Well, good morning. It's a pleasure to be with you all and to see you all once again. This morning, we're going to be thinking about a certain figure from church history. And hopefully, it's not too cliche to invite an Irishman to your church. And he speaks about St. Patrick, but that's what we're going to be doing. So we're going to consider some of Patrick's life, some of the things he did, some of his motivations. And in doing so, I think we will be edified. Please turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 1. Acts chapter 1, and we'll read verses 6 to 8. But here we have the risen Lord Jesus Christ prior to his ascension, and he commands his disciples to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. And as they go, they have the promise that God himself will be with them. by the power of the Holy Spirit, chapter 1, verses 6 to 8, reading from the ESV. So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and to the end of the earth. These words contain both command and promise. There is the command to go into all the earth. And there's a promise that God himself will be with his disciples, with his apostles, with his apostolic church as we fulfill this great commission to go to the ends of the earth. And of course, these words from our Lord uttered 2,000 years ago have been the words that have inflamed the desire and confidence of the church that she has gone. into all the earth, bringing the good news of the gospel. Well, one man who answered the call of Christ through these words was a man by the name of Patrick. Now, there are a lot of myths and interesting stories and things that may not have ever truly happened when it comes to Patrick involving snakes being banished and all sorts of things. And it's probably also fair to say that not all who celebrate his day on March 17th do so with the best of motives. And I don't know what you've heard about Patrick. But this morning, I want to introduce you to the man who I believe is the real Patrick. Patrick, according to his own words, a man of flesh and blood, a man who knew that he was a sinner, but a man also who knew the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, a man who lived in very uncertain times, very dark times, perhaps not too unlike our own, a man who stands, I believe, as a model example for missions for the church throughout the ages. Well, as we think of the life of St. Patrick, we need to first paint the picture of the kind of world he lived in, his context. And to put it simply, he lived in very dark and uncertain days. Patrick was born in 390 AD. which meant that he lived most of his life in the 400s or 5th century. It's often helpful when you have dates thrown at you to be able to have some references so you can hang those dates upon. So as a point of reference, so Patrick was born 390 AD. As a point of reference, the Council of Nicaea was 325. That was when the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit was affirmed. against the Arians, who argued that the father and the son were not of the same substance, but a similar substance. A very important date in the history of the church. Another important date is 354, the birth of Augustine, or Augustine. Augustine was born 354. He died 430. So those are some dates that kind of orient us to when Patrick lived, that time frame. At the time that Patrick lived, the Roman Empire had reached its peak. And by that point, it was very much in a state of rapid decline. It was a dark and uncertain time. It was surely a time in which many who lived in the Roman Empire were very afraid, as they saw the rise of barbarian tribes and the constant attacks against the empire. The empire had grown to really unsustainable levels. Within the empire itself, politically, of course, it was tearing itself apart. And from without, it was being attacked by barbarian tribes. The final nail in the coffin, you might say, was the invasion of Germanic tribes from across the River Rhine. The Romans had depended on the Rhine River to keep out many of the northern Germanic tribes from entering into Roman territory. However, during the winter of 406 and 407, the Rhine River froze over, essentially now creating a land bridge for the Germanic tribes to pour into Roman occupied territory. It allowed for some 200,000 Germanic warriors to cross into Roman territory. Rome would collapse under the weight of this invasion. And in 410, the Goths would sack the city of Rome itself. shocking to the entire empire. So this is the world and time in which Patrick lived. Patrick lived in Roman Britain, modern day England and Wales. So culturally, Patrick was Romano-British. He was a descendant of the Romans who had invaded Britain a couple centuries earlier. Because of the Roman legions being removed from Britain in order to fight the tribes in the mainland, it meant that many of the Roman settlements in Britain were undefended against raids by the Saxons and even by Irish pirates. You may never have known there were Irish pirates, but there you go. So that's Patrick's world. It's a dark world. It's a kind of a crumbling world. It's a time of great uncertainty, where if you were civilized, if you could read and write and you lived within the Roman world, maybe you traded, you farmed, the world that you knew was coming to an end. And what lay beyond that was darkness. It was the unknown. It was uncertain. That's his world. Now let's think more about the man himself. Now what we know about Patrick. comes primarily from two of his writings. The first is a letter that he wrote to an Irish chieftain. And then the second, it's not a large work, but larger work, is Patrick's confession. Now, we use the