a cornerstone sermon manuscript

HUDSON TAYLOR’S TEXT (JOHN 19:30) Given 31 January 2010 No. 8 in the series Texts That Changed History: The Practical Ownership of Scripture Cornerstone Bible Church • Lilburn, Georgia Dr. Doug McIntosh, Senior Pastor

As I look back across a fairly long and eventful life, it seems to me that the two most remarkable events that have taken place in my lifetime are very easy to identify. One would have to be the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. That one took the world by sur- prise, but in reality it could have been predicted, because tyran- nies always create huge resentments among their populations. You cannot rob the people to build weapons and expect everyone to be content in those circumstances. The other staggering event, in my estimation, is the astonishing rise of a huge Christian population in . Nobody knows how large that population really is because the Chinese government refuses to acknowledge the existence of the real church in China, which is unregistered, meets in homes, and is therefore consid- ered illegal. People who have no axe to grind tend to put the number of Christians somewhere between 50 and 100 million. If we split that number in the middle, we arrive at 75 million, which would make China one of the largest Christian populations in the world, comparable to the number of believers in the . All this has taken place in the face of communist repression and per- secution. By common consent, the number of believers in China in 1949 when were expelled was somewhere in the vicinity of a half million. It was not regarded as a strong church, and the predictions were unified in forecasting that the totalitarian communist government would undoubtedly wipe out completely the results of two centuries of work in China in a matter of months. But the church today is one of the strongest in the world, and shows no signs of retreat, for which we can thank God. We will not know this side of the Second Coming all the causes that led up to that tiny church’s existence in 1949, but it is hard to deny that one of those causes was our subject for today, James . Hudson Taylor spent 51 years in China in the second half of the nineteenth century. He is best known as the founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM), an organiza- tion that still exists, though its name is now OMF International. (The initials once stood for Overseas Missionary Fellowship). At the time of Hudson Tay- lor’s death in 1905, CIM had on its staff 850 missionaries serving in China. These people were spread over 205 mission stations, and were serving along- side 1,300 Chinese staff. They were working in 188 schools and 44 hospitals scattered over all 15 provinces of China. The churches they established ac- counted for 125,000 Chinese believers. All of that ministry ultimately emerged from Hudson Taylor’s encounter with one text of Scripture, the verse found at John 19:30. I’ll read it for you beginning at verse 28. Hudson Taylor’s Text in Context (John 19:28-30) 28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” 29 Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. 30 So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. Hudson Taylor’s Text and His Conversion Hudson Taylor’s text is really Hudson Taylor’s word. That is, the thing that changed his life and led to his conversion was the sentence in verse 30 where Jesus says, “It is finished.” In our English Bibles, we find three words. In the Greek text there is only one: tetelestai. To understand how profoundly this word influenced him, we have to look at… His family Taylor was born in Yorkshire, in 1832 to godly parents. His father was a pharmacist and a lay preacher in the Methodist church. His father had a great interest in China based on some of the reading he had done, and of- ten prayed earnestly (even before Hudson was born) that if he ever had a son that God would in turn send that child to China as a missionary. That

2 seemed a far-fetched prayer at the time, because China was closed almost en- tirely to missionary work. In spite of that, at the age of five Hudson used to tell visitors to the family home that one day he hoped to go to China as a missionary. As he grew up, however, Hudson Taylor knew a number of struggles in his spiritual life. His struggles At the age of seventeen, Hudson was still unconverted. It wasn’t that he was uninterested in spiritual things, but he simply didn’t understand the heart of the gospel. Taylor wrote of this period in one of his books: “Often I had tried to make myself a Christian and failing, of course, in such efforts, I be- gan at last to think that for some reason or other I could not be saved.”1 He continued in this state for some time, but at last he found his text, which resulted in… His conversion It happened this way. It was a holiday and his family was away. Hudson was home by himself and was rather bored. Looking for something interesting to read, he went into his father’s study and began flipping through books and printed materials when something caught his eye. It was a tract or pamphlet that was several pages long and included an interesting-looking story. He decided to read the story but to stop his reading before the author got to the point where he made his application. Hudson had done that before. But this time was different. He read all the way through and was captivated. One phrase in the pamphlet caught his attention. That phrase was “the fin- ished work of Christ.” He had never heard the expression before and he thought it was curious. If Christ’s work was finished, could anyone or need anyone add anything to it? He wrote of this later when he said, “Light was flashed into my soul by the Holy Spirit… There was nothing in the world to be done but to fall down on one’s knees and, accepting this Savior and His salvation, to praise Him evermore.”2 What he didn’t know was that his mother was praying for him at that very minute because she had been so concerned for his spiritual darkness. When she came home later, he told her of his conversion, and she was not surprised; but she was very excited and grateful to God for this answer to her prayers. Hudson Taylor’s Text and His Missionary Vision The thought that Christ’s work was finished and needed only to be offered to the world quickly brought Hudson back to his earlier interest in missions, and it gave him what we might call his missionary vision. In this area he was exceptional in every respect. One missionary historian introduces the section on Hudson Taylor by say- ing:

