Dr. Joel Beeke explores the Puritans' 17th-century application of Reformed theology to daily life, contrasting their emphasis on God's sovereignty with modern American church worldliness and easy believism. Addressing criticisms regarding slavery and legalism, he argues that contemporary preachers must avoid shallow gospel conclusions by thoroughly expounding Scripture's law and judgment. Ultimately, Beeke urges the church to fear God more than man, recommending resources like "Puritan Treasures for Today" to restore biblical depth and divine providence as the lens for all existence. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Joel Beakey and Puritan Reform00:04:35
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. Joel Beakey 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.
I hope you enjoy the episode.
Is theology applied?
All right.
Well, it's a privilege to have you, Dr. Beakey, on the show this evening.
And the first question, just to help our audience get familiar with you, is who are you and tell us a little bit about your ministry?
All right.
Well, my name is Joel Beakey, and I grew up in Michigan and felt called to minister when I was 15 years old.
I was converted when I was 14, really.
Came to Liberty when I was 15, spiritual liberty.
And I trained for four years in Ontario, St. Catharines, Ontario.
And then I accepted a call to 700 farmers in northwest Iowa with no farming experience.
That was my first church.
And I was there for three and a half years and then accepted a call to the Netherlands Reformed Church in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.
And while I was there for five and a half years, I went to Westminster, Philadelphia to get my PhD.
And when that was just about complete, I accepted a call here to Grand Rapids, where I've been for the last 34 years.
So it's been a long ministry here.
And then 26 years ago or so, I began Puritan Reform Theological Seminary due to circumstances that were rather trying at the time with a church split.
And at the same time, I began Reformation Heritage Books, which is a big part of my life.
So the denomination stood behind me, the Heritage Reform denomination, starting the seminary, I should say.
And Reformation Heritage Books, I established as an independent ministry with a board of interdenominational men.
And so right now, I'm a quarter time in my church as a pastor, Heritage Reform Church here in Grand Rapids, three quarters time in the seminary.
When I work for Reformation Heritage Books as much as I can on the side.
And I'm married to a wonderful woman named Mary.
I have three wonderful children, and they're all married to godly spouses.
So I'm really blessed with a God fearing family, which is God's amazing grace.
And five years ago, if you asked me, Do you have any grandchildren?
I'd say, No, not yet.
And now, five years later, I've got seven of them.
Wow.
The two oldest have had three children in the last five years, and the youngest has had one child.
That's great.
That's great.
That's similar to my wife and I.
We had our three children in the last, well, less than four years.
Really?
Once people get started, sometimes they come in bunches.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
The oldest child could not have a child for several years, and so then the other second child was married by that time as well.
Actually, had the first grandchild, 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.
Wow, within four years they had three children.
Wow, it's gone!
So, here at the seminary, Joel, we now have 219 students this past year.
We train men from all over the world.
They come from 30 different denominations in 20 different countries.
And we train them with MAs, MDIVs, DMENs, PhDs, THMs, send them back to their own country, and they get positions there and bring the reform.
Biblical faith to those countries.
So it's an exciting ministry.
Praise God.
That's great.
Training Global Ministers in Faith00:12:02
Well, with that said, it seems like many people are familiar with you through your work on the Puritans.
And so could you just talk to our audience a little bit about your love for the Puritans and maybe explain to some of us who may not be familiar with the Puritans who were the Puritans and what are some of their greatest contributions to the church?
Yes, well, I grew up in a very conservative Reformed church, came under severe conviction of sin when I was 14.
And I would come home after school every single day, finish my schoolwork by 8 or 9 p.m. or so, and then I would read my dad's bookcase of Puritan writings.
And I would read them till midnight or later.
And this went on.
I mean, I read the whole Bible a couple times through, and I was just reading, reading, trying to find liberty for my own soul.
And the Puritans really did lead me to spiritual liberty in Christ.
And I realized as I read them that I've never read anything like this before that had so much substance and was so rich.
And so I immediately began, when I was 16 years old, a ministry called Bible Truth Books Ministry, which was mostly selling Puritan books.
And I've been selling them basically ever since.
I've sold, I don't know how many millions, probably $50 million worth.
Somewhere around there, of Puritans writers in my writing books in my lifetime.
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.
I mean, that's the first thing they really want to teach us.
