The NXR Podcast - August 04, 2021


THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Puritans Message To The American Church

Topics
slavery and Puritan practices fear of God
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Jonathan Edwards Bozo John Bunyan Martin Lloyd-Jones George Whitefield Will Mark Carney Reformed Baptist Richard Baxter Thomas Goodwin Thomas Hooker George Swinock Thomas Watson John Flavel Calvin Biggie Beeky Mary Adam
THEOLOGY APPLIED - How To Identify A Cult THEOLOGY APPLIED - The 3 Most Dangerous Cults In America

Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

154.58

Word count

7,081

Sentence count

297

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

32

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 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.
00:00:08 At 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 and what the Puritans would have to say in response. His answer was insightful and profound. I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:26 Applying God's word to every aspect of life.
00:00:29 This is Theology Applied.
00:00:37 All right.
00:00:37 Well, it's a privilege to have you, Dr. Beakey, on the show this evening.
00:00:41 And the first question, just to help our audience get familiar with you, is who are you?
00:00:45 And tell us a little bit about your ministry.
00:00:48 All right.
00:00:49 Well, my name is Joel Beakey, and I grew up in Michigan.
00:00:53 and felt called to minister when I was 15 years old.
00:00:59 I was converted when I was 14, really.
00:01:01 I came to liberty when I was 15, spiritual liberty.
00:01:05 And I trained for four years in Ontario, St. Catherine's, Ontario.
00:01:11 And then I accepted a call to 700 farmers in northwest Iowa
00:01:16 with no farming experience.
00:01:19 That was my first church.
00:01:20 and I was there for three and a half years and then accepted a call to
00:01:26 the Netherlands Reformed Church in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey and while I was there for
00:01:34 five and a half years I went to Westminster, Philadelphia to get my PhD and when that was
00:01:41 just about complete I accepted a call here to Grand Rapids where I've been for the last 34 years
00:01:46 so it's been a long ministry here and then uh 26 years ago or so i began puritan reform
00:01:57 theological seminary due to um circumstances that were rather trying at the time with a church split
00:02:06 and at the same time i began reformation heritage books which is a big part of my life
00:02:13 So the denomination stood behind me, the Heritage Reformed denomination, starting the seminary, I should say.
00:02:21 And Reformation Heritage Books, I established as an independent ministry with a board of interdenominational men.
00:02:31 And so right now, I'm a quarter time in my church as a pastor, Heritage Reformed Church here in Grand Rapids.
00:02:38 three-quarters time in the seminary when I worked for Reformation Heritage Books as much as I can
00:02:44 on the side. And I'm married to a wonderful woman named Mary. I have three wonderful children,
00:02:52 and they're all married to godly spouses. So I'm really blessed with a God-fearing family,
00:02:59 which is God's amazing grace. And five years ago, if you asked me, do you have any grandchildren?
00:03:05 And I'd say, no, not yet.
00:03:07 And now five years later, I've got seven of them.
00:03:11 Wow.
00:03:12 The two oldest have had three children in the last five years, and the youngest has had one child.
00:03:17 That's great.
00:03:18 That's great.
00:03:19 That's similar to my wife and I.
00:03:21 We had our three children in the last, well, less than four years.
00:03:26 Really?
00:03:27 Once people get started, sometimes they come in bunches.
00:03:32 Yes, yes.
00:03:34 Yeah.
00:03:34 Yeah, the oldest child could not have a child for several years.
00:03:39 And so then the other second child was married by that time as well, actually had the first grandchild.
00:03:44 And then suddenly the Lord opened the womb for the oldest, and we thought maybe it was just a one-off because they had so much difficulty.
00:03:52 And wow, within four years, they had three children.
00:03:56 Wow.
00:03:57 Wonderful.
00:03:57 So here at the seminary, Joel, we now have 219 students this past year.
00:04:04 We train men from all over the world.
00:04:06 They come from 30 different denominations in 20 different countries. 1.00
00:04:13 And we train them with MAs, MDivs, DMs, PhDs, THMs, send them back to their own country. 1.00
00:04:22 and they get positions there 0.99
00:04:26 and bring the Reformed biblical faith
00:04:29 to those countries.
00:04:31 So it's an exciting ministry.
00:04:32 Praise God.
00:04:34 That's great.
00:04:35 Well, with that said,
00:04:37 it seems like many people are familiar with you
00:04:40 through your work on the Puritans.
00:04:43 And so could you just talk to our audience
00:04:46 a little bit about your love for the Puritans
00:04:47 and maybe explain to some of us
00:04:50 who may not be familiar with the Puritans.
00:04:52 Who were the Puritans?
