Salvation in Full Color | The Whole Counsel

The podcast. We have started 2021, and in the new year we have a lot of new things. TJ mentioned last year that there were going to be some changes in the podcast. So here we are, and if you're viewing the podcast, you can see the changes.

If you're just listening, let me explain them to you. First of all, we're in a new place. This is the office of MediaGratia, so we're no longer filming in my study at the church. Also, we have a new co-host, Chuck Baggett.

Chuck's been with us a few times, but he'll be with us permanently. Chuck and I are co-pastors of a church in New Albany, so we want to approach these topics that we're going to be approaching from a pastoral perspective, not just for spiritual leaders, but from an experiential perspective.

How do we take truths and apply them to ourselves, but also how do we apply these truths to other people? We have a new name, The Whole Council, and so speaking of The Whole Council of God, covering a wide array of topics.

What's the same? Well, what's the same is really that the content still will be truths about the Christian life approached from an experiential perspective, and we still want to borrow a lot from the older writers.

We find it helpful to be able to lean on some of their writings and to take their books or their letters or sermons and to introduce you to them, in case you haven't come across them yourself, and so we want to jump right in with a new book.

This year. Yes, we're going to take a book written by Richard Owen Roberts or edited by Richard Owen Roberts, I suppose, called Salvation in Full Color. Richard Owen Roberts, who is an expert on the history of revival, he spent his life studying that and has been an itinerant evangelist, preacher, and he's also written several books.

This one is a compilation of sermons by Great Awakening pastors that cover the full gamut of salvation, and so we want to take some time walking through those sermons, and as we get to them each week, there'll be a short biographical sketch of the preachers who preach them, and so that's kind of the plan.

Chuck mentioned that the.

Sermons of this book are all taken from Great Awakening ministers, the first Great Awakening, so we want to kind of give you a reintroduction to that. The Great Awakening movement was an international movement, starting in the colonies.

Later, news reached the UK through Isaac Watts and others, and a book was published, Calling People to Prayer. That book was used by the Lord to really stir the hearts of so many in the Church of England, in the Church of Scotland, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists in the UK, and from the UK we have the most famous preacher of the Great Awakening, George Whitefield, and when we look at these sermons, what we find really is evangelicalism at its best, in our opinion.

A very healthy balance is here. The Great Awakening ministers all borrowed from the Puritans the century before, and like Puritanism, there was a wedding of experiential or heart grasp of truths, but also intellectual, and so the things that you're going to read in this book that we're going to talk about, they're all very doctrinal, and there's some deep waters here, but they're also approached in a very warm way.

The writers want you to take these truths and to apply them to yourself. I think that when you read these letters, whatever you have in your mind when you think of Reformed theology, or maybe if you use the label Calvinistic, these writers actually would fall under those labels, but if you listen to what they say in their sermons, it may be very different than what you think of when you think of those words.

There is a warm doctrine. There is an aggressive evangelism calling men and women to repent and embrace the gospel. Nothing about this is what we would think of as hyper-Calvinism, so we're glad to introduce the book to you just for that, but also just the way that those truths are laid out are so important.

Yes,.

The truths themselves are important in the order that they are laid out in the book, which we'll cover later, but also it is important that we think about even broader truths in a specific manner. So, Roberts introduces the book by pointing us to the character of God, which is the starting place.

How we think about God is so important to everything else, our thought about everything else. So, he points to a very specific thing, four things, four categories, major categories, God, self, sin, and salvation.

Those are connected beginning with the character of God. If we have a low view of God, if our view of him is not as scriptures describe him to be, then certainly that's got to affect everything else, those other categories.

And so, he begins and these sermons begin by pointing us to the character of God and seeking to elevate our thoughts of him by showing us what the scriptures say are true about him. If God is as he describes himself to be, and this is so much of the Behold Your God stuff, right?

If God is as he describes himself to be, then what must we be? And Roberts points out that we have this huge problem of pride, and until we see God as he is, we have no motivation to be humble, to humiliate ourselves before God.