Their blood is biblical, everything is biblical.
That's why there's, I mean, there is familiar.
In Habakkuk, because they are in Romans.
And they had probably 40 to 60 scriptural citations across the average two pages when you open the book.
The Puritans were largely a 17th century movement, but it began already in the 1560s.
And it didn't really finish until the 17 teens or so, thereabouts, I believe.
So you're talking 160 years, but the apex of the Puritan movement was definitely in the 17th century.
And what they did, the best way to describe it, I think, is that they were thoroughly reformed in their theology.
They didn't really advance any substantive new doctrines, but they took what the reformers said, they sat on their shoulders, and then they took it and applied it to everyday life.
I mean, every aspect of your life.
So if you think of it this way, reformers are busy hammering out major doctrines like justification by faith, right principles for worship, priesthood of all believers, etc.
Puritans come along and say, That's wonderful.
We agree with all of this, but you've, you reformers, you've written so many books on that.
But how do you use this doctrine of sanctification that you've developed?
How do you use it as a husband, as a wife?
How do you live as a Christian at work?
So the Puritans are really head, heart, hand theologians, and they minister to the whole man.
William Gooch, for example, is an 800 page folio volume on marriage and childbearing.
And it's just incredible the detail to which he goes.
To show you biblically how to live in nearly every area of your life.
So that's one contribution they make.
Another contribution I think that's very important is that the Puritans are really, really godly people.
So godly that in our worldly age, there's actually people that think they were legalists.
And maybe a few Puritans, you know, in a couple areas of their life were a bit over the top from our modern perspective, at least.
But they were just intent on living.
A Trinitarian centered, God glorifying life in which Christ is all and in all.
So they were very zealous.
They spoke of zeal as a white hot flame for the glory of God.
And they had a high view of the church, a high view of worship.
They really believed that every sermon God is speaking to you directly through the external minister, the internal minister, which is the Holy Spirit.
They got that from Calvin.
Is putting the word into his bow and shooting it out as an arrow, directing the arrows to the hearts of every hearer according to that hearer's need.
So they have a strong stress on individual conversion that we're often lacking today the need to really know by experience what it means to repent of sin and become a lost sinner before God and find salvation rich and full and free in Christ.
And so the vitality, the living reality of their Christianity.
Is almost tangible when you read the Puritans.
And the amazing thing about them, Joel, is that this movement lasted for 150 years.
Usually a movement that's so full of zeal, so full of life, so full of the Holy Spirit, so full of scripture is kind of short lived.
It's hard for natural man to live with such intensity for more than six months.
But by the grace of God, this movement.
I mean, it did, it was dissipating by the late 1680s, but for well over a century, it was a very, very alive movement.
You've got me thinking, Dr. Beeke, a few things.
So, one, I'll just rattle off a couple questions here.
One, I know he was a Baptist, and I personally am a Reformed Baptist, but would you consider John Bunyan, because you said the word bibline, and it just made me think of Bunyan, would he be considered one of the Puritans?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, Bunyan is.
Yeah, one of the lead Puritans.
There were a few Baptist Puritans.
Maybe at the very end of the Puritan age, there were a few coming in.
Bunyan was the eccentric guy among the lead Puritans because he was the only one that really wasn't educated at Oxford or Cambridge, just about.
And he was mainly self taught through books he read and spirit taught.
And he was the only major Puritan that was a Baptist.
But Bunyan's views were quite congenial.
If you were a Pado Baptist in his church, you could become a member.
You just couldn't become an elder or deacon, but you could become a member.
And if you wanted your kids baptized, he'd say, okay, we'll get one of my Puritan friends here, and he'll baptize your kids, and it's okay.
So he was quite understanding of the Pado Baptist view.
Yeah.
Well, that got me thinking also.
You said something when you were.
Giving us a little bit of your testimony.
You've used the phrase a few times now in regards to you said you were converted when you were 14, but at 15 you said you experienced liberty.
And it just made me think of John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress.
And the law of the Lord comes to him.
He finds this book in a field and he's burdened by his sin.
Everything loses its taste and enjoyment in life his family, all these things.
And he's just weighted down and miserable.
And then he goes to the wicket gate and there's It's confusing.
