July 27 | Moments Almanac | Sermons
Two men stood to speak on the same date in history. One was a young missionary on the American frontier who doubted he had much to offer. Standing beneath a grove of trees near Fort Hall in 1834, Jason Lee preached what he considered a brief, inadequate exhortation to a congregation that could barely understand him. It would later be remembered as the first Protestant sermon preached in the Oregon Country. The other was Maximilien Robespierre, the powerful voice of the French Revolution. Conv...
Two men stood to speak on the same date in history.
One was a young missionary on the American frontier who doubted he had much to offer. Standing beneath a grove of trees near Fort Hall in 1834, Jason Lee preached what he considered a brief, inadequate exhortation to a congregation that could barely understand him. It would later be remembered as the first Protestant sermon preached in the Oregon Country.
The other was Maximilien Robespierre, the powerful voice of the French Revolution. Convinced that virtue could be enforced by terror, he helped build a machine that ultimately consumed him when his own allies turned against him.
In this episode of Moments Almanac, we explore two platforms, two messages, and two radically different visions of influence—one that scattered seed in humility, and one that wielded power through fear.
Sometimes the sermons we think are failures become the ones God uses to shape history.
Take heart. Notice the scattered moments. Share the grace.
Welcome to Moments Almanac. This is a time for us to remember the people, places, and events that leave fingerprints on the soul. Today is July 27th, and on this day in 1834, it was a hot Sunday afternoon beside the Snake River in what is now Idaho. A young Methodist missionary named Jason Lee stood beneath a rough grove of trees at a half-built trading post called Fort Hall. Around him gathered an unlikely congregation, native men and women in ceremonial dress, French Canadian voyagers, fur trappers, and weathered mountain men, many of whom could not understand a word he was about to say. Lee didn't attempt a polished sermon. Instead, his journal admitted that he offered only a brief exhortation, almost apologizing for how little he had to give the men living so far from any church. His text was simple. Whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God from Corinthians ten thirty one. It was preached to listeners who, by his own account, mostly could not follow him. By every ordinary measure, it was an unimpressive afternoon, an awkward sermon, a language barrier, no great revival, no dramatic conversions, and yet historians remember it as the first Protestant sermon ever preached in the Oregon country. The day itself ended in sorrow. That evening a horse race turned deadly, and the following morning Lee conducted what is to believe to have been the first Protestant funeral west of the Rocky Mountains for a man he had never known, nor would his story become one of interrupted success. Disease devastated the Kalapuya people he had come to serve. His mission struggled. Eventually his own board removed him, believing he had become too invested in the American settlement and not enough in evangelism. And yet history has strange ways of measuring faithfulness. Willamette University traces its beginnings to his mission. The city of Salem grew from that same work. Even America's eventual claim to Oregon could not be told without mentioning Jason Lee. Sometimes God plants forests through sermons their own preachers considered failures. Sixty years earlier on the calendar, but on the same date, a very different preacher stood before a very different congregation. On july twenty seventh, seventeen ninety four, the ninth of Thermidor in the French Revolutionary Calendar, Maximilian Robespierre rose for the National Convention in Paris. For more than a year he had preached his own gospel, not the gospel of grace, the gospel of virtue enforced by terror. More than seventeen thousand people had already gone to the guillotine, while Robespierre insisted France could be purified by fear. But on this day the convention turned against its own prophet. The deputies shouted him down before he could finish speaking. By nightfall he was under arrest. The next afternoon, july twenty eighth, the machine he had built carried him to the very guillotine that had become the symbol of his certainty. Two men, two platforms, two sermons. One doubted he had anything worth saying, and he spoke it anyway, and the other was so certain of his own righteousness that he believed he had the authority to decide who deserved to live. One scattered seed, the other wielded the sword. History remembers which one bore lasting fruit. Jason Lee reminds us that God has never required eloquence before obedience. Faithfulness often feels small while we're living it. Robespierre reminds us that whenever any cause begins to believe it can create heaven by force, it has already forgotten heaven's king. I think Paul's words still say it best. Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God, or as the old hymn puts it, little is much when God is in it. Labor not for wealth or fame. There's a crown and you can win it. If you'll go in Jesus' name. The kingdom has always grown more through humble witnesses than through powerful rulers. And that's Moments Almanac for July 27th. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments and share the grace.
