And we'll remain standing for the scripture reading and following the scripture reading, we'll sing together the Gloria Patri. Psalm 30, it's a great anticipation of what we're thinking about today in today's sermon. Hear the word of the Lord, I will exalt you, O Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. O Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me. O Lord, you brought me up from the grave. You spared me from going down into the pit. Sing to the Lord, you saints of his. Praise his holy name. For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime. Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. When I felt secure, I said, I shall never be shaken. Oh, Lord, when you favored me, you made me you made my mountain stand firm. But when you hit your face, I was dismayed. To you, oh, Lord, I called to the Lord. I cried for mercy. What gain is there in my destruction and my going down into the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness? Here, oh, Lord, and be merciful to me. Oh, Lord, be my help. You have turned my wailing into dancing. You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give you thanks forever. Amen. As we reflect on the great heritage of faith we have through the Reformation, I, as I typically do on this particular Sunday of the year, I depart from my normal exposition of scripture and reflect usually on some character in the life of the church. And today I want to direct you to the life of John Newton. Born in 1725, died in 1807 at the age of 83. And as you will see, the story of his life reads exactly like the parable of the prodigal son. We could have read that for our scripture reading today. And I have more than I can put into one message. And so this is a two-parter. Part one is this morning, which is basically going to be his early life conversion and his call into the ministry. And then this evening, his ministry and his hymn writing will be the focus of our attention. John Newton lived 200 years after the Reformation. He is considered one of our reformers as such. So why look at John Newton's life? For one thing, he's so incredibly interesting. His life is filled with amazing drama and the unexpected. Even one modern writer said that Newton's life enshrines one of the most fantastic fairy tales that was ever the true story of a human being. Another reason to consider his life, or at least of what he can contribute to us, is the gift of John Newton to us is not so much the gift of a great theologian who would write mighty defenses of biblical truth, which you might find in a Luther or Calvin or someone else like that. But Newton was a man whose gift was to bring the gospel and applying it to life, to live as a Christian man in a wonderful way and communicate that practical experience and knowledge to us. It was written of him by William Jay, who himself was a famous minister of the time, that John Newton was the most truly Christian man that he ever knew. And a quote of John Newton, which kind of communicates what we can kind of get for him and his emphasis. He says, he writes, a scholar may know the name of a maid's broom in 20 different languages, but a maid may know how to use that broom better than any scholar. And so with a Christian, it's not how much we know, but how we use that knowledge and what we are as a result of the truth that we know. And that's his contribution to us through his letters, his writings, and his hymns, is taking the Christian life and the gospel and applying it to life. Not how much you know, but how you put into practice what you do know. And it's good to think about that. He was born July 24, 1725, exactly 265 years before Kara was born. So I can't forget his birthday. His mother was a sweet, pious Christian woman. His father was a seafaring captain. He never felt like he really got very close to his father. He was kind of a distant, severe, remote man. He spent time with him at periods in his life, but he knew him as a distant, he was often away. His mother undertook the Christian training of John Newton as a little boy. And she taught him from his earliest days the hymns of Isaac Watts, the shorter catechism, and the scriptures themselves, and would teach them and have him memorize them. So by the age of six, he had a significant portion of scripture, of the hymns, and of the catechism put to memory. And that's going to be significant as we think about his life, how his mom nurtured him. But when he was still very young, six years old, his mother was taken with consumption and became very ill. She was taken to stay in the home of a good friend in a town called Chatham. And that's going to come into play in his life here in a little bit. John Newton himself was taken into the home of a neighbor. Before he turned seven, his mom had died. And so here is a young boy, and he knew tragedy, knew suffering, knew difficulty. And his childhood was, for him, a very lonely time. His father remarried, and there were other brothers and sisters that were born, but he never really felt a part of that. And he was sent to a boarding school at Stratford. Think of it. He's seven years old, and he's sent off to a boarding school. I