And so I kind of want to get your take from your testimony, but also Bunyan's, because the law of God comes to him, and then he goes to the wicked gate and meets goodwill, and he says, Are you willing to receive me with all my heart?
And he goes through the wicked gate, but then it's later.
So it's kind of like three different progressions.
The law comes to him, and that burden falls on his back, and then the wicked gate where he goes through, and then there's also the sepulchre and the cross, and the three shining ones who speak to him, and his burden rolls away into the sepulchre, and he bears it no more.
And so, I guess my question is in terms of your own conversion, what do you mean by those terms conversion and then liberty coming later on?
And does that relate to Bunyan's framework?
I can put it in Bunyan's framework.
I went through the exact same things, but I don't want to set it as a pattern for everyone else because my experience was very, very intense.
I was the sinner hanging on a thin spider's thread over the pit of hell, as Edwards would say.
I was the sinner in the hands of the angry God.
I thought for sure I was a reprobate.
And yet there was a love for God in my soul, but I just was overwhelmed that God could never save such a sinner as me.
So, yeah, my burden was really heavy on my back for close to 18 months.
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, paying for my sin, and his active obedience, obeying the law for me, wiped away my sins.
It gave me a right to eternal life.
And he was the savior of the greatest of sinners who just cast themselves upon him in faith.
And yeah, when that happened to me, I got my.
I got my dad out of bed at 3 30 in the morning.
So I've been saved.
My sins are washed away, Dad.
I couldn't sleep.
I was overwhelmed.
So for me, these experiences were very, very real.
All three, actually the conviction of sin, and then my first view of what I might call Christ as the way of escape.
It gave me a little bit of hope, but then I didn't think it could still be for me, kind of like going through the wicked gate, where there wasn't a full closure with Christ, but there was some hope in Christ, and new life sprang up within me.
So, yeah.
When I use the word conversion, I mean, you can use it in different ways.
I could say, you know, I was regenerated when I was 14 or 15, but it's hard to mark the exact moment of regeneration sometimes.
Right.
But conversion is the whole change of lifestyle.
And then, but when the sins rolled off my back into the empty sepulchre, using Bunyan's language, I was just set free.
I came to spiritual liberty big time.
I was very shy.
No one can believe that anymore, but I was very, very shy in my life up to that point.
And my tongue was just on loose.
I talked to everybody, everybody at work, everybody at school.
They didn't know what got into me, but I just couldn't hold back from telling people about my wonderful Savior.
And then it was about six months after that that I felt called to ministry.
Wow.
Okay.
Bridging the Gap Through Holiness00:15:08
Well, are there any criticisms towards the Puritans?
And I know there are, but what are some of the primary criticisms?
And are there any that you might sympathize with as someone who loves the Puritans?
Are there any criticisms that you can?
See where the critic might be coming from?
Oh, sure.
I mean, there's no age that's perfect.
There's no group of people.
There's no individual pastor that's perfect.
So, yeah.
My criticism of those who criticize the Puritans lightly and glibly is that what I've experienced in my lifetime of talking about the Puritans to thousands of people is that, with very rare exceptions, the people that seem to have a real bone to pick with the Puritans are people who haven't read them.
They're going by Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, other 19th century sources.
And you see, the Puritans are very open for substantial criticism by groups that are much more liberal than they are.
Because as soon as you have a group that is much more conservative than you and has more focus on godliness, you want to kind of, if you're a Christian, even in some sense of the word, even if you're just a nominal Christian, You kind of want to pick them apart because they make you feel a little uncomfortable because they're so godly.
So you come up with criticism like this well, they're way too legalistic.
I've read the Puritans all my life and they come down hard on legalism.
But they are very strong and living wholly and solely for Jesus out of gratitude.
But yeah, what that means then for them in their life is that they deny themselves certain things.
For example, they weren't into dancing.
In fact, they thought most dancing.
Bisexual dancing was sinful because it aroused the lust of the flesh.
Is that legalism?
Could be.
But in my book, when I read the Puritans, they rejected that and denied themselves that because they didn't trust their own heart and they wanted to live close to God.
Sort of like Daniel, Daniel 1, they didn't want to defile themselves with a portion of the king's meat.
So a lot depends on your motivation.
So what happens today, of course, is that people look at things like that and say, oh, wow, they're legalists.
But they're usually people that haven't read them.
