Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: David Brainerd 3

Brainerd's life is one long agonizing strain to redeem the time not grow weary in well-doing and abound in the work of the Lord. Well, let me close with the last section the effect of his life the effect of his life and I want to begin this little section with his effect on Edwards.

We we know Brainerd because of the impact he had on Jonathan Edwards. Had Edwards not been so moved we would not know David Brainerd. Here's what Edwards wrote. I Would conclude my observations on the merciful circumstances of mr. Day Brainerd's death by acknowledging with thankfulness the gracious dispensation of providence to me and to my family in So ordering that he should be cast hither to my house In his last sickness and should die here so that we had the opportunity for much acquaintance and conversation with him and to show him kindness in such Circumstances and to see his dying behavior.

To hear his dying speeches and to receive his dying counsels and have the benefit of his dying prayers. Now what gives that? Incredible poignancy. Is that Edwards knew Jerusha? Caught the disease and died four months later.

So that he was writing this a couple of years later knowing that it had cost him the life of his daughter to have Brainerd in his house and Thanking God For the ministry. There's this beautiful description of of his taking each of Edwards children aside and Asking them about their faith and praying with them and you can imagine how a father Would see one of the most noble missionaries of the day doing that to his children and would would be deeply deep for deeply Thankful as a result of this immense impact on Edwards.

He wrote the life of Brainerd. It's been reprinted more than all of his other books and has had an immense immense Impact and I listed all the missionaries that I could think of who had read and commented on Brainerd earlier in the talk.

But if that's true, that is if you can assemble about a dozen famous Missionaries who said they owe so much to Brainerd how many countless unknowns must there be? Who fed on and were strengthened by this book.

I Mentioned colleges. Let me just refer to this briefly. Princeton and Dartmouth in some measure. Oh their existence to David Brainerd the frustrated pastor scholar. It goes like this. He was kicked out of Yale.

Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron Burr. Were were getting fed up with Yale College. They were behind the awakening. They took Brainerd side try to get him readmitted and couldn't the Synod of New York and New Jersey headed up to here with the carnality of Yale and Said when it happened to Brainerd We're gonna start our own school namely the College of New Jersey, which became Princeton and the beautiful little touch of Providential.

What do you call it irony? Is that in October of? 46 Princeton was chartered by the Presbytery there in New Jersey and in May of 47 now picture this. He is four or five months before he's dead. He is at the house of Jonathan Dickinson for four months trying to recover to get back to Cross Weeks and to continue his ministry.

And then giving up finally and realizing he's too sick during that time. Jonathan Dickinson where he's staying is appointed the first president of Princeton. The classes begin in his house and David Brainerd is called the first student of the College of New Jersey and numerous scholars write about the indirect inspiration and impact that his expulsion From Yale and his passion for the ministry and for thinking had on the founding of Princeton College is another interesting story about Eleazar Wheelock.

Brainerd went to work among the Indians on Delaware River at the forks of the Delaware in the Susquehanna Indians and He felt like a total failure. He worked there a year gathered a few Believers who later by the way went on to cross Weekson and joined the community there, but left Feeling a failure.

However, his journal about his time there was read by Eleazar Wheelock a friend of his who was absolutely enthralled with the prospect of working among the Indians there the Iroquois in particular and so he took up the challenge among the Iroquois then moved to Connecticut pressed on formed a school and Started a college which became Dartmouth College owing in a very remarkable way a significant way to the inspiration of the journals and model of David Brainerd in 1740.

Yale Harvard and William and Mary were the only colleges in the colonies and They were not sympathetic to the awakening none of them was. But in the tide of the awakening came with the Presbyterians Princeton with the Baptist Brown University with the Dutch reform Rutgers and with the congregation list Dartmouth to show the educational spin-off of the Great Awakening.

And isn't it remarkable that this nobody who served for four years in the wilderness was a Key element in the founding of half of those schools two out of the four the lesson is that Had he abandoned his missionary career the writing of his journals and suffering In order to take up a peaceful settled scholarly pastoral life.