confession, the language of confession, in different ways, don't we? You might think of our confession of faith in 1689. Well, that's not quite the sense that Patrick means when he says confession. Maybe Clark has a copy of Augustine's confessions in the library there. So it's that kind of sense, just like Augustine's confession. It's sort of a story of his life, a story of his faith, a spiritual biography, if you will. And Patrick begins his confession with these words. I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful, and most contemptible to many, had for a father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potatus, a priest of the settlement of Benevium, Tiberii. He had a small villa. This opening passage from Patrick's confession tells us a number of interesting things about Patrick. For starters, his father was a deacon. His grandfather was a priest. So his family held important positions within the church and certainly within society. Patrick's family was Christian. That's not terribly surprising since Christianity at this time was the religion of the empire. However, we do learn later in Patrick's confession that his faith at this time was just nominal. He was, you might say, going through the motions. Maybe he was the son of a Christian family, but he wasn't a true believer himself. He also tells us that his family owned a villa, which means that Patrick came from a rather well-to-do family. They would have owned servants and slaves. He had the privilege of being educated to read and write. The villa where he lived was in a town called Benaven-Tiberney. We don't know exactly where that is, but scholars suggest it was somewhere on the west coast of Britain, possibly even Wales. So all in all, the early years of Patrick's life were, I think, very comfortable. We might even say that he lived a rather privileged life. He lived in a villa, unlike most people. Most people in the ancient world were not educated to read and to write. They didn't own slaves. They more than likely were slaves. But Patrick's life of ease and comfort and privilege, we might say, came to a stop. when his life drastically changed when at the age of 16 he was captured by Irish raiders. He writes, I was then about 16 years of age. I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity to Ireland with many thousands of people and deservedly so because we had turned away from God and did not keep his commandments. So at the age of 16, Patrick was captured by Irish raiders who would raid along the west coast of Britain. And he was taken as a slave to Ireland. Remember, again, at this time, Roman Britain was largely undefended as the legions had been taken from that island and placed on the mainland to fight the barbarians. We don't know exactly where in Ireland he was taken to, but again, scholars suggest that it was County Mayo, which is on the west coast of Ireland. But there he would live as a slave for years. Well, boys and girls, could you imagine that? Imagine as a teenager being ripped away from your family, taken from everything you know, taken to a strange and foreign land. Surely it must have been very, very frightening for the young 16-year-old Patrick. And Ireland was a very strange and very distant land. It was different from the world that Patrick grew up in, in many ways. Patrick went from the life of being upper class and owning slaves to now himself being a slave. Patrick was ripped from his family. Now he was owned by strangers. He was removed from his studies of learning to read and to write in Latin, and he was placed in a culture that was largely illiterate. He would have had to learn to speak the language of the Irish people. Ireland was a very different place politically. Instead of one central power like the Romans had, Ireland was made up of a patchwork of all sorts of tribal clans and smaller kingdoms and vassals and kind of suzerain lords. There were about 180 of these various kind of tribal chiefs. Patrick was probably purchased as a slave of one of these tribal kings. What's more, the religion of Ireland was very different. The Romans had never made it to Ireland. Christianity hadn't taken root in Ireland. Ireland was pagan. The pagan religion of Ireland centered really around a kind of a polytheism of gods with the worship of the sun being the central god that was worshipped. It's kind of ironic, really, the sun being worshipped in Ireland when there's so little sun and it's all rain. But there you go. So Patrick, once the son of a wealthy landowner, living the life of luxury, is now a slave in a foreign land. Again, could you imagine that? Imagine experiencing that, being taken from all you know, from your family, from your way of life, to a very alien and strange place, being forced to work for people who had enslaved you. How would you respond? We might think that something like this would harden Patrick against any belief in God. How could a good God allow something like this to happen to Patrick or anybody? We might assume that Patrick might even turn his back on the faith of his parents, as it were. But in fact, what we find with Patrick is that the very opposite happens. As horrible as this experience was for Patrick, it was the very means that God would use to convert his soul. He writes, after I came to Ireland, every day I had to tend sheep, and many times a day I prayed. The love of God and his fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. And there, the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief, that I might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to the Lord my God. who had regard for my objection, and mercy on my youth and ignorance, and