If you read the Puritans and you see their love for Christ and their love for living wholly and solely for a triune God and wanting to dedicate their entire lives to them, you'd be hard pressed to find hardly any Puritans, Puritan ministers.
I'm not saying all the people that were legalists, but that is a criticism.
And there were a few that overdid it sometimes out of zeal.
Yes.
There's been a lot of criticism lately about owning slaves.
There were a few Puritans, very, very minor amount that owned some slaves.
Jonathan Edwards, who sometimes counted as a Puritan, the last Puritan, sometimes not, was more in the 18th century.
In fact, his whole life was in the 18th century.
Most scholars say that's beyond the age of the Puritans.
He had a few slaves, treated them incredibly well, by the way, but it was still an awful thing.
You can't justify it.
But very few Puritans.
It's mostly a post Puritan thing, and people get that mixed up.
And a lot of people think Spurgeon in the 19th century was a Puritan.
Well, he may be Puritan minded with the small pay, but the Puritans as a movement were fading away when slavery became something more common.
And a lot of Puritans spoke against it.
Richard Baxter wrote against it.
So when they speak about Puritans being slave owners, What we do there is we say something like this, yes, and that's a real shame that there was even one, but there were some small number, very small percentage.
But are there any Christians today who support abortion?
Unfortunately, there are, but I would hate to have our generation one day be labeled as oh, yeah, those Christians were terrible because they believed in slaughtering their babies.
I think the majority of Christians today are against abortion, at least real Christians.
And that's the way the Puritans would have been as well.
In fact, most of the early Puritans didn't even know anything about slavery.
Is there other areas?
Yeah, I think there were a few Puritans that probably were too prolix in their preaching.
Preaching for 23 years on the book of Job, maybe a bit overdone.
But don't forget, in their day, Again, the people wanted them to go deeply into various subjects.
So, Thomas Hooker, for example, has, I don't know, like 30 sermons in a row, 35 maybe, about humiliation for sin.
But then he preaches 65 sermons right behind it on redemption in Christ.
In our day, people are attracted to sermons where you go through a whole chapter in one sermon.
Puritans were used to dissecting it, unpacking it, and that's the way the people wanted it.
That's the way they were in their education as well.
They studied thoroughly and in detail.
So a few Puritans overdid it there, and I would not imitate that.
I have a lecture that I give on how we should emulate the Puritans in preaching today, and then a follow up lecture on how we should not emulate the Puritans today.
Certainly, it's wrong to take over.
Everything from the Puritans and try to plop it into the 21st century.
We're in a different age, the different needs.
But in terms of substance spiritual, godly, confessional, doctrinal, experiential, practical, biblical substance the Puritans are light years ahead of us in all kinds of areas.
Just take the area of marriage.
They wrote 29 books on marriage.
And in an age when it was a very hard thing to get a book published because it was very complicated.
Very expensive.
And those books reveal their understanding of Ephesians 5 on the theology of marriage to be so far beyond ours that there's hardly any comparison.
So I took those 29 books, for example, with another colleague, and we co authored a book called Living in a Godly Marriage, in which we summarized in contemporary language what the Puritans were saying in those 29 books.
And I've written another book on marriage, another book on family.
Or two books on family, I guess, or two books on marriage and one book on family.
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.
That was beyond your own books on marriage.
They're just so substantive, so biblical, and so practical that we can learn a lot from them.
Well, that kind of brings us to the next question, which is what do you personally, Dr. B. G. C., see as one of the 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?
Well, the word that would pop in my head right away would be worldliness, shallowness, easy believism.
Puritans would have a lot to say.
William Greenell wrote a book called Stop Loving the World.
We're just travelers through Vanity Fair here.
On our way to the celestial city, evangelize, have friends in the world to evangelize them, but don't cozy up to the world, don't become worldly.
Again, people might see that as legalist, but for the Puritans, it was jealousy for your own soul to be a chaste virgin for Christ, as it were, to live holy and solely for Him.
And once you start mixing with the world and creeping back to the world, doing the things of the world, talking like the world, You lose your spiritual vitality.
So, for example, in our culture, I mean, even in my own church, and we've got a lot of very godly people in our church.
What if I talk to this typical 75 year old and say, How old would you like to be if you could be any age?
Probably a number of them would say, Oh, I wish I were younger.