3 No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul has had a wider vision and has carried out a more system- atic plan of evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor. His sights were set on reaching China, all four hundred million people, and it was to that end that he labored.3 His preparation In order to open doors for his presence in China, he knew he would need something of value to offer the population in addition to the gospel. He de- cided to take up the study of medicine and so became a trainee at the Lon- don Hospital. At the same time he applied to go to China as an appointee of the Chinese Evangelization Society, a poorly organized mission society that had been sending people there ever since the Chinese emperor had permit- ted westerners into the country. His discovery It was while he was in his training that he made the important discovery that was to shape all of his work as a missionary. He discovered that he could depend on God to supply his needs by prayer alone. The doctor whose apprentice he was happened to be an absent-minded sort, and he told Hud- son to be sure and remind him when Hudson’s salary, meager as it was, came due. Taylor decided not to do this, but to see if he could depend on God to supply his needs whether or not the doctor remembered his obligation. His rationale for this was simple: “When I get out to China I shall have no claim on anyone for anything; my only claim will be on God. How important, therefore, to learn before leaving England to move man, through God, by prayer alone.”4 Of course, what he said was not quite true. The Chinese Evangelization Society was allegedly responsible to send along funds do- nated to his work; but they were so irregular and irresponsible about this that his dependence on prayer turned out to be a good thing. (By the way, that is not the only way to do it. The Apostle Paul was not re- luctant to tell interested people of his own financial needs when he was moving around the mission field. Nonetheless, for Hudson Taylor it was im- portant to know that God could be trusted.) Hudson Taylor got to China sooner than he expected. His medical training was interrupted when word came out of China that a man named Hung, a professing Christian, had become the new emperor. The Chinese Evangeliza- tion Society thought this would be the propitious moment to get as many missionaries into the country as possible. So, at the age of 21, Hudson packed his suitcase and left for China. That was probably not a particularly wise thing to do. In the end, putting a professing Christian in power worked no better in China than it works in the United States, so Taylor had cut his training short to no avail, and this would cause problems later.

4 His early field experience He arrived in in the spring of 1854, and like David Livingstone, he found his first exposure to the mission field an unpleasant one. Shanghai was filled with missionaries, but they were all living in the port city, and none of them knew anything much about the real China, which was inland from Shanghai. Like David Livingstone in Africa, Hudson decided to see for himself. He took a boat up the river and stopped at about twenty different towns along the way. What he found was troublesome. His European dress made him stand out like a sore thumb. He could walk all around Shanghai and nobody would notice; but the second he got off the boat upriver every- body in town came to see the weird westerner. When he returned, he told his fellow missionaries that since he had plans to live in the interior he was going to adopt Chinese dress so as not to cause trouble at his new posting. They all thought he was crazy and was giving in to the pagans. He thought they were exchanging the gospel message for a message that said, “If you’re going to be a Christian, you have to start by be- coming English.” At age 23, Hudson had reached a crossroads. Actually, it was more like a dead end. During his months in China, his time had been marked by a grow- ing disillusionment with his missionary society, which had failed to keep its promises of support, and by discouragement caused by criticism from estab- lished missionaries of Taylor’s unorthodox methods. He was so unhappy with the Chinese Evangelization Society that he resigned and began to serve as an independent missionary with no outside help. But two crushing blows came; first, in the form of a Dear John letter from his girl in England, who insisted that he forget her, “fearing that she did not love him”; and second, an order from the British consul to stop his mission- ary work in a particular non-treaty town inland. “My dear mother,” he wrote home, “my heart is sad, sad, sad. I do not know what to do.” At that stage, God graciously gave Hudson Taylor a friend, a godly Scottish missionary about twenty years his senior named William Burns. Burns sensed in Taylor a young man with a kindred spirit and a need for a friend. He encouraged Taylor to rest in the Lord and to trust in His goodness, guid- ance, and resources. Burns, too, adopted conventional Chinese dress. For seven months they traveled, preached, and prayed together, and those months left an indelible mark on Hudson Taylor. As Taylor’s son and daughter-in-law described it, “The friendship of this man was the gift of God to Hudson Taylor at this particular juncture… Such a friendship is one of the crowning blessings of life.”