So, it is this correct view of God that prompts us to lay our pride in the dust and in self-abasement, look to him. Because as we see ourselves, we begin to see our sin for the problem that it is. If we are proud, if our view of ourself is really high, and God is not that big, not that special, then obviously sin can't be that big of a problem.

And if sin's not that big of a problem, then salvation can't be that big of a salvation. So, we begin by looking at God and seeing him as he is. Pride's laid in the dust. Sin is an insurmountable problem outside the work of God, but in grace he has provided a great salvation that is more than adequate to cover every sin.

And so, he lays those things out for us, both in the introduction, trying to press the need for that kind of view, and then the sermons themselves also kind of cover those four categories. Yeah, so if we take those.

Great truths and how they are linked with each other and how they affect each other—high view of God, low view of self, serious view of sin, and the need then for an enormous, full-blown salvation, which of course is not really perhaps what we've grown up with in American evangelicalism.

We've grown up with the opposite. Small view of God, big view of me. Small view of my sin, small view of my Savior. Kind of a monochrome picture of salvation. So, we tend to say, I got saved at this age.

There's nothing wrong with that, and we don't want to overreact, but the Bible gives so many other words. The Spirit of God, in his infinite wisdom, through the writers, has given us a whole series of theological terms under the umbrella term of salvation.

So, if salvation, or being saved, is the umbrella term, then under that comes a number of other aspects, and so that's where we get the chapters for this book. Let me just read through the titles here, and I'll read them in the order that we find them, and then we'll talk about why that's important.

The character of God, the law of God, total depravity, the heinousness of sin, dead works. Now, all those sermons are dealing with the problem and getting the right measure of the problem, so we don't accept anything less than the salvation that God offered, and then he begins the good news, divine love, the atonement, regeneration, or the new birth, effectual calling, the work of the Holy Spirit, and all those deal with what God has done to bring us to himself, and then we read of this, seeking the Lord, repentance, justification by faith, our responses to the gospel.

More, he goes on, adoption, conversion, love to God, and then perseverance of the saints, sanctification, divine retribution, and finally, the final warning, and each of those by a different Great Awakening minister.

Now, the reason we're taking time to go through all this is that the order of those truths is very specific. It's not just truths preached by Great Awakening ministers. It's truths laid out in the order that those ministers would have agreed was the biblical order, based on what Chuck mentioned, the God, self, sin, and salvation.

So, if you're tempted to come to a book like this, which I have done this before, we've gone through this book as a church a couple of times over the years, and it's been really beneficial, but sometimes I just want to pick up the book, and I want to jump to my favorite topic, or maybe to a sermon that's a topic that I haven't thought about much before.

I remember the first time I saw this book. So, you know, you might be tempted to go to something that talks about the sovereignty of God, and what about predestination, or what about the effectual call?

You know, maybe you haven't even heard that term, so you jump in, and you just skip ahead, and you read that, but we really want to encourage you not to do that. The order of the sermons is particularly critical, and just as critical as all this specificity.

One problem we have is in neglecting the specific theological, biblical terms here, like, you know, regeneration, or adoption, or perseverance of the saint, sanctification, you know, atonement. When you lump all those into just one word, I'm saved, you tend to have a very small view of salvation.

Chuck and I were talking earlier about, you know, in our own experience, and we see this in the church, as a person's view of God gets bigger, then the gap that they feel between themselves and God expands, and so there's kind of a sense, there's a temptation to despair, you know, to think that, why would a God that's that big even notice me?

So, in order to have a healthy Christianity, the only option is, as our view of God expands, and we realize the gap between me and Him is much bigger than I ever imagined, in that gap, our view of the work of Christ must expand.

And so, as the view of the gospel, or as Roberts talks about here, the gospel in full color, as our understanding of the gospel expands and becomes, under these theological themes, fuller and bigger, then the response is not despair, but a greater sense of what He's given us, and a greater gratitude and love.