00:04:53 And what are some of their greatest contributions to the church?
00:04:58 Yes, well, I grew up in a very conservative Reformed church,
00:05:02 came under severe conviction of sin when I was 14.
00:05:07 And I would come home after school every single day,
00:05:11 finish my schoolwork by 8 or 9 p.m. or so,
00:05:15 and then I would read my dad's bookcase of Puritan writings.
00:05:20 And I would read them until midnight or later.
00:05:25 And this went on.
00:05:26 I mean, I read the whole Bible a couple times through.
00:05:29 And I was just reading, reading, trying to find liberty for my own soul.
00:05:33 And the Puritans really did lead me to spiritual liberty in Christ.
00:05:37 And I realized as I read them that I've never read anything like this before that had so much substance.
00:05:44 And it was so rich.
00:05:46 And 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 And I've been selling them basically ever since.
00:05:58 I'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 When 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 I mean, that's the first thing they really want to teach us. 0.84
00:06:31 Their blood is bibline.
00:06:33 Everything is biblical.
00:06:34 That's why there's, I mean, they're as familiar in Habakkuk as they are in Romans.
00:06:40 And they had probably 40 to 60 scriptural citations across the average two pages when you open the book.
00:06:50 The Puritans were largely a 17th century movement, but it began already in the 1560s.
00:06:56 And it didn't really finish until 17-teens or so, thereabout, I believe.
00:07:02 So you're talking 160 years, but the apex of the Puritan movement was definitely in the 17th century.
00:07:12 And what they did, the best way to describe it, I think, is that they were thoroughly reformed in their theology.
00:07:19 It didn't really advance any substantive new doctrines, but they took what the reformers said,
00:07:25 they sat on their shoulders, and then they took it and applied it to everyday life.
00:07:30 everyday life. I mean, every aspect of your life. So if you think of it this way,
00:07:37 reformers are busy hammering out major doctrines like justification by faith or right principles
00:07:42 for worship, priesthood of all believers, et cetera. Puritans come along and say,
00:07:49 that's wonderful. We agree with all of us, but you reformers, you've written so many books on
00:07:54 that, but how do you use this doctrine of sanctification that you've developed? How do
00:08:01 you use it as a husband, as a wife? How do you live as a Christian at work? So the Puritans are
00:08:08 really head, heart, hand theologians, and they minister to the whole man. William Gooch, for
00:08:17 example, is an 800-page folio volume on marriage and childbearing. And it's just incredible,
00:08:25 the detail to which he goes, to show you biblically how to live in nearly every area
00:08:32 of your life. So that's one contribution they make. Another contribution I think that's very
00:08:39 important is that the Puritans are really, really godly people, so godly that in our worldly age,
00:08:46 There'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 But they were just intent on a living, a Trinitarian centered, God glorifying life in which Christ is all and in all.
00:09:10 So they were very zealous.
00:09:14 They spoke of zeal as a white-hot flame for the glory of God.
00:09:18 And they had a high view of the church, a high view of worship.
00:09:23 They really believed that every sermon God is speaking to you directly through the external minister.
00:09:32 The internal minister, which is the Holy Spirit, they got that from Calvin,
00:09:35 is putting the Word into his bow and shooting it out as an arrow,
00:09:40 directing the arrows to the hearts of every hearer according to that hearer's need.
00:09:47 So they have a strong stress on individual conversion that we're often lacking today,
00:09:53 the need to really know by experience what it means to repent of sin and become a lost sinner
00:10:00 before God and find salvation rich and full and free in Christ. And so the vitality, the living
00:10:08 reality of their christianity is almost tangible when you when you read the puritans
00:10:16 and the amazing thing about them joel is that this movement lasted for 150 years usually a movement
00:10:22 that's so full of zeal so full of life so full of the holy spirit so full of scripture
00:10:29 is kind of short-lived it's hard for natural man to live with such intensity for more than
00:10:35 six months
00:10:37 but by the grace of God
00:10:40 this movement
00:10:41 it was dissipating
00:10:44 by the late 1680s
00:10:45 but for well over a century
00:10:47 it was a very
00:10:49 alive movement
00:10:51 you've got me thinking
00:10:54 Dr. Beeky a few things
00:10:55 one, I'll just rattle off
00:10:58 a couple questions here
00:10:59 one, I know he was a Baptist
00:11:00 and I personally am
00:11:03 a Reformed Baptist
00:11:04 but would you consider John Bunyan
00:11:07 because you said the word Bibline
00:11:08 and it just made me think of Bunyan
00:11:10 would he be considered one of the Puritans?