don't know if you do that with your child. And he was a dropout at the age of 10. He left school at the age of 10 and joined his father on board ship and sailed with him for the next six years. He sailed on the high seas with his father. And you would have thought that would have been a real neat time between him and his father, but it wasn't. He tells us those years were a great struggle. He remembered the truths that his mother had taught him as a very young child, but he was around the great worldliness that you often found on board ship. And even though he lived kind of under his father's watchful eye, as soon as his father wasn't around, he joined in the cursing and the forgetfulness of God. He writes of that time, I often saw the necessity of religion as a means of escaping hell, But I loved sin, and I was unwilling to forsake it." His life continues to make a progression downward. He's still in his young teenage years. He buys a book that turns to cause even greater problems for him. The ship that they were on came to port in a town in Germany. And on his day off, he went in, found a bookshop, and bought a book that turned out to really create many problems for him. It was a book by, I think the author, Shaftesbury. It was called Characteristics. Shaftesbury was a deist, a person who believed that God had created the world, but then left it like a watchmaker to run all on its own. And so there was no really standards of morality. God was not involved in your life. And the key thing, and Newton says the book worked on him like a slow poison, but the key thing about the book was this man wrote very winsomely, but he said, the truly great man is the man who will doubt. It was the weak man, this author said, who believed things were certain and things were true. But if you really wanted to be a man of courage, you would doubt everything. And so that thought worked in his heart and all those things that he had been taught and had been certain of, he began to doubt and to question. Well, by the time he turned 17, his father was just really disappointed in him. He didn't seem to show any aptitude as a As a sailor, he was introspective and moody. He seemed to be lazy and just lounging around on deck. And so his father figured, I need to do something to change him. And so he arranged for him to get a job on a plantation in Jamaica. And it actually would have been a fairly decent job, but Newton didn't want to have any part of it. to go to there. And so they were due to set sail from Liverpool in December of 1742. And in that week, so he had one week before he was to get a coach to go to London to get on board this ship. And during that week, he asked permission. He went to visit the family that had cared for his mother when she was very sick in Chatham. And it was a family by the name of Catlett. He had never met them before, but his dad said, okay, go visit them for a little while, and the woman of the house was such a good friend of John Newton's mother, they were glad to receive him and welcomed him very well, but something, a significant event in his life happened there at the home. He met their daughter, Mary Catlett, who was 13 at the time, and he fell desperately and hopelessly in love. And he writes, I was impressed with an affection for her which never abated or lost its influence a single moment in my heart from that hour. So the idea of being five years away in Jamaica, having fallen in love, was just intolerable to him. And so he forgot to tell the Cadillacs that he had to get on board the carriage in a week. And one week led to two, and two led to three. And when he was pretty convinced the ship was already left, he finally went down to the port and had to deal with his father's anger. His father was furious at him for missing the ship to go to this plantation in Jamaica. But he put him on another boat, and he sailed in the Mediterranean for about a year. About a year later, he comes back and spends another wonderful time with the Catlett family, enjoyed the time with them. And it brings us to another point of a change. So it's 1744, he's 18 years old, and he was waiting around for another ship to get on, and he was press ganged into the Navy. War had broken out that year between England and France, and the Navy, as you may know at that time, had the privilege or the ability that if they were walking around a town and they saw a man either dressed as a sailor or looked like he might have been aboard a ship, they had the rights to grab that guy and put him on board a Navy warship. And that's what happened to him. He was seized and taken aboard this warship, this man of war called the Harriage. And a Navy vessel was very different than what he'd experienced up to this point. A merchant vessel had a crew of 25 to 30 men. A man-of-war like this ship was a crew of 350 men. Not only that, but this particular warship was due to go to the Far East and be away for four or five years. So he'd escape four to five years from Jamaica only to get on a warship that was going to be gone four to five years. He was just totally devastated and shocked by that. As one who was press ganged into the Navy, he was the lowest of