On today's episode of Theology Applied, I was privileged to have as a special guest, Dr. Joel Beakey, to discuss the topic of the Puritans. At the end of this episode, I specifically asked Dr. Beakesy in regards to what he sees as one of the greatest weaknesses of the church in America today, and what the puritans would have to say in response. His answer was insightful and profound.
00:00:00.000On today's episode of Theology Applied, I was privileged to have as a special guest, Dr. Joel Beakey, to discuss the topic of the Puritans.
00:00:08.520At the end of this episode, I specifically asked Dr. Joel Beakey in regards to what he sees as one of the greatest weaknesses of the Church in America today,
00:00:17.780and what the Puritans would have to say in response. His answer was insightful and profound. I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:26.120Applying God's word to every aspect of life.
00:05:46.040And so I immediately began, when I was 16 years old, a ministry called Bible Truth Books Ministry, which was mostly selling Puritan books.
00:05:55.260And I've been selling them basically ever since.
00:05:58.460I've sold, I don't know how many millions, probably $50 million worth, somewhere around there, of Puritans writers in my books in my lifetime.
00:06:10.140When I go to conferences, you know, when people start to read the Puritans, when Christians, I should say, start to read the Puritans, their level of holiness rises almost inevitably because the Puritans are so thoroughly biblical.0.78
00:06:26.700I mean, that's the first thing they really want to teach us.0.84
00:06:34.460That's why there's, I mean, they're as familiar in Habakkuk as they are in Romans.
00:06:40.480And they had probably 40 to 60 scriptural citations across the average two pages when you open the book.
00:06:50.220The Puritans were largely a 17th century movement, but it began already in the 1560s.
00:06:56.420And it didn't really finish until 17-teens or so, thereabout, I believe.
00:07:02.340So you're talking 160 years, but the apex of the Puritan movement was definitely in the 17th century.
00:07:12.480And what they did, the best way to describe it, I think, is that they were thoroughly reformed in their theology.
00:07:19.920It didn't really advance any substantive new doctrines, but they took what the reformers said,
00:07:25.600they sat on their shoulders, and then they took it and applied it to everyday life.
00:07:30.340everyday life. I mean, every aspect of your life. So if you think of it this way,
00:07:37.580reformers are busy hammering out major doctrines like justification by faith or right principles
00:07:42.260for worship, priesthood of all believers, et cetera. Puritans come along and say,
00:07:49.940that's wonderful. We agree with all of us, but you reformers, you've written so many books on
00:07:54.920that, but how do you use this doctrine of sanctification that you've developed? How do
00:08:01.720you use it as a husband, as a wife? How do you live as a Christian at work? So the Puritans are
00:08:08.660really head, heart, hand theologians, and they minister to the whole man. William Gooch, for
00:08:17.920example, is an 800-page folio volume on marriage and childbearing. And it's just incredible,
00:08:25.980the detail to which he goes, to show you biblically how to live in nearly every area
00:08:32.120of your life. So that's one contribution they make. Another contribution I think that's very
00:08:39.020important is that the Puritans are really, really godly people, so godly that in our worldly age,
00:08:46.580There's actually people that think they were legalists and maybe a few Puritans, you know, in a couple of areas of their life were a bit over the top from our modern perspective, at least.
00:08:58.520But they were just intent on a living, a Trinitarian centered, God glorifying life in which Christ is all and in all.
00:12:27.900you said you were converted when you were 14
00:12:29.860but at 15 you said you experienced liberty and it just made me think of john bunyan and pilgrim's
00:12:36.840progress and you know the the law of the lord comes to him he finds this book in a field and
00:12:41.800he's burdened by his sin everything loses its taste and enjoyment in life his family all these
00:12:47.760things and he's just weighted down and miserable and uh and then he goes to the wicked gate and
00:12:52.900there's it's it's confusing and so i kind of want to get your take from your testimony but also
00:12:57.880bunions because you know the law of God comes to him and then he goes to the wicked gate and meets
00:13:03.100goodwill and he says are you willing to receive me with all my heart and he goes through the
00:13:07.220wicket gate but then it's later so it's kind of like three different progressions that the law
00:13:11.580comes to him and that burden falls on his back and then the wicked gate where he goes through
00:13:16.480and then there's also the sepulcher and the cross and the the three shining ones or you know who
00:13:22.700speak to him and his burden rolls away into the sepulcher and he bears it no more and so i guess
00:13:28.560my question is uh in terms of your own conversion what do you mean by those terms conversion and
00:13:34.100then and then liberty uh coming later on and does that relate to bunyan's experience i can put it
00:13:39.320in bunyan's framework i i went through the exact same things um but i don't want to set it as a
00:13:44.680pattern for everyone else because my my experience was very very intense i was i was the sinner
00:13:51.400hanging on a thin spider's thread over the pit of hell, as Edwards would say.
