At the outset, I would like to bring
a few words of introduction, which will be
rather biographical in nature that I think will
help in lending some background to the paper,
and then we'll consider a definition of our
terms, Puritan evangelism, what do we mean by
those terms, and then a few of the
sources from which I have drawn the paper,
and this is why it will be necessary
to do a good bit of reading, because
I have a number of quotes in the
paper, and I haven't been blessed with a
photographic memory that can just take whole paragraphs
and memorize them and then give them, as
though they were extemporaneous.
And then we want to come to the
core of the paper, which is what I
am calling the distinctives of Puritan evangelism, those
areas in which the evangelism of the Puritans
was marked in great contrast to the evangelism
of our day.
I am not touching the areas where there
might be basic agreements, such as the free
offer of the gospel, the truth that salvation
is to be found only in the merits
of Jesus Christ.
Some of these areas where the evangelism of
our day has been more or less adequate,
but I will be speaking of the distinctives
of Puritan evangelism in seeking to touch upon
those aspects of their evangelism which have well
-nigh been lost in the evangelism of the
twentieth century.
And to cover that, we will look at
the message, its content, and then the methods
used to communicate it, some of the means
by which those methods were employed, and then
if we have time, something of the mood
or the climate of Puritan evangelism.
By way of introduction, I would like to
say at the outset of our consideration of
this important theme that I beg your permission
to give this biographical introduction.
God thrust me out in His sovereignty into
an itinerant ministry back, oh, about ten years
ago, and I had nothing to do but
to preach night after night, to pray and
read the Bible.
And at that time there came to my
own heart a deep sense of holy fear
in the light of 1 Corinthians chapter 3,
I believe it's verse 13, where the Apostle
Paul said, For the day shall try every
man's work, not of what size it is,
but of what sort it is.
When I stood before my Lord, it would
not be primarily the quantity of my labors,
but the quality.
And with that holy fear before me, I
began to ask God, What is it that
I am authorized to preach?
For the Lord gave me enough sense to
realize it's rather an impudent thing to pray,
Oh God, bless that which I am preaching,
if I'm not preaching that which He's authorized
me to preach.
To pray, God, bless the means that I'm
employing, if He has nowhere authorized those means.
And so this drove me to an intense
study of those aspects of biblical revelation, which
touched particularly upon the evangel, the message we
are to proclaim, and the means by which
we are to proclaim it.
And as I studied it, I saw some
glaring inconsistencies in the modern methodology and the
modern message.
I saw very little justification in the Bible
for the means that were employed, which were
more often psychological than scriptural.
But realizing that many a heretic started out
by saying, Back to the Bible alone and
the son of my fair head, I was
scared to come to any finalized conclusions unless
I had some confirming voice from that great
stream of historic Christianity, and began to pray.
I had nobody to guide me in my
reading or my literature.
Most of the pastors where I ministered were
very negative to me.
And the Lord in His providence put a
book like Baxter's Call to the Unconverted into
my hands.
But I began to read, and there came
that witness at the mouth of two or
three witnesses, every word shall be confirmed, that
these were not some strange concepts that no
one else had ever seen in the Bible,
but that they were in the mainstream of
historic Christianity.
And so long before I came to a
commitment of the basic God-centered approach to
all truth as expressed in Reformed theology, I
found much help in these authors whom I
have named to you.
In the light of these things, it's obvious
that I'll not be able to handle this
subject with that dispassionate objectivity that seems to
be a status symbol in evangelical circles today.
I can't deal with this thing dispassionately.
One cannot handle aspects of truth which he's
convinced have eternal implications, which bear directly upon
the honor and glory of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and do so in such a way
as to give the impression that there's really
not much at stake if you take a
divergent view.
I'll not be able to consider the subject
in such a way as to leave it
unrelated to the present hour in which we
live and in which we minister.
Now please get this next statement.
I feel it's the crux of the whole
paper.
To the extent that the Puritans captured biblical
principles of evangelism and then worked them out
in the flesh and blood of actual experience
in the context of their generation, to that
extent, we are obligated to discover those same
biblical principles and embody them in the flesh
and blood of the twentieth century ministry.
I have no desire to either begin or
perpetrate a cult of antiquity worship, none whatsoever,
but I'm greatly concerned that we capture the
biblical principles embodied in the evangelism of the
Puritans.
And where some of these things touch us
at sore spots, I make no apologies for
I'm greatly disturbed by men who seem to
delight in building sepulchers to the Puritan prophets,
but who will not embody their concepts at
the price of radically overhauling their own message
and methodology in the field of evangelism.
And the proof of your theology is in
your methodology.
A man can sit and talk to me
all day that he believes this, this, and
this, but I want to watch him work,
and then he tells me what he believes.
So that, by way of sort of a
biographical background, now a definition of terms.
What do we mean by Puritan evangelism, or
what do I mean tonight?
The word Puritan, I am not limiting our
study to those who were cut off from
the stated ministry of the Church of England
by the Act of Uniformity in 1662, but
all those who preceded that band of worthies,
and all those who followed them and who
drank of the same wells of biblical and
experimental Christianity, that kind of Christianity that was
characterized by three things.
Doctrinally, it was a broad and a vigorous
Calvinism.
Experimentally, it was a warm and contagious devotional
kind of Christianity.
And in evangelism, it was tender, aggressive, and
impassioned.
And so in the term Puritan, I'm using
it in that broad sense.
By evangelism, I'm using the term in this
sense, speaking of that distinct proclamation of the
evangel, the counsel of God concerning the salvation
of men from sin and its consequences.
To use the definition which Packer sets forth
in his book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of
God, evangelism is, quote, a work of communication
in which the Christian makes himself a mouthpiece
of God's message of mercy to sinners.
So we're speaking of that message of mercy
to sinners as embodied or as set forth
by these Puritans, using the term Puritan in
its broad sense.
Now, from what sources have we drawn these
observations?
In general, much of that which will follow
in the paper is drawn from the climate
of the Puritan expository works where an impassioned
proclamation of the gospel and an earnest entreaty
to sinners are woven into the warp and
woof of the regular expository ministry of the
Word of God.
Anyone who reads the Puritan commentators will be
constantly exposed to these concepts and will be
aware of their constant reoccurrence like the pronounced
motif in a work of art or music.
When one is reading a weighty treatise like
Manton's treatise on sin called Man's Guiltiness Before
God or William Gernald's The Christian in Complete
Armor, as you read through, you find these
continual strains of an impassioned evangel occurring again
and again.
But now specifically, the works from which I'll
be quoting to a great extent tonight are
these, Eileen's Alarm to the Unconverted, the book
that was graciously given to us by the
host church and one which, in my own
opinion, is the clearest, most biblical treatise ever
written on the subject of conversion.
We have spent an entire Sunday school year
going through this, exegeting it in our college
class, and what a blessing it's been, looking
up every passage of scripture and where a
principle is touched upon, taking off and sometimes
spending the whole class session on it.
