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Plates, flat things where you
place food on. Maybe you thought about what
are these plates made of? Do you know what they're made
of? They're made of porcelain, or
china as they're also called, a material that is made by heating
materials, generally including a material like kaolin in a kiln,
to temperatures between 1200 and 1400 degrees Celsius. The strength and translucence
of porcelain relative to other types of pottery arises mainly
from vitrification and the formation of the mineral mullite within
the body at these high temperatures. And definitions vary, but porcelain
can be divided into three main categories. Hard paste, soft
paste, and bone china. So porcelain that these plates
are made of, or cups, tea cups, coffee cups, those materials,
porcelain, and it's also called china. as I also said, or fine
China. And you may wonder why are they
called China in English? Well, it's because it came to
Europe through China. It was an imported product that
was invented in China. It went to India, to It went
west, and soon enough it came to Europe, where Europe was trading
in the 19th century with China and they brought ships that sailed
from Europe, from England, from Sweden, from Finland maybe, from
many different countries. They sailed with their ships
to trade with China and they traded porcelain, they traded
silk and tea. and paid with silver and paid
this to China. So they had these large sailing
boats or sailing ships that went from Europe, went down They didn't
have trucks, they didn't have airplanes, they had ships, and
also they didn't have the Suez Canal in Northern Africa, so
they had to take their boats down south along Africa and pass
the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, round South Africa, and
go up to China eventually to bring
these goods, silver to China and bring back china, porcelain,
silk and other goods. The English also traded opium
with the Chinese. It was used as a health drug
in medicine. They smoked the opium. Eventually it started to become
a recreational drug for the Chinese, so they smoked opium for recreation
and they became addicted to it and the English exploited this,
the English merchant made the Chinese addicted to opium so
that they could sell more opium to them and make a lot of money. And someone who went to trade
with China, someone who went by these boats, they could have
enough money for that year as they went to China to trade and
came back. In just that year they would
have enough money to to live on for the rest of their lives. But after a while, China started
to ban opium and also declared sort of a war against opium,
against England. They started fighting the English
merchants, and this took a few years. This was in the 18th century. But the English Royal Navy was
still stronger than the Chinese Navy and defeated the Chinese, or
they conquered some of the Chinese armies. and forced the Chinese to sign
a treaty, the Treaty of Nanking, which was an unequal treaty that
forced the Chinese to still not shut down the trade but to keep
the trade open and to have a few ports open for trade. They were called the Treaty Ports
and they also ceded Hong Kong to England for perpetuity. But one of these Treaty Ports
was the port of Shanghai And these treaty ports were sort
of the setting for the missions in that time. It was a political
thing, but it was also how the English, the Europeans, Christians
could engage in missions to the Chinese people. They could come
to these treaty ports freely and be there and share the gospel. And also, this was the time,
this was the setting that the missionaries had. And one of
these missionaries was Hudson Taylor, James Hudson Taylor. So this is what I'm going to
talk about. here now, Hudson Taylor. And
the historian Ruth Tucker says about him that no other missionary
in the 19th century since the Apostle Paul has had a wider
vision and has carried out a more systematized plan of evangelizing
a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor since the Apostle
Paul. So James Hudson Taylor, he was
a missionary to China and founder of the China Inland Mission. And now what we're going to look
at in Hudson Taylor's life is how he lived For Christ. This conference is about Christ.