00:11:13 Oh absolutely
00:11:14 yeah Bunyan is one of the lead Puritans
00:11:18 there were a few Baptist Puritans
00:11:21 maybe the very end of the Puritan age
00:11:24 there were a few coming in
00:11:26 Bunyan was the eccentric guy 0.99
00:11:30 among the lead Puritans
00:11:32 because he was the only one that really wasn't educated at Oxford or Cambridge, just about.
00:11:38 And he was mainly self-taught through books he read and spirit taught.
00:11:44 And he was the only major Puritan that was a Baptist.
00:11:50 But Bunyan's views were quite congenial.
00:11:54 If you were a paedo-baptist in his church, you could become a member.
00:11:57 You just couldn't become an elder or deacon.
00:12:00 but you could become a member
00:12:02 and if you wanted your kids baptized
00:12:04 he'd say okay
00:12:06 we'll get another
00:12:07 get one of my Puritan friends here
00:12:09 and he'll baptize your kids
00:12:11 and it's okay
00:12:12 so he was
00:12:13 quite understanding of the paedo-baptist view
00:12:17 yeah
00:12:18 well that got me thinking also
00:12:20 you said something when you were giving us
00:12:22 a little bit of your testimony
00:12:23 you've used the phrase a few times now
00:12:26 in regards to
00:12:27 you said you were converted when you were 14
00:12:29 but at 15 you said you experienced liberty and it just made me think of john bunyan and pilgrim's
00:12:36 progress and you know the the law of the lord comes to him he finds this book in a field and
00:12:41 he's burdened by his sin everything loses its taste and enjoyment in life his family all these
00:12:47 things and he's just weighted down and miserable and uh and then he goes to the wicked gate and
00:12:52 there's it's it's confusing and so i kind of want to get your take from your testimony but also
00:12:57 bunions because you know the law of God comes to him and then he goes to the wicked gate and meets
00:13:03 goodwill and he says are you willing to receive me with all my heart and he goes through the
00:13:07 wicket gate but then it's later so it's kind of like three different progressions that the law
00:13:11 comes to him and that burden falls on his back and then the wicked gate where he goes through
00:13:16 and then there's also the sepulcher and the cross and the the three shining ones or you know who
00:13:22 speak to him and his burden rolls away into the sepulcher and he bears it no more and so i guess
00:13:28 my question is uh in terms of your own conversion what do you mean by those terms conversion and
00:13:34 then and then liberty uh coming later on and does that relate to bunyan's experience i can put it
00:13:39 in 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 pattern for everyone else because my my experience was very very intense i was i was the sinner
00:13:51 hanging on a thin spider's thread over the pit of hell, as Edwards would say.
00:13:58 I was the sinner in the hands of the anger of God.
00:14:00 I thought for sure I was a reprobate, and yet there was a love for God in my soul,
00:14:07 but I just was overwhelmed that God could never save such a sinner as me.
00:14:13 So, yeah, my burden was really heavy on my back for close to 18 months.
00:14:19 So 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 uh wiped away my sins and gave me a right to eternal life and he was the savior of the
00:14:54 greatest of sinners who just cast themselves upon him in faith and um yeah when that happened to me
00:15:01 i 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 washed away that i couldn't sleep i was overwhelmed so for me these experiences were very very real
00:15:16 all three actually the conviction of sin and then my first view of what i might call christ as the
00:15:24 way 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 kind of like going through the wicked gate um where there wasn't a full closure with christ
00:15:34 but there was some hope in christ and new new life sprang up within me um so yeah when i use
00:15:43 the word conversion i mean you can use in different ways i could i could say you know i was regenerated
00:15:49 um when i was 14 or 15 but it's hard to mark the exact moment of regeneration sometimes
00:15:55 right but conversion was the whole change of lifestyle and then but when i went when the sins
00:16:00 rolled off my back into the empty sepulcher using bunyan's language um i was just set free i came to
00:16:07 spiritual liberty big time i was very shy no one can believe that anymore but i was very very shy
00:16:15 in my life up to that point and my tongue was just on loose i talked to everybody everybody at work
00:16:21 everybody at school um they didn't know what got into me but i just couldn't hold back from telling
00:16:27 people about my wonderful savior and then it was about six months after that that i felt called to
00:16:32 call to ministry. Wow. Okay. Well, are there any criticisms towards the Puritans? And I know there
00:16:41 are, but what are some of the primary criticisms? And are there any that you might sympathize as
00:16:46 someone who loves the Puritans? Are there any criticisms that you can see where the critic
00:16:51 might be coming from? Oh, sure. I mean, there's no age that's perfect. There's no group of people.
