Amazing Grace: Ministering To Us Series

(Introduction Source: http://www.amazinggracemovie.com)

Born into a captain’s family who traded at the East India Company, John Newton (July 24, 1725 – December 21, 1807) embarked on sea voyages at the young age of 11. He soon entered the prosperous slave trade until he nearly died on a voyage that would change his life forever. He proclaimed, “Only God’s amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God.” This would influence his famed hymn Amazing Grace, in which he declared he was once blind but now could see. Newton wrote the hymn after converting to Christianity in 1748 and abandoning his participation in the slave trade. In1764 he was ordained in the Church of England.

William Wilberforce first met John Newton when he (Wilberforce) was a child. Newton was the pastor at the church Wilberforce attended. He (Wilberforce) became reacquainted with Newton in his twenties when Wilberforce was on the brink of a career as a British MP (Member of Parliament). Wilberforce’s outspokenness on the abolition issue may well have also led Newton to make his first public confession of guilt over his past involvement in the slave trade. In the Amazing Grace, Wilberforce visits John Newton twice. The first time he asks Newton for advice about whether to leave politics and join the clergy. And, in hopes of using Newton’s testimony as a former slave trader, Wilberforce visits Newton for a second time, now at St. Mary Woolnoth Church in London. Here Wilberforce discovers that his former pastor is indeed blind.

He (Wilberforce) incorporated Newton’s confession into his plea for abolition. The vote to abolish the slave trade throughout the British Empire finally passed in 1807—the same year John Newton died. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the date when the abolition act first passed the vote of Parliament

Not limiting himself to just abolitionist work, Wilberforce dedicated his life to what he called his "two great objects:" abolishing slavery in the British Empire and what he called "the reformation of manners [society]." To this end, he advocated for child labour laws, campaigned for education of the blind and deaf, and founded organizations as diverse as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and the National Gallery (of Art). He managed to get written into the chart of the East Indies Trading Company the right of missionary to also go to India. In short, he paved the way for Christian missionary work in India, but also in West African countries such as Sierra Leone.

Just like the slaves dispossessed from Africa, the Apostle Peter wrote the epistle of 1 Peter from Rome in 64 AD to the church dispossessed from their homeland by persecution. As we saw last time (1 Pt. 1:1b) the letter was addressed to Churches in provinces located in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, which were part of the Roman Empire.

Regardless of where we find ourselves, be it the Roman or British Empire, under blessing or persecution, we have the ministry of those who came before us with a message of Salvation by Grace through faith. Those who have ministered to us in the past have done so not seeing the culmination of their ministry. The OT prophets prophesied not seeing the Cross. Wilberforce ministered to those of his era in proclaiming the worth of Human beings. Today 200 years after his death, we live in a time that we owe to those who came before us. Bondage, in its physical manifestation in slavery, and spiritual in its bondage to sin, require salvation.

Peter’s theme in the first chapter of this letter is the blessedness or greatness of salvation. Here in vs. 10-12 he examines it from the viewpoint of four divine agents who were involved with the message of salvation: Those who ministered to us to bring us the ultimate message of hope: 1) the Old Testament prophets who studied it, 2) the Holy Spirit who inspired it, 3) the New Testament apostles who preached it, and 4) the angels who examined it.

1) Salvation was the Theme of the Prophets’ Study

Pt. 1:10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, 11a inquiring what person or time

The apostle first draws attention to the salvation referred to in verse 9 from the viewpoint of the prophets.

• They were God’s Old Testament spokesmen who prophesied about the grace that was to be.

Grace is not just a New Testament Concept

In the Garden of Eden after man fell into sin and death, God promised salvation

Gen 3:15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."