Our Reformed Heritage
Practical Sovereignty (Ephesians 1:11-12)
Lesson 9: The Example of Samuel Davies
by Bob Burridge ©2019
God’s sovereignty isn’t just a detached curiosity for theologians. It’s a practical and vital truth for us all to appreciate and cling to every day. It gives meaning to things hard to understand. It restores our awareness that we’re loved, even when things otherwise seem cold and harsh.
If you imagine the world as independent of a God who is really God, you have a universe uncertainly limping along from one meaningless event to another. With that view the weak give up and are consumed by those stronger. The successful overindulge themselves and get bored with it all. Those who don’t know how to get ahead feel oppressed and confused. The ambitious only try to appear moral so they can get ahead. The lazy complain and expect others to do the work while they do nothing.
If there is no Sovereign God, then chaos takes all purpose and certainty away. It’s like the world in John Lennon’s song “Imagine” where a godless society has no religion and he imagines that everybody could just get along with one another. He was unaware of a most fundamental fact: humanity is fallen in Adam, corrupted to the core, in rebellion against their Creator, and in need of a Savior.
Without a Savior we are blind yet think we see perfectly well. John Lennon was a musical genius and quite intelligent in some ways, but he, like all the rest of us in our natural state, can’t see the real world that’s all around us. We see a deception. Our fallen soul tells us we can control it our own way. But we also sense a futility because for all these years of man on earth it’s no better. We are miserable, lost, and doomed if there is no God who has a purpose in it all, and if there is no Savior to deliver us from ourselves and join us back to fellowship with God again.
The good news is that there is such a God and there is such a Savior! Just as we all fell in Adam, Jesus came to represent his people to pay sin’s penalty for them. He didn’t just take away guilt and leave them blandly neutral. He lived a perfectly righteous life and promised to credit that righteousness to anyone who would put their trust in him. He restores their ability to sense God’s comfort and to respect his all powerful control of circumstances that come along. He tells them in his written word not only what to do in challenging times, but also is there to empower them to bear up under challenges as they are moved by grace to live for God’s glory through all that comes to pass.
Having a loving God who’s totally Sovereign, and who has a firm and perfect plan, moves all of life into a different dimension. He reveals himself to us in his written word. The truth we find there isn’t just a better anchor for the soul. It’s the only real anchor.
The 18th century American Presbyterian minister Samuel Davies had a practical grasp of the Sovereignty of God. He didn’t preach a lot directly on the doctrine of predestination. He said to his people, “… my present design is to speak to your hearts about an affair which you are all concerned and capable to know, and not to perplex your minds with a controversy of which not many of you are competent to judge.”
But he was always clear about the truth of the gospel, and of God’s sovereign grace that was behind it working in the sinner’s heart. He made it clear that no one would come to belief in the saving work of Jesus Christ without God transforming them. They would spend all eternity in damnation if they failed to put their trust in the work completed on the cross. He explained from God’s word that they were not able to come in faith on their own in their lost condition. He challenged them to come to the Savior as broken helpless sinners pleading for forgiveness and restoration through Christ alone.
The life of Davies is an astounding testimony of the blessing God offers when his truth is told and accepted. He was born November 3rd, in Delaware in 1723, 53 years before our country declared its independence. His mother told him he was named after the Samuel of the Bible because she asked the Lord for him. He later said that her prayers were used by God in blessing his life and ministry.
When he was 15 he made an open profession of faith in Christ through grace, and became a communing member of the Presbyterian Church. He worked seriously as a student, mastering the classics and Christian Theology.
In 1746, when he was about 23 years old, he had become very frail and weak physically, but he pressed on as God enabled him. He married and was soon ordained as an evangelist to minister in the backwoods of Virginia. First he had to be licensed to preach. For that he had to go to the Governor of Virginia. At the time the only legal church was the Anglican Church of England. Others were classified as dissenting churches and were technically illegal. But Davies so impressed the Governor that he was the first non-anglican licensed to preach in Virginia. He worked throughout his life to promote tolerance for all denominations.
In 1747, just a year after his marriage, his wife died giving birth to his first son who also died. He was deeply grieved and went through a hard time of adjusting to the loss. He hardly slept and let his health go even more. Some thought he would certainly die.
But he kept on and worked all the harder. He didn’t minister to just one little church. There were five congregations without pastors. He rode alone on his horse, studying along the way, to preach in each one. Soon that grew to seven churches in six counties. Then it grew to 14 churches. The closest meeting house was in Hanover County and held 500 people. It overflowed. Soon they had to meet outside under the trees in the woods for shade and shelter.