00:16:57 there's no individual pastor that's perfect so yeah my criticism of those who criticize
00:17:04 the puritans lightly and glibly is that what i've experienced in my lifetime
00:17:12 of talking about the puritans to thousands of people is that with very rare exceptions the
00:17:18 people that seem to have a real bone to pick with the puritans are people who haven't read them
00:17:23 so they're going by scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne other 19th century sources and you see
00:17:31 the puritans are very open for substantial criticism by groups that are much more liberal
00:17:38 than they are because as soon as you have a group that is much more conservative than you
00:17:43 and has more focus on godliness you want to you want to kind of if you're a christian
00:17:49 even in some sense of the word even if you're just a nominal christian you kind of want to
00:17:55 pick them apart because they make you feel a little uncomfortable because they're so godly
00:17:58 so you come up with criticism like this while they're way too legalistic
00:18:03 i've read the puritans all my life and they come down hard on legalism but they are very strong
00:18:11 are living wholly and solely for Jesus, out of gratitude.
00:18:16 But yeah, what that means then for them in their life
00:18:20 is that they deny themselves certain things.
00:18:23 For example, they weren't into dancing. 1.00
00:18:25 In fact, they thought most dancing, bisexual dancing, was sinful 1.00
00:18:29 because it aroused the lust of the flesh. 1.00
00:18:32 Is that legalism?
00:18:33 Could be.
00:18:35 But in my book, when I read the Puritans, 0.83
00:18:38 they rejected that and denied themselves that because they didn't trust their own heart and
00:18:44 they wanted to live close to god so like daniel and daniel one didn't want to defile himself
00:18:50 for the portion of the king's meat so a lot depends on your motivation so what happens today
00:18:56 of course is that people look at things like that and say oh wow they're legalists
00:19:01 but they're usually people that haven't read them if you read the puritans and you see their love
00:19:07 for christ and their love for living holy and solely for a triune god and wanting to dedicate
00:19:12 their entire lives to them you'd be hard pressed to find hardly any puritans puritan ministers i'm
00:19:20 not saying all the people that that were legalists but that is a criticism and there were a few that
00:19:26 overdid it sometimes out of zeal um yes there's been a lot of criticism lately about owning slaves
00:19:35 There were a few Puritans, very, very minor amount that owned some slaves.
00:19:45 Jonathan Edwards, who sometimes counted as a Puritan, the last Puritan, sometimes not, was more in the 18th century.
00:19:52 In fact, his whole life was in the 18th century.
00:19:54 Most scholars say that's beyond the age of the Puritans.
00:19:58 He had a few slaves.
00:20:00 Treated him incredibly well, by the way, but it was still an awful thing.
00:20:03 You can't justify it. 1.00
00:20:05 But very few Puritans.
00:20:07 It's mostly a post-Puritan thing, and people get that mixed up.
00:20:12 A lot of people think Spurgeon in the 19th century was a Puritan.
00:20:18 Well, he may be Puritan-minded, but the small people, but the Puritans as a movement were
00:20:25 fading away when slavery became something more common.
00:20:30 And a lot of Puritans spoke against it.
00:20:32 Richard Baxter wrote against it.
00:20:33 so when they speak about puritans being slave owners what we do there is we say something like
00:20:41 this yes and that's a real shame that there was even one but there were there were there were
00:20:47 some small number very small percentage but are there any christians today who support abortion
00:20:56 unfortunately there are but i would hate to have our generation one day be labeled as 0.95
00:21:04 oh yeah those christians were terrible because they believed in slaughtering their babies
00:21:07 um i think the majority of christians today are against abortion at least real christians 0.97
00:21:16 and that's the way the puritans would have would have been as well in fact most of the
00:21:20 The early Puritans didn't even know anything about slavery.
00:21:24 Is there other areas?
00:21:27 Yeah, I think there were a few Puritans that probably were too prolix in their preaching.
00:21:37 Preaching for 23 years on the book of Job may be a bit overdone.
00:21:41 But don't forget, in their day, again, the people wanted them to go deeply into various subjects.
00:21:51 So Thomas Hooker, for example, has, I don't know, like 30 sermons in a row, 35 maybe, about humiliation for sin.
00:22:02 But then he preaches 65 sermons right behind it on redemption in Christ.
00:22:07 um in our day where people are attracted to sermons where you go through a whole chapter
00:22:15 in one sermon puritans were used to you know dissecting it bringing unpacking it and that's
00:22:21 the way the people wanted it that's the way they were in their education as well they studied
00:22:26 thoroughly and uh in detail so a few puritans overdid it there and i would not imitate that i
00:22:36 I have a lecture that I give on how we should emulate the Puritans in preaching today,
00:22:41 and then a follow-up lecture on how we should not emulate the Puritans today.