Yeah, if the problem is not a big problem, then one term might seem adequate, but the greater we find that gap to be, the more we see the necessity of each of those terms, and what they imply, what they teach us about what God has done to rescue us.

Yeah, I mean, you take the chapter, Dead Works, which comes from the book of Hebrews, and you might think, well, I've never even thought about repenting from dead works. What is repentance from dead works?

What are dead works? And how would I turn away from those, so as to make room for the fullness of Christ? Then, you know, that's just one example of where perhaps a careless handling of the great doctrines of our salvation, and I think we could say, as a generalization, American evangelicals, we have a pretty truncated gospel.

We have parts of the truth, and they're true, but because it's a small and bland view of the gospel, it just doesn't grip us. One good self-examination would be, how many words do you need when you think of your salvation?

Do you just need a couple? Saved, forgiven, justification. Is that the end of it? Or maybe you say, well, my focus in salvation is sanctification, but if you only need a couple of these biblical terms, and yet God gave us all these biblical terms, then it's a good indication that maybe our view of God is small, and that's why our view of these terms is small, and we haven't taken them to heart.

Yeah. Mr. Roberts addresses that in the introduction, and he asks, who is right? I don't want to read this whole section, but he makes a series of statements. Let me mention some of them. He asks, who is right?

The preacher who insists that nothing is easier than becoming a Christian, or Jesus Christ himself, who made the way of salvation so difficult that even his disciples asked, who then can be saved? Who is right?

The teacher who describes salvation as the point in time, act of believing in Christ, or the Lord himself, who in severely rebuking Peter for an ordinate speech declared, whoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take his cross and follow me.

Who is right? The Christian leader who gathered about himself vast crowds of people by tickling their ears with pretty speeches, or Christ, who time and time again drove away the great multitudes by increasingly difficult teaching, and demanded of his small band of loyalty through the worst forms of persecution, and a faithfulness to total salvation that endured unto death.

Who is right? The aggressive evangelist who promises instant salvation to millions, who merely immediately and overtly respond to his simple appeal, or the very one who paid the price for sin in his own blood, who made salvation a much more serious matter, declaring, not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Who is right? The slovenly student of the Bible, who is still to read it through carefully and with understanding, or Christ, who says, no man can come to me except the Father who has sent me draw him, and no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of my Father.

Who is right? The peddler of religious tripe, who cheapens the gospel of grace and damages the kingdom of God, by pretending that anyone can encounter God accidentally, and be eternally saved by a careless nodding of the head, or Christ, who tells us to strive to enter in at the straight gate, for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able when once the master of the house is risen up and hath shut the door, and you begin to stand without and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us, and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence you are.

Well, if our view of salvation is low, if our view of God is low, then those statements have to sound shocking. Yeah, I was just thinking when you're reading them, how shocking.

They do sound. Like you think, okay, that's a different Christianity, but it's not. It's the Christianity of Scripture, and the point of all those questions that Roberts asks is that you ought to, like the disciples, say to God, well, if that's salvation, then who could be saved?

And the answer is, that's the great question, you know. The sinner, the most helpless, the most despairing, hopeless sinner can be saved, but it will take an enormous work. It's the triune, eternal work of God, and we're about to look at that in those 20 chapters that follow.

Right. John, as you read.

The titles of the sermons, they were all titles that reflected great doctrines, and we've also said that these are revival sermons, and yet none of them specifically mention revival, at least none of the titles, and that might be surprising to some people that hear revival sermons, and it's not, you know, you should be revived.

Why does he address these kinds of doctrines as revival.

Sermons? Yeah, that really is, it ought to catch our attention, and it's so beneficial, because it brings to light something that perhaps we haven't thought about, and that is, historically, there tend to be two categories of revival.

Now, let's not mistake that. I'm not saying one is genuine revival and one is false revival, or one is a real work of the Lord and one is just a counterfeit. These are both works of the Lord, but there are two different types.