5 At the same time, Hudson Taylor was doing what he could to gain some suc- cess in… His romantic life He was lonely, and he wanted a wife. After several disappointing attempts at finding one who would be willing to come to him from England, Hudson Taylor found a prospect in young , a woman he met in the city of Ningpo, where she was a teacher in a boarding school for girls. She was the daughter of missionary parents and had been born in China. The headmis- tress of the school threw up many roadblocks to the union, but persistence won fair maiden, and in the end Maria consented to marry Hudson, and it was an extremely happy and productive union. They were true partners in ministry. One missions historian writes: Maria was the very woman Hudson Taylor needed to polish the rough edges of his personality and to help him focus his enthu- siasm and his ambitions, and from the start their marriage was a true partnership. They remained in Ningpo for three years dur- ing which time Taylor was unexpectedly thrust into the supervi- sion of the local hospital, a position that was clearly beyond his capability.5 Hudson Taylor’s interruption of his medical training had come back to haunt him, so he and Maria made the decision to return to England on furlough so that he could resume his studies. While they were there, they would accom- plish much more than that on what became… His productive furlough The Taylors arrived in England in 1860 and first addressed some health problems of their own. After getting some medical attention and some much- needed rest, Taylor enrolled in and completed his medical training, becom- ing a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. They also devoted themselves to some challenging translation work. They had brought to England with them a Chinese language helper and together they completed a revision of the New Testament in the Ningpo dialect. The work was difficult and time-consuming, and they worked twelve to fourteen hours a day on it until it was finished. But by far the most significant event during these years was the founding of… The China Inland Mission Taylor traveled around England during this furlough, and wherever he went, people were moved as he described the plight of China’s millions. They were so touched that they wanted to know how they could be a part of what Hudson and Maria were trying to do. After a while, he and Maria sat

6 down and put on paper the principles and charter of a new organization de- signed to not only support them and their work in China, but also to be the channel through which God could raise up other people who were interested enough in China to want to go there to work alongside them. The CIM was organized as a nondenominational society and did its recruiting not from the highly educated but from the working classes in England. All their recruits would be faith missionaries who had learned on their own to trust God to supply their needs as they worked. Because of his bad experiences with the Chinese Evangelization Society, the Taylor’s decided that the headquarters of the CIM would have to be in China where it could be responsive to the needs of the missionaries. Taylor was made the president of the organization, and in the course of time discovered that he had a real knack for organization and leadership, something that would be very valuable in the years ahead. Finally, in 1865, he was ready to go back to China. He headed back not only with Maria, but with the four children that had been born to them and fif- teen missionary recruits that became the core group of the CIM. Taylor had left his mark on England during his furlough. Charles Haddon Spurgeon recognized this when he said, “China, China, China is now ringing in our ears in that special, peculiar, musical, forcible, unique way in which Mr. Taylor utters it.”6 The missionaries arrived in Hangchow, which was to be the CIM headquar- ters, had Chinese clothes made, received Chinese haircuts, and began the process of finding their permanent stations. They went through many ad- justments, including a time of disillusionment because the experience was not what they expected when they were in England. The dissensions of the group were solved in a painful way when little Gracie Taylor, the daughter of Hudson and Maria, took ill not long after their arrival and soon died. The outpouring of sympathy brought the group together and eased their dissatis- factions. His later ministry For the next twenty years, one crisis after another came to the CIM family. Taylor kept asking God for new people to help, and God kept answering his prayers. Ten here, fifteen there, 38 at another point; all came to assist in the great work. At the same time, hostilities began to break out in the inland cities against foreigners of any kind. Taylor bore a huge weight of responsi- bility—not only for his own family, but also for the dozens of people who were arriving to assist in the work. In 1870, they sent their young children back to England for their education, which was a very difficult time for them. Maria was expecting still another child, and after the little ones left for England she fell seriously ill. She de-

