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Puritan Evangelism By Albert N. Martin

Thank you, Pastor Walt. Just a word of explanation, we have been feasting not only upon the sense
of God's presence with us in our times of prayer, but upon very able, and I'm sure most
of us are convinced, Spirit anointed ministry in the Word, and I hope we'll be able to make
a little bit of the transition to that which may be a little bit more academic. Not that
I would choose it that way, but this is what has been assigned to me.
What I would like to do at the outset, after we look to the Lord in just a moment of prayer,
is to go over a general outline of what we'll be covering so that as we move from section
to section, there'll be some overall bird's-eye view of the entire train of thought that we're
seeking to cover. And that which I feel we should ask of the Lord is a discerning spirit
that we might be taught of Him, that He would help us to prove all things and to hold fast
only that which is good. To that end, let us look to Him in united prayer.
Again our Father, we desire to consciously and deliberately affirm our confidence in
You, and just as deliberately to disclaim all confidence in the armed flesh. For You've
said in Your word, cursed be he that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm, and whose
heart departs from the Lord. He shall be like a heath in the desert, and shall inhabit the
parched places. O God, we know by bitter experience those parched places, even when we've sought
to communicate Your truth. So speak to us as we trust in You and Your Spirit. Minister
to us and give us discerning minds and hearts that we may prove all things and hold fast
that which is good. We ask through our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
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 the 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'm 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 agreement, 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 and seeking to touch upon those aspects of their evangelism which
have well nigh been lost in the evangelism of the 20th 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 about ten years ago, and I had nothing to do but to preach night after night, 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. And 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 am not preaching
that which he has authorized me to preach. To pray, God bless the means that I am 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 sun of truth has been setting until it
rises upon my fair head, I was scared to come to any finalized conclusions and had some
confirming voice from that great stream of historic Christianity and began to pray. I
had nobody to guide me in my reading and 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 and then Eilean's Alarm and some of the works of Jonathan
Edwards. I look back now and I still don't know how they got 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 20th century ministry.
I have no desire to either begin or perpetrate a cult of antiquity worship. None whatsoever.
But I am 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 am 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 by 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 at 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 we'll 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 Durnall'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 will 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 had 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 hard 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, does not work
in a vacuum, 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 outflowed Bible passage after Bible passage.
Ah, the wind took my paper. Thank you, Walt. That's why I said I'd 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 illegal guilt, or they talked about sin as that inherent depravity
of nature which may be 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 a hen, she has two kinds of clucks. There's a 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 patron saint 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 warmth 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. You
won't find it. When the Puritan came to a text like that, he let it say what it meant.
That true salvation and 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 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 the unfolding
of what this God is 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 justify, 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 Ileah, 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.
Paul 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, the burst of light, and down on
the ground he goes. And when Paul writes about it later, he says, when it pleads God, that's
the word of time, when it pleads God, to reveal his Son in me, that's salvation.
When it pleads God, a sovereign gospel way. Zacchaeus, a good illustration of this. 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 Brial says, there
is one account in the Bible of a death that repents. 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 Eilean is one of them, and Baxter would be another who did
not at all fall into that era, 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, Doddbridge 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 a base note. Isn't that the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the what? Poor in 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
guilt before God. Now, see the difference? He does not say, I want you to 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 appointed for mercy. End of quote. And 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, and hence we
stand under his wrath and his condemnation. Listen to Joseph Eilean 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 the 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 two-fold 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 as 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 law's 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 full of sin I am. Christ is a Savior from both. And the reason
we've had this division of justification and sanctification and the theological root
of the whole deeper life movement is a failure to understand this. For having only presented
man in his legal problem and Christ as a Savior from legal guilt, we've got to somehow fix
up this guy who says he's got his legal problem solved but who's obviously living
in the full expression of the corruption that he is. 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. And 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. And you know why
he wouldn't? He said, the gospel I preach secures not only the justification but the
sanctification of sinners. Got it? And he drank of those wells. And it was the proper
use of the law that laid 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
was the conclusion, but I am carnal, full of sin, in me dwelleth no good thing. And
Christ is an objective and a subjective savior. Well, I must carry 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 ministry. 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 Alarms of 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, the number of you has 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-two, you fall on your face and you say, oh God, are
there be 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 discriminated in their application of truth. Perhaps there's
no treatise that is filled with this from beginning to end like those in 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 is really talking. 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
kill joy? Now I'm making bunion in the 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 faith? 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. Ignorance. What a picture of
multitudes in our day. When they begin to ask him, how do you know you're saved? He
says, 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 it is. In other words, I must be
saved because I know that I'm saved because I know that I'm saved. Utterly ignorance at
the grounds of assurance is not to be found by putting my hand somewhere and seeing if
I get 13 watts of juice, 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.