Puritans would say, Why?
Why would you say that?
Why wouldn't you want to be closer to being with Jesus forever?
I have a lady at my church, every time I wished her happy birthday, she'd say, one year closer, one year closer to being with Jesus.
And you see, that antithetical approach to the world is much more poignant in Puritan thinking.
So instead of saying happy new year, they would say blessed new year to each other.
And by blessed, they meant a deeper spiritual word in scripture.
That means internal happiness, regardless of external circumstances.
So, what do we mean when we say Happy New Year?
We mean, I hope everything goes your way this year.
Hope you don't have many afflictions.
Hope no one dies in your family.
Hope you don't get cancer.
What the Puritans meant when they said Bless a New Year was, I hope that you learn to submit more and more this year to God's sovereign dealings in your life because all things work together for good, and the more you're at one with His will, The more you will grow spiritually, I really wish you spiritual growth this year in submission to God and bowing under His inscrutable sovereign dealings with you.
Well, you feel right away.
It's a whole different spiritual depth, a whole different way of life.
Now, granted, the world wasn't as worldly as it was today, so the temptation wasn't as severe in some ways, but still, the Puritans have a lot to say to us about living godly in an ungodly world.
What do you think the Puritans would have to say in regard?
Because I completely agree with everything you've said thus far, so.
One big problem in the American church today is worldliness, and the Puritans would have much to say about holiness, and then also in regards to that blessed word, a high esteeming of the providence of God in life and forming more and more the image of the Son in us through suffering.
But that said, what do you think the Puritans would have to say in regards to the fear of man?
That's something that I see as a pervasive problem with pastors and leaders in the church today.
But see, well, that's just an inevitable fruit of the whole thing we're flirting with talking about, at least.
That really the Puritan strength is a high view of God, a Trinitarian God who's to be adored and worshiped and loved, who's to be put before God.
To the Puritans, anything that would rival God would be sheer idolatry and not to be tolerated.
So, God was big.
And when God is big, man is small.
The Puritans would say this, like Lloyd Jones said about them, Martin Lloyd Jones.
He said, The thing about the Puritans is when you're done reading something, you feel like you've been in the presence of God.
And they've made God big.
That's the gift they had.
You know, you read The Boundless God by George Swinock.
Oh, man.
Read 10 pages of that.
You're just moved.
You just fall on your knees.
You're falling on your face.
Oh God, forgive me for having such small thoughts of thee.
And yeah.
So the Puritans were very big on the fear of God.
Here's how they defined it the fear of God is to esteem the smiles of God to be of more value than the smiles of men, and the frowns of God to be of more value than the frowns of men.
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.
Yeah, I agree.
I've often said in my church here, but also in 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.
And it's just, you know, the reason why we need to esteem the holiness of God, when, you know, the first use of the law, we see the law of God as a reflection of his own holy nature.
And by that, if the Spirit Willing, then he graciously provides a conviction of our sins.
So we see the holiness of God, we see the sinfulness of ourselves, and the gap, not in an objective sense, but subjectively, for the Christian, the gap seems to get even bigger.
It's as though the chasm is growing between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of the sinner, even the redeemed sinner, that as we see more and more of God, so not in any objective sense, in an objective sense, we're being sanctified and we're being made holy, although.
The gap is, if it is shrinking at all, it's minuscule because God is infinitely holy.
But we are getting holier, we're getting better, not worse.
But subjectively, we feel as though the gap is widening.
But that's not to leave the Christian in despair because the gap is filled.
It's bridged by the cross of Christ.
It's bridged by the grace of God, the love of God.
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, and you hear sermons again and again and again about the love of God without first coming to fear God, then the love of God is just puny.
It's anemic.
It's shallow and weak.
And.
Preaching Christ Without Losing Text00:10:10
Which is exactly what's the problem with the American church so much today.
Everything is so shallow and everything is so man-pleasing.
And the goal is to make people feel good when they walk out of church.
Just the expression that so many ministers use, I'm sorry to be critical here, but if they say something that really produces some guilt or has potential to produce guilt, they say, I don't make you feel guilty or anything.
I'll trust that with the Puritans who would say, One Puritan said, I take a stick in my hand, I go around and beat every bush until I find old Adam hiding behind a bush and I bring him out and I stand him naked before God.