7 livered her baby, who lived less than two weeks; then she herself died at the age of 33. The following year, Hudson Taylor married a second time, a Miss Jennie Faulding, one of the missionaries he had recruited years before. In 1872 they returned to England to see his children and to recruit more missionaries. By 1895, thirty years after its founding, missionaries of CIM had entered every Chinese province and there were nearly 700 of them doing the work. The accomplishments of the organization were huge, and so was Hudson Taylor’s responsibilities. Through all of these years Taylor was plagued by ill health, by missionary disagreements, and by the anti-foreign sentiment that the missionaries all had to face. Hudson Taylor understood that his own weakness wasn’t a problem; it was an opportunity for God to work. His organization accomplished a great deal in China, and a friend of his once complimented him on all that he had done. He said in reply, “It seemed to me that God looked over the whole world to find a man who was weak enough to do His work, and when He at last found me, He said, ‘He is weak enough—he’ll do.’” The Christian life is like that. It is fundamentally paradoxical. When we feel strong for God, we are on the wrong track. When we are sure that nothing we can do could ever make a difference, we are right where God wants us because we will then look to Him. Hudson Taylor died in China in 1905 after a life filled with difficulties and challenges and left a nucleus of believers behind who formed the core from which grew the modern church in China. All of this was connected with an idle moment when he contemplated the extent of Christ’s finished work for himself and for the world. To this text, or rather to this word, I want to turn your attention for the next few minutes. Hudson Taylor’s Text When the Lord Jesus uttered that single word from the cross that comes into English as, “It is finished,” He used a word with rich associations. Tetelestai is… An agricultural word When a Greek farmer discovered that a calf born into his herd was excep- tionally beautiful and without flaws, he might very well look at it and say, “It is finished.” God had put together an animal that was completed, a pol- ished and refined work of creation. He would use that word that Jesus used in His dying moment, tetelestai. But tetelestai was also…

8 An artistic word When a Greek sculptor had completed his shaping of a marble bust, he would step back from his efforts and realize that nothing else needed to be added to it. Satisfied with his labors, he would say, “It is finished. The work is done. Nothing needs to be added.” And tetelestai is also… A priestly word When a priest received a perfect lamb from a worshiper, the pride of the man’s flock, he might reflect on how different it was from the typical offer- ing that he received. People were inclined to give lame or blind animals, since they couldn’t sell them anyway. The priest could look at that perfect lamb and say, “It is finished. It is an offering worthy of being presented to God.” And the word Jesus used in John 19:30 was especially… A commercial word When a business transaction was completed in the marketplace, this is the word that was used to describe it as over and done with. The invoice might say, “Two hundred yards of cloth,” and give a price in so many drachmas. But once the money was paid, the seller would write across the face of the document, “Paid in full.” In Greek, the word was tetelestai. That is the word that gave Hudson Taylor peace in His soul. That is the word that led him to China and created the China Inland Mission. This word is the core of the Christian gospel. We believe and teach that no human achievements can add anything to what Jesus did. He paid it all. It is a truth that is hateful to our world. We insist on mixing human achievement in with God’s work, but God will have none of it. If that is news to you this morning, I hope that you will respond to it the way Hudson Taylor did—by turning to God in profound thanks and true worship and recognizing the claim that He has on your life as a result. You probably won’t be called on to do all that he did, but he will give meaning and purpose to your life all the same.

Copyright notice Copyright © 2010 Douglas McIntosh. This data file/manuscript is the sole property of the copyright holder and may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file/manuscript must contain the above copyright notice. This data file/manuscript may not be copied in part (except for small quotations used with cita- tion of source), edited, revised, copied for resale, or incorporated in any commercial publica- tions, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays, or other products offered for sale without the written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be

9 made in writing and addressed to Dr. Doug McIntosh, Senior Pastor, Cornerstone Bible Church, 869 Cole Drive, Lilburn, GA 30047. Notes 1 Clifford G. Howell , “J. Hudson Taylor: Founder of the China Inland Mission,” Wholesome Words web site, located at http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/biotaylor7.html. Ac- cessed 27 Jan 2010, n.p.

2 Quoted in Ruth A. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Chris- tian Missions (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, 1983), 173.

3 Tucker, 173.

4 Quoted in J.C. Pollock, Hudson Taylor and Maria: Pioneers in China (Grand Rapids: Zoner- van, 1976), 17.

5 Tucker, 179. 6 Quoted in Pollock, 140.

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