This is a conference where we are to talk about Christ and
exalt Christ. And we're not going to exalt
men or admire men or human beings. other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And what we do find in Hudson
Taylor's life is that he did not live for himself, he did
not live to exalt himself, or his own mission, or his own ministry. He lived and worked for Christ
alone, and Christ was all of his life. He was saved by Christ. He was born in 1832 in Barnsley
in England. He was born to a chemist. His father was a chemist and
a Methodist lay preacher, James Taylor, and his mother was Amelia They were both, his parents were
Christians. They gave their children a Christian
upbringing. They had family devotions. His
father was a lay preacher and he enjoyed having company at
his home. People came to his home where
they were talking about the things of God and often the subject
of missions came up during these conversations. and the children
were also there listening in to the conversations and often
talked about missions, stories about mission trips, stories
about different countries, different cultures and especially his father's
interest was in China. He talked a lot about China to
his children and to people and They taught their children about
China, they had books about China, and they actually wanted their
son Hudson to become a missionary to China. And early as a child,
Hudson also had the desire to go as a missionary to China. to carry out mission to spread
the gospel in China. But no one is born a Christian
and no one inherits their parents' religion just like that by birth,
and Hudson was no exception. left the faith and tradition
of his parents and started working at 17 years old. He was working
at a bank where his co-workers, he was a clerk of sorts at a
bank where his co-workers were very worldly, they were a bad
influence on him. They talked about worldly things,
they had worldly pursuits, they wanted things, they wanted riches,
they wanted money, they wanted stuff and other worldly desires
and Hudson was caught up in all this. at the bank, but one day he found
a tract, a gospel tract, left by his father, I think. And as he found this tract, he
thought that, well, I know what this is going to say. It's going
to have a story. and then it's gonna have a moral cookie at
the end, a gospel message, but I thought I'm gonna just read
the story and be entertained by the story, and then I'll leave
the other, the moral story, the moral cookie, the gospel message,
I'll just ignore that and enjoy a good story. But anyway, he
read this tract, this gospel tract, and at the same time,
his mother and his sister, he had several siblings, but most
of all, his mother and his sister were praying for him. They wanted
him to come to the faith and knowledge of Jesus. His mother,
at the same time as Hudson picked up this tract, and read it his
mother was at the same time praying for him in her chamber and Hudson
writes about when he was reading this
tract, he writes, while reading it, I was struck with the phrase,
the finished work of Christ. Why does the author use this
expression, I questioned? Why not say the atoning or propitiatory
work of Christ? Immediately, the words, it is
finished, suggested themselves to my mind. What was finished? At once I replied, a full and
perfect atonement and satisfaction for sin. The debt was paid for
our sins. And then came the further thought,
if the whole work was finished and the whole debt paid, what
is there left for me to do? And with this dawned the joyful
conviction, as light was flashed into my soul by the Holy Spirit
that there was nothing in the world to be done but to fall
down on one's knees and accepting this Savior and his salvation,
praise him forevermore. And that's where Hudson Taylor
came to salvation, came to saving faith and trust in Jesus Christ
alone. And at the same time, his mother
was praying for him. And when she was praying, she
had the sense that something had happened to her son, that
her prayers had been answered, and that her son had come to
faith. And he didn't tell his mother
at first. He just went to his sister to
tell her that now I have become saved. And then his mother came
to him and congratulated him on his new birth. And he asked, I told my sister
not to tell you. And she said, well, she didn't
tell me, but God told me what had happened. So there he was
saved and in 1851 he was baptized and he started to reinvestigate
this interest he had in going to China. He was saved by Christ and he
wanted to live for Christ and he wanted to do this for Christ
to go on a mission to China. One of his famous quotes is,
there are many famous quotes by him that I will quote, but
this is one, he says, the Great Commission is a command. to be followed. The Great Commission
is not an option to be considered, but it is a command to be followed. He saw that it was a command
by Christ when Christ says in the Great Commission, you know,
where he tells at the end of Matthew and at the end of Mark,
he tells his disciples to go out into all the world and preach
the gospel to all creatures, make disciples of all nations.
That was a command by Christ, and it was not an option to be
considered. It was a command to be followed,
to be obeyed. So again, he had this from his
childhood, the thoughts of China. His father, James, who used to
lament the indifference that the church there in England had
to China. And he asked, why do we not send
any missionaries there? We are so many Christians here
in England. Why don't we send missionaries
to China where there are no Christians, where they haven't heard the
gospel? And Hudson had early made up
his mind to go to China, read this book, but his parents had
given up their hope. But now Hudson was back again,
back in the faith. He had been come saved, but he
was still wrestling with his sin. He was wrestling with God. He needed a breakthrough. He
wondered, How can I get closer to you, God? How can I get rid
of these sins that I have in my life? He was still wrestling,
struggling. There was something missing.
