David Brainerd

I've talked a lot about wide margining in various videos, so I don't think I want to repeat my whole theory here of how to do that, other than to say that I'm to the place in my life, I cannot read the Bible without a pen in my hand, because I'm constantly calling things to mind, I'm thinking of things, I'm making observations, I'm noting things in the text that later Make sense and help me.

And just for way of example here, this very morning, I'm reading in the beginning of 1 Kings where David is old and he's going to die, right? And there's this part where Solomon is about to take over the kingship and David is going to give him some final instructions.

He wants Joab dead.

He wants revenge against Shimei.

For instance, Joab is an incredibly complex character and what an interesting person to study.

Well, at the end of the book, he wants Joab dead.

And that doesn't seem to make sense because Joab has, time and again, acted in David's favor, even trying to correct David as, for instance, with the census, protecting David as, for instance, with the rebellion of Absalom.

And yet at the end, David wants Joab dead.

People didn't have places they could stay so easily.

Jonathan Edwards very famously took in a guy named David Brainerd under the same situation.

And would end up publishing his diary, and it helped launch the Century of Missions.

But that's just the thing people used to do back in the day, and Luther was no different.

So, again, making connection with Reformation Month, what was it they were preaching during the times of the great awakening doctrines like the absolute sovereignty of God doctrines like justification by faith alone doctrines.

doctrines like the grace of god alone as against the works of of men doctrines like predestination all of these things were actually stunningly what god used to bring about such marvelous times of revival and so if you look at the sermons of some of the great revivalists like edwards or like george whitfield for instance were Aaron Burr and some of these guys, David Brainerd, they're all in the mix here.

They're preaching solid reformed reformation era doctrine.

They're just doing it in the context of their own day.

When Christ enters the heart, the glory is such, the power is such, that the very physical frame seems to collapse beneath it, and the whole man is trembling and shaking.

You find the same thing in the experiences of people like Jonathan Edwards and David Brainerd.

They've all testified to this.

You see, when Christ comes and dwells in the heart by faith, and when we are filled with the whole fullness of God, you need to be strong to take it and to contain it.

And there are historical examples.

Jonathan Edwards claimed that he had his famous protege, David Brainerd, who was a missionary who died in his 20s.

Jonathan Edwards, after the fact, said, no, he went too far.

He took it too far.

Amen? As of any as we are deemed to eternal life believed.

That's why the historic Calvinists like John Elliot and William Carey and David Brainerd, they gave their lives to win the lost.

They were not sitting in one place saying that, ah, God has so co-elected the people that will come.

And remember the mind-bending thingy that we were talking about there.

He recognized his spiritual kinship.

What can be done, he asked his English conference, what can be done to revive the work of God where it has decayed? And he answered his own question by replying, let every preacher read carefully the life of David Brainerd.

Today Wesley's journal and Brainerd's journal stand side by side among our choicest classics of devotion.

In his early days John Wesley devoted himself to the evangelization of the Red Indians.

David Brainerd spent all his ministerial days among them.

Mr. Wesley used to say that whenever the cravings of his soul became so intense that no satisfaction could be found even at earth's purest fountains, he invariably found comfort in that sublime proclamation.

If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.

Come, cried the Savior in the temple courts, come unto me.

We delay discipleship.

I think of a man by the name of David Brainerd, and I'm almost done.

He was an American missionary who devoted his short life to bringing the gospel to the Native American tribes.

Though he struggled with poor health, loneliness, and depression, he persevered in preaching Christ, often traveling through wilderness areas and enduring harsh weather to reach people with the gospel.

Brainerd spent much of his ministry among Native Americans in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

He was known for his intense prayer life.

If you ever heard of a book about the diary of David Brainerd, I'd highly encourage you to get that book and read it.

It's a very sobering and convicting book to read nonetheless.