00:22:45 Certainly, it's wrong to take over everything from the Puritans and try to plop it into the 21st century.
00:22:51 We're in a different age, with different needs. 0.81
00:22:53 But in terms of substance, spiritual, godly, confessional, doctrinal, experiential, practical, biblical substance, 1.00
00:23:03 the puritans are light years ahead of us in all kinds of areas
00:23:08 just take the area of marriage they wrote 29 books on marriage
00:23:13 and in an age when it was very hard thing to get a book published because it was very complicated
00:23:19 very expensive and those books reveal their understanding of ephesians 5 on the theology
00:23:28 of marriage to be so far beyond ours that there's hardly any comparison.
00:23:36 So I took those 29 books, for example, with another colleague, and we co-authored a book
00:23:40 called Living in a Godly Marriage, in which we summarized in contemporary language what
00:23:47 the Puritans were saying in those 29 books.
00:23:50 And I've written another book on marriage and another book on family, or two books on
00:23:54 family, I guess, or two books on marriage and one book on family.
00:23:58 And 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 That was beyond your own books on marriage.
00:24:11 You know, they're just so substantive, so biblical and so practical that we can learn a lot from them.
00:24:19 Well, 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 well the word that would pop in my head right away would be worldliness 0.82
00:24:40 shallowness easy believism puritans would have a lot to say
00:24:49 william greenell wrote a book called stop loving the world
00:24:52 we're just travelers through vanity fair here on our way to the celestial city evangelize
00:25:00 have friends in the world to evangelize them
00:25:02 but don't cozy up to the world
00:25:04 don't become worldly
00:25:05 again people might see that as legalist
00:25:08 but for the Puritans it was
00:25:10 jealousy for your own soul
00:25:11 to be a chaste virgin for Christ as it were
00:25:14 to live holy and solely for him
00:25:17 and once you start
00:25:19 mixing with the world
00:25:21 and creeping back to the world
00:25:23 doing the things of the world
00:25:25 talking like the world
00:25:26 you lose your your spiritual vitality so for example in our culture i mean
00:25:36 even in my own church and we we've got a lot of very godly people in our church
00:25:43 but if i talk to this typical 75 year old and say how old how old would you like to be if you could
00:25:50 be any age probably a number of them would say oh i wish i were younger
00:25:56 puritans would say why why would you say that why would you want to be closer to being with
00:26:03 jesus forever i have a lady in my church every time i wished her happy birthday she'd say one
00:26:08 year closer one year closer to being with jesus and you see that antithetical approach to the
00:26:16 world is much more poignant in in puritan thinking so say say instead of saying happy new year
00:26:24 they would say blessed new year to each other and by blessed they meant a deeper spiritual word in
00:26:31 scripture that means internal happiness regardless of external circumstances
00:26:36 so what do we mean when we say happy new year we mean i hope everything goes your way this year
00:26:41 hope you don't have many afflictions hope no one dies in your family hope you don't get cancer
00:26:47 what the puritans meant when they said blessed new year was i hope that you learn to submit more
00:26:54 and more this year to God's sovereign dealings in your life because all things work together for
00:26:59 good and the more you're at one with his will the more you will grow spiritually I really wish you
00:27:05 spiritual growth this year in submission to God in bowing under his inscrutable sovereign dealings
00:27:12 with you well you feel right away it's a whole different spiritual depth a whole different way
00:27:20 of life now granted the world wasn't as worldly as it was today so the temptation wasn't as severe 0.97
00:27:26 in some ways but still the puritans have a lot to say to us about living godly in an ungodly world
00:27:38 what do you think the puritans would have to say in regard because i completely
00:27:42 agree with everything you've said thus far so one big problem the american church today's
00:27:47 worldliness, and the Puritans would have much to say about holiness, and then also in regards to
00:27:52 that blessed word, high esteeming of the providence of God in life and forming more and more the image
00:28:00 of the Son in us through suffering. But that said, what do you think the Puritans would have to say
00:28:06 in regards to the fear of man? That's something that I see as a pervasive problem with pastors
00:28:13 and leaders in the church today let's see well that's just an inevitable fruit of the whole 1.00
00:28:19 thing we're we're we're flirting we're talking about at least um that really the puritan strength
00:28:27 is a high view of god a trinitarian god who's to be adored and worshiped and loved who's to
00:28:37 nothing is to be put before God.
00:28:41 To the Puritans, anything that would rival God 0.97
00:28:44 would be sheer idolatry and not to be tolerated.
00:28:51 So God was big.
00:28:53 And when God is big, man is small.