There is a word-oriented or word-centered revival, and then there is the experience-oriented or experience-centered. Now, there's a lot of overlap. Obviously, in a word-oriented or word-centered revival, we have a lot of experiences.

The Great Awakening, First Great Awakening, is a wonderful example of that. Many extraordinary accounts of God dealing with souls and people putting that down, you know, for posterity in biographies, in their own journals, but that wasn't the center of the work, and an experience-centered revival will have a lot of preaching of the Word, but it's the experience, not the Word, that tends to become the center.

So, think of it this way. In a word-centered revival, it is the great truths of Scripture being carefully taught under the extraordinary degree of God's blessing that produces the extraordinary results.

That's what we call revival. God coming among his people in an extraordinary way, producing extraordinary results, and the heart of that is the teaching of the Bible. The word-centered revival tends to be carried from one city to the next through preaching of the great truths of Scripture, and it also tends to last longer.

Historically, we've seen that where the Great Awakening, maybe we could say, lasted 10 years. Second Great Awakening, nearly 50 years in our country. So, the word-centered revivals not only are carried from town to town through preaching, they last longer, and therefore, the other difference is they tend to penetrate and transform the fabric of that society more fully.

The experience-centered revival is just as truly a work of God, but it tends to be centered around testimonies. So, from one town to the next, the revival spreads as people from town A that experienced real revival go to town B, and this is often led by lay people, non-clergy.

I mean, I don't really like those terms as much, but it's not the pastors preaching, but the people that are affected. So, as in the 1904 revival, college kids go from town to town throughout the UK and in the States, and you find them telling of the great work of God in their souls, and it's so encouraging, it leads other churches to begin to cry out, God do that here.

We need that, and God did, but it's the testimony that's.

The fuel. Right, which is not a bad thing, and just to reiterate what you said earlier, I remember the first time I heard this years ago, it was kind of shocking to me, like, wait a minute, is he saying that one is really good and one not so good, and that's not what he's saying, but one is more.

Enduring. Right, right. So, the experience-oriented almost always last a year, maybe two years at the most. 1904 revival in Wales is a great example. We estimate that over a million people in Wales were converted.

Now, Wales doesn't have that many millions, so you have a massive harvest, and those people are truly changed. Many of them gave their lives to missions and just a wonderful fruit from that, but because it only lasted about a year to two years, it didn't change the fabric of the British culture in the way that the Great Awakening did, or what they call the evangelical revival.

So, the depth, the enduring changes aren't there to the degree that in a word centered it is. So, one thing I remember Mr. Roberts encouraging us toward is that if we are allowed to ask God for these seasons of refreshing, these seasons of grace, revival, then it's wise that we know which revival we're praying for.

Mr. Roberts made a point one time that in history, when doctrinally sound churches experience an experience-centered revival,.

The fruit is more healthy. Right, they'll benefit more because the foundation is already there.

Yeah. So, let me give you an example. When D .L. Moody in the 1850s and 60s is in the UK preaching to churches in Scotland, like where Andrew Barnard was pastor, and in England where Spurgeon was pastoring, churches that had a healthy theological foundation, when a short-lived, maybe experience-centered revival occurs, because the root system's already there, healthier fruit.

But if you have a church setting where doctrines have almost been lost, and that would really describe much of American evangelicalism. Genuine Christians, earnest, but never have taken doctrine or been taught doctrine seriously.

If an experience-oriented revival occurs, we would expect that the fruit, though there will be some real fruit, it will not endure, and it would not be as healthy as if we were prepared by a solid foundation.

Yeah, that's an important distinction for our day, both because of the reason you just said, that churches, so many churches, so many people don't have a firm grasp of doctrine of these very terms we're going to be looking at.

Also, just as a culture, we're moving further away from objective truth and words for becoming fuzzy. So it is important that we define these things and understand them, and that we're impacted by God himself, so that weight is felt when we see these words.