You know, that's what that man needs so that he becomes a lost sinner before God and he cries for mercy.
You know, even back in the Middle Ages, you know, that famous classic with Anselm, which the Puritans would totally agree with this particular point.
You know, Anselm is the wise seasoned pastor who's having an interview with.
A beginning disciple named Bozo.
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.
And Bozo just can't seem to get it.
And finally, the necessity of the God man.
Finally, Pastor Ambrosi then looks at Bozo and he says, Bozo, your problem is you don't understand the enormity of sin.
So, you can't understand the enormity of grace.
And that's what the Puritans did.
You know, they made you feel the enormity of God, the enormity of sin, and the enormity of grace.
Then there's room, huge amounts of room, to preach the magnificent, amazing love of God.
I just preached tonight to my own church on Hosea 2 19 through 20.
It's a preparatory sermon for the Lord's Supper next Sunday.
On, I will be trophy to me forever.
Well, the whole sermon was basically on the love of God, but it's love of God over against the enormity of our sinfulness.
Right.
So that the congregation walks out just shaking their heads in amazement.
That's the goal of my head when I was preaching, anyway.
This gospel is such an amazing thing.
But if you don't see the seriousness of your sin and you're just told, well, you don't believe in Jesus.
And you're saved, and everything goes like in 10 seconds, and now you're saved, and I assure you, you're saved, and you've raised a hand, you've walked in the aisle, you've done something.
I'm not saying it's impossible to be a true conversion, but most of the time it doesn't bear fruit.
But the danger is that then people think they're saved, and the preacher told them they're saved, and so they go on thinking they're Christians and they've never been born again.
A false assurance.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that leads me to maybe one final question, and we'll go ahead and wrap up.
But I have a feeling I know what you're going to say.
But I think of whether this is legend or true, maybe you can confirm.
But I think of stories of George Whitefield going all the way up the coast, preaching conviction, preaching judgment, preaching condemnation, and then coming back down and preaching grace.
Or I think of, you know, sinners in the hands of an angry God with Edwards.
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.
Yeah.
You know, and now in our gospel centered everything, you know, world, the church that we live in, obviously all the scripture speaks to Christ.
And Christ is in every text.
I think it was Spurgeon who said maybe not every verse, but every chapter, you know.
But Christ can be found in every text and Christ should be preached.
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.
But we've got to quickly, so quickly, alleviate the congregation, the hearers, so quickly get to Christ.
And of course, we want to get there.
I guess my question is just is it permissible?
Do you have to get to Christ right away?
And is it permissible to preach about the humiliation of sin for a sermon?
And leave the people under that weight.
Yeah, you let your text be your guide, right, Joel?
So the point is are you thoroughly preaching your text?
So if you're preaching through Ephesians, for example, and you get to Ephesians 2, Ephesians 1, you're going to be preaching just a lot of gospel.
Ephesians 2, at the beginning, you're going to be preaching about what natural man is.
Or think of Romans 3.
If a preacher just takes Romans 3, 1 through 20 in one sermon and then spends five sermons on the rest of Romans 3, which is all gospel, yeah, you've got an imbalanced preacher.
Romans 3, 1 through 19 needs to be preached solemnly and thoroughly, just as Romans 3, 20 through the end of the chapter needs to be preached solemnly and thoroughly.
So, for example, Romans 3 19, Jotham Edwards has a whole sermon on every mouth shall be stopped and all men shall become guilty before God.
A whole sermon on that.
Now, there's a few paragraphs at the end about deliverance in Christ and directing the smitten conscience to Jesus.
But there's only a few paragraphs there because really there's nothing in the text there about that.
But then, if the text is on heaven, for example, Edwards will have the whole sermon on heaven, and then maybe he'll spend the last one or two paragraphs warning those who are not prepared for it about the dangers.
So, the Puritans were so biblical that they would preach the text to the full in every situation.
And if they weren't preaching straight through a Bible, they did variety.
They didn't do strictly what's today called expository preaching, they did do quite a bit of that.
But at times, they would just pick some of the isolated texts in the Bible.
What they called the grand texts of the Bible.
But then they would be careful to pick texts from different areas of Christian experience so that their preaching over a period of time was balanced.
And a lot of preachers did not have the problem.