00:28:55 The Puritans would say this,
00:28:57 like Lloyd-Jones said about them, Martin Lloyd-Jones.
00:28:59 He said, the thing about the Puritans is
00:29:01 when you're done reading something, 0.81
00:29:04 you feel like you've been in the presence of God.
00:29:07 and they've made God big.
00:29:11 That's the gift they had.
00:29:12 You know, you read The Boundless God by George Swinok.
00:29:15 Oh, man.
00:29:17 Read 10 pages of that.
00:29:19 You're just moved.
00:29:20 You're just falling on your knees.
00:29:21 You're falling on your face.
00:29:22 Oh, God, forgive me for having such small thoughts of thee.
00:29:26 And, yeah.
00:29:29 So, the Puritans were very big on the fear of God.
00:29:32 Here's how they defined it.
00:29:33 The 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 So they could bring the fear of man down because the fear of God, the childlike fear of God, was so big in their lives.
00:29:58 Yeah, I agree.
00:30:00 I'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 And 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 We see the law of God as a reflection of his own holy nature.
00:30:29 And by that, if the Spirit is willing, then he graciously provides a conviction of our sins.
00:30:35 So we see the holiness of God.
00:30:36 We see the sinfulness of ourselves. 0.86
00:30:38 And the gap, not in an objective sense, but subjectively, for the Christian, the gap seems to get even bigger. 0.82
00:30:46 It's as though the chasm is growing between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of the sinner,
00:30:53 even the redeemed sinner, that as we see more and more of God.
00:30:57 So not in any objective sense.
00:30:58 In an objective sense, we're being sanctified and we're being made holy,
00:31:03 although the gap, if it is shrinking at all, it's minuscule because God is infinitely holy.
00:31:09 But we are getting holier.
00:31:10 We're getting better, not worse.
00:31:12 But subjectively, we feel as though the gap is widening. 0.52
00:31:15 But that's not to leave the Christian in despair because the gap is filled.
00:31:19 It's bridged by the cross of Christ.
00:31:22 It's bridged by the grace of God, the love of God.
00:31:25 And so if you've never seen that gap, if you've never seen the holiness of God and the true vile sinfulness of sinners,
00:31:33 and you hear sermons again and again and again about the love of God without first coming to fear God,
00:31:40 then the love of God is just puny.
00:31:42 It's anemic.
00:31:43 It's shallow and weak.
00:31:45 Right.
00:31:46 That's a concern.
00:31:47 Which is exactly what's the problem with the American church so much today.
00:31:52 Everything is so shallow and everything is so man-pleasing.
00:31:56 And the goal is to make people feel good when they walk out of church.
00:31:59 Just the expression that so many ministers use, I'm sorry to be critical here,
00:32:04 but if they say something that really produces some guilt or has potential to produce guilt,
00:32:11 they say, I don't make you feel guilty or anything. 0.98
00:32:13 I don't trust that with the Puritans 1.00
00:32:16 it would say
00:32:16 one Puritan said
00:32:18 I take a stick in my hand
00:32:19 I go around and beat every bush
00:32:21 until I find old Adam
00:32:23 hiding behind a bush
00:32:24 and I bring him out
00:32:25 and I stand him naked before God
00:32:27 you know
00:32:28 that's what that man needs 0.87
00:32:31 so that he becomes a lost sinner
00:32:32 before God
00:32:33 and he cries for mercy
00:32:34 you know
00:32:35 even back in the Middle Ages
00:32:37 you know
00:32:38 the famous classic
00:32:39 with Anselm 0.99
00:32:40 which the Puritans would totally agree
00:32:41 with this particular point
00:32:43 But, you know, Anselm is the wise, seasoned pastor who's having an interview with a beginning disciple named Bozo.
00:32:52 And 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.
00:33:02 And Bozo just can't seem to get it.
00:33:05 And finally, the necessity of the God man.
00:33:09 Finally, Pastor Ambrose then looks at Bozo and he says, Bozo, your problem is you don't understand the enormity of sin.
00:33:21 So you can't understand the enormity of grace. 0.95
00:33:25 And that's what the Puritans did. 0.91
00:33:28 You know, they made you feel the enormity of God, the enormity of sin, and the enormity of grace.