And it's not just a definition, you know, a Webster kind of definition, but this is what God has done, and this is the importance of that. Yeah, so when we pray,.

It's right to pray for the kind of revival that we believe would bring the most honor to the Lord, and I think in our day, clearly, that would be a word-oriented revival. Would you say also,.

I think this would be true, that if we're going to pray like that, then it'd be foolish to pray like that, that God would give us a word-oriented revival and not study doctrine. Yeah, and not.

Teach it. I mean, and as pastors, we do feel the balance there. The Sunday morning worship service is not a theology lecture. It is a meeting with God, God's children seeking his face. So we don't preach doctrine.

We preach Christ doctrinally. So the focus is still a person, and the truths, those great truths that we're going to be looking at in the coming weeks of salvation, those great truths are there, and we try to spell them out carefully biblically, but we love those truths because we love the King that they belong to.

Yes, and that's evident also in these sermons. Yeah, yeah, certainly a very different approach than just wanting to be people.

Who have it right, you know. Yeah, so we're going to be talking about this for the next however many weeks, at least 20. We want to encourage people to read along if they will, but if you do, as you approach this, or as you try to approach this, you might be put off a bit by some of the language.

These are sermons from a couple hundred years ago, and sentences are long. Some of the words are not words we use today, and you might start reading and think, I don't understand. It's not worth the effort, but it is worth the effort, both because it's worth the effort because of the doctrine that's there, because of the truths that are there, and the way that they are presented, not just in the order like we're talking about, but because of the men who preach them.

They preach them warmly like we've talked about, and we're not saying this. I'm not saying to give the effort kind of in a vacuum, but we've done this at Christ Church. As you mentioned, we've gone through this a couple of times, and especially the first time, I think there were probably a lot of people who said, we're not comfortable with this old language.

This is hard going, but we encouraged them to put in the effort, and many of them did, and they did benefit from it. So, yeah, it's different. If you're not familiar with old writers, it's different reading, but take your time.

Take a pencil with you. Mark words you don't understand. Do the work, and I think that you will find benefit. Also, because the truths are what they are, we want to be careful not to approach them in a light way.

There are books that we have read and did not really benefit from because we did not, not just the language barrier, but maybe we just didn't really apply ourselves to. So, as these truths are laid before you, these are God's truths from His Word, and if that's what they are, then they deserve our attention and whatever adjustments we need to make.

For them. Diligence, humility, and I would say appetite really make a difference when I approach a religious book, a book like this. So, as we close down our episode, I want to just give you an illustration.

The doctrines of salvation, the doctrines of the new covenant, the covenant of grace, you could think of them as the small print of a contract of love between the king and his enemies who have been made his children.

If there was a last will and testament of a king, and you were involved in that will, and in a human scene, imagine the king has passed away, and so you're called to the reading of the will, and you're going to be an heir.

I mean, you would ask for a copy of that, and you would comb through it, every small print, every page. It wouldn't matter how long it was. You would want to know everything that the king, out of love, provided for you.

Even if you didn't love the king, you would love that document. For the Christian, of course, we do love the king because he loved us first, but if you take the New Testament, the new covenant, and you see these various words, and at first maybe we've treated them casually, but if we step back and look at it, we realize that these are the small print of the greatest contract, the greatest last will and testament.

Our king doesn't die, and yet he makes us his heir, and this living king calls us to the reading of the will, and you're involved, and so every believer ought to come to the doctrines that are in this book, Salvation in Full Color, hungry.

I want to know what my king, my kinsman, my brother, my defender, my savior, or as Paul says, our all and in all. As Rutherford said, you know, oh what an only one is Christ. So what has this only one given me?

And we greedily grab.

These words at life and death, you know. Yeah, so we do look forward to covering these 20 sermons with you over the next weeks, and if you want to follow along, as we mentioned at the beginning, the information for the book, the sermons, are in the show notes.