Many quotes from Eileen.
Secondly, some quotes from Philip Dobridge's famous work,
The Rise and Progress, a great work of
the nonconformist minister of the 1700s, and then
Baxter's Call to the Unconverted and his book,
The Reformed Pastor, and then several works of
Jonathan Edwards, his sermon, Sinners in the Hands
of an Angry God, his classic work on
the religious affections, and then an article by
J.I. Packer on Puritan evangelism.
I'm so glad this didn't get into my
hands until after I had initially prepared the
paper because I would have been discouraged, I
think, in trying to have some originality, and
I got hold of this after I'd originally
prepared it and so have added some to
the original paper from this book of Packer's.
Now we move to the heart of our
study tonight.
What were the distinctives of Puritan evangelism?
First of all, will you consider with me
the distinctives of their message in its content?
Now, in a general sense, three things marked
the evangelism, content-wise, of the Puritans.
First of all, it was eminently a scriptural
evangelism.
It is not unusual to find five, ten,
or sometimes as many as fifteen distinct phrases
in the actual language of the English Bible
on any given page of Puritan evangelistic literature.
When reading the evangelistic sermons of our contemporaries,
one is often disturbed by the fact that
the message contains more indications of an acquaintance
with Sartre and Freud and Tillich than a
heart acquaintance with Moses, Paul, and John.
Though the Puritans, for the most part, were
certainly learned men and had a broad base
of classical learning beneath them, they were men
who were absolutely convinced that people are born
again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible
by the word of God which liveth and
abideth forever, and that the Holy Ghost, though
he works sovereignly, but he uses the truth
as his instrumentality.
It's obvious that their thought patterns were steeped
in the exact phraseology of the English Bible.
One is amazed how in one sentence there
may be a phrase from some obtuse section
of Obadiah and then a familiar phrase from
John, all woven into the very thought patterns
of these men.
And I believe there's no explanation for it
but that these men primarily studied their Bibles
devotionally and on their knees the Holy Ghost
burned the very words of Scripture into their
hearts, that when they took up pen to
write there was something that the Spirit of
God could bring to the conscious remembrance and
out flowed Bible passage after Bible passage.
Ah, the wind took my paper.
All right, thank you, Walt.
That's why I said I better stick with
my paper.
The wind's going to blow it away when
I leave it and go to other things.
Secondly, it was not only eminently scriptural, but
it was doctrinal.
They were not afraid to let their slip
show when they preached the evangel.
They were not out here ringing five bells
when they preached the gospel, but their slip
showed.
Setting forth Christ, they set him forth with
a theological articulation and distinguished things that differed.
When they dealt with sin, you knew what
they meant.
They talked either as sin, as moral rebellion
against God bringing upon me legal guilt, or
they talked about sin as that inherent depravity
of nature which made me unfit for a
heaven that was light and a God who
is pure and of infinite holiness.
And when they were done talking about sin,
you knew what they meant.
When they dealt with the atonement, even in
the practical work like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, doctrine
is dealt with even when he talks about
chickens.
In the House of Interpreters, clucking of the
hen, she has two kinds of clucks.
There's the general cluck four kinds, but the
two I'm thinking of tonight.
Thank you, Mr. Reisinger.
I'd better be straight on Bunyan.
I have his paper insane here tonight.
But he makes the distinction between that cluck
that she's doing all the time and no
chickens come running, and then that special cluck
that brings her little ones under her wings,
the general call of the gospel, that effectual
call to his elect.
Doctrinal principles woven into the warp and woof
of the evangelist.
And then thirdly, it was symmetrical.
There is a beautiful symmetry in the whole
counsel of God, and so in Puritan evangelism,
one finds indications of this symmetry.
One of the glaring faults of modern evangelism
is its lopsidedness.
It's a caricature of the true evangelist.
Its proclamation of God's grace is in such
a way as to make it cheap grace.
Its holding forth of the simplicity of the
gospel is such that it makes it contemptible.
This you will never find in the Puritan
proclamation of the gospel.
Where in modern evangelism do you ever read
a message on Luke 13, is it?
Strive to enter in at the narrow gate.
When the Puritan came to a text like
that, he let it say what it meant.
That true salvation in conversion is a difficult
and a rare thing.
And yet when you come to a glorious
text, he that believeth on the Son hath
life, they let it speak in all of
its freeness and all of its gospel glory.
There is that beautiful symmetry in the proclamation
of the gospel.
Let me read this very clear comment by
J.
I.
Packer on this subject.
Thomas Manton said these words, The sum of
the gospel is this, that all who by
true repentance and faith do forsake the flesh,
the world, and the devil, and give themselves
up to God the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit as their Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, shall
find God as a Father, taking them for
his reconciled children, and for Christ's sake pardoning
their sin, and by his Spirit giving them
his grace, and if they persevere in discourse,
will finally glorify them and bestow upon them
everlasting happiness, but will condemn the unbelievers, impenitent
and ungodly, to everlasting punishment.
This is the sum of the gospel.
Quite different from trust Jesus to take you
to heaven when you die.
Isn't it?
The beautiful symmetry.
The sum of the gospel is this.
Repentance, faith, being returned to God, Father, Son,
and Spirit, justified, sanctified, and glorified at the
end of a perseverance.
That's the gospel.
A beautiful symmetry in their presentation.
Now specifically, what are the distinctives of Puritan
evangelism?
In a general sense, eminently scriptural, doctrinal, symmetrical,
but now in what specific areas do we
find their evangelism different from the evangelism of
our day?
John mentioned this morning that after you've painted
the horse, or drawn the horse, you draw
a cow, and you say, horse is not
cow.
Well, tonight I want to say, horse is
not cow.
I think this will be the best way
for us to bring out in clarity the
distinctives of Puritan evangelism.
First of all, their evangelism had as its
basis a vigorous biblical theism.
The foundation of their evangelism was the proclamation,
the setting forth of biblical theism, a proper
doctrine of God.
I think the contrast can be best stated
by saying this.
Modern evangelism says that the most important verse
in the Bible is John 3.16, God
so loved the world.
A Puritan would say, no, the most important
verse of the Bible is Genesis 1.1,
in the beginning, God.
And anything that happens from there on is
going to be doing to ends that he
has designed for his own glory.
And so they didn't assume that people knew
who the God of John 3.16 was.
They knew that the concept of atonement, of
reconciliation, of forgiveness, of justification, have absolutely no
biblical meaning, apart from some basic understanding of
the God of the Bible who does affect
the reconciliation and who does draw sinners to
himself.
And so they would use as the basis
of their evangelism a biblical theism.
You see this in Ilion, where he comes
to that chapter on the miseries of the
unconverted, and he expounds how every attribute of
God is against the sinner in his unrepentant
state, his holiness, his faithfulness, his justice, his
purity, until the sinner is prepared, as the
Spirit of God takes that truth and makes
it real to him, to receive as good
news the fact that that God, whose attributes
burn against him in righteous indignation, has provided
a way of mercy and escape in his
Son Jesus Christ the Lord.