00:33:37 then there's room huge amounts of room to preach the magnificent amazing love of god i just preached
00:33:46 tonight to my own church on mosea 2 19 through 20 it's preparatory sermon for the lord's supper
00:33:52 next sunday on i will betroth thee to me forever all the whole sermon is basically on the love of
00:33:59 god but it's love of god over against the enormity of our sinfulness right so that the congregation
00:34:10 walks out just shaking their heads in amazement that's the goal of my head when i was preaching
00:34:17 anyway this gospel is such an amazing thing if you don't see the seriousness of your sin
00:34:23 and you're just told well you don't believe in jesus and you're saved and everything goes
00:34:29 like in 10 seconds and now you're saved and i assure you you're saved and you've raised a hand
00:34:34 you've walked in the aisle you've done something um i'm not saying it's impossible to be a true
00:34:42 conversion but most of the time it doesn't bear fruit but the danger is that then people think
00:34:49 they're saved and the preacher told them they're saved and so they go on thinking they're christians
00:34:53 and they've never been born again.
00:34:55 A false assurance.
00:34:57 Yeah.
00:34:59 So that leads me to maybe one final question,
00:35:02 and we'll go ahead and wrap up.
00:35:03 But I have a feeling I know what you're going to say,
00:35:07 but I think of, whether this is legend or true,
00:35:10 maybe you can confirm,
00:35:11 but I think of stories of George Whitefield
00:35:14 going all the way up the coast,
00:35:15 preaching conviction, preaching judgment,
00:35:19 preaching condemnation,
00:35:20 and then coming back down and preaching grace.
00:35:22 Or I think of, you know, sinners in the hands of an angry God with Edwards. 0.60
00:35:26 Or 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 You 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.
00:35:48 And Christ is in every text.
00:35:49 I 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 But 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 But we've got to quickly, so quickly alleviate the congregation, the hearers, so quickly get to Christ.
00:36:24 And, of course, we want to get there.
00:36:25 I guess my question is just, is it permissible?
00:36:30 Do you have to get to Christ right away?
00:36:32 And is it permissible to preach about the humiliation of sin for a sermon and leave the people under that weight?
00:36:41 Yeah, you let your text be your guide, right, Joel?
00:36:44 So the point is, are you thoroughly preaching your text?
00:36:49 So if you're preaching through Ephesians, for example,
00:36:53 and you get to Ephesians 2, Ephesians 1,
00:36:59 you're going to be preaching just a lot of gospel.
00:37:01 Ephesians 2, at the beginning, you're going to be preaching
00:37:04 about what natural man is.
00:37:08 Or think of Romans 3.
00:37:09 if a preacher just takes
00:37:13 Romans 3 1-20 in one sermon
00:37:15 and then
00:37:17 spends five sermons on the rest of
00:37:19 Romans 3 which is all gospel
00:37:21 yeah
00:37:23 you've got an imbalanced
00:37:25 preacher
00:37:26 Romans 3 1-19
00:37:29 needs to be preached solemnly
00:37:31 and thoroughly
00:37:32 just as Romans 3 20
00:37:35 through the end of the chapter
00:37:37 needs to be preached solemnly and thoroughly
00:37:39 So, 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.
00:37:51 A whole sermon on that.
00:37:53 Now, there's a few paragraphs at the end about deliverance in Christ and directing the smitten conscience to Jesus.
00:38:01 But there's only a few paragraphs there because really there's nothing in the text there about that.
00:38:05 But then, if the text is on heaven, for example, Edwards will have the whole sermon on heaven,
00:38:14 and then maybe he'll spend the last one or two paragraphs warning those who are not prepared for it about the dangers.
00:38:21 So the Puritans were so biblical that they would preach the text to the full in every situation.
00:38:29 And if they weren't preaching straight through a Bible, they did variety.
00:38:34 They didn't do strictly what's today called expository preaching.
00:38:38 They did do quite a bit of that.
00:38:40 But at times they would just pick some of the isolated texts in the Bible, what they
00:38:46 called the grand texts of the Bible.
00:38:48 But then they would be careful to pick texts from different areas of Christian experience
00:38:55 so that their preaching over a period of time was balanced.
00:38:59 And a lot of preachers did not have the problem.
00:39:02 Probably most of the Puritan preachers did not have the problem preaching 35 sermons on one subject.
00:39:09 So that's only a few.
00:39:13 Many Puritans had a really good balance that would be accepted today in terms of preaching.
00:39:20 The 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?
00:39:29 with the balance that scripture has.
00:39:33 I want to be thoroughly scriptural in my preaching.
00:39:37 And that does not seem, to me, in my assessment,
00:39:41 that does not seem to be the primary concern of many preachers today.
00:39:45 Even in some of the better churches, it seems like the primary concern is,
00:39:50 did I get to the gospel? Did I get to Christ?
00:39:52 And obviously that's important, but I think there's a way of missing Christ in the text,
00:39:58 but there's also a way of preaching Christ at the expense of the text.
00:40:02 And I've noticed that if you're not careful,
00:40:04 basically it creates where every single one of your sermons is the same.