Bayan, you're familiar with him, I'm sure. One of Jonathan Edwards' greatest works,
some consider it his great, that of the religious affection. Its basic premise is this, to distinguish
between a truth 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 apart
and 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 ignite and belch out in the flames of passion and
rebellion against God. So a true Christian 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 need his sins, so his only need
is I've got to 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 get down on your face
and say, Lord, is it I? Is it I? 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
difference. Do 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 still fall short, and this man said, Oh, that
I could just be but one of the difficulties. And that's the extreme, but there certainly
is in the word of God a discriminating application, for when Eilean goes to make his discriminating
applications, it's chapter and verse, chapter and verse, chapter and verse.
The 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 work and work 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
of sin. The following statement by Eilean 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 burdens 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 hand. 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 light, 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 but God is joined, the king and the priest, whereas the sound convert takes a
hold of 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? End of quote. 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 whole Christ to the whole man. As an example, in Dobridge'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, unfamed submission. I desire to make no terms with
thee but that I may be entirely lying. 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,
here are the words which Eilean 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 power 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. 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, our spirit-taught fathers, knew absolutely
nothing.
Now, in the A, B, C, D, E, 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 shall 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. And so he perks his ears up,
and he can't figure out the tune. Is that mess call, or is that call armed? So he nudges
his buddy. He says, hey, what's that guy playing? And he can't distinguish the tune.
He doesn't know whether to get his mess kit or 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 tomorrow?
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 soul
to soul 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 Puritans 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 said, 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... And I could hear it there. Once in a
while, I picked 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. 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 a side here and there to the
fact that it's turn or burn. The admission of our Lord in Luke 24, 47 was literally obeyed
by the Puritans and their evangelism. Jesus Christ said that repentance unto remission
should be preached among all the nations. The example of Saint Paul was assiduously
followed in Acts 20, 21, repentance toward God, faith toward Christ. Here 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, for 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, S-O-N, with a capital
who's unwilling to honestly face the question of his sin. In the development of the theme
of conversion, Eilean 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 5, 31, God has exalted Christ with his right hand to be a prince and a savior to
do what? To give repentance and remission of sin. 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, who's wedded to his lust, and bring him to
the place where he is not only reluctant, but glad to forsake the darling bosom sin
to his heart, and turn to God with a full resolve to obey him and honor him and make
him his end. They knew that old Adam wasn't up to that of himself, but they knew that
the mighty ascended Christ was. And so they dared to preach a biblical standard of conversion
with a clear note of repentance, for they knew that only God could bring men to submit
on those terms, but that God would bring an innumerable multitude to himself on those
terms and on the lesser terms. And the soft peddling of the biblical doctrine of repentance
in our day, I'm convinced, as I've tried to think this through in its 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 a cross nineteen hundred 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 thought about it along this line. 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! He even got tracked to 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 the last. The bowing of the heart to the
sovereignty of Jesus Christ. So they emphasize repentance not with the embellishments of
an orchestral arrangement, but with the simplicity of a trumpet. 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, O 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 till he 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 bend of his life changed so that a man renounces
that which he took for his happiness and places his happiness where he never did before and
lives not to the same end. Drives not in the same design in the world as he formerly did.
In a world, in a word, he that is in Christ is a new creature. End of quote. Baxter says
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, et cetera, you're
a stranger to true conversion. This is a supernatural work. End of quote.
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? Through the hands of the 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 evangelism
in our tracks, 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 seems
to be a studied attempt to have everything so arranged that if God the Holy Ghost didn't
come within 100 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
winters. He said, I was going to come with a message and a message so offensive to the
natural heart that unless my God broke out of heaven and opened blind eyes and unstopped
the deafened ears, I'd go out of current from miserable failure in a flop. He said, 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
Eilean. I can't quote. I haven't even looked at the clock, probably shouldn't. I'll get
convicted if I've gone too long. But you read Eilean at the outset of his book. He says,
O God, what shall I do? The sinner is dead. His ears are deaf. His eyes are blind. He's
in the tomb of sin. And he says, O God, choose my arrows for me. Lord, thou canst 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, thou canst pierce it
with the arrows of thy truth. They didn't usurp the office of the Holy Ghost, either
in the proclamation, the method, or listen to me, 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 receives 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 does a change of heart call? He said, regeneration. Who can change
us in his heart? And he answered, the Holy Spirit alone. He said, Daddy, 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's 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 and is expressed in hundreds
of evangelistic methods of our day.