watched over me before I even knew him. And before I was able to distinguish between good and evil, he guarded me and comforted me, as would a father his son." One of the things that you find when you read Patrick's confession is that here is a man who is very much aware that he is a sinner. He is a sinner, and he serves a holy God. He mentions that again and again. And it's here, as he's a captive in Ireland, that he's first struck by the greatness of his sin and the holiness of God. To put it in these words, I think he realizes, as he's a slave in Ireland, that his greatest problem at this point isn't his slavery to a local tribal chief. Rather, it's his slavery to sin and his knowledge of the holiness of God. But not only does Patrick speak a lot about his own sin in his confessions, he also speaks much of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. To put it in terms I think very familiar to us, Patrick knew the bad news, but he also knew the good news. He speaks much of that good news, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, of the forgiveness of sins. He knew that this glorious God, this triune God, had sent his only son into the world to save sinners. Scholar Crawford Gribbon notes, his faith was centered on the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, God's son. So there in his captivity, he speaks of the Lord converting him, opening his eyes, changing him from unbelief to faith, reaching out to him in mercy. And what's interesting is that this is such a different picture and such a different religion, we might say, and conception of who God is from the paganism that surrounded Patrick. The paganism that surrounded Patrick was filled with this pantheon of gods. And as a worshiper of these gods, you did what you could in order to get them to do things for you. It's very much a kind of a workspace religion, a quid pro quo. You offered, you sacrificed, you prayed, you did these things so that they would do these things for you. You acted so that they would act. But Patrick's faith in the triune God is so different from this. Patrick worships a God who is sovereign, a God who initiates salvation when Patrick is helpless. I think we could say that Patrick's faith is very Augustinian, if that's not too anachronistic to say. He says this. I know for certain that before I was humbled, I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and that he that is mighty came and in mercy raised me up. Indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there, I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord, for his great favors in this world and forever that the mind of man cannot measure. These are the words of a man who's been saved by grace, and he knows it. These are not the words of a man who felt that he had maybe worked his halfway to God, and God came the other half. This is a man who knows. He was stuck in the muck, and the Lord lifted him out in grace. And it's this experience in Ireland that will drive the rest of his life, this knowledge of the grace of God and saving him. And so I think in Patrick's case, as horrible and terrible as it was for him to be taken as a slave and to live as a slave for all those years in Ireland, I think just like with the life of Joseph, we can say, and I think Patrick could say, what man meant for evil, God meant for good. Well, Patrick lives as a slave in Ireland for six years, primarily tending sheep, as he described. But then through a series of interesting events that I'll actually skip over, he manages to make his way back home, escape his captors and make his way back home to Britain. He travels 200 miles by foot and by sea. And finally, he arrives back home to his family. And as you can imagine, it's his family. They were very happy to see him. He writes, my parents welcomed me as a son. And they asked me in faith that after the great tribulations I had endured, I should not go anywhere else away from them. Maybe those of you who are parents can relate to that. Here's your son back. He was taken at 16. Now he's, what, 22. And they basically tell him, you're never leaving the house again. You're not going anywhere. And so there's a real possibility that Patrick's story could have ended here. Had he said, whew, I'm glad that's all over. That was a horrible experience. I'll put it behind me. I'm going to pick up my education again, pursue my career, get married, settle down. And I never want to hear of Ireland ever, ever again. Good riddance. But that's not what happens. Instead, he begins to feel this overwhelming burden to go back to Ireland with the gospel. It's not what we expect, is it? After such a horrible ordeal, what in the world would make a man like this, who has suffered in this way, to then want to return to his captors? Well, as I read Patrick's confession, I think there are three things in particular that motivate his desire to go back to Ireland. The first thing is his dreams, his dreams. He tells us, he writes, that he has these recurring dreams of the people of Ireland pleading with him and begging him to come and to bring the gospel to them. They write him letters in these dreams, and they beg him. And Patrick describes how these dreams just break his heart. He wakes up night after night from these dreams, unable to sleep. So using the language of Paul in Acts 20, He says that he's bound by the spirit to go back to Ireland. The second thing that motivates Patrick is gratitude for the gospel. Patrick feels a deep sense of duty to go back to Ireland with the message of God's grace, because that's where he first came to the realization and where he received God's grace. Towards the beginning of his