Probably the most of the Puritan preachers did not have the problem of preaching 35 sermons on one subject.
So that's only a few.
Many Puritans had a really good balance that would be accepted today in terms of preaching.
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 with the balance that Scripture has?
I want to be thoroughly scriptural in my preaching.
And that does not seem to me, in my assessment, that does not seem to be the primary concern of many preachers today.
Even in some of the better churches, it seems like the primary concern is did I get to the gospel?
Did I get to Christ?
And obviously that's important, but I think there's a way of missing Christ in the text, but there's also a way of preaching Christ at the expense of the text.
And I've noticed that if you're not careful, Basically, it creates where every single one of your sermons is the same.
You take a new text each week, you take five to 15 minutes to springboard off of that text into your same gospel proclamation with maybe a few slight tweaks.
And the people will say, for years, what a wonderful gospel centered, Christ centered church.
But they're actually not getting the whole counsel of God.
You speak to them about the law of God.
And they're lacking in those areas.
And so I think there's a way of being Christ centered that's not actually biblical.
Right.
I know that sounds funny, but I think it's possible.
I grew up with the opposite, Joel.
I grew up where the typical sermon was 60 minutes long, and the first 55 minutes was usually about man's depravity, man's sinfulness, and very little gospel.
And that's the danger of a certain brand of sometimes called hyper Calvinism.
Then you've got the opposite extreme, which you're describing.
And the balance is obviously in between those two, where I like to put it this way in the form of, we adhere to the Heidelberg Catechism as one of our doctrinal standards misery, deliverance, gratitude.
We don't preach 50% misery, we preach 100% misery.
Man is totally needy.
We don't preach 50% deliverance.
We preach 100% deliverance in Christ.
We don't preach 50% gratitude and sanctification.
We preach 100%.
Our entire lives are called to be a living sacrifice to Him.
So it's 100, 100, 100.
Growing Through Judicious Scripture Reading00:02:51
And we bring that through a judicious selection of texts to preach on.
And that really feeds the flock with the whole counsel of God and gives them a great variety too.
It does help your.
Sermons from becoming the same, the same kind of sameness running through them when you just preach the scriptures.
Yeah, I agree.
Well, are there any final words that you'd like to leave us with?
Yeah, I'd like to say this I would like to encourage your listener to start reading the Puritans, and we are the leading Puritan publisher in the world today, and we're doing 12 Puritan titles a year.
We do 40 titles a year, so 28 of them are not Puritans.
So we do all kinds of things.
But I would advise them to start by reading a few books from what we call the Puritan Treasures for Today.
These are 100 to 150 page Puritan books that we've edited every single sentence so it reads like it was written today.
Very easy for people to get into the Puritans this way.
Like William Greenhill's Stop Loving the World or John Flavel's Triumphing Over Sinful Fear, which is a great book, by the way.
HeritageBooks.org, heritagebooksoneword.org.
You can check them out.
There's about 15 of them now.
There'll be a lot more a few years from now.
Because they're really taking off.
Puritan treasures for today, they're called.
You'll find those extremely easy to read.
And then from there, graduate yourself to reading Thomas Watson, I would say, first of all.
Short sentences Watson has, full of weighty substance, quite easy to read.
And then move on to John Fable, John Bunyan.
And then from there, work your way up to Thomas Goodwin and John Owen.
Full of substance, but more challenging for the beginning Puritan reader.
To read.
And if you really take the time, I would advise you also to look up all the texts when you read the Puritans because they're so biblical, you'll feel like you're just being advanced greatly in your head knowledge of what the scriptures are saying, not only, but also in heart knowledge.
And I believe I've seldom met someone who really got into reading the Puritans who wouldn't say, I've grown like I've never grown before.
Just in so many ways.
The Puritans are just so much better than so much of the fluff out of the market today.
Well, thank you, Dr. Beakey, for coming on the show.
Why Readers Love the Puritans00:00:54
And I'm sure our listeners will be blessed.
Is there any way that they can keep up with you and follow you?
I guess Reformation is probably the chief way that they can follow.
Yeah.
And I have a blog, Joel Beakey.
And then I've got Facebook, and so yeah, I've got it in Twitter.
You can get me on those.
Great.
Well, thanks for coming on the show.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
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If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God, This would be a great resource.
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