Beloved, I don't say these things cruelly, but you've got a little, 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, since 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 we'd stay there till the
break of day. But if they had all the light they had and there was no priest, would it
come unto 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 as 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 peer of entrance, for they encourage me to trust the
Holy Ghost, to do his work of conviction, of illumination, of throwing 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. But may I suggest 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 its platform, used
the law wisely, discriminatory in its application of truth, found it a clear note of repentance,
the whole Christ of 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. And then I thought I had a third. Let me check
the general outline here. Now those are just the two basic things that I have. When one
reads the evangelism of the Puritans, he's struck 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 Dobridge's classic quote,
Dobridge 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 limitations of fallen reason. 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 Alian'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 Alian 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 rebels argue, if I'm elected, I'll be saved,
do it at 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 and believe, I shall be saved. And that if you do not repent, you'll be damned.
Is not this plain ground for you? And will you yet run upon the rocks? Isn't that beautiful?
Because they realize any mental barrier could stand as a block between the soul and its
approach to Christ. And so they reason 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, like Adam who hid, he stands before 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 of Christ.
So the Puritans reasoned with us. They addressed truth to the mind. They did it by logical
order. They did it by specific naming of sins. It's interesting, after Phileon 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 4. 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? And then
you realize he wasn't 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 wealth
learn to use the question as a probe to conscience. Eilean in some places has whole pages of questions.
Let me just take several sentences out of page 66. Is it a reasonable thing for you
to contend against the Lord? Is it reasonable that an understanding creature 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 a 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, will you talk like you believe we ought to preach as though the whole work depended
on us? 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 him to 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 discriminated. 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 attack to do it, it's because we've got
a cold heart and we don't love sinners. If I saw men in some kind of dire physical plight
and 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 I by all means
might save some, and the same Paul said both. 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 a 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 until
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 release. 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 behind the nose is the ears. He's lost his chance. So he said, when I come
to my friend Abbie, no ham sandwiches. I become a Jew to the Jews. I only have my kosher food
with me. Isn't that what he said? Why did he do it? Because he thought he could save
the sinner now. He's the same Paul who affirmed in such clear terms salvation was the work
of God, even the faith to embrace him. But he knew that his task was to proclaim the
message accurately to as many people and with earnest entreaty. And the Puritans captured
it. And that leads me to the second point I'll not need to labor. 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. How
are you going to teach your 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
it. At least I find when I read them that's what happened. And they did it in their evangelism.
One who's reviewed Dobridge'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 a
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
hearers, 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 McCheyne wasn't
a Puritan by name or by the time in which he was born, but in the doctrines he preached,
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
McCheyne was holding forth the word of life. And this man awed by the sense that this was
the place where there had been such mighty visitations of God was looking at the different
parts of the church and the old sextant took him into study. 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 of his success? He said, my friend, go around and sit in that desk. So he did.
He walked around and sat in the desk. He said, now put your head over on the desk. And 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 poop
from which Robert Murray McCheyne sounded for the glorious gospel of our ever blessed
God and our Lord Jesus Christ. And he said, do you want to know the success, the secret
of the success of his ministry? He said, lean over the poop. So the man leaned over.
He said, now stretch out your arm. He said, now weep again.
I sense this in Baxter, Eileen, Doddbridge, 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 Spirit of God was moving in a certain 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 launch truth in the minds
of our ears. Then 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. But
beloved, he's not going to put the logs in there. I've got to do it. That's my task.
The mood or climate of their evangelism? Reverence, sobriety, and urgency. They didn't try to
amplify people to Jesus. They tried to sober them with the great claims of their Creator,
the awful nature of sin as rebellion against him. But the wonder and the awe that this
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever forsaking their
own claims to righteousness and desire to retain that usurped crown upon their head
and willing once again for it to rest upon the head of Jesus, come in faith and repentance
that they shall find mercy. And the mood of their evangelism, you sense, was one of reverence
and 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 histrion-turned-preacher and the psychologist-turned-pulpitier, 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 to 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, stripped and broken, and falling before the
foot of a sovereign Savior.
I'm confident in the group this size tonight. There are some of you who have never been
wounded by God's holy law, who have never been brought by the Spirit of power to King
Jesus, who extends mercy to sinners. And I entreat you tonight to seek the Lord while
He makes His child. Call upon Him while He is near. Speak Him in a way of repentance
and faith, and you have the promise of God that none should seek Him in there.