Sermon Tone Analysis

The Weakness of Hudson Taylor (1832-1905)

Hudson Taylor was born into a Methodist Christian family in Barnsley Yorkshire; John Wesley was a guest in their home when he was a boy.

Taylor developed a love for Jesus at a young age.

When he was five years old, he told his family that he wanted to be a missionary to China one day.

As a young boy though, Hudson had to be schooled at home because he was frail and often sick as a child.

It is a condition he had to deal with all of his life.

In 1849, Taylor felt the Lord’s call on his life to be a missionary to China, at the age of seventeen.

Hudson had grown a deep conviction to depend on God for all his needs.

Much like George Mueller, he committed to pray and ask God alone for everything he needed for ministry.

He would spend his life in poverty living off little money and meals that consisted only of oatmeal and rice.

In 1853, Taylor set sail for China.

When he arrived he had little support for many of the other missionaries had either died or left the country because of the hardship.

Taylor spent much of his life poor, sick, lonely, and in sorrow.

He lost his wife and infant son to cholera.

He was often doubted by his missionary organization for his evangelizing methods, and he was constantly surrounded by Chinese nationals who did not care for white westerners.

Hudson once said, in describing his call to ministry, he said

“I often think that God must have been looking for someone small enough and weak enough for Him to use, and that He found me.”

Hudson Taylor

In the closing months of his life, he was so frail that he wrote to a friend and said,

“I am so weak, I cannot even pray.

I can only lie still in God’s arms like a little child and trust.”

Hudson Taylor

Weakness is one word that describes Hudson Taylor.

He was physically small in stature.

He had a frail disposition.

He was not much to brag about as a man and in the world’s estimation.

He was often underestimated as a missionary by his own sending organization.

Because of his frailty, he was told too many times to hung it and go home.

The problem with being weak in this world is that it leads to discouragement and despondency.

Paul calls it “loosing heart.”

Loosing heart tempts the believer to quit, to give up, to stop serving in the ministry, or to stop joyfully advancing the kingdom of God by making much of Jesus.

Had Hudson Taylor believed that others believed about weakness in the hands of God, he would’ve lost heart and not become one of the greatest and most effective missionaries in the Western World.

The Weakness of the Corinthian Church

The first letter Paul sent to the Corinthian church did not land well on the church.

Timothy had returned to Paul in Ephesus reporting that the church was struggling to remain faithful to the gospel it first received.

There were false apostles corrupting the teaching of the church; likely Judaizers who were instructing the Gentile believers that that had to live according to Mosiac regulations.

After Paul’s second visit to the church, he described it as sorrowful (1 Cor 2:1; 13:2).

The false teachers were trying to get the church to disown Paul.

Paul wrote an even more severe letter of rebuke to Corinth from Ephesus (Eph 2:3-4, 9), which is now lost.

He sent this letter by Titus.

Thankfully, Titus came back to Paul and reported that most of the church had repented (1 Cor 7:5-7), but some were still rejecting Paul’s authority.

Paul decided to write 2 Corinthians expressing his relief that they repented on the one hand, and convincing the minority holdouts to come around.

In 2 Cor 3:7-4:6, Paul tries to lift spirit of the church up by helping them understand the new covenant they lived under in Christ, where God has removed the veil from our hearts and reveals his glory, and empowers us in our sanctification, and that empowerment in our sanctification is most seen in our weakness.

Paul explains that God uses our weakness to display his power in glory as he advances his kingdom.

Paul explains using his own ministry of the gospel.

Paul asserts that weak servants of Jesus both share in the knowledge of the glory of God and are being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Cor 3:18), in their frail human bodies, often through affliction and persecution.

Paul’s ministry has been one of suffering, but his suffering had benefited the church ( 2 Cor 4:8-10), so he persevered faithfully.

Furthermore, Paul says that all believers in Christ can hold fast in the faith doing effective gospel ministry because they know that on the one hand, they will be raised from the dead because Jesus was raised form the dead, and on the other hand, their suffering is only for a season, and will not compare to the eternal glory and reward God has for his people.

With this in mind he says, do not loose heart.

Do not let your weakness keep you from serving the Lord.

In fact, your weakness is exactly what God desires to do great and mighty things for his kingdom.

Hudson Taylor believed the truth from Paul’s text that I’m giving you today:

Because God empowers weak servants for gospel ministry you will joyfully advance the kingdom of God in Litchfield effectively for His glory.

I don’t want you to loose heart, and neither does the Lord.

I want to steady your heart with six truths from Paul’s ministry in our text that will help you serve well at FBCL.

You can serve well at FBCL knowing the power of God is revealed in your weakness.

(2 Corinthians 4:7)

Paul describes our weakness by comparing us to jars of clay.

In antiquity, a jar of clay was a cheap thin clay container that was used for common purposes.

They were to brittle that the jars often broke and so common that they were easily disposable.

Paul says our whole existence of life on this planet is like a jar of clay.

Its not just your physical body, but everything it entails being human; your flesh, your feelings, your thoughts, your desires, everything.

Our bodies and minds and hearts are so brittle and easily broken.

We are weak by nature.

Paul gives us some insight to what it means to be weak in 2 Cor 4:8-10

2 Corinthians 4:8–10 (ESV)

We are afflicted in every way...perplexed; persecuted, struck down; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus,

To be afflicted is to be troubled or overwhelmed by physical and/or psychological suffering.

To be perplexed is to be in a state of confusion or a loss for words.

It could be despondency.

Depression can be just as debilitating as a physical sickness.

It is easy to loose heart when the darkness of the soul will not lift.

Persecuted is being hated by your fellow man because you love Jesus.

Your family wants nothing to do with you because of your faith in Christ.

Your friends have left you because you find more happiness in God’s holiness than in their debauchery.

Your community despises you, imprisons you, takes your property, and kills your sons and daughters because you value your citizenship in heaven more than their pagan political ideology.

To be struck down is likened to a wrestler who is thrown to the floor.

Its the idea of being setback, or put back, in a bad spot.

A wrestler who is thrown to the floor on his back is on the verge of being defeated.

This feeling is common in gospel ministry; always feeling like we are on the verge of being defeated.

Finally, to carry around the death of Jesus is to suffer repeatedly, as he did, for the Father’s glory.

Its worth mentioning here that our weakness is not just physical.

Paul is quick to tell the church Eph 6:12

We have a powerful enemy in Satan, and he roams the earth looking for opportunities to devour the faith of the saints.

On our own, we do not stand a chance against such a formidable foe.

He likes to attack your soul.

Its a spiritual war we cannot see, but we must be very aware of in this life.

When the world looks at us though this lens, we are weak.

Like the jar of clays, we are not the kind of container you’d want to put something of value.

And yet, Paul says God has put his treasure in us.

The treasure God has put in us is the knowledge of His God’s glory and the gospel of His salvation.

Look back at

God put his glorious message of hope into fallen frail sinners so it could shine through the cracks and holes of our weakness.

God shines his spiritual light into the darkness of of sinners by giving them life.

Sinners are dead in their trespasses and sins.

God shines his light, that is, makes them alive in Christ through his surpassing power.

It’s the surpassing power of God to command light to shine in darkness as he did in Gen 1:3.

By the same surpassing power of God to bring light to His creation, He commands the light of Christ to shine in the hearts of sinners, giving them a new birth (John 3:5), making them a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).

Furthermore, that new creation light that shines in you is what he uses to bring light to the darkness of others, most effectively through your weaknesses.

Sometimes, church, we look at the darkness of Litchfield with all of the poverty, substance abuse, broken families, disability, and the unchurched, and the only thing we can see is a massive mountain.