00:13:58.440I was the sinner in the hands of the anger of God.
00:14:00.340I thought for sure I was a reprobate, and yet there was a love for God in my soul,
00:14:07.000but I just was overwhelmed that God could never save such a sinner as me.
00:14:13.680So, yeah, my burden was really heavy on my back for close to 18 months.
00:14:19.340So it was a long period. And then, you know, I did have a very powerful experience in my own soul, where I finally understood the gospel. I understood, though I didn't understand the language, but I mean, I didn't know the language yet, but I understood for the first time in my life, the double obedience of Christ, that his passive obedience, pain for my sin, and his active obedience to being the law for me.
00:14:49.340uh wiped away my sins and gave me a right to eternal life and he was the savior of the
00:14:54.140greatest of sinners who just cast themselves upon him in faith and um yeah when that happened to me
00:15:01.260i i i uh i got my i got my dad out of bed at 3 30 in the morning so i've been saying my sins are
00:15:10.620washed away that i couldn't sleep i was overwhelmed so for me these experiences were very very real
00:15:16.700all three actually the conviction of sin and then my first view of what i might call christ as the
00:15:24.300way of escape that gave me a little bit of hope but then i didn't think it could still be for me
00:15:29.020kind of like going through the wicked gate um where there wasn't a full closure with christ
00:15:34.780but there was some hope in christ and new new life sprang up within me um so yeah when i use
00:15:43.580the word conversion i mean you can use in different ways i could i could say you know i was regenerated
00:15:49.260um when i was 14 or 15 but it's hard to mark the exact moment of regeneration sometimes
00:15:55.260right but conversion was the whole change of lifestyle and then but when i went when the sins
00:16:00.220rolled off my back into the empty sepulcher using bunyan's language um i was just set free i came to
00:16:07.180spiritual liberty big time i was very shy no one can believe that anymore but i was very very shy
00:16:15.260in my life up to that point and my tongue was just on loose i talked to everybody everybody at work
00:16:21.100everybody at school um they didn't know what got into me but i just couldn't hold back from telling
00:16:27.660people about my wonderful savior and then it was about six months after that that i felt called to
00:16:32.940call to ministry. Wow. Okay. Well, are there any criticisms towards the Puritans? And I know there
00:16:41.660are, but what are some of the primary criticisms? And are there any that you might sympathize as
00:16:46.900someone who loves the Puritans? Are there any criticisms that you can see where the critic
00:16:51.680might be coming from? Oh, sure. I mean, there's no age that's perfect. There's no group of people.
00:16:57.880there's no individual pastor that's perfect so yeah my criticism of those who criticize
00:17:04.760the puritans lightly and glibly is that what i've experienced in my lifetime
00:17:12.760of talking about the puritans to thousands of people is that with very rare exceptions the
00:17:18.600people that seem to have a real bone to pick with the puritans are people who haven't read them
00:17:23.160so they're going by scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne other 19th century sources and you see
00:17:31.540the puritans are very open for substantial criticism by groups that are much more liberal
00:17:38.120than they are because as soon as you have a group that is much more conservative than you
00:17:43.400and has more focus on godliness you want to you want to kind of if you're a christian
00:17:49.900even in some sense of the word even if you're just a nominal christian you kind of want to
00:17:55.420pick them apart because they make you feel a little uncomfortable because they're so godly
00:17:58.960so you come up with criticism like this while they're way too legalistic
00:18:03.660i've read the puritans all my life and they come down hard on legalism but they are very strong
00:18:11.740are living wholly and solely for Jesus, out of gratitude.
00:18:16.200But yeah, what that means then for them in their life
00:18:20.280is that they deny themselves certain things.
00:18:23.140For example, they weren't into dancing.1.00
00:18:25.520In fact, they thought most dancing, bisexual dancing, was sinful1.00
00:18:29.220because it aroused the lust of the flesh.1.00
00:21:27.080Yeah, I think there were a few Puritans that probably were too prolix in their preaching.
00:21:37.960Preaching for 23 years on the book of Job may be a bit overdone.
00:21:41.400But don't forget, in their day, again, the people wanted them to go deeply into various subjects.
00:21:51.980So Thomas Hooker, for example, has, I don't know, like 30 sermons in a row, 35 maybe, about humiliation for sin.
00:22:02.580But then he preaches 65 sermons right behind it on redemption in Christ.