the low, thrown in what they call the cockpit, which is an area at the front of the ship, and that's where they threw the criminals and the worst of the characters of the ship. And he wrote to his father to see if his father could do anything. Well, his father couldn't get him out of the Navy, but he did get him a promotion. He became a midshipman and moved to the middle of the boat and had a different position. And at least that would have been somewhat better. He had about a week before the ship was going to go, and so he went and visited the Catlets one more time. Mary's parents were a little alarmed at Newton's ardor for their daughter, and so they said, well, don't come back until your dad gives you permission to marry. And he went back to the ship. The ship sailed to one other port in England before it was going to leave for the Far East. And the captain needed supplies on shore, so he sent a group of men. And he didn't want them to desert, so he put John Newton in charge of them as they went to shore. Well, as you can imagine, some of you are anticipating what happened. John Newton deserted. And he knew his father wasn't too far away, and so he took off to try to get to his father in case he could get a transfer of him to another ship. He walked for a day and a night, but he never made it there. As he was getting close, he encountered a party of soldiers who recognized that he was a sailor and probably a deserter, and so they captured him and brought him back in chains to Plymouth, where the ship was. And he writes about that. They brought me back to Plymouth and I walked through the streets, guarded like a felon. My heart was full of indignation, shame, and fear. And he had good reason to be afraid. Discipline in the Navy at that time was very, very brutal. And he was brought back on board ship in chains. And the carpenters of the ship had built these little racks. And they chained him and some other men, some other deserters, up on these racks. And they flogged them with a cat-of-nine-tails. And some men would get a flogging of 100 strokes, which I can't imagine undoubtedly killed them. And so there before all 350 men on board ship, Newton is flogged. And we don't know how bad his flogging, but we knew, no, it was brutal. And he lost his rank. He was thrown into the cockpit, the front of the ship. He was full of despair. And as the ship was leaving England, he thought about throwing himself overboard and just dying. He was in such great despair, but the only two things kept him from doing that. One was his Mary Catlett, his love for her, and his thinking, what would she think if she found out he died? But the second thing that kept him from doing that was his hatred for the captain. He says, though I had well deserved all I had met with, and the captain might have been justified had he carried his resentment even further, Yet my pride at that time suggested that I had been grossly injured, and this so far wrought upon my heart that I actually formed designs on his life. And this was one reason that made me willing to prolong my own." So he wanted to live just long enough so he could kill the captain, and then I guess he would throw himself over. Being a deserter, he became the object of the ridicule of everyone on the crew. Everyone who used to be his friend, of course, weren't anymore. They ridiculed him. They had contempt for him. And it was at this time that he began to abandon all faith in the scriptures and all the truths that had been inculcated in him as a child. He says, on the heritage, I met with companions who completed the ruin of my principles. The Scriptures that he used to quote, now he used as jokes and ridiculing the Word of God. His doubt, his conscience was being so seared. Well, the ship moved from port to port on its way to the Far East. And one early morning, a midshipman came down and told him to get out of his bunk. He was in his hammock, and he didn't move fast enough. So the midshipman took his sword and just cut his hammock down. He found himself flopped on the floor. He makes it up to the deck. And what he finds happening is there's this merchant ship tied up to the Navy vessel. And what would happen is when a Navy ship had had a couple men that weren't performing very well. They would find a merchant ship and they would requisition two men from the merchant ship who were more talented, maybe had abilities they needed, and they would make a prisoner, not a prisoner, but a sailor exchange. So when Newton understood what was going on, he pleaded with a captain that he could be put upon a merchant ship. And he was given permission. So within about 10 minutes from being in his hammock, he was on board this other ship. And what's interesting is he had one book with him as well as a few possessions. And the one book that he took with him was Euclid on Geometry. Now that's just the book you would take on vacation, isn't it? Yeah. your organic chemistry book. I mean, who wouldn't want to read that on vacation? So he gets on this vessel, and it's trading on the west coast of Africa, the Guinea coast, the slave coast. And of course, as you know, that was the time period where the slave