Secondly, they were not fearful to use the
law of God as an instrument of evangelism.
Now William Guthrie, who would not be classified
as a Puritan, but whose work, the Christian
saving interest, is certainly in the stream of
Puritan thought, says, as some of you may
be aware, that God calls sinners four ways.
Some he calls in a sovereign gospel way.
Saul of Tarsus, breathing out threatenings and slaughters
against the Church on his way to Damascus,
and God says, it's time for my eternal
purpose and the salvation of this rebel to
be realized, and so he speaks out of
heaven a verse, and when Paul writes about
it later, he says, when it please God,
that's the word of time, when it please
God, to reveal his Son in me, that
salvation, when it please God, a sovereign gospel
way.
Zacchaeus, a good illustration of it.
Some God calls from the womb.
John the Baptist, filled with the Spirit from
his mother's womb.
Some God calls in the hour of death.
The thief on the cross, as Bishop Ryle
says, there is one account in the Bible
of a deathbed repentance.
One that none may despair.
Only one that none may presume.
Only one.
But there is one.
But there's a fourth way that God calls
sinners, and this is his more ordinary way,
and it's by a prior law work.
Now some of the Puritans were divided on
this.
Some went into an unbiblical extreme, and people
began to feel that unless you had 35
pounds of conviction and 23 buckets of tears,
and wept for 13 months, you couldn't come
to Christ.
You had no warrant to come.
But there are other Puritans, and certainly Ilion
is one of them, and Baxter would be
another, who did not at all fall into
that error, and yet they still had a
proper use of the law.
They regarded the law in its killing, slaying
work as a necessary prerequisite to the right
proclamation and application of the gospel.
For example, Doddridge says, after setting the stage
by announcing the pattern and goal of his
book, quote, as I am attempting to lead
you to true religion, and not merely to
some superficial form of it, I am sensible
I can do it no otherwise than in
the way of deep humiliation.
He didn't say, if you'll just admit you're
a sinner, now we're ready to move on.
No, he said, if you're going to have
the real thing, it's got to start on
the base note.
One dear servant of God says, when God's
about to play the chord of grace in
the heart of a sinner, he starts with
the base note.
Isn't that the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the want, poor and spirit.
That's where God starts his work of grace,
and this is what Doddridge is saying.
Therefore, still quoting, supposing you are persuaded through
the divine blessing on what you before read
to take it into consideration, I would now
endeavor in the first place with all seriousness
that I can to make you heartily sensible
of your guilt before God.
Now, see the difference?
He does not say, I want you to
get, get you to admit that you're guilty.
He said, I want to make you heartily
sensible of your guilt.
There's all the difference in the world.
Heartily sensible of your guilt.
For I well know, still quoting, that unless
you're convinced of this and affected with this
conviction, all the provisions of gospel grace will
be slighted and your soul infallibly destroyed in
the midst of the noblest means of, end
of quote.
Thus using the law, they sought to show
men that God stands as an angry judge
and his wrath burns toward the sinner.
His claims and throne rights have been denied,
his laws spurned.
Listen to Joseph Ilian as he declares to
his hearers that God is against them while
they still abide in their sins.
Quote, sinner, I think this should go like
a dagger to your heart to know that
God is your enemy.
Oh, where will you go?
Where will you show to yourself?
There's no hope for you unless you lay
down your weapons and sue out your pardon
and get Christ to stand as your friend
and to make your peace.
End of quote.
He then proceeds to show that the face
of God is against the sinner.
The heart of God is against him and
all his attributes are against him while he
remains impenitent.
We find a similar concept set forth in
Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands
of an Angry God.
I'll not read it, I had a rather
large quote, but it's along this same line
and expresses the same sentiment.
In their use of the law, the Puritans
sought to bring men to the realization that
their problem was a twofold problem.
That of a bad record, a legal problem,
and that of a bad heart, a moral
problem, both of which made them unfit for
the presence of God.
By the one they sought to bring men
into a sense of their condemnation, a bad
record, and by the other to a place
of despair in the light of their depravity,
a bad heart.
You see, in our day, the gospel has
been proclaimed in such a way that men
have been made aware only that they've got
a little legal problem.
They've got a few check marks up in
heaven, they've done some bad things.
But the Puritans realized Jesus Christ is a
Savior not only from what I've done, but
from what I am.
And just as no sinner will lay hold
of the righteousness of Christ for what he
has done that is wrong, until he sees,
not the labors of my hands can fulfill
thy laws demands, so no sinner will lay
hold of an omnipotent Christ to change him
in terms of what he is, until he
can say foul.
And Christ is a Savior from both.
And the reason we've had this division of
justification and sanctification, and the root, the theological
root of the whole deeper life movement, for
having only presented man in his legal...
We've got to somehow fix up this guy
who says he's got his legal problems solved,
but who's obvious.
So we've had to concoct everything from, well,
you know all the names for it, to
somehow get the gospel to the man in
terms of what he is.
Puritans didn't have that problem.
I read something that was interesting about Charles
Spurgeon, who saw the genesis of that which
is called, and I don't say this with
any disparaging remarks to many of the dear
men who are propagating that system of thought,
many men of God whose shoes I'm not
worthy to shine, but so you know what
I'm talking about, I must use the term.
He saw the beginnings of the holiness movement,
Keswick concept, and he'd never speak at any
holiness convention.
You know why he wouldn't?
He said, the gospel I preach secures not
only the justification, but the sanctification of sinners.
Got it?
He drank of those wells, and it was
the proper use of the law that lay
at the foundation of this, for the law
reveals not only the bad record, but the
bad heart.
For after Paul says he was slain by
that law, he said, here full of sin
in me dwelleth no good thing.
And Christ is an objective and a subjective
Savior.
Well, I must hurry on to the second
or third area.
A strong theism was the foundation of their
gospel, a right use of the law was
one of the first stones, or one of
the first beams in the superstructure, and then
thirdly, their evangelism was marked by a discriminating
application of truth.
A discriminating application of truth.
One cannot read long in Puritan literature without
being struck with the keenness with which they
searched out the differences in their hearers and
sought to apply the truth to them in
their specific categories.
In an excellent article by A.T. Atkinson,
we have set before us the three main
areas in which this discrimination is evidenced and
needs to be set forth in our ministries.
One, the difference between the church and the
world.
Two, the difference between true and professing believers.
Three, the difference between the different stages of
spiritual growth.
The difference between the church and the world,
true and false believers, and the different stages
of spiritual growth.
This principle is seen very clearly in the
Alarm to the Unconverted by Eilean, in which
he actually starts his treatise by clearing away
mistakes about conversion and clearly stating what conversion
is not.
He starts out, conversion is not, taking the
badge of Christ in baptism, outward adherence to
the form of religion, he has about seven
or eight things religion is not.
Then when he comes to the marks of
an unconverted man, he says there are ten
marks that some people carry in their foreheads,
and so he deals with them.
The unclean, the profane, the willfully ignorant, ten
marks, obvious marks of an unregenerate man.
They said, ah, but a number of you
have escaped me.
Now let me go to twelve marks that
are hidden in the heart.
And then he proceeds to lay out twelve
categories of unbelievers, and when he's done with
his twenty, you fall on your face and
you say, oh God, are there but a
few that be saved.
Why did he do this?
Because he realized he had all twenty-two
classes before him if he had probably more
than fifty or sixty people.
And so he was concerned as a wise
surgeon or as an able doctor that he
would prescribe the right medicine for the right
malady, and they were discriminating in their application
of truth.
Perhaps there's no treatise that is filled with
this from beginning to end like Pilgrim's Progress.
How discriminating is that account of talkative.
My, you listen to talkative talk about the
free grace of God and imputed righteousness, and
you say that fellow's got it straight.
The Holy Ghost has really taught him.
And you remember Faithful, he got quite enamored
with this guy.
Christian didn't share his joy.
So he came and said, what's the matter,
you a killjoy?
Now I'm making bunion twentieth century now.
Are you a killjoy?
What's the matter?
Well, he said, why don't you talk to
him about the power of things?
And so he begins to.
Oh, and he can still mouth it until
Faithful begins to be what?
Discriminating in his application of truth, and it
isn't long before talkative says, I've had enough
of these boys, let them go on, I
can't take this anymore.
Ignorant.
What a picture of multitudes in our day.
When they begin to ask him, how do
you know you're saved?
He said, well, I know I must be
because my heart tells me I am.
But upon what basis does your heart tell
you that it is?
Because my heart tells me that it is.
In other words, I must be saved.
Utterly ignorant.
The grounds of assurance is not to be
found by seeing if I get 13 watts
of deuce, but by holding up the standard
of that book, which describes what a Christian
is, and being as honest and objective as
I'll have to be in the day of
judgment saying, oh God, am I what your
book says a Christian is?
And that's the truth that in keen, incisive,
discriminating application Bunyan is getting across with ignorance.
Mr. Byhams, you're familiar with him, I'm sure.
One of Jonathan Edwards' greatest works, some consider
it his greatest, that of the Religious Affections.
Its basic premise is this, to distinguish between
a true and the false conversion.
Edwards' sermon, hypocrites deficient in the duty of
secret prayer.
John Thornberry had some mimeographed copies of that
and I got it when I was with
him some years ago down in Kentucky.
And after reading that sermon, so discriminating.
He speaks of this principle, that a true
Christian, one who's had a real sight of
his uncleanness and his spiritual bankruptcy, even after
he knows his sins are pardoned, has much
ground to continually come to God because he
knows he's weak.
His heart is a tinderbox of iniquity and
the world is full of sparks.
And he comes to God again and again
praying that the sparks will not fell down
in the flames of passion and rebellion against
God.
Has plenty of need to continually come to
the throne of grace.
But the hypocrite, the only need he's ever
been aware of is he knows he's going
to die and his conscience tells him he
might meet his sins.
So his only need is, I gotta get
a sense of forgiveness.
And once he gets that, having never discovered
the corruption of his heart, he has no
sense of need to pray.
So what happens?
The hypocrite is deficient in the duty of
secret prayer until he hears a sermon that
a Christian's a praying man.
Then he prays enough to ease his conscience
and then he doesn't pray anymore.
Well, I tell you, after you read a
discriminating sermon like that, you go down on
your face and say, Lord, is it I?
Is it I?
Now at this point, it might be well
to give a word of warning for no
doubt some of the Puritans went too far
in making fine distinctions which troubled the consciences
of the sensitive and were totally unheeded by
the indifferent.
But if they went too far in this
direction, God knows we've fallen so far short.
I don't know who made the comment, but
after reading one of the old Puritan works,
someone said, oh, that I could be but
one of so-and-so's hypocrites.
You get it?
They've been describing, you can do this and
do this and do this and do this
and do this and this and this.
And that's the extreme.
But there certainly is in the Word of
God a discriminating application for when Ilion goes
to make his discriminating applications, it's chapter and
verse, chapter and verse, chapter and verse.
Fourth area in which Puritan evangelism had a
distinctive so little known in our day is
that they preached the whole Christ to the
whole man.
The concept of Christ being offered as prophet,
priest, and king had apparently worked its way
into the warp and woof of the thinking
of the men of that age before it
became embalmed in printer's ink through the efforts
of the Westminster divines.
Therefore, we see no attempts in Puritan evangelism
to offer Christ as a savior from the
penalty of sin while deliberately ignoring his claims
as a sovereign and a lord and his
demands that we forsake the love and the
practice.
The following statement by Ilion is a classic
in this regard.
Quote, all of Christ is accepted by the
sincere convert.
He loves not only the wages but the
work of Christ, not only the benefits but
the burden of Christ.
He's not only willing to tread out the
corn but to draw under the yoke.
He takes up the commands of Christ, yes,
the cross of Christ.
Now notice, written back in the early 1600s,
the unsound convert takes Christ by halves.
He is for the privileges but does not
appropriate the person of Christ.
He divides the offices and benefits of Christ.
This is an error in the foundation.
Whoever loves life, let him beware here, for
this is an undoing mistake of which men
are often warned.
Now listen, and yet none is more common.
Did you think the dividing of the offices
and the benefits of Christ was a 20th
-century concoction?
No.
It's the concoction of the rebel heart of
man, and the expression of it may be
different in each age, but Eilean said none
was more common in his day.
Jesus is a sweet name, but men do
not love the Lord Jesus in sincerity.
They'll not have him as God offers him,
a prince and a savior.
They divide what God has joined, the king
and the priest, whereas the sound convert takes
a whole Christ and takes him for all
intents and purposes without exceptions, without limitations, without
reserve, for he's willing to have Christ upon
any terms, willing to have the dominion of
Christ as well as the deliverance by Christ.
He says with Paul, Lord, what wilt thou
have me to do?
In reading the covenants, which Puritan evangelists encourage
their hearers to use in closing with Christ,
one is struck again with this note of
presenting the Christ to the whole man.
As an example, in Doddridge's famous work, we
find the following words, quote, he puts a
covenant on paper for the sinner to make
with God, but my heart now bows itself
before thee in humble, unfeigned submission.
I desire to make no terms with thee,
but that I may be entirely thine.
Brother Barnard said today, he died to get
me, me.
I cheerfully present thee with a blank, entreating
thee that thou wouldst do me the honor
to signify upon me what is thy pleasure.
Teach me, O Lord, what you'd have me
to do, for I desire to learn the
lesson and to learn it that I may
practice it.
End of quote.
Again, hear the words which Ilion puts into
the mouth of the seeking sinner, quote, therefore
I bow my soul unto thee and with
all possible thankfulness accept thee as mine and
give myself up to thee as thine.