There was something he needed. He needed to be utterly at God's
disposal. He felt this very urgent need
to become utterly at God's disposal and given to His will and service,
but there was something that was keeping him back. He was
down struggling, he was down alone on his knees praying to
God praying, kneeling down, asking God, pleading with God, and he
writes again, never shall I forget the feeling that came over me
then. Words can never describe it. I felt I was in the presence
of God entering into covenant with the
Almighty, I felt as though I wished to withdraw my promise, but could
not. Something seemed to say, your
prayer is answered, your conditions are accepted. And from that time,
the conviction never left me that I was called to China. And
it was as if he heard God say inaudibly, then go for me to
China for Christ. So although he had in the back
of his mind since his childhood to go to China, this was a moment
that he needed where he really understood that he was actually
called personally by Christ himself to go to China. And after this
he began studying He began studying medicine so that he could go
there to China to practice medicine and to also help sick people
at the same time as he was preaching the gospel to them. He also started
studying Chinese. He studied Chinese on his own,
by himself. He got a Chinese Bible with Chinese
signs in them. He couldn't read them. And he
taught himself some Chinese by comparing the Chinese Bible and
the English Bible, looking at the signs, where were these signs
used in different passages of the Bible. And he managed to
figure out certain meanings of these Chinese signs. So already
when he came to China, then finally he knew a few of the words and
signs, what they meant. But there were still some problems.
for missionaries to go to China. As I mentioned in the beginning,
the ports were open, there were these treaty ports that were
open so that English Westerners could go to these treaty ports
and be there, and they could be missionaries there, but it
was completely forbidden for Westerners to go further into
China from these port towns. It was forbidden, it was closed
to them. So that was a problem to them. They could not go beyond these
treaty ports. But Hudson, as he was studying
in England, he found the Chinese Evangelization Society in London,
which sent missionaries to China and was associated with a Dr. Charles Gutzlaff or Karl Gutzlaff,
a German man who had made many risky attempts to go into China,
to go further in, deeper into China. He even disguised himself
as a Chinese. He put on Chinese clothing, Chinese
haircut and those things so that he could be disguised and go
incognito into, deeper into China, and this became an inspiration
for Hudson later on. Anyway, Hudson found the Chinese
Evangelization Society so that he could go to China. The first time he went to China
was in 1854. He took a ship from Liverpool
in 1853 and sailed for China as an agent of the Chinese Evangelization
Society. And he came to Shanghai He went
in 1853, he arrived in 1854 in Shanghai, in one of these port
towns. Shanghai, of course, in China.
I looked the direction where it is and it's about 7,000 kilometers
that way. There is Shanghai. If you want
to have a concrete example of where it is, So if you face there, you will
see Shanghai, if you can look very far. And when he came to
Shanghai, his first year there, it was the civil war there in
Shanghai, and he almost got killed in this civil war, but he survived. He found his wife, Maria Jane
Dyer, and married her in 1858 in a Presbyterian compound in
Ningbo. So he was there with his wife.
His wife was also a missionary. And he got married there, and
they served together. Then he went back to England.
He would visit China about 11 times and go back and forth between. He went to England and was having
talks or speaking about China, speaking about the work in China,
speaking in different churches to different people. And he found
that there was a great interest from many people to go to China,
not only to the port towns, but to go deeper into China, to go
into the forbidden territories, to spread the gospel not only
in the port towns, but actually to all the provinces of China,
deeper into China, to the inland of China. And people were asking
him, is there any way, is there any missionary society that I
can join that will send me to the inland of China so that I
can go as a missionary to those unreached peoples who live deeper
in China. And unfortunately, there was
no such missionary society. The evangelization society he
was working with and those who were there, they were very cautious. They did not want to offend the
Chinese authorities. They did not want to overstep
where they could go and were sort of discouraging to those
who wanted to go as missionaries further into China. It would
be bad for England politically, it would be bad for the trade,
it would be bad for everything if they would have people who
would break these restrictions, who would go over the limits,
go over and deeper into China. So there were no such missionary
organizations And what do you do when you see this need? What
did Hudson do when he saw this need and he did not know that
he saw this need, he saw this demand or this desire for many
people to go as missionaries to inland China, but there was
no organization to take them. Well, he founded his own organization,
the China Inland Mission, in 1865, together with William
Thomas Berger. They founded the China Inland
Mission and in less than one year they had accepted 21 missionaries to go there. And it's really
interesting to read about the China Inland Mission and their
sort of their mission statement. Hudson wrote about the core values
of the China Inland Mission, and it's really interesting to
read. First he writes, the China Inland Mission was formed under
a deep sense of China's pressing need and with an earnest desire
Constrained by the love of Christ and the hope of his coming to
obey his command to preach the gospel to every creature, its
aim is, by the help of God, to bring the Chinese to a saving
knowledge of the love of God in Christ by means of itinerant
and localized work throughout the whole of the interior of
China. So the mission statement was
to do this for Christ, for God, by the help of God, and all who
went out as missionaries should go in dependence upon God for
temporal supplies. This he writes, They would not ask for money.
