn't let him down. He reached a plane of joy, and a plane of peace, and a plane of strength that lasted all his life.

It had its ups and downs, but something had happened, and the ups and downs were higher than the ups and downs were before. Before turning 60, just before turning 60, he was in Melbourne. An Episcopalian minister had heard of Keswick and was spending time with Hudson, and he wrote this.

Here was the real thing, an embodiment of what Keswick teaches, such as I had never hoped to see. He's 60 years old, such as I had never hoped to see. It impressed me profoundly. He was a man almost 60 years of age, bearing tremendous burdens, yet absolutely calm and untroubled.

Why Hudson Taylor’s Experience Lasted: Bible Saturation, Suffering, and Sovereign Grace

So, here's my closing question, to which I have three answers, so we got another 10 -15 minutes to go. Why did it last? Thousands have had Keswick experiences and crashed and burned. They've gone to conferences on union, abiding.

God has met them. They soared, and they crashed. Why didn't he? And I mentioned three answers. I'm going to unpack those three answers. I didn't think them up and then look for them. I was done with all my research, and there they were.

Number one, he was a Bible man, absolute century with the Bible. He knew all the criticisms and to what degree they were biblical. Number two, he suffered. Oh, how he suffered. And number three, he believed in the sovereignty of the vinedresser.

Okay, let's take those one at a time. He was a Bible guy. He was submissive, not just a knower of the Bible. He was submissive to the Bible. There's the key. You can be a knower of the Bible and crash and burn and make shipwreck of your faith.

To be submissive to the Bible is a wonderful protection from crashing and burning. His walk of faith in life was not nearly as passive as some of his words make it out to be. William Berger, his England side, China inland mission leader, when he read the correspondence in which Hudson Taylor described his experience, wrote to him a warning letter saying how he disapproved of overstressing the passive receptive aspects of holiness and minimizing the active.

And he emphasized we must resist evil. We must make efforts to obey God. And later, J .C. Ryle, in the same period, would write the famous book on holiness precisely to try to set things more straight when it came to the way God sanctifies his people.

Over the years, Taylor embraced that counsel. He accepted that. I don't think it was a surprise in his ears that he needed to be warned against overstressing the passive at the exclusion of the active.

He said, union is not identical with abiding. Union is uninterrupted. Abiding may be interrupted. If abiding be interrupted, sin follows. That's true. He not only recognized that abiding in Christ can be interrupted and has its ups and downs, but that even our most faith filled, joy filled, ecstatic moments of abiding are sinful.

Not all Keswick people went there. We are sinful creatures, he wrote, and our holiest service can only be accepted through Christ Jesus, our Lord. What a safeguard against perfectionism. His life was one resounding affirmation.

God uses means to preserve and deepen and intensify union with Christ. And those means are a kind of effort. He would say, not slavish effort, but trusting effort. The difference between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit.

The difference between serving in your own strength and 1 Peter 4 .11, let him who serves serve in the strength that God supplies. What's that like? That should be one of your major goals in life, is to discover the meaning of 1 Peter 4 .11 for ministry.

Serving in the strength of another. You serve, the strength is from another. That's the miracle of life. That's what he discovered in a new way. Or Galatians 2 .20, the life I now live. Yes, I get out of bed in the morning.

I go and open my Bible. I write mission letters. I edit a magazine. I recruit recruits by the faith of him who loved me and gave himself for me so that I'm walking in constant reliance and communion upon him a moment by moment so that there's this sweet peace and contentment in my effort.

In this effort of faith, there are things to be done. Quote, communion with Christ requires our coming to him. Meditating upon his person and his work requires the diligent use of the means of grace and especially prayerful reading of his word.

Many fail to abide because they habitually fast instead of feed. Fast from the word instead of feeding on the word. His new pattern after his experience is to get up, go to bed earlier, get up at 5 a .m.

He knew he needed sleep. That's another means of grace. He got up at 5 a .m. in order to, quote, give time to Bible study and prayer, often two hours before the work of the day began. And he never saw these spiritual disciplines in contradiction to glorious experience of union with Christ.

Jesus is divine. His father is the vinedresser. Both the power of the vine and the providence of the vinedresser, including the vinedresser's providence to get you out of bed in the morning, get you over your Bible, open your eyes, use caffeine if you must, and keep you reading in his holy word.

This leads now to the second reason why he didn't make shipwreck. First one was he's Bible saturated. He walked into a biblical balance concerning means and effort, and yet he never ever forsook the wonder of the sweetness and quietness and restfulness, peacefulness, joyfulness of abiding like a branch in a vine.

In all of his efforts, that's what we want. Second, he suffered deep and long, and this suffering was God's way of deepening and sweetening his experience of union with Christ. The vinedresser does many things to the branches, and the one that Jesus focused on in John 15 -2 was pruning, cutting.

The aim of that cutting is to preserve and intensify, make fruitful the vine. So here's what he says, it is only, this is Hudson Taylor, it is only in the trial of God's grace that its beauty and power can be seen.

Then all our trials of temper, circumstances, provocation, sickness, disappointment, bereavement will but give a higher burnish to the mirror and enable us to reflect more fully, more perfectly the glory and blessedness of our master.

Another quote, it is in the path of obedience and self-denying service that God reveals himself most intimately to his children. When it costs most, we find the greatest joy, we find the darkest hours, we find the darkest hours, the brightest, and the greatest loss, the highest gain.

While the sorrow is short-lived and will soon pass away, the joy is far more exceeding, and it is eternal. Would that I could give you an idea of the way in which God has revealed himself to me in China and to others whom I have known in the presence of bereavement, in the deepest sorrows of life he has so drawn near to me that I have said to myself, is it possible that the precious one who is in his presence can have more of his presence than I have now?