The schools may not have been founded. We've never heard of him. The missionary movement would not have had that impulse. It is an amazing thing. I close with two last comments. The most awesome effect of David Brainerd's ministry is the same as yours.

There were about in 50 Indians who will be in heaven because of his direct preaching ministry. I Can't begin to estimate how many millions of people from all the tribes and tongues who will be because missionaries went under the inspiration, but let's just Let's just take his life as it stood.

He had gathered about a hundred and thirty souls of whom he was fairly sure of their conversion by the time he left and it went on growing under the ministry of his brother John and I think Sinclair Ferguson has made plain to us the inestimable value of one soul plucked from everlasting Destruction and brought into the eternal joy of God.

Had he suffered what he suffered for only one Indian that would still be his greatest achievement. And if he has a hundred and thirty or forty or fifty Then All the more amazing. It might be fitting for me to close by opening up a journal that is far weaker and far more worldly, this is from a journal entry of mine, June 28 1986.

Tom and Julie, you remember that day? You don't you don't keep a journal probably. Maybe you do. June 28 1986 this afternoon Tom and Julie and I drove to Northampton we found the gravestone of David Brainerd a dark stone slab the size of a Gravetop and a smaller white marble insert which said sacred to the memory of Reverend David Brainerd a faithful and laborious missionary to the Stockbridge Delaware and Susquehanna tribes of Indians Who died in this town October 10 1747 which is a mistake.

Tom and Julie and Ruth and Hannah and I took hands and Stood around the grave and prayed to thank God for Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards. And to dedicate ourselves to their work and their God. It was a memorable and I hope powerful and lasting moment father.

My heart is thankful to you two hundred and Fifty years Later for this man broken sick Tormented lonely beat down Frustrated glorious man and I thank you for what you've taught me what you've worked in me and I long so much for us all now to be faithful.

Father give us some measure of his good spirit. And oh that we may not loiter on our heavenly journey, I Pray this now in Jesus name. Amen. Well, we've got 20 minutes I think. For for us to reflect on on Brainerd's life.

It's a very prejudiced account that you've heard here. Unashamed Admiration, what would you like to talk about anything at all. Be fine with me. Corrections or additions or queries? Go ahead bear. I haven't read one other book about Brainerd.

All I've read is this the Yale critical edition of The diary and the journals and all of Norman Pettit's introduction and Brainerd's. I mean the Edwards comments. So my exposure is very very very limited.

It's not. It's not based on the secondary literature at all. And I commend that approach to life to you. Forget secondary literature and go to the sources. I am so glad that I did not read Norman Pettit's introduction before I read Brainerd because I got so angry.

At the way, he talked about Brainerd. I was angry at him. He talked about joylessness. Again, and again, and I underlined 50 places where he talked about joy. It's unbelieving literary critic from the University of Chicago handling pearls.

He knows nothing about. So don't go to secondary literature go to the sources. No, no offense bear. You did you did. I'm glad I didn't think you would be go ahead. Yeah, so did Henry Martin that lovely man Fritz.

If I were a homiletics teacher I would require that my students try every kind of delivery including a full manuscript. But in no way would I suggest that is the norm. I have read enough of history to know that God could take Thomas Chalmers who read laboriously and transform a people and God could take a Spurgeon who could prepare in 45 minutes and deliver an unforgettable message with a half sheet of notes.

You must find your own way. I write out every Sunday morning sermon for 10 years. Because I Think I have a gift for delivering it without people knowing that all right not everybody does and Anybody that looks like they're reading should get rid of their manuscript.

All right, but I do because I Can't get my thoughts straight any other way. I Can't get them straight. I can't get my ideas in order you you have to write if you have a weak mind. I believe this with all my heart because I went one time and talked with the faculty at Fuller Seminary in 1978 and I remember Ralph Martin the New Testament teacher in a kind of demeaning way said oh Do you do that arcing stuff that dr. Fuller teaches?