They would depend on God. They would not ask people for
money. They would not fundraise. They
would just ask God. They would depend completely
on God. And they would not go into debt.
They would not borrow money to be able to do the things in China,
to do their ministry. They thought that if you borrow
money, that is a way of saying that you want something now that
God is not yet providing you money for. And it's a way of
not trusting that God in the right time will supply the right
needs in his time. So they would not ask for money,
they would not borrow money, they would depend completely
upon God. If this is God's work, God will
supply it. He said, God's work done in God's
way will never lack God's supplies, according to Philippians 4.19,
where it says, my God will supply every need of yours according
to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. They had a non-solicitation policy,
they would just lay these needs before God in prayer and if this
was really God's will, if this was really God's work, He would
provide and they would not ask people for money, they would
be completely relying on free will offerings by people that
they have not asked for, but that people would give of their
free will as God would lead them. It's the same policy as we heard
George Miller had, that Joel mentioned this morning, And he
was also inspired by that and he actually received donations
from Spurgeon and George Miller for the work in China. Many times
he was in dire straits, in dire need. He didn't have any money
for the next day. But he relied on God and the
next day he would have an envelope with all the money that he needed.
God showed himself faithful. And even at, he was speaking
in many places in England, in America, many different places. He was speaking one time in D.L. Moody's church. or at a conference,
and D.L. Modi asked Hudson, should we
take up an offering on this meeting after you have spoken so that
people can give money to your ministry? And he said, no, we
have a non-solicitation policy. We will not ask for money. So please don't raise an offering. Don't ask for collection. Don't
ask for money. God will supply. So he was speaking
and after he was speaking the next day, a man who had been
at this meeting came up to him and gave him 5,000 US dollars. Back then it was a lot more than
it is today. And this man said that if you
had asked for money yesterday, if you had taken up an offering,
I would just have given you $5. because that's what I had on
me. But now I will give you 5,000
US dollars. So that's how God showed his
faithfulness and how God rewarded this for Hudson. But it's important to also say
that he didn't think that it was wrong to ask for money or
to solicit funds for your ministry. This was his philosophy, this
was George Miller's philosophy, this was this faith-based ministry. that they had, it was not for
everyone, but he thought that it would glorify God the most
if we relied completely on God and will not ask for money or
solicit money, ask people for money, but completely trust in
God to supply us for his glory. So that was the values of his
mission. And in 1866, he returned to China
with his new missionaries. The party, he went with 16 missionaries
in the China Inland Mission. And Taylors and his four children,
his wife and his four children, And they had taken to heart this
thing also that they should dress up like Chinese, they should
adopt their clothing. He said, let us in everything
unsinful become Chinese, that by all means we may save some
let us adopt their costumes, acquire their language and study
to imitate their habits, and so that we can go be invited
into their houses and live in their houses. Back in that time,
picture yourself the missionaries back then or the English missionaries,
they showed up in China with English clothing, like, yeah,
suits, like we were here. And that was completely foreign
to the Chinese people. They looked nothing like them. And they had their big noses
and round eyes and different haircuts. So Hudson Taylor, he
thought that this was a stumbling block for the Chinese. They will
not invite us in their homes. They will not accept us. They
will not listen to us. If we look completely different
than them, we need to blend in so that it becomes easier for
them to listen to us. And it's the same thing as Paul
says, that I have become all things to all men in order that
I may save some. He wanted to remove these unnecessary
stumbling blocks that would make it harder for the gospel to be
listened to by them. The gospel itself is a necessary
stumbling block. The message of the cross is a
stumbling block and meant to be a stumbling block. It is the
power of God for those who believe, but a foolishness and a stumbling
block for those who don't believe. But our clothes, our language,
our customs, are not a necessary stumbling block for people. We need to remove them. This
was Hudson's philosophy. That's why he dressed up like
Chinese. He cut his forehead and they
looked like Chinese in their clothing. And they were very
criticized for it by the other English missionaries, the other
Western missionaries. They thought it was immodest.