confession, he writes this. Indeed, I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper. So many favors and graces has the Lord deigns to bestow on me in the land of my captivity. For after chastisement from God and recognizing him, our way to repay him is to exalt him and confess his wonders before every nation under heaven. And so Patrick's response is, as one who has received grace, He now feels it's his duty to proclaim grace. Again elsewhere he writes, not by my own grace, but by God who is victorious in me and withstands them all so that I might come to the Irish people to preach the gospel and endure insults from unbelievers, that I might hear scandal of my travels and endure many persecutions to the extent of prison, and so that I might give up my free birthright for the advantage of others. And if I should be worthy, I am ready to give even my life without hesitation. and most willingly for his name and I choose to devote it to him even unto death if God granted to me. I am greatly God's debtor because he granted me so much grace that through me many people would be reborn in God. Well, it's amazing, isn't it, that his suffering in Ireland. And even as he's writing this letter, it's later in life after he's gone to Ireland and after he's maybe been mistreated even more by the Irish people and the chieftains and the druids and all of that. And yet, all of that doesn't produce a bitterness in him. No, instead, his suffering by the hands of the Irish has almost the opposite effect. He has a pity for them and a desire for them to know the same grace that he has experienced. And so that's the second thing that drives him in his writings, to go back to Ireland. It's his gratitude for the gospel. The third motivation driving his return to Ireland is his sense of duty to the Lord. Patrick has been described as being a man of one book. And when you read his confession, you certainly get that sense. Throughout his confession, there are so many allusions and citations of scripture throughout his writings. In one section in particular, he weaves together passage after passage from the Psalms and the Gospels and Acts and even the Prophets. And he weaves them all together to demonstrate the duty that is upon the church and the duty that he feels is upon himself to go to the nations. I'll just read a portion of that section. He says, we ought to fish well and diligently, as the Lord exhorts in advance and teaches, saying, come ye after me, and I will make you to be fishers of men. And again, he says through the prophets, behold, I send many fishers and hunters, saith God, and so on. Hence, it was most necessary to spread our nets, so that a great multitude and throng might be caught for God, and that there be clergy everywhere to baptize and exhort to people in need and want, as the Lord in the gospel states, exhorts and teaches, saying, go therefore now, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. So Patrick was a man who knew his Bible. He was a man who took the commands of our Lord Jesus Christ very seriously. But he also trusted what Christ had promised, that as he went, God would be with him. And so in going back to Ireland with the gospel. He very much saw himself as taking part in the fulfillment of Matthew 28 and Acts 1. In his mind at the time, obviously Ireland was like the furthest reaches of the empire. He believed that he was the one bringing the gospel to the ends of the earth and that even soon the Lord Jesus Christ might return. But such was his trust in the promises of scripture. So those were his motivations. And after hearing all of that, you might assume that as soon as he got back to Ireland, well, with all of that happening, he must have gone straight back to Ireland, getting the first boat back to the island. But actually, after Patrick gets back to Britain, he spends about a decade in order to pursue theological training. And it's only after he's had this training that he then goes to Ireland. And this time, he returns to Ireland not as the slave of some tribal chieftain, but rather he returns as a slave and servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. There, he would face great opposition from tribal chiefs and from druids, who were very politically powerful figures. But by God's grace and the work of the Spirit, many would come to faith in Christ. Many churches would be planted. Many would come to trust in the Triune God. Now, Patrick was not the first missionary to Ireland. But through the work of this man, the church in Ireland was established. Patrick would encourage the learning of reading and writing in order to read and copy sacred scripture. And then somewhat ironically, the once pagan Ireland became a bastion of Christianity. and a means by which many, many manuscripts were preserved, even as the Roman Empire was collapsing. Well, Patrick was certainly not a perfect man. He asserts that very thing in the opening of his confession when he says, I, Patrick, a sinner. And yet I think we can look back in his life and we can say that, by God's grace, he was a faithful man, a man who lived in interesting times. And so before we close, let's consider two lessons that I think we can draw from Patrick's life. The first is, and I'll phrase it more in terms of a question, but what ought to be our focus in uncertain times? What should be our focus in uncertain times? As we consider it, Patrick lived in dark days. He lived in uncertain days. He lived at a time when the world he knew was collapsing. The Roman Empire that had once brought stability and trade and peace to a degree and learning and all of these things, road networks, was now falling apart. As a result, law