trade was in full force. And he was part of a ship that would be engaged in that. Boats would go to Africa, collect slaves, go take them to America, collect goods, come back to England with them. And it was amazingly dangerous for the sailors as well. A large percentage, nearly a third, died every year that were part of these crews. Well, I'm not sure why, but they were probably epidemics that came and went. And it was even worse for the slaves. He wrote later, if English ships purchased 60,000 slaves annually, upon the whole extent of the African coast, the annual loss of lives would not be less than 15,000. So a huge number died, not only from epidemics that would come on the ships, but even from the brutal, brutal treatment. Even the better captains weren't very good. But then you had some cruel and vicious captains. And this is the horrible history of the terrible slave trade. He tells, Newton writes about one story which horrifies us even to think about it. A young mother was taken as a slave with her one-year-old child. And the little child naturally was terrified. And the captain was a particularly brutal man and he dealt with the, the weeping child by throwing it overboard. And they would have thrown the mother overboard as well if she hadn't been valuable. So it was a horrible, horrible business that he became a part of that he understood later. And even the desperate nature of the slave trade wasn't as well known at that time as it became later. And we'll think about that a little bit more tonight. But all part of this, Newton's character as well as the situation was declining, degenerating. The warnings of conscience, he just totally silenced them. He says the warnings of conscience entirely ceased. For a space of many months, if not years, I cannot recollect that I had a single check of conscience. At times I've been visited with sickness and have believed myself near to death, but I had not the least concern about the consequences." He was on a smaller ship, but Newton, one of his abilities was he had a way with words. He made himself a nuisance to the captain. He had a great ability for rhyme and verse. And on that particular ship, he used it differently than he's going to use it later. And he made a song about the captain, which wasn't very flattering. And before long, the whole crew was singing it. That didn't do him any favors with the captain, and the captain was thinking what to do with him when the captain died. So then the first mate becomes the captain. And the first mate, having seen all this, knows he's not getting along too well with Newton. He's got to figure out something to do with him. So when he gets to the African coast, Newton asked, Newton knew that the first mate was going to get rid of him some way, so he asked permission to join a trader on the African coast, which he did and stayed there about two years. And he reflects on that and he says, one reason why God allowed him to land on the coast of Africa was that in isolation he would be less peril to other people. Because by this time I not only sinned with the high hand myself, but I made it my studied attempt to seduce others upon every occasion. So he made sin his practice and pursuit and tried to get others to join him. Well, the traitor he worked with was a slave trader, among other things. And he would make journey inland to get slaves. But one time, Newton took very seriously, perhaps with malaria, but he became very sick. And so when the trader left, he was left at the depot under the charge of the trader's mistress, a black woman who lived as his wife. And she took all her anger out on him, gave him no comforts, Didn't try to do any treatment of his illness. He slept on a mat on the floor with a pillow made out of wood. The only food he got was after she was done eating, if there were any scraps left on her plate, she gave them to him. And he became so weak, one time when she gave him the plate to eat the remaining scraps, he didn't even have the strength to hold it and it fell on the floor and all the scraps scattered and she just laughed him to swine. He would crawl out at night to wash his shirt, he only had the one shirt. let it draw on his back, would sometimes have to scrape around to dig up roots. He was truly reduced as the parable of the prodigal son. His life, both spiritually and physically, was a wreck. The trader came back, he complained about it, but he was indifferent to it. He would sometimes take him inland with him on his trips, and he would chain Newton to the boat while he was gone, without food and he would give him a fishing rod and he would leave him for sometimes a day or two. Several days he would be chained to the boat with nothing to eat. He had a fishing rod and the only thing he could eat would be the fish that he would get from, that he might catch. Well, things continued to decline in his condition. The trader was afraid that he would die, and so he wanted to try to get rid of him. And a ship arrived with a merchant who knew Newton's father. So he made an arrangement to get Newton on his ship, and he was going to take him back to England. It was full of, the ship was full, besides slaves, a cargo of wood and beeswax, and it went to America, and then it was recrossing the Atlantic, going back to England. And this is where the great transformation in Newton's life came, the great transforming event. He was 22 years of age in March 1748. He went to bed in what was woken up in the middle of the night, And they were in this horrible storm, and the ship was being swamped and in danger of going under. And amazing providences were going to take place. Everybody, all the sailors were aroused to come. And Newton was making his way up the steps. And he opened the door about to go out on the deck. And the captain saw him and yelled for him to go back down and get a knife. And he turned and went back down to get a knife. And the person following him stepped out on deck. And immediately, a wave washed over the deck and washed him overboard. amazing providence that he wasn't the one washed overboard. Kind of reminds me of Frank's story when he walked up a stair there in Pearl Harbor and a bomb came down through the stairwell and just, and God protected him and saved him. Amazing providence. And they worked all night and the next day to tried to save the ship. For 11 hours, he was roped to the helm so that he wouldn't be washed overboard. And he credits the fact that the ship was full of wood and beeswax as the only reason that it didn't sink. During the night, he spoke to one of his companions who was working with him, and he says, well, this will give us something to talk about over a glass of wine in a few days. Still kind of unconcerned, his companion said, no, it's too late. It's too late. The morning as he was fighting the storm, he hollered to the captain and spoke, told about all that they had done to try to save the ship. He made the comment, the offhand comment, if this will not do, the Lord have mercy on us. He didn't even think about what he was saying at the moment. But then he began to reflect on it, and God used that just offhand comment, something dredged up from his memory of his youth, and he says it was the first expression of any desire for mercy uttered unconsciously for many years. And as he's tied to the helm of the ship, God begins to work on his conscience. And he thinks, what mercy can there be for me? He says, I expect that every time the vessel descended into the sea, she would rise no more. You see, God began to work on his heart. And every time the ship plunged into the valley of the wave, he saw himself plunging into hell. and then they would come back up. God was at work in his heart through this experience. He says, I now began to think of that Jesus whom I'd so often derived, and I remembered the particulars of his life and death, a death for sin, not his own, but for the sake of those that in their distress should put their trust in him. And now I chiefly wanted evidence. The comfortless principles of unbelief were deeply riveted. But he wanted to believe that the gospel record was a fact. And a few days later, as things were calm, God's working on his heart, he says, one of the first helps I received was in reading the New Testament from Luke chapter 11. And I was conscious that to profess faith in Jesus, when in reality I did not believe his history, was no better than a mockery of the heart-searching God. And here I found a spirit spoken of who was to be given to those that asked for it. And on this I reasoned in this way, if this book is true, the promise in this passage is true. And I have need of that very spirit by which the whole was written in order to understand it aright. And God has promised here to give that spirit to those who ask. I must therefore pray. And if this book is of God, he will make good his own word. If what I'm writing should be read by our modern infidels, they would say I too well know their manner of argument, that I was desirous to persuade myself into this opinion, and I confess I was. And so would they be if the Lord had shown them what he was pleased to show me at that time, the absolute necessity of someone to stand between a righteous God and a sinful soul. And on the gospel scheme, I saw at least a purdventure of hope. On every other side was black, unfathomable despair. And God was bringing him to hope. The only hope was in the gospel, someone to stand in his stead. And he would write later in one of his hymns, in evil long I took delight, unawed by sin or shame, till a new object met my sight and stopped my wild career. I saw one hanging on a tree in agonies of blood. he seemed to charge me with his death, though not a word he spoke. Or in the other wonderful song, we remember amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. It was that March 21st date that he remembered. I'm going a little over time, but let me just finish a few more things. That was the period of his great conversion. When he came home, The ship was a battered wreck. He went to visit Mary Catlett. Not sure what he'd find, but he did find that his father, when his father realized that he was alive, had given permission for him to marry her. And he went to her home to propose, and he was, all the things he imagined him saying, he couldn't say. He was tongue-tied. And so he left without proposing, but he proposed by way of letter. after he left, and she agreed. And after a few years where he went back to see at times they were married, he became a captain of a ship for a few years, was a Christian, still growing, still trying to figure out things. He was a captain of a slave ship for a time. But on one of his voyages, he met a Scotsman who became a good Christian friend to him, and they would read the scriptures together, and they would pray together, and he would encourage him, and he began to grow. This man told him of the preaching of George Woodfield, and so when they landed, he searched him out and went to hear him preach, and he talks about how he wept under the preaching of the gospel. how at 5 o'clock in the morning he would go to the tabernacle to hear him preach. And he then had some health problems and was encouraged not to go back to sea. God was, he was growing spiritually over these period of years, so it was 22 when he became converted. So over the next 20 years he's growing, he's reading. He wasn't sure after he was not sailing anymore what he would do with his life. He joined with other Christians. He's part of the Anglican Church, but not well-received because he agreed with the Methodists and others who believed in conversion and regeneration. And as he's studying the scriptures, he came to the place, he initially didn't think that he would pursue ministry, he would work in some other way, but God laid it on his heart because of the spiritual darkness of the age that he should serve the Lord in ministry. And he applied for ordination, but the bishops didn't want to give a seaman, a sailor, a pastorate. So he wrote out his conversion experience, his narrative of his conversion. It fell into the hands of a nobleman, and pastorates were purchased and given at that time. And so he called him to be the curate, not a bishop or a vicar, but a curate of a church in Omni. And that's where we'll pick up his story next year. And for the next 43 years, he served as a minister, began that in 1764. But just what do we learn from the life of John Newton? What a couple of lessons I want to leave you with as we reflect on this part of his life. First thing is we have to learn the other wretchedness of sin and how sin gains its power through unbelief and disobedience and unfaithfulness. Newton writes, I gradually deviated from the principles in which I was educated until I became profligate and abandoned. The way of transgressors will always be hard. He says, I went from bad and became worse. I forsook God and he left me for a time to follow the way of my own heart. And afflictions didn't change him. Being starved and sick on the coast of Africa didn't change him. It was God finally bringing His Word and His truth back to remembrance that transformed his life. It was the Spirit of God at work in his heart that changed him. Sin is utter wretchedness in its grip on us. The answer to that, and we see it in his life, is to see the power and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is his testimony, he writes, I can see no reason why the Lord singled me out for mercy, but this, that it seemed good to him. Unless it was his reason to show by one astonishing instance that with him nothing is impossible. I stood in need of an almighty Savior. and such a one I found described in the New Testament. On that March day in 1748, Christ met with me, and I have reason to praise him for that storm. For the apprehension I had first of sinking under the weight of all my sins into the ocean and then into eternity. All the evil that I suffered was the immediate result of my own folly and willfulness, but the good I've experienced was wholly unmerited. and for a long time unhoped for. Near the end of his life, as he was approaching his own death, he said to his friend, William Jay, his memory, he said, my memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things. I am a great sinner, and I have a great savior. He writes in one of his hymns that we love, how sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer's ear. It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds, and drives away his fear. May that be our experience as well. May we remember, I'm a great sinner, but I have a great Savior. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we do thank you for richly bringing us to you in Christ. how desperate our need was in sin, and yet, like John Newton, we have experienced the amazing grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. May you, O Lord, be at work in our hearts and minds and give us a remembrance of your wonderful grace and the power of your gospel that comes through Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. After the benediction, let's sing at least part of that hymn of John Newton, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. And let's sing the first three. We'll sing stanzas one, two, and three of 460 following the benediction. Let us please stand together for God's blessing. Dear people of God, receive his blessing. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit be with and abide with you all, now and forevermore. Amen.