William Carey: Expect Great Things from God, and Attempt Great Things from God

Write on the board what’s above!

Today we are going to talk about a guy by the name of William Carey.

Who has heard of this man before?

Where do you think William Carey came from? England

Around what year do you think he was born? (Aug 17, 1761)

Carey grew up in a devout Anglican family. When he was 14, he went away by his parents to learn to become a shoemaker.

During his time learning to be a shoemaker, there was another young man there who talked of things of Christ, and invited Carey to attend his prayer service, where Carey heard the gospel proclaimed clearly. He did not immediately accept Christ, but tried to clean up his life by his own works. Until one day, when he sold shoes to someone and replaced the real shilling that the customer gave him and gave his boss a counterfeit. His boss soon found out and the shame and guilt destroyed Carey. It was at that point that Carey knew he was a sinner in need of a Savior. It was at that point that he placed his faith in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

Carey quickly became entrenched in the Word of God, and was a faithful witness to many around him, including his sisters. Early on in his walk with Jesus, Carey was faithful to pray consistently for his sisters and share the gospel with them. Soon after his conversion, his sisters placed their faith in Jesus too.

In 1781, at the age of 20, Carey married his wife Dorothy. Within a year, Dorothy gave birth to their first daughter Ann.

To support his family, Carey continued to work as a shoemaker for several years and was preaching and learning languages on the side. Sadly, Carey’s young daughter died within the first year of her life, but Dorothy and Carey would go on to have 7 more children together.

During these years, he started to pick up books about the voyages taken by a navigator named James Cook. In these books he was reading about the lands that were filled with people where the gospel has not reached, and the Bible had never been translated. Carey began to look deeply into these distant lands figuring out what he could about contexts, cultures, and religions therein.

In 1787, he was ordained as a pastor of a baptist church in Moulton, England. In this region of England there was quite a few other baptist churches and the pastors would sometimes gather for fellowship, encouragement and partnership in ministry.

Here, Carey thought it appropriate to bring up the fact that there are people all over the world who are without the gospel, and it is the responsibility of the church to take the gospel to them.

A seasoned pastor at the meeting responded with “Young man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine.”

Carey went back to his church and began writing a response to these local pastors explaining how through Scripture God chooses to use means, that is his church, to reach the heathen.

Many people argued that the Great Commission ended with the apostles and should not be taken as a command to God’s people today. Carey argued that Christ’s command to baptize and teach were followed by the churches, should not this also have ended if wen are not also to go to the ends of the earth. The same with Christ being with us. It does not say I am with you until you complete the mission, but that he is with us until the end of the age, or the end of time.

The other argument as to why not go to the nations, was that there was plenty enough to do at home for England’s Christians to go to other nations. Carey refuted this by pointing to the drastic numbers of people around the world without churches, without a Bible and without any Christians living amongst them.

He also showed in this writing that the means in which God uses is prayer and his people.

Soon after writing this work, there was another pastor’s meeting where Carey was given the privilege to preach at. He chose Isaiah 54:2-3 as his text.

Isaiah 54:2–3 ESV

2 “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. 3 For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.

Expect Great things from God, and attempt Great things for God

Soon after this sermon, the Baptist Missionary Society of England was formed and Carey was the first missionary appointed by this society. This society was the first Protestant missionary society to be formed, making it the parent of all other missionary agencies.

This society was something that helped Carey stay afloat while He was in India. Specifically two great friends of his, Andrew Fuller and John Ryland Jr, were instrumental in encouraging Carey, sending more workers to Carey, and raising money for the work to continue on and grow.

He set sail for India in 1793 at the age of 32. However, this did not come without it’s challenges.

Carey lost another son before he set sail, and was joined on his missionary journeys with a young family and a reluctant wife. Carey convinced his wife to go to India by allowing her sister to go with them to help care for her and the family.

Unfortunately, the Carey’s lost their third child in India to dysentery, which ended up spiraling Carey’s wife into a deep depression and insanity. With the many challenges of constantly moving houses in India, to getting sick, their continual poverty, and the death of their child along with Dorothy’s reluctancy in the first place to go to India, this spiraled her.

This was a huge challenge for the Carey family, and often weighed heavily on William. However, he continued to take care of his five children and the missionary work.

By 1797, 4 years into his time in India, he finished the first ever translation of the NT into Bengali. TO say the least, Carey was a great linguist. Over his 40 years in India, he translated the whole Bible into 6 languages, and the NT into 23 languages.

In 1799, two other workers from England showed up in India. William Ward and Joshua Marshman. Knowing the importance of healthy teammates Carey quickly got connected with them and they all decided to move to Serampore, India. These three soon became known as the Serampore trio.

These three were given land in the Danish governed city of Serampore, and were even supported by the Danish governor at the time. This allowed them to proclaim the gospel freely to the natives, and to even start a college called Serampore college. It functioned, and still functions, as a general college for all people, no matter what caste. Carey was seen has a hero in many of the natives eyes for providing such a school and advocating for many of the most helpless and hopeless. (Widow burning/ child prostitution/founding printing machine)

In 1800, after 7 years of work, the Serampore trio saw their first convert come to faith. Krishna Pal was baptized by the missionaries in the nearby houghly river. This was huge for the ministry happening here, because many of the locals got to understand that this is not merely an English religion, but rather they too should deeply consider the message of the gospel and exclusively placing their trust in Jesus. As the years went by, and they continued to faithfully teach and preach, Serampore was filled with 100s of local believers.

Krishna Pal, the first convert, became one of the most powerful preachers among his people, and many were turning to Christ in faith and getting baptized. Churches were being formed and the Lord was growing his kingdom.

died in 1834 in India, at 73 years old after 41 years of faithful service in India

Father of Modern missions