In other words, the experience of the fullness of union with all of its joy, peace, power, love comes not only from the preciousness of the vine, but the pruning of the vinedress. God uses means of pain as well as prayer and Bible study.

Quote, all these difficulties, Taylor said, are only platforms for the manifestation of his grace and power and love, which leads us finally now to number three. He rested in, believed in the sovereignty of God in a very absolute way.

I had to dig for this. It's funny how biographers of Hudson Taylor are so ah theological, very frustrating. But I dug and I found, because I wondered, how did he retain his composure when 58 of his missionaries were slaughtered, 21 children killed?

How did he retain under the most oppressive, dangerous, sorrowful, painful circumstances his joy? How did he keep going? And he didn't just throw in the towel and say, it's enough, I can't take it anymore.

He did it because he was sure of the all-satisfying sap of the vine and the all-satisfying sovereignty of the vinedresser. When he was 52, he was laid up and he wrote, make up your mind that God is an infinite sovereign and has the right to do as he pleases with his own and he may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in his dealings with you.

When Maria died, he was 38, four little children left behind. She died of cholera. He wrote to his mother, from my inmost soul, this is the year after the experience happened, from my inmost soul, I delight in the knowledge that God does and permits all things and causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him.

Now, Satan is real and he does much evil in the world to God's people. Job is written to help us grasp how the sovereignty of God relates to that evil of Satan and his reflections on the book of Job are stunning.

He wrote, oftentimes shall we be helped and blessed if we bear in mind that Satan is servant and not master and that he and wicked men incited by him are only permitted to do that which God by his determinate counsel and foreknowledge has before predestined, determined, shall come.

People use the word permit sometimes to escape determinate counsel. Hudson didn't. God ordains or permits all that comes to pass and when he unpacks permits, he unpacks it by saying they are only permitted to do what God by his determinate counsel and foreknowledge has before determined shall be done.

Paraphrase, God permits what he decrees. Conclusion, I conclude that while Keswick teaching may in many cases have been overemphasized or have overemphasized passivity, that's true, in many cases overemphasize the essential nature of a second experience of a crisis nature that you must walk into and out of to get to the higher life.

That's not true. You don't have to go that route. So that's a mistake to overemphasize that second experience while they were mistaken in the worst exponents of emphasis on passivity or a second experience.

Nevertheless, Hudson Taylor's life bears witness to the possibility of living with more peace, more joy, more fruit in hardship than most of us enjoy. If you just need Bible to meditate on in the coming days, go here.

You know where I'm quoting. Not that I speak of being in need, for I have learned, mark that word, I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound in any and every circumstance.

I have learned the secret. It's a hapax legomenon in the New Testament. Greek word only used here. A word almost always used in the mystery religions for the secret. Why would he grasp for a word like that?

That's a risky word because it's a mystery how you learn the secret. I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance, need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So if you just need to take away a Bible verse to pray over, let it be Philippians 4, 11 to 14.

The learning here, I believe in this text when Paul says, I have learned this contentment, this murmur free contentment. Oh, I'd love to unpack that. Chapter two, verse 15, do all things without grumbling or complaining, questioning that you may be blameless and innocent children of God in the midst of crooked and perverse generations on whom you shine in China like the light of the world.

What's the light of the world? Murmur free. Christians who don't complain is the light of the world. It's the same light in chapter five of Matthew as well. Blessed are you when men persecute you and revive you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely.

Rejoice and complain. Rejoice in that day for great is your reward in heaven. Let them see this glory of your good works so that they may give glory to your father who is in heaven. We have such a long way to go.

John Piper does at least. 68 and still murmuring. Pray for me. I will pray for you. I am totally serious. Learning is, two more minutes, learning is information and realization. Information is we have a vine.

We're attached to a vine. He is life. He is all my joy. I give to you my peace. I give you my love. I give to you. This is information that's right there in the book attached to the vine by faith in Jesus.

It's ours. Union is unbreakable, unchangeable. Realization is a miracle, a miracle. So is faith. Realization of the fullness of this experience is a miracle and is a resting, is a receiving, is an enjoying.

It happens. It happens or it doesn't while you're contemplating the union and the wonder of the vine and his life in you. So whether God gives you a crisis moment, I don't idolize that. I've never experienced one.

I don't think. I've probably experienced several of them, but I don't remember them because I'm 68. Whether you have a crisis moment of this realization that lasts a lifetime or whether God leads you into deeper, higher experiences of himself over time through many warfare battles, don't settle.

Don't settle for anything less than murmur-free contentment in the vine that unleashes your dream, your venture. When you're leaving here in a couple hours, have before you, may I be filled with all the fullness of God, Ephesians 3, 19, and don't settle till your noontime, noontime.

Don't settle till noon till you get it. You will get it. Just question how much you'll get now, and God only knows how much he will give to you now. Some people labor with psychological woundedness to the end, and they hold on, and that's a holding on.

But don't ever, ever think that there's not more for you to have. And then when you have it, whatever measure, use it to give yourself to some amazing Christ-exalting dream. Let's pray. So, Father, some of these brothers, sisters here are going to go to China, going to go to North Korea, they're going to go to Indonesia, they're going to go to Iraq or Saudi Arabia, and I pray that you would just make that clear for them without any arm-twisting.

May the peace of God rule, arbitrate, confirm in their hearts what the next venture is. And may for all of us, Lord, there be a higher level of enjoyment of our union, with you. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.