Thou shalt be sovereign over me, my king
and my God.
Thou shalt be on the throne and all
my powers shall bow to thee and shall
come and worship before thy feet.
Thou shalt be my portion, O Lord, and
I will rest in thee.
I fly to thy merits.
I trust alone to the virtue and value
of thy sacrifice and prevalence of thy intercession.
I submit to thy teaching.
I make choice of thy government.
Other quotes I have but will pass over
them in the same sentiment.
Of the anemic, bloodless expression, take Jesus as
your personal savior.
These are mighty forefathers who knew nothing.
Of a gospel that merely got men out
from underneath the dangers of everlasting hell, leaving
them an option as to whether or not
they would bow to their sovereign at some
subsequent date, these are spirit-taught fathers who
knew absolutely nothing.
Now in the fifth place, another distinction was
their clarion call to repentance.
Now when I use the term clarion call,
I'm not using it for semantic embellishment.
I'm using it purposely.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, if
the trumpets sound an uncertain note, how should
they prepare themselves to battle?
You want to get the picture?
Here's some fellow that's in his tent out
on the battlefield.
It's about time for breakfast, and the bugler
goes out, and he starts to toot something.
So he perks his ears up, and he
can't figure out the tune.
Is that mess call, or is that call
to arms?
So he nudges his buddy, and he says,
hey, what's that guy playing?
And he can't distinguish the tune.
He doesn't know to put his helmet on
and get his rifle.
Well, the trumpet's sounding, making a lot of
noise, but it's not sounding a certain note.
And Paul says, if it doesn't sound a
certain note, how are people going to rise
up to arms?
I'm convinced with all my heart that this
is what God wants to do in our
own generation, and to do it in the
order that he's been pleased in these days,
and I can't tell what it's meant to
me personally.
To convince us that we need a heart
that burns with love for sinners, eyes that
are filled and spilled down with tears for
sinners.
Oh, dear ones, unless that is geared to
a clarion call of the truth upon which
God has put his shield to save sinners,
it will be abortive.
Just as preaching that God-owned message without
a God-broken heart will be abortive, so
to have the tearful heart without the God
-owned message will fall short of that which
God would do for his glory.
And in this area of repentance, the Puritan
sounded a clear note.
I try to take my five-year-old
son with me whenever possible.
Sometimes when I go to the hospitals, I
put him in the car, and he even
likes to listen to John Bunyan on the
little recorder, too.
He says, Daddy, turn on Pilgrim's Progress.
And as we're traveling around, sometimes we learn
hymns together, and I was trying to teach
him the hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every
Blessing.
Well, a few days before I started working
on this with him, or sometime during the
period in which I was trying to teach
him that hymn, I had the radio on,
and there's a Christian FM station in our
area, and there was an arrangement of Come
Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and it was
a piano arrangement, and with an orchestral background.
And I knew that it was Come Thou
Fount of Every Blessing only because my ear
was keen to pick out the tune amidst
all the orchestral embellishments, you know, sort of,
da-dum-dee-da-dum, da-dee-da
-dee-dee, da-da-da-dum, dee-dum
-dee-dum, da-da-da-da-dum.
And I could hear it there.
Once in a while I'd pick out the
note.
Now, when I got into the car with
my son, and I'm about to teach him
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, how did
I teach it to him?
Now, son, this is how you learn it.
Da-dum-da-da, da-da-da-da
-da.
No, no, I didn't do that.
I said, Son, this is the way we
sing it.
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.
Why?
Because you see, an ear that is sensitive
to a tune that is well learned can
pick it out.
But an ear that has no previous knowledge
will never learn it unless it comes through.
Dum-dum-dum, you see?
That's what Paul's saying.
If the trumpet doesn't sound a certain note,
it's not enough to have a little side
reference to repentance, not enough to have a
little reference and aside here and there to
the fact that it's turn or burn.
The admonition of our Lord in Luke 24,
47 was literally obeyed by the Puritans in
their evangelism.
Jesus Christ said that repentance among all the
nations, the example of St. Paul was assiduously
followed in Acts 20, 21, repentance toward God,
faith toward Christ.
Hear the call of Richard Baxter, quote, It
is not enough to mend the old house,
but pull down all and build new on
Christ the rock and sure foundation.
It's not to mend somewhat in a carnal
course of life, but to mortify the flesh
and live after the Spirit.
It's to change your master and your works
and end and set your face the contrary
way and do all for the life you
never saw and dedicate yourselves and all you
have to God.
This is the change that must be made
if you will live.
That's a certain note, a certain note.
So if you will be drunkards or fornicators
or worldlings or live after the flesh, you
may as well say plainly, we will be
damned or you shall be unless you turn.
There's no intimation that Baxter believed that the
question was not the sin question, but the
son question.
He clearly affirmed in these statements that no
man can settle the son question who's unwilling
to honestly face in the development of the
theme of conversion.
Ilion states that in true conversion, we turn
from sin, the devil, the world and our
own righteousness.
And again, we could set forth many quotes,
but why did they do this?
It's because again, their theology affected their message
here.
They believed Acts 531.
God has exalted Christ with his right hand
to be a prince and a savior to
do what?
To give repentance and remission.
They knew that one of the works of
the risen Christ and only the omnipotent Christ
can do it is to take the sinner
who loves his sin, who drinks iniquity like
water and
turn to God.
And the soft peddling of the biblical doctrine
of repentance in our day, I'm convinced that
tried to think this through and it's interrelationships
is inseparably united to a denial of the
truth that salvation is of God.
For if man contributes to it, you better
get demands that man can meet unaided by
the Holy Ghost.
You follow me?
Don't miss this.
If man contributes to that salvation, then you've
got to have a standard of demands and
terms that man can meet unaided by the
Holy Ghost.
And it's just plain good horse sense.
If all I need to do to get
to heaven is to nod to a few
propositions about a man on the cross 1900
years ago, so that when I die, I
go to be with him and I don't
burn, that's just plain good horse sense to
nod my head to those facts, isn't it?
Jesus said, the rich so hardly enter the
kingdom of heaven.
I've thought about it along these lines.
A man's usually rich because he knows how
to handle money and make money, right?
He's got a good business head.
Now, if salvation was simply nodding to some
facts in order to assure me that when
I die, and I know I've got to
die, I won't have to face the consequences
of my sin, why a rich man would
be the most likely to get saved because
he'd have the most keen sensitivity, that's just
a good business proposition.
Free insurance.
Even got tracts that tell you that's what
salvation is.
Isn't that right?
But Jesus said, the rich man will hardly
enter.
Why?
Because salvation involves not merely the nodding to
some facts, but the forsaking of lust, the
bowing of the heart to the sovereignty of
Jesus.
So they emphasize repentance, not with the embellishments
of an orchestral arrangement, but with the simplicity.
Turn or burn.
And then another area in which we see
the distinctives of Puritan evangelism is in their
concept of the magnitude of the work of
conversion.
The Puritans did not believe that true conversion
was ordinarily the work of a moment, ordinarily,
to be performed in an atmosphere of giddiness
and lightness by one whose mind had not
been brought to the place of deep sobriety
and serious thought concerning the great issues of
sin and eternity.
Listen to Baxter as he says, quote, oh
sirs, conversion is another kind of work than
most are aware of.
It's not a small matter to bring an
earthly mind to heaven and to show man
the amiable excellencies of God, to be taken
up in such love to him that can
never be quenched, to break the heart for
sin and make him flee for refuge to
Christ and thankfully embrace him as the life
of his soul, to have the very drift
and bent of his life changed and places
his happiness where he lives not to the
same end, drives not in the same design
in the world as he formerly did.
In a world, he that, in a word,
he that, that's no small thing.
And that's no small thing.
We find similar statements in Eilean's alarm.
The following is but one of many that
I could quote, quote, never think you can
convert yourself.
If you would ever be savingly converted, you
must despair of doing it in your own
strength.
It's a resurrection from the dead, a new
creation, a work of absolute omnipotence.
Are not these out of the reach of
human power?
If you have no more than you had
by your first birth, a good nature, a
meek and chaste temper, etc., you're a stranger
to true conversion.
This, when our Lord Jesus finished dealing with
a man, the disciples cried out in amazement,
what?
Isn't the plan of salvation simple?
Now then, what they said when he got
done dealing with a rich young ruler, what
did they say?
Threw their hands up and said, Lord, who
then can be saved?
And what was Jesus' answer?
Matthew 19, 25.
With men, this is impossible.
But with God, all things are possible.
Then one last thing concerning the distinctive.
They did not usurp the office of the
Holy Spirit.
One of the sad earmarks of modern evangelism,
and when I use the term, remember, I'm
not just talking about mass evangelism.
I'm talking about the proclaiming of the evangel
in our tracts, in our personal work ministry,
and in our classes on personal evangelism as
well as mass evangelism.
There is a continual attempt and an actual,
it seems, though I would not impute false
motives to this, some men probably do it
in ignorance, but it seems to be a
studied attempt to have everything so arranged that
if God the Holy Ghost didn't come within
a hundred miles, you still have something to
show when you're done.
Whereas the concept of Puritan evangelism and biblical
evangelism is this, whether it's when the saints
meet to worship or whether we proclaim the
message, if Almighty God doesn't do something, nothing
will happen.
That's what Paul meant when he said in
1 Corinthians 2, he said, when I came
unto you declaring the testimony of God, I
didn't come with enticing words of men's wisdom.
Why?
Listen to what he said.
He said, I did not want your faith
to rest in the wisdom of men, but
in the power of God.
That's why he said I came in what?
Weakness, fear, trembling, and I wasn't going to
garnish the cross with beautiful flowers and cover
its ragged, jagged splinters.
He said I was going to come with
a message and a method so offensive to
the natural heart that unless my God broke
out of heaven and opened so conscious
I was that unless God came from heaven,
all my past experience and the thousands of
sermons I've preached and all the things I've
seen didn't give me one bit of help.
I stood before you trembling.
Ah, dear ones, I believe the Puritans had
this in great measure.
You read Eileen, I can't quote, I haven't
even looked at the clock, probably shouldn't.
I'll get convicted that I've gone too long.
But you read Eileen at the outset of
this book, he says, Oh, God, what shall
I do?
The sinner is dead.
His ears are deaf.
His eyes are blind.
He's in the pool of sin.
And he said, Oh, God, choose my arrows
for me.
Lord, how can break through?
And he has an allusion there to the
creature there, the Leviathan in Job, who has
the hide so impregnable that no instrument can
pierce it.
But he said, Lord, how can pierce it
with the arrows of thy truth?
They didn't usurp the office of the Holy
Ghost, either in the proclamation, the method.
When it came time to apply the message
to an individual, they didn't use this cute
little syllogism.
You admit you're a sinner.
Yes.
Christ received sinners.
Yes, you've got it.
You don't feel a thing.
You don't know anything's happened.
But believe me, you've got it.
Didn't do it.
They shut men up to God till he
told them.
May I share something that has been one
of the most precious experiences I've had as
a father.
I was catechizing my son one evening, and
we had gotten to the question again.
What is a change of heart called?
He said, regeneration.
Who can change a sinner's heart?
And he answered the Holy Spirit alone.
He said, Daddy, he said, I want God
to give me a new heart.
I said, well, that's good, son.
He said, Daddy, if I pray to God,
will he give me one?
We went on the next question.
How can you obtain the help of the
Holy Spirit?
God has told us we must pray to
him.
He said, Daddy, I'm asking God to give
me a new heart.
And he said, Daddy, if I keep asking,
God will do it, won't he?
I said, yes, son, he's promised.
If you ask, you receive.
If you seek, you'll find.
And he said, Daddy, you can't tell me
when he's done it, but he'll tell me,
won't he?
I tell you, dear ones, that all I
do to keep from breaking down and weeping,
I said, oh God, whether he's just parroting
something I've told him or whether you've sent
a little glimmer of light, I don't know.
But what he said is more sound Bible
theology expressed in hundreds of evangelistic methods of
our day.
Beloved, I don't say these things cruelly, but
you've got to look.
I've got a little blood mixed with them.
Been privileged to be in meetings where the
Spirit of God has been pleased to come
and people have been under conviction, sometimes where
there's been visible evidence of tears and deep
concern.
I refuse to create any impression that any
overt act was to be identified with the
inward reality of the reception of grace.
So I wouldn't call them down an aisle
or to a room, but tell them to
seek God.
And if they had questions and needed help
to get more light to come and would
stay there till the break of day.
But if they had all the right they
had, I would know where to come under
God by him.
I've seen men of God write me off,
count me cruel.
And I've handed him my Bible and said,
my brother, when I stand before God, I'll
be judged on the basis of the message
and the method is found in this book.
Please show me chapter and verse, principle or
precept.
It hadn't been done yet.
This is why I'm prejudiced to my Puritan
trend.
For they encourage me to trust the Holy
Ghost, to do his work of conviction, of
illumination, of drawing to Christ and then of
assuring sinners when he's done the work.
Now, just quickly, what method of communication did
they use?
And here I would state that the matter
of method will differ in age to age,
according to gifts and style and the rest.
The man suggests three things that characterize the
method by which the Puritans communicated this gospel
that was doctrinal, symmetrical, scriptural.
One that had a strong theism as a
platform, used the law wisely, discriminatory in its
application of truth, sounded a clear note of
repentance, the whole Christ for the whole man,
didn't usurp the work of the Spirit.
How did they communicate it?
Three things I would suggest.
Their communication was, first of all, reasonable.
Secondly, it was affectionate or impassioned.
Then I thought I had a third.
Let me check my general outline here.
