Being Shaped by the Word

Puritan preaching was shaped in content and method by Scripture. The Westminster Directory of Public Worship says of ministers, “Ordinarily, the subject of his sermon is to be some text of scripture, holding forth some principle or head of religion, or suitable to some special occasion emergent; or he may go on in some chapter, psalm, or book of holy scripture, as he shall see fit.”[14] Edward Dering put it succinctly, “The faithfull Minister, like unto Christ, [is] one that preacheth nothing but the word of God.”[15] John Owen agreed: “The first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the word.”[16] As Miller Maclure noted, “For the Puritans, the sermon is not just hinged to Scripture; it quite literally exists inside the Word of God; the text is not in the sermon, but the sermon is in the text…. Put summarily, listening to a sermon is being in the Bible.”[17]

Puritan preaching allowed Scripture to dictate the emphasis for each message. The Puritans did not preach sermons that were a kind of balancing act between various doctrines. Rather, they let the biblical text determine the content and emphasis of each message. When Jonathan Edwards preached on hell, for example, he didn’t make a single reference to heaven, and when he preached on heaven, he didn’t speak about hell.[18]

The Puritans preached a Bible text completely, whatever its theme, so in time they would be sure to address every major theme of Scripture and thereby every major doctrine of Reformed theology. Nothing was left unbalanced in the total range of their many and lengthy sermons. In theology proper, they proclaimed God’s transcendence as well as His immanence. In anthropology, they preached about the image of God in its narrower as well as its wider sense. In Christology, they exhibited Christ’s state of humiliation as well as exaltation. In soteriology, they focused both on God’s work and on man’s response, and knew when to accent each. In ecclesiology, they acknowledged the high calling of special offices (ministers, elders, and deacons) as well as the equally high calling of the general office of all believers. In eschatology, they declared both the glories of heaven and the horrors of hell.

Timothy, learn from the Puritans, in your lifestyle and your preaching, to show wholehearted allegiance to the Bible’s entire message. Be a man of the living Book. Believe in preaching. Never forget that when you proclaim the Scriptures as a lawfully ordained preacher, Christ speaks through you so that, by His Spirit, the preached Word is a living Word.

That makes your calling so significant, that Henry Smith could preach to his flock, “If ye did consider, my beloved, that ye cannot be nourished unto eternal life but by the milk of the word, ye would rather desire your bodies might be without souls, that your churches without preachers.”[19]

Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 in the Learning from the Puritans series.


Notes

[1] Richard Mitchell Hawkes, “The Logic of Assurance in English Puritan Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal 52 (1990): 247. For the difficulties in, and attempts at, defining Puritanism, see Ralph Bronkema, The Essence of Puritanism (Goes: Oosterbaan and LeCointre, 1929); Leonard J. Trinterud, “The Origins of Puritanism,” Church History 20 (1951):37-57; Jerald C. Brauer, “Reflections on the Nature of English Puritanism,” Church History 23 (1954):98-109; Basil Hall, “Puritanism: The Problem of Definition,” in G. J. Cumming, ed., Studies in Church History, vol. 2 (London: Nelson, 1965), pp. 283‑96; Charles H. George, “Puritanism as History and Historiography,” Past and Present 41 (1968):77-104; William Lamont, “Puritanism as History and Historiography: Some Further Thoughts,” Past and Present 42 (1969):133-46; Richard Greaves, “The Nature of the Puritan Tradition,” in R. Buick Knox, ed., Reformation, Conformity and Dissent: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Nuttall (London: Epworth Press, 1977), pp. 255-73; D.M. Lloyd-Jones, “Puritanism and Its Origins,” The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), pp. 237-59; James I. Packer, “Why We Need the Puritans,” in A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990)pp. 21-36; Joel R. Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance: The Legacy of Calvin and His Successors (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1999), pp. 82ff.

[2] Peter Lewis, The Genius of Puritanism (Hayward Heath, Sussex: Carey, 1975), pp. 11ff.

[3] Sidney H. Rooy, The Theology of Missions in the Puritan Tradition: A Study of Representative Puritans: Richard Sibbes, Richard Baxter, John Eliot, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), pp. 310-28.

[4]  Cf. Packer’s introduction in Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), p. xv.

[5] Some of my advice is being adapted from my Puritan Evangelism: A Biblical Approach (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 1999).

[6] See Joel R. Beeke and Ray B. Lanning, “The Transforming Power of Scripture,” in Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position of the Bible, ed. Don Kistler(Morgan, Penn.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1995), pp. 221-76.

[7] “A Profitable Treatise, Containing a Direction for the reading and understanding of the holy Scriptures,” in H[enry] H[olland], ed., The Works of the Reverend and Faithfvll Servant of Iesvs Christ, M. Richard Greenham (1599; reprint New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), pp. 389-97. Cf. Thomas Watson, “How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit,” in Heaven Taken by Storm: Showing the Holy Violence a Christian Is to Put Forth in the Pursuit After Glory, ed. Joel R. Beeke (1669; reprint Pittsburgh: Soli Deo Gloria, 1992), pp. 113-129.

[8] Ibid., pp. 16-18, and Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity (1692; reprint London: Banner of Truth Trust), pp. 377-79.

[9] Ibid., p. 379. “There is not a sermon which is heard, but it sets us nearer heaven or hell” (John Preston, A Pattern of Wholesome Words, quoted in Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, 2nd ed. (New York: Schocken, 1967), p. 46.

[10] Christ the Fountain of Life (London: Carden, 1648), p. 14.

[11] Geneva Bible (1599; reprint Ozark, Mo.: L.L. Brown, 1990), p. 3.

[12] “Food for New-Born Babes,” in The Works of Henry Smith, ed. Thomas Smith (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1866), 1:494.

[13] Quoted in I.D.E. Thomas, The Golden Treasury of Puritan Quotations (Chicago: Moody Press, 1975), p. 33.

[14] The Westminster Confession of Faith (Inverness: The Publications Committee of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 1985), p. 379.

[15] M. Derings Workes (1597; reprint New York: Da Capo Press, 1972), p. 456.

[16] The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (1853; London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 16:74.

[17] The Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1534-1642 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), p. 165.

[18] Cf. The Wrath of Almighty God: Jonathan Edwards on God’s Judgment against Sinners, ed. Don Kistler (Morgan, Penn.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996); The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2:617-41; John H. Gerstner, Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980).

[19] Works (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1866), 1:495.

This article originally appeared here.