As he traveled on his circuit he stayed in homes where he taught every night, even gathering a large number of slaves whom he taught to read and believe. He opened his own home to teach them, to teach anyone who would come. These slaves numbered over 300 converts in the first few years. It became common to see them carrying Bibles and reading the writings of the Puritans. A visitor to Hanover said it was “like the suburbs of heaven” there.
In 1752 he was sent to England to raise money for the College of New Jersey, a Presbyterian school which later became Princeton University and Seminary.
While in England, he was invited to preach at the Royal Chapel before King George II. This was quite amazing since he was considered there to be a dissenter from the Church. But Davies was known as one of the greatest orators of all times. Patrick Henry often attended his sermons and credited Davies with teaching him oratory. Davies spoke with a commanding voice, yet solemn and dignified. He told the truth plainly and clearly aiming at the poor slave as well as the educated noble.
While he was preaching he saw King George making quiet comments to those around him. Davies stopped and stood in silence for a moment. Then he looked at the King and said, “When the lion roars, the beasts of the forest all tremble; and when King Jesus speaks the princes of the earth should keep silence.” The king took the comment well and later the king explained to him that he meant no disrespect. He was just so taken in and astonished at the eloquence and solemnity of Davies that he had a hard time not commenting to those around him.
Back in Virginia Davies organized the first Southern Presbytery in 1755 with 5 other ministers.
In 1759 Davies was drafted by the Presbytery and the College Board to become president of Princeton after the death of Jonathan Edwards. He served for 18 months, then died in 1761, at the age of 37.
It’s said that he preached his own “funeral message” at Princeton on New Year’s Day. His text was Jeremiah 28:16, “This year thou shalt die.” He warned that some of those present will with high probability meet death that year. He said “Perhaps I may die this year… It is of little importance to me whether I die this year or not; but the only important point is that I make a good use of my future time, whether it be longer or shorter.”
He died one month later on February 4th leaving behind his second wife and 5 children. He left an unmatched though often overlooked legacy of a godly ministry.
Samuel Davies saw the root of his ministry as telling the hard truth of the gospel to everybody. He was horrified that most churches were just teaching little morality lessons and giving false hope. He didn’t want anyone to think that they were able to decide for Christ by themselves. They needed to know that they had no hope in their own efforts. Their only possibility of coming to Christ was by Grace alone.
He commented on such texts as Ephesians 1:11-12, “In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.”
Samuel Davies explained, “I cannot be persuaded God has made such a world as this, without first drawing the plan of it in his own omniscient mind. I cannot think he would produce such a numerous race of reasonable and immortal creatures, without first determining what to do with them. I cannot think the events of time, or the judicial process of the last day, will furnish him with any new intelligence to enable him to determine the final states of men more justly than he could from eternity.”
Looking closely at this passage in Ephesians 1, the life of Davies is brought into focus. The context of these verses is about the work of Jesus Christ. He was eternally determined in the mind of God the Fater to be the Redeemer of his people from lost mankind.
Ephesians 1:3-6, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”
God isn’t waiting to see what we will do. He chose those he would redeem before anyting was ever created.
The word translated as “predestined” here is from the root word “pro-oritzo” (προορίζω). The first part “pro-” means “before”. The second part of that word “horitzo” means to “set a boundary or limit”. Our word “horizon” comes from it. God set the boundaries of salvation beforehand, even before Adam’s fall into sin.
Those who say they don’t believe in “predestination” have a problem with this verse, and the 5 other places where this word is used in the New Testament.
They see it as a denial of the freedom of our “will”. But there’s no real conflict there. Our will is totally free to do what we desire most in any situation. The limit to our will is our corrupt desires. When we choose to believe in the work of our Savior, it’s because the Holy Spirit has given us that desire. When people choose to reject the Gospel, it’s because God hasn’t regenerated their lost heart.
Since we can’t know the eternal mind of God until we see him moving in someone’s life, we challenge the lost to believe knowing that our prayers are ordained as part of how God fulfills his plan.
Then Paul goes on in Ephesians 1:7-10 saying, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
That’s the context of this amazing passage in Ephesians.
Paul put it so plainly in Romans 8:29-30, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
God’s Sovereign power is that vital and practical anchor for the soul. His promises alone grip the real ground that holds his people fast through life’s turmoils and trials.
One of the hymns he wrote for his people is Great God of Wonders. It’s a song of God’s pardoning grace, a grace unparalleled, rich and free.
(Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.)
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