00:40:09 You take a new text each week,
00:40:12 you take 5 to 15 minutes to springboard off of that text
00:40:15 into your same gospel proclamation with maybe a few slight tweaks.
00:40:21 And the people will say, you know, for years,
00:40:24 what a wonderful gospel-centered, Christ-centered church.
00:40:27 church but they're actually not getting the whole counsel of god you speak to them about the law of
00:40:32 god you speak to you and and and they're um they're lacking in those areas and so i think there's a
00:40:39 way of being christ-centered that's not that's not actually biblical right if that and i know that
00:40:45 sounds funny but i think it's possible i grew up with the opposite joel i grew up where the typical
00:40:51 sermon was 60 minutes long, and the first 55 minutes was usually about, yeah, man's depravity,
00:41:00 man's sinfulness, and very little gospel. And that's, you know, the danger of a certain
00:41:09 brand of sometimes called hyper-Calvinism. Then you've got the opposite extreme,
00:41:16 what you're describing. And the balance is obviously in between those two, where I like
00:41:25 to put it this way, in the form of, you know, we adhere to the Heidelberg Catechism as one of our
00:41:30 doctrinal standards, misery, deliverance, gratitude. We don't preach 50% misery, we preach 100%
00:41:37 misery. Man is totally needy. We don't preach 50% deliverance, we preach 100% deliverance in Christ.
00:41:43 We don't preach 50% gratitude and sanctification.
00:41:46 We preach 100%.
00:41:48 Our entire lives are called to be a living sacrifice to him.
00:41:53 So it's 100, 100, 100.
00:41:56 And we bring that through a judicious selection of text to preach on.
00:42:05 And that really feeds the flock with the whole counsel of God and gives them a great variety, too.
00:42:10 It does help your sermons from becoming a kind of sameness running through them when you just preach the scriptures.
00:42:20 Yeah, I agree.
00:42:21 Well, are there any final words that you'd like to leave us with?
00:42:26 Yeah, I'd like to say this.
00:42:29 I would like to encourage your listener to start reading the Puritans.
00:42:33 And we are the leading Puritan publisher in the world today, and we're doing 12 Puritan titles a year.
00:42:44 We do 40 titles a year, so 28 of them are not Puritans, so we do all kinds of things.
00:42:50 But I would advise them to start by reading a few books from what we call the Puritan Treasures for Today.
00:42:59 These are 100- to 150-page Puritan books that we've edited every single sentence, so it reads like it was written today.
00:43:07 Very easy for people to get into the Puritans this way.
00:43:10 Like William Greenhill's Stop Loving the World or John Flavel's Triumphing Over Sinful Fear, which is a great book, by the way.
00:43:20 Heritagebooks.org.
00:43:22 Heritagebooks, one word, .org.
00:43:24 You can check them out.
00:43:26 There's about 15 of them now.
00:43:28 there'll be a lot more a few years from now because they're really taking off puritan treasures for
00:43:33 today they're called you'll find those extremely easy to read and then from there graduate yourself
00:43:39 to reading thomas watson i would say first of all short sentences watson has full of waiting
00:43:45 substance quite easy to read and then move on to john fable john bunyan and then from there work
00:43:52 your way up to thomas goodwin and john owen um full of substance but more challenging for the
00:43:59 beginning puritan reader to to read and if you really take the time i would advise you also to 0.65
00:44:07 look up all the texts when you read the puritans because they're they're so big blind you'll feel 0.83
00:44:12 like you're you're just being advanced greatly in your head knowledge of what the scriptures 1.00
00:44:20 are saying not only but also in heart knowledge and i believe i've seldom met someone who really
00:44:28 got into reading the puritans who wouldn't say i've grown like i've never grown before
00:44:35 just in so many ways the puritans are just so much better than so much of the fluff out of
00:44:42 the market today well thank you dr beakey for coming on the show and i'm sure our listeners 1.00
00:44:49 will be blessed is there any way that they can keep up with you and follow you i guess
00:44:53 reformation is is probably the chief way that they can follow yeah and i have a i have a blog
00:45:00 joel joel beakey and then i've got facebook and so yeah i've got it in twitter you can get me on
00:45:09 those those yeah great well thanks for coming on the show i appreciate it thank you as a special
00:45:16 thank you for your gift of any amount we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our
00:45:20 store to access this offer visit right response ministries.com slash offer we highly recommend
00:45:27 pastor joel's book am i truly saved if you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about
00:45:32 the love of god this would be a great resource as a reminder to get this offer go to right
00:45:37 response ministries.com slash offer and thank you for your generous support
00:45:46 you