and order in the Roman world was collapsing. The borders of Rome were unable to withstand the pressure from the northern Germanic tribes that were migrating into Roman territory. When Patrick was a teenager, the great city of Rome itself had fallen to the Goths. And so what was Patrick's focus in these dark days? What was he calling the church to do? Well, as we look at Patrick, we see that his focus was on the gospel and the spreading of the good news. In other words, the uncertainty of his times did not cause him to lose focus or trust in God's sovereign plan of salvation for the world. And I think the same could be said of our day and age. I think we'd all agree, we live in dark days, don't we? We live in very uncertain times. But as we look and as we learn from church history, I think we come to a better realization that the church has always lived in dark days. The church has always lived in politically uncertain and somewhat scary days. Our age, in that sense, is no exception. And so I think we can learn from Patrick. And instead of looking and longing and maybe praying for some kind of golden age of the church brought about through cultural revival or something of that nature, I think instead we need to recognize today for what it is, just as Patrick did. Today is the day in which God is at work through his church among the nations. Today is the day in which there is still gospel grace and gospel mercy for the lost. And God would have us as his church to seize this day and to proclaim this same gospel. And so even in these dark and uncertain times, we as the people of God living wherever we're living, in other nations or here in Enumthong, Washington or Carlisle, Pennsylvania, wherever we are, And however dark and bleak it may seem, and however uncertain the next political cycle might seem, we can take confidence that God has a plan of salvation which cannot be hindered or thwarted by man. And thus, as the church, our focus ought to be to continue to announce the same gospel. Shame on us if we fail to continue to carry that torch forward. But instead, let us be like Patrick. Let us hold fast to the face of our triune God. Let us focus and let us spread the gospel. The second lesson that we can learn from Patrick, but again, I think is very relevant to our day and age, is that there is no culture and there are no people so deep in sin that they cannot be saved by the grace of God. There is no culture, there are no people so deep in sin that they cannot be saved by the sovereign grace of God. You know, when Patrick told his family and friends that he wanted to go back to Ireland, many people opposed him. It's fascinating. He writes how his friends and his family were pleading with him not to go back to Ireland. They were bribing him. They were offering him money if he would not go back to Ireland. People were saying to him that the Irish could never be saved. They're too dark. They're too pagan. They're too barbarous. And yet, look at what happened when Patrick went back. How the Lord used him. How the light of the gospel spread throughout the land and many, many people were saved. Interestingly, many years later, another missionary, William Carey, and his friends would face major opposition as they sought to bring the gospel to parts of Asia and India. Well, Michael Haken points out how William Carey was very much influenced by Patrick, in Patrick's willingness to go to a dark and hostile, pagan place, and Carey apparently even when he was making his presentation of his mission to India appealed to the example of Patrick and how Patrick went to Ireland and how the Lord worked. Patrick could go to a dark place like Ireland because he had already seen how the Lord had worked in the darkness of his own heart. He had already seen God work in Ireland in his own heart, as he was tending sheep as a slave. He knew that God had already graciously saved him from ignorance and sin and unbelief, and God could do it again. More than that, he was confident that God would do it again. And Patrick exhorts us to do the same. He writes this, according therefore to the measure of one's faith in the Trinity, one should proceed without holding back from danger to make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, to spread God's name everywhere with confidence and without fear. And so beloved, let us not be fearful of the times that we live in. or of the places we go to day by day, the workplace. Maybe some of us are in hostile family environments where we have an unbelieving spouse. Let us take courage. Let us have confidence, not in ourselves, but in the gospel and in the grace of our triune God. Let us take courage in the power of the gospel, the work of the Holy Spirit in converting sinners, in the eternal plan of God to save his elect, and in the glorious sufficiency of Christ our Savior. Let's pray. Our holy triune God, we thank you for the lessons that we can learn from history. We learn that Satan has opposed your church throughout the ages. The world of flesh and the devil has encroached upon your people in all times. And yet we also know of the great one who is the sea that has crushed the serpent's head, and the one who continues to use his church to trample that serpent underfoot. We pray that the Lord Jesus would continue to have his gospel and his grace made known. We pray for the spread of your gospel, even in this town and in each of the workplaces and situations that we find ourselves in. Help us to be courageous and bold, even as Patrick was, and give us the same gratitude for the gospel, knowing that we, too, have been saved solely by grace. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.