Isn't that just a crutch. This is an exegetical device that requires writing out the text. Isn't that just a crutch and I said that's exactly what it is because I'm a cripple intellectually so unless you are like Jonathan Edwards and Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan or whoever and and can take an idea and for an hour or two Hold it and turn it like dr. Ferguson said I Agree with him that is not the prerogative of a genius, but I have to do it on paper.

I Cannot do it. I think of the shutters banging and the cars going by and food and My mind won't hold an idea without a pencil in my hand. So know thyself brother and proceed. Go ahead at the back. I don't but I'll tell you who can tell you mark Noel has just written the history of Princeton and you can you can find I'm sure a very profound Treatment of that move.

I it's a troubling phenomenon I agree Tom to see what happens what what seems to always happen with my own alma mater. I fear I don't know what might happen there, but Is a tragic thing which is why I suppose there have to be constantly new schools being created like there is in Florida now.

Two of them right there I don't know where the hands are coming first. Let's just start here. Go ahead David. No, I was looking behind you, but go ahead. We'll jump back. My only exposure to John is the little I read in the introduction here by Pettit who says that John took over the work in Cross Weeks and pressed on till he was 60 years old that the work prospered and That's it, I mean, so I just don't know what else to say.

John he had two favorite brothers John and and The other younger one Israel, maybe I'm not sure what his name was, but they both were evidently very warm and successful ministers. The people the people in his own day did not regard Brainerd as a weird sick guy.

We we when we read these kinds of personal testimonies and the self-deprecation. We Americans from our psychological perspective immediately indict him with sickness. They didn't and it may not have been as sick as it looks to us.

We have been told to esteem ourselves so consistently for so many years that anything that looks like the lack of self-esteem Looks sick now. I suspect there was a measure of sickness in Brainerd, but not as much as the average reader today would think.

Probably not David Lindy. Oh, there's so many things he has to teach us. Community. Oh, he just cried out for Christian community. He loved friends. He loved to talk with people if there'd only been somebody with him to say come on David quit it.

It didn't go that bad yesterday. You have a very bad perspective. It was good. They listened to you somebody to give him we do not we we are not made to function alone in the ministry. We will not judge our ministries correctly if we're left alone.

We will either be excessively proud or excessively despairing. We must get the orientation of friends so there's a first thing to learn partnership and community in the ministry to give us balance and oh My goodness, that's so important.

The a second thing is we must learn to use. No, that's not the right way to say it. We must learn to perceive our Successes as the works of grace and delight in them delight in them so that and he does that periodically he's just very very hesitant I think to say anything that would come close to looking like he is extolling himself and We must find language that can say it was a wonderful service yesterday the Lord blessed.

I felt freedom. I thank the Lord for his goodness to me as a minister. I'm not perfect. I made mistakes, but it could have been a lot worse so. Fine fine language that can extol the mercy of God in our lives when he does one little fraction of kindness Innocent through us.

That's my alternative to self-esteem. Grace esteem. I like to call it cultivating the esteem of grace in all of its little Dimensions in our lives. That's my counseling approach is if somebody thinks they're too useless to go on in life.

I don't generally try to find some feature in which they can boast. But I can point out so many evidences of grace in their lives that God is at work in their lives. And and he's the kind of God who really doesn't need much to work with Witness David Brainerd in order to get on with them.

So that's a that's an approach that I think he would Point us toward. I Think the biggest lesson he has for us along those lines is God-centeredness and utter absolute passion to keep God at the center of everything now the danger of that is that people some Puritan types Don't Have the theological sophistication or depth To learn how to value the creation for God's sake.

They feel that any delight in things is Idolatry and in my book desiring God I wrestled with that in the chapter on prayers as well as I know how to wrestle with It and got my answer from Augustine Who prayed father?

He loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee. Which he loves not for thy sake. Now what that does is free you to obey 2nd Timothy or 1st Timothy 4 where all these things were freely given to you to enjoy Marriