They Couldn’t Have Known VI

I am really enjoying this series and since I am meditating on it stories seem to pop up everywhere. The Lord has encouraged me over and over with it. Here are a few more examples that I’ve “stumbled” across recently.

One day a teenager in Akron, Ohio was on his way home from work at a tire company and overheard a street preacher say: “If you don’t know how to be saved… just call on God.” Upon returning home, he climbed into the attic and heeded the preacher’s advice. We don’t even know the street preacher’s name and he couldn’t have known the incredible harvest that God was going to give him from that sermon because that teenager was A.W. Tozer. Tozer was a pastor in the first half of the twentieth century and is one of the best loved Christian writers of all time. He wrote over 40 books including the Christian classics: The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy. He is oft quoted and one of the most quotable authors ever. In the vein of this series, one of my favorite of his quotes is this: “We can be in our day what the heroes of faith were in their day – but remember at the time they didn’t know they were heroes.” Untold thousands have been blessed by Tozer’s ministry. It’s certain that the street preacher never knew the impact of his message until he arrived in Heaven. He couldn’t have known. He simply obeyed the Spirit and preached, amazing. We never know fully what God is up to in our lives.

On October 5, 1783, a pastor by the name of Dr. Ryland baptized a young man. That evening the pastor entered in his diary, “This day baptized a poor journeyman shoemaker.” Of course Dr. Ryland couldn’t have known when he lowered young William Carey into the water that Carey would go on to become “The Father Of Modern Missions” and bring the gospel to India. There is no way that Dr. Ryland could have known that this young cobbler would be a genius of Bible translation and would translate and distribute “more than 213,000 volumes of the Divine Word, in forty different languages.” and many other things. His life and ministry inspired thousands to give themselves to God in missionary service and his impact on India and the world is still felt today. Dr. Ryland couldn’t have known what God was up to and neither can we.

In January of 1850 a 15 year old boy was trying to get to church in a snowstorm. The blizzard was so great that he couldn’t make it to his church so he turned down a lane and ducked into a small Primitive Methodist Chapel. The pastor was snowed in and couldn’t be there so a poor tradesman in the congregation stood up to attempt to preach instead. Years later the 15 year old boy wrote about that morning. Here is what he wrote.

[quote]”He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had nothing else to say. The text was, ‘Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’ He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in the text. He began thus: ‘My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, “Look.” Now that does not take a deal of effort. It ain’t lifting your foot or your finger; it is just “look.” Well, a man need not go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man need not be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; a child can look. But this is what the text says. Then it says, “Look unto Me.” ‘Ay,’ said he, in broad Essex, ‘many of ye are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You’ll never find comfort in yourselves.’ Then the good man followed up his text in this way: ‘Look unto Me: I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hanging on the Cross. Look: I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O, look to Me! Look to Me!’ When he had got about that length, and managed to spin out ten minutes, he was at the length of his tether. “Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. He then said, ‘Young man, you look very miserable.’ Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made on my personal appearance from the pulpit before. However, it was a good blow struck. He continued: ‘And you will always be miserable — miserable in life and miserable in death — if you do not obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.’ “Then he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist can, ‘Young man, look to Jesus Christ.’ There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the Precious Blood of Christ.”[/quote]

We don’t know the poor tradesman’s name that “preached” that day but the whole Christian world knows the name of that 15 year old boy who came to Christ that day. The tradesman couldn’t have known that the teenager he spoke those anointed words to would go on to become C.H. Spurgeon “The Prince of Preachers.” The next year at the age of 16 Spurgeon would preach his first sermon and by the age of 21 he was preaching every Sunday to crowds of 5 to 6 thousand people and continued for over 30 years. I’ve included below a newspaper artist’s sketch of a Sunday morning at Spurgeon’s church, The Metropolitan Tabernacle. Millions of his sermons have been printed and distributed around the world. The expanse and impact of his ministry only heaven knows. They couldn’t have known dear friends and neither can we. How do we know what God is doing and will do with the young people around us that we are ministering to everyday? We can’t. We must simply sow every seed God puts in our hand and trust Him with the results.

Matt Bullen