Now, those are just the two basic things
that I had.
When one reads the evangelism of the Puritans,
he's stuck with the fact that they're addressing
men as reasoning creatures.
They did not come to the unregenerate man
with a barrage of pressure directly upon his
will, but they are seeking to move the
man by way of his understanding.
As someone has pointed out in his comment
on Doddridge's classic, quote, Doddridge addresses the intellect
to shame his readers for their unreasonable neglect
of God.
By direct charge and natural analogy, he appeals
to the conscience to produce conviction of sin.
His use of such argument, however, does not
mean that like the rationalist of his day,
he's forgotten the limitation.
It is his contention that conscience is the
voice of God to the sinner, and we
continually meet with such phrases as, quote, I
put it into your conscience, and, quote, is
it so contrary to the plainest principles of
common reason?
You find this in Elyon's alarm.
He tries to show men the unreasonableness of
going on in an impenitent state.
The Puritans even dared to answer some of
the thorny questions relative to the doctrine of
election when they were proclaiming the evangelism.
Convinced as they were that every excuse should
be torn from the hand of the sinner
so that he stands inexcusable before God, it's
not surprising to find Elyon reasoning with the
sinner in the following manner, quote, you begin
at the wrong end if you dispute about
your election, prove your conversion, and then never
doubt your election.
If you cannot prove it, set upon a
present thorough turning.
Whatever God's purposes be, which are secret, I'm
sure his promises are plain.
How desperately do argue?
If I'm elected, I'll be saved.
Do what I will.
If not, I'll be damned.
Do what I can.
Perverse sinner, will you begin where you should
end?
Is not the word before you?
What does it say?
Repent and be converted that your sins may
be blotted out.
What can be plainer?
Do not stand still disputing about your election,
but set to repenting and believing.
Cry to God for converting grace.
Reveal things belong to you.
In these, busy yourself.
It is just as one has said, they
who will not feed on the plain food
of the word should be choked with the
bones.
Whatever God's purposes may be, I'm sure his
promises are true.
Whatever the decrees of heaven may be, I'm
sure that if I repent, there's not this
plain ground for you.
And will you yet run upon the rocks?
Isn't that beautiful?
Because they realized any mental barrier could stand
as a block between the soul and its
approach to Christ.
And so they reasoned with the sinner.
They did as one eminent servant of God
said we must do.
We must grow with the stick of divine
truth and beat every bush behind which a
sinner hides until we're God in his nakedness.
Why do we do that?
Because we're cruel?
No, because we know until he gets out
from behind that bush, he'll never cry to
be clothed in the righteousness.
So the Spirit has reasoned with them.
They addressed truth to the mind.
They did it by logical order.
They did it by specific naming of sins.
It's interesting after Hylian gets through the first
60 pages of his book and you say,
my, he's just clobbered all of us.
Then he says this when he starts chapter
four, while we keep aloof in general statements,
he's given those 10.
Yes, he's given the 10 outward marks, the
12 inward marks.
And now he says, while we keep aloof
in general statements, there's little fruit to be
expected.
It's the hand fight that does the execution.
David is not awakened by the prophets hovering
at a distance in parabolical insinuations.
Nathan's forced to clothe with him and tell
him plainly, thou art the man.
When I read that, I said, Lord, how
much closer can you go than just talking?
Logical order, specific naming of sins, and then
the pressing of questions upon the conscience.
This is something that has struck me, that
all the great masters of Puritan evangelism and
those who've drunk of the same wells learn
to use the question as a probe to
conscience.
Hylian in some places has whole pages of
questions.
Let me just take several sentences out of
page.
Is it a reasonable thing for you to
contend against the Lord?
Is it reasonable that an understanding preacher should
lose, yea, live quite against the very end
of his being?
Is it reasonable?
Does it make sense?
How is it with your soul?
You see, probing the mind with the question,
forcing conscience to do his work.
The Puritan believed that the handle that he
had in the dead sinner was his conscience.
Only God could do the saving work, but
he did it by means of the truth.
I had a man who claimed to be
a Calvinist say, after I delivered this paper
elsewhere, he said, well, you talk like you
believe we ought to preach and so the
whole work depends.
I said, my dear brother, you and I
are called upon to employ every means of
the instrument he's put in our hands to
study and pray continually.
God, how can I communicate the truth to
sinners?
Packer says in his book, love is enterprising,
and if I love sinners, I'll be enterprising
to find every legitimate tool that the Holy
Ghost has given me to somehow stab and
wound the sinner's heart that God might bring
into himself.
And a man tells me he loves souls
and just goes on week after week saying,
naming a few sins and only categorizing people
in big general globs and not seeking to
be discriminating, that man has no love for
souls.
Now the ability to do this may be
somewhat varied according to gifts, experience, background, but
if there isn't a burning attempt to do
it, it's because we've got a cold and
we don't love sinners.
If I saw men in some kind of
dire physical plight, not all would be rescued
by the exact same means.
If I had any love for them, I
would do everything in my power to learn
every single means and use it to rescue
as many as I could.
I believe this is what God wants us
to do.
Remember what Paul said?
The same Paul who said, when it pleased
God who separated me from my mother's womb
and called me, the same Paul who wrote
Romans 9 said, I am become all things
to all men that are...
Why did he do it?
Love is enterprising.
As I said to my people, put in
that 20th century vernacular, when Paul saw a
man over there, first thing he wanted to
get was his ears.
First part of any man's anatomy that Paul
saw were man's ears.
That's right.
Because he said, I've got a message that
maybe God will send into the ears of
his heart, but they won't go to the
ears of his heart till they come to
these physical ears.
So he starts over to that man.
He wants to get his ears and tell
his message.
But he sees that in front of those
ears is a big Jewish nose.
So Paul takes his ham sandwich and he
puts it back in his valise.
Yeah.
You see, he doesn't come up to that
man eating his ham sandwich because he knows
that though in front of those ears is
a nose, that those nose are attached to
a feet.
And if he comes up with a ham
sandwich, the feet are going to go.
And when they go, the nose is going
to go.
And to my friend Aby, I become a
Jew to the Jews.
I only have my kosher food with me.
Isn't that what he's saying?
Why did he do it?
Because he thought he could save the sinner.
No, he's the same.
He knew that his task was to proclaim
the message accurately to as many people and
with earnest intrigue.
And that leads me to the second point.
I'll not need to labor it there.
Evangelism was affectionate or impassioned.
It's a rare thing to find a ministry
which both feeds the mind with solid substance
and moves the heart with affectionate warmth.
That's a rare thing.
Isn't it?
That's what our brother Ernie was talking about.
Solid substance, but warm overtones of truth.
And wasn't God good to give us a
living demonstration of it last night?
It's a long time since I've wept halfway
through a sermon.
And I asked myself later, did he tell
any stories that were emotionally touching?
Not a one.
I even teach young preachers to use illustrations.
Brother Fletcher, you didn't use any last night.