00:22:07.620um in our day where people are attracted to sermons where you go through a whole chapter
00:22:15.100in one sermon puritans were used to you know dissecting it bringing unpacking it and that's
00:22:21.880the way the people wanted it that's the way they were in their education as well they studied
00:22:26.480thoroughly and uh in detail so a few puritans overdid it there and i would not imitate that i
00:22:36.060I have a lecture that I give on how we should emulate the Puritans in preaching today,
00:22:41.780and then a follow-up lecture on how we should not emulate the Puritans today.
00:22:45.940Certainly, it's wrong to take over everything from the Puritans and try to plop it into the 21st century.
00:22:51.240We're in a different age, with different needs.0.81
00:22:53.500But in terms of substance, spiritual, godly, confessional, doctrinal, experiential, practical, biblical substance,1.00
00:23:03.340the puritans are light years ahead of us in all kinds of areas
00:23:08.040just take the area of marriage they wrote 29 books on marriage
00:23:13.220and in an age when it was very hard thing to get a book published because it was very complicated
00:23:19.620very expensive and those books reveal their understanding of ephesians 5 on the theology
00:23:28.960of marriage to be so far beyond ours that there's hardly any comparison.
00:23:36.000So I took those 29 books, for example, with another colleague, and we co-authored a book
00:23:40.140called Living in a Godly Marriage, in which we summarized in contemporary language what
00:23:47.500the Puritans were saying in those 29 books.
00:23:50.420And I've written another book on marriage and another book on family, or two books on
00:23:54.680family, I guess, or two books on marriage and one book on family.
00:23:58.060And what happens is inevitably when people read those books, they come back to me and they say, wow, that book you did of what the Puritans taught on marriage, that was really something.
00:24:08.600That was beyond your own books on marriage.
00:24:11.040You know, they're just so substantive, so biblical and so practical that we can learn a lot from them.
00:24:19.080Well, that kind of brings us to the next question, which is, what do you personally, Dr. Biggie, see as one of the biggest failures or the biggest weaknesses of the church in America today? And what is something that the Puritans would have to say to us?
00:24:33.680well the word that would pop in my head right away would be worldliness0.82
00:24:40.060shallowness easy believism puritans would have a lot to say
00:24:49.280william greenell wrote a book called stop loving the world
00:24:52.280we're just travelers through vanity fair here on our way to the celestial city evangelize
00:25:00.320have friends in the world to evangelize them
00:29:33.740The fear of God is to esteem the smiles of God to be of more value than the smiles of man, and the frowns of God to be of more value than the frowns of man.
00:29:45.320So they could bring the fear of man down because the fear of God, the childlike fear of God, was so big in their lives.
00:30:00.260I've often said in my church here, but also my church back in California, that I'm concerned that the love of God has been wasted on a generation of people who have not been properly taught the fear of God.
00:30:16.840And it's just, you know, the reason why we need to esteem the holiness of God, you know, the first use of the law.
00:30:24.680We see the law of God as a reflection of his own holy nature.
00:30:29.160And by that, if the Spirit is willing, then he graciously provides a conviction of our sins.
00:32:43.120But, you know, Anselm is the wise, seasoned pastor who's having an interview with a beginning disciple named Bozo.
00:32:52.500And he's trying to show Bozo in the dialogue going back and forth why conviction of sin is important to appreciate the magnitude of God's grace.
00:35:20.680and then coming back down and preaching grace.
00:35:22.440Or I think of, you know, sinners in the hands of an angry God with Edwards.0.60
00:35:26.260Or I think of what you've already mentioned, some of the Puritans, you know, just, you know, 35 sermons in a row on humiliation of sin.
00:35:34.760You know, and now in our gospel-centered everything, you know, world in the church that we live in, obviously, all the scripture speaks to Christ.
00:35:49.840I think it was Spurgeon who said maybe not every verse, but every chapter, you know, but Christ, Christ can be found in every text and Christ should be preached.
00:35:58.740But I wonder that even in those reformed churches that are willing to preach on sin, even then, it seems as though we can only preach on sin seriously for maybe five, six, seven minutes, maybe 15 if we're pushing it.
00:36:14.180But we've got to quickly, so quickly alleviate the congregation, the hearers, so quickly get to Christ.
00:37:37.300needs to be preached solemnly and thoroughly
00:37:39.180So, for example, in Romans 3.19, Jonathan Edwards has a whole sermon on every mouth shall be stopped and all men shall become guilty before God.
00:39:13.480Many Puritans had a really good balance that would be accepted today in terms of preaching.
00:39:20.040The main thing a preacher needs to be able to say to his conscience, the Puritans would say, is, am I bringing my people, the whole counsel of God, as deposited in Scripture?