They thought it was scandalous, especially for the women to dress
up with these Chinese clothings. So they were frowned upon by
the other missionaries. But it was still shown to be
a successful strategy. They were easily invited into
their homes. They could easily spread the
gospel among the Chinese. And Taylor, in total, he came
to spend 51 years in China and bring the society was responsible
for bringing over 800 missionaries to the country, to China. They
started 125 schools and directly, as a direct result of this work,
18,000 Chinese became Christian, became saved, came to faith. But what is really fascinating
about Hudson Taylor was not what he did, his mission, those things,
but that his life was for Christ. Christ was his all and still
is his all, as he now is with Christ. But he said about Christ,
the vine is not the root merely, but all. Root, stem, branches,
twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit. And Jesus is not that alone.
He is soil and sunshine, air, and showers and 10,000 times
more than we have ever dreamed, wished for or needed. Oh, the
joy of seeing this truth. He saw that Christ is everything. Christ was everything to him. It was, he was his life, his
all, his everything. And really, after years of being
a missionary, at age 37, he entered into what is called the exchanged
life, or what he called the exchanged life. It wasn't enough that he
had dedicated himself to Christ, that he had gone on a mission
for Christ, all the more he came to this
experience or this exchange life where he said that God has made
me a new man. That was in 1869 when he was
37 years old. He was already a Christian, he
was already a new creature in Christ, but still he sought Christ
so much He wanted so much of Christ. He thought that this
was missing, something was still missing for him. He wanted more
of Christ. And he had this moment where
he got, God gave him more of Christ. And it was as if he had
been made a new man again. I think this really agrees with
what Jonathan Edwards also says, that we teach Christians to seek
God, seek God's kingdom as if they were still lost sinners
seeking salvation. The urgency, the passion, the With all that might, still, even
if you are already a Christian, you should never stop seeking
Christ, stop wanting more of Christ. It never ends. You want more and more of Jesus
Christ. And this happened to Hudson when
he read a passage on personal holiness from Christ is All by
Henry Law. a writer who wrote, this was
a commentary on the Pentateuch, the five first books of the Bible,
where he shows Christ everywhere in the five books of Moses. And Hudson read this passage and came to this deep sense,
this understanding of Christ. And he said this, the Lord Jesus
received is holiness begun. The Lord Jesus cherished is holiness
advancing. The Lord Jesus counted upon as
never absent would be holiness complete. He is most holy who
has most of Christ within and joys most fully in the finished
work. It is defective faith which clogs
the feet and causes many to fall. And he sought this identification
with Christ, he sought more of Christ, and he wrote, the sweetest
part, if one may speak of one thing being sweeter than another,
is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. Galatians
2.20 says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer
I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live
in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of
God who loved me and gave himself for me. So Hudson get this new sight
of union with Christ and Christ's fullness and came into a deeper
givenness, a deeper yieldedness where he gave himself in a deeper
sense and everything he had to Jesus Christ. Now he may have been sort of
influenced by a Keswick teaching which goes into error and teaches
that you only have to look upon Christ for your sanctification.
You don't have to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
You don't have to work on your sanctification. So some people
went into this error where they became relaxed in their Christian
life, they didn't try to fight sin in their life, they just
said that, I rely on Christ for my sanctification, I don't have
to do anything. It's clear that Hudson did not
go into this error, even if he uses some of those phrases or
had read some of that or been somewhat influenced by that.
And John Piper, he discusses more in-depth his relation to
this Keswick teaching. And he concludes that Hudson
did not go all into this Keswick teaching and he kept a sound
theology that was corrected by his Bible knowledge. He still
knew what the Bible said. And he did not go passive in
his holiness. Although he says these things
that it's Christ, Christ, As it's shown here, he gave his
life to the service, to the work for Christ and sought that diligently
with fervor, with fire inside, with passion. And it is true
that sanctification is a progressive thing in the Christian life.
You do need to go steps forward and sometimes you can take big
steps forward where you come closer to Christ in a certain
way and get a sort of experience or some sense that you have come
closer to Christ, you have come more to Christ-likeness. And we know that Hudson Taylor,
all the work he could do, he was able to do this work because
of his union with Christ. He felt this union with Christ,
understood this union with Christ, this empowerment from Christ. Part of this union with Christ
was his suffering for Christ on the mission field. As the
Apostle Paul says, Philippians 3 and 10, that I may know him
and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings,
being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection
from the dead. Not that I have already grasped
it all or have already become perfect, but I press on If I
may also take hold of that for which I was taken hold of by
Christ Jesus." Hudson also felt this way. He wanted more likeness
to Christ. He was not finished and he wanted
fellowship with Christ even in his sufferings. As Paul also writes in Colossians
1.24, now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh
I am supplementing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions in behalf
of his body, which is the church. There is something lacking of
Christ's afflictions in a Christian's life, in Paul's life, in Hudson's
life, in our life. that we need to supplement, we
need to suffer more to become more like Christ. Paul again writes in 2 Corinthians
11, 26, I have been on frequent journeys
in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my
countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city,
all kinds of dangers. These sufferings of Christ is
not only direct persecution because you're a Christian, it's also
the sufferings, the dangers that comes with the Christian life,
that comes with going on a mission, on the mission field, meeting
all the kinds of dangers. went through many dangers for
Christ and suffered many things for Christ, maybe not as a direct
persecution, but because of the dangers that were involved with
being a missionary. His first year in China, he was
almost killed in the Civil War. In 1868, he survived a riot in
Jiangsu. The China Inland Mission was
slandered by the British press. They said they almost started
a war, which was not true. Fake news is old. Fake news has
been around for a long time. Even the British Parliament called
for the withdrawal of all missionaries from China because of this riot,
because they had been slandered and they said that the missionaries
had started this. And the tailors fled from Yangshuo
but returned later that year and saw many convert to Christ. He was married two times. His
first wife died and he got a second wife and she also died later
on. Eight of his 14 children died
on the mission field, especially the year 1870 Several of his children and his
wife died in the same year. Their son Samuel Dyer Taylor
died. Noel Taylor was born and died
13 days after, and his wife Maria Jane died in the same year he
suffered the loss of children, family, for Christ. And then he married Jane Elizabeth
Foulding in London, who died in 1904 in Switzerland. One time when Hudson was in China
he fell from the steps in a river boat
and hurt his spine. In the 1900s The year 1900, there was the
Boxer Rebellion in China. They were practicing what was
called Chinese boxing, which is what we know today as martial
arts, kung fu, karate, those things. They were doing this
against Christians, against foreigners, and killed 58 of the China inland
missionaries, and 21 children were killed. Hudson's response to this was to show the meekness and gentleness
of Christ. He did not demand reparations
or payment of loss or property or life. He wanted to show the
meekness and gentleness of Christ. His outlook on these things was
that he said, these people who were killed by the Chinese boxers,
he said, they exchanged a murderous mob For the rapture of Jesus'
embrace, his presence and his smile, they received a crown
of glory that does not fade away, and they walk now with Jesus
in white, for they are worthy. He saw that dying for Christ
was gain. He was often sick in body as
well as perplexed in mind and embarrassed by circumstances.
He was slandered a lot and he said, had not the Lord been especially
gracious to me, had not my mind been sustained by the conviction
that the work is his and that he is with me, I must have fainted
or broken down, but the battle is the Lord's and he will conquer. He was not there for his own
sake. He was not there doing his own
things. He was there doing the work of God, of Christ. The battle is the Lord's and
he will conquer. He trusted in Christ for these
things. He wanted to cry with David,
my flesh and my heart faileth. But that is not his last word,
and by grace I too can add, he said, God is the strength of
my heart and my portion forever. Though often cast down, I am
where I would be and as I would be, save for more likeness to
Christ. He wanted more likeness to Christ. In 1905, he was on his last,
eleventh and final time in China, and there he died suddenly and
was buried at a Protestant cemetery that no longer exists, but they dug up his remains and buried
him again at a local church in Xinjiang and at his tombstone They erected his tombstone and
there are written the words, sacred to the memory of the Reverend
J. Hudson Taylor, the Reverend founder
of the China Inland Mission, born 21st May 1832, died 3rd
June 1905, a man in Christ. That was the summary of his life.
He was a man in Christ. And what he did for Christ and
what God accomplished through him for Christ Even today, despite how China
is today, despite all the state persecution, Christianity is
still growing in China. It's hard to estimate how many
Christians there are in China. Some contradict this, but they
believe there are up to a hundred million or more Christians in
China. Some figures are that 500,000
Protestant baptisms happen in China every year. What we learn from Hudson's life,
this was all for Christ. It was not for himself. He did
not accomplish these things by himself or for himself. He did
it for Christ, and Christ, God used him for his work. We see from his salvation story
where he came to the understanding that faith in the finished work
of Christ was essential for salvation. He understood that it was not
his work. He could not add anything. No
man can add anything. You cannot add anything to your
salvation. When Christ died on the cross,
he said, it is finished. It is finished. He did it 100%. He didn't do 99% and then you
do 8 or 1%. He did 100%. If you don't understand or don't Believe that Christ alone and
his finished work, where he died for sinners, he took the full
penalty, the full punishment for your sin on the cross. If you do not believe this or
understand it, you do not have saving faith. Because you do
not have complete saving faith in Christ. You have maybe 99%
faith in Christ and 1% faith in yourself. No, you have to
have 100% faith completely in Christ alone if you are to have
saving faith and be saved. Do you as a Christian, as we
look here at Hudson Taylor and his life, look at him in how he sought Christ first and
his likeness, do you do that? Do you first seek Christ? Do
you have complete faith in His finished and completed work? And do you seek Him first and
foremost and His likeness? Do that. Seek Him. Seek to be totally committed
to Jesus Christ. All yourself, all your ambitions,
all your uncertainties, have everything committed to Him. Do you understand what that means? Going on a mission is a way to
get more of Christ. It's not an end in itself for
you and for your career or for your work or for your ministry. It is a way, a means to get more
of Christ in your life, more of His likeness as you serve
Him, as you suffer for Him, suffer his sufferings? Are you eager like Paul, like
Hudson, to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship
of his sufferings, being conformed to his death? Everyone are not called to be
missionaries in foreign countries. but we are all called to Christ,
to be more like Christ. If you are a missionary, or a
pastor, or a preacher, or involved in some Christian ministry, or
if you have a normal, regular day job where you work for the
boss You are still to live for Christ where you are in whatever
God has called you to do. Paul writes to slaves, to servants
in the New Testament. Serve your masters as if you
serve the Lord himself, as you work at your day job, working
for the man? Do you work as if you work for
Christ, as if you work for the Lord? Do you do everything you
do for Christ? Hudson said, this is the most
famous quote by Hudson Taylor among Chinese people. He said, if I had a thousand
pounds, China should have it. If I had a thousand lives, China
should have them. And then he corrects himself,
no, not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for him? Can
we do enough for such a precious savior? He did not go to China
for the sake of China. He went to China for Christ,
to serve Him, because Christ is worthy, those whom He has
purchased. So seek primarily Christ, not
a fancy mission or a fancy ministry or work, your call to suffering. Seek Christ. This endeavor Hudson
did, these efforts he did, flowed for his desire for Jesus. He wanted more of Jesus. He wanted
to serve Jesus. So Hudson Taylor, he was a man
in Christ. I don't know how long I've been
going on now, but we will conclude. Hudson was a man in Christ. He
was saved by Christ. He lived for Christ. He did his
mission for Christ. And I will end with this quote
from him, where he says, we may fail. We do fail continually,
but he never fails. I have continually to mourn that
I follow at such distance and learn so slowly to imitate my
precious Master. I cannot tell you how I am buffeted
sometimes by temptation. I never knew how bad a heart
I have, yet I do know that I love God and love His work and desire
to serve Him only and in all things. And I value above all
else that precious Savior in whom alone I can be accepted. Often I am tempted to think that
one so full of sin cannot be a child of God at all. but may
God help me to love him more and serve him better. Let us pray. Lord, we come before you and
we thank you for this man that you have used, Hudson Taylor,
and what we can learn from his life and what you did through
him for the sake of yourself, for your own glory, what you
did for China and still doing for China and for the rest of
the world. Lord, we pray that you will help us all, as
Hudson here prays, help us to love you more. Help us to love
you more and to serve you better, not for our own sake, not for
our own pleasure and for our own well-being, but for your
sake alone, for Christ's sake, for your kingdom's sake. May Christ have the reward of
his sufferings, and may the whole world be filled
with your glory. Amen.
A Biography of Hudson Taylor
Series 2021 Five Solas Conference
| Sermon ID | 87211332355705 |
| Duration | 1:07:33 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Bible Text | Galatians 2:20 |
| Language | English |
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