He's a close friend.
He knows the spirit in which I said
that he's my elder in the Lord, and
I wouldn't want to be disrespectful.
But we've been together in meetings, and I
believe George knows the spirit in which I
said that.
Was there that which had any natural way?
No.
What was it?
Just the holding forth of the great and
glorious doctrines of God's grace in Jesus Christ.
But somehow God the Holy Ghost came and
sat on those words.
And the time they come out of the
mouth of His servant got into our hearts,
and our heads were informed with solid substance,
and our hearts burned with warmth by the
Holy Ghost.
That's a rare thing.
The Puritans, I think, captured that.
At least I find when I read them,
that's what happens.
And they did it in their evangelism.
One who's reviewed Doddridge's Rise and Progress said,
quote, one feels in reading the book his
intense longing for the salvation of the sinner.
He conveys this desire in the painstaking care
with which he pursues the sinner into every
corner of his carnal confidence.
Isn't that good?
Pursues the sinner, loves him enough to keep
after him into every corner of his carnal
confidence.
When one is done reading Eilean's Alarm, he's
struck again with the clear application of this
principle enunciated by Charles Spurgeon when he said,
quote, I wouldn't be in if I didn't
have one quote from Spurgeon.
When I have shot and spent all my
gospel bullets and have none left, and little
effect seems to be made upon my ears,
I then put myself in the gun and
shoot myself at them.
End of quote.
What did he mean?
He meant he would just unzip his heart
and plead.
Robert Murray McShane wasn't a Puritan by name
or by the time in which he was
born, but in the doctrines he preached, in
his discriminatory application of truth, the use of
the law, he fits in here.
Some of you perhaps have heard the story.
Someone went to the church where he preached
and saw such blessing of God.
And the old sextant was there who had
been there when Robert Murray McShane was holding
forth the word of life.
And this man, awed by the sense that
this was the place where there'd been such
mighty visitations of God, was looking at the
different parts of the church and the old
sextant took him.
And the man said to the sextant, tell
me, having been here, sat under this godly
man's ministry, what do you feel was the
secret?
He said, my friend, go around, sit in
that desk.
So he did.
He walked around, sat in the desk.
He said, now put your head over on
the desk.
He did.
He said, now put your face in your
hands and weep.
They walked out of the study.
They went out into the sanctuary.
And he stood in the pulpit from which
Robert Murray McShane sounded forth the glorious gospel
of our ever-blessed God and our Lord
Jesus Christ.
And he said, you want to know the
success, the secret of the success of his
ministry?
He said, lean over the pulpit.
The man leaned over.
He said, now stretch out your arm.
He said, now weep again.
I sense this in Baxter, Eileen, Dodd-Rich,
and even though the personality of the keen,
logical Jonathan Edwards would perhaps not lend to
the weeping of the eyes, you sense the
weeping heart.
Oh, beloved, may God give to me, give
to you, that distinctive of Puritan evangelism.
And then, last of all, the means.
What means were used?
I won't go into these details.
Perhaps the other things have been more important.
It was pastoral.
They didn't make this distinction between an evangelistic
sermon and an expository sermon, for the Bible
is both an instruction book for the saints
on their way to heaven and a guide
for those in the broad road as to
how to get into that narrow gate and
get on the narrow way.
And so you find wherever they could legitimately
do so, there was the continual sounding out
of these great notes of divine revelation.
It would seem that their ministry was not
only pastoral, but occasional.
It said of Eileen, by his wife, that
in the latter days of his life he
would preach anywhere from nine to fourteen times,
seeming to indicate that when these men sensed
that the place or upon the ministry of
a certain man, then they would give themselves
to more meetings.
This would demand more historical study.
I'm not qualified to speak authoritatively in this
area.
Perhaps someone could do the Church of God's
service by following through on this.
And then thirdly, it was catechetical.
Baxter's comments are proverbial on the influence of
catechetical instruction as a means of evangelism.
Of Eileen, it is said that five days
a week he followed up his work of
Sunday and kept a list of all the
people on the streets and catechized regularly.
May I commend for your reading along this
line of the benefit of catechetical instruction as
an instrument of evangelism, an article by John
Murray in The Banner of Truth, the compilation
of their periodicals, volume two, and the last
chapter in Shedd's book on pastoral theology and
homiletics.
Two excellent articles.
What was the result of such a method?
In our day, when the quick results, many
are responding, take note of this now, to
an unknown Christ from a sense of unknown
need in terms of unknown conditions.
You got it?
We're so intent upon quick results, people are
responding to an unknown Christ from a sense
of unknown need in terms of unknown conditions.
But Puritan evangelism was marked by its thoroughness,
and the practice of catechizing was no small
part of this thoroughness.
I like to think of it in terms
of a fireplace, and God says to us
as his servants, lay the great logs of
my truth in the minds of people.
The fireplace is the human mind.
There's no warmth, there's no light from those
logs, but they're there in the fireplace.
You and I can't give any saving warmth
or light to truth, but we can watch
truth in the minds of others.
And when God sends the fire of his
own spirit, there's something to be ignited, and
when it begins to burn, it isn't the
quick puff of a piece of paper that's
been thrown in in the spur of the
moment, but it's the continuous glow and long
-lasting fire of logs.
That's instruction, catechizing, laying the beams of truth,
and calling upon God that he'll take that
truth and give the light and warmth that
only he can give.
So beloved, he's not going to put the
logs in there.
I've got to do it.
It's my task.
The mood or climate of their evangelism?
Reverence, sobriety, and urgency.
They didn't try to haplify people to Jesus.
They tried to sober them with the great
claims of their Creator.
The awful nature of sin, there's rebellion against
him.
But the wonder and the awe that this
God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son, for whosoever forsaking their
own claims to righteousness, desire to retain that
usurped crown upon their head, and willing once
again for it to rest upon them, come
in faith and repentance, that they shall find
mercy.
And the mood of their evangelism, you sense,
was one of reverence, of sobriety, and urgency.
Baxter said, if there's anything, he said, I
can't stand it.
It's a preacher who tries to make me
laugh.
There's a place for the occasional aside of
humor, but when it's the studied effect of
the history-on-turn preacher and the psychologist
-turn-pulpiteer, it's an abomination in the sight
of God.
Well, I believe the Puritans can teach us
much, and I trust that this paper tonight
has helped us to want a drink of
those wells of biblical principles that in our
generation the evangelism that God has authorized may
be proclaimed in the power of the Holy
Ghost, and that we'll see great multitudes coming,
strict and broken, and falling before the foot
of the Sovereign Savior.
I'm confident in a group this size tonight.
There are some of you who've never been
wounded by God's holy law, who've never been
brought by the Spirit to bow to King
Jesus, who extends mercy to sinners.
And I entreat you tonight to seek the
Lord while he may be found.
Call upon him while he's near.
Speak him in a way of repentance and
faith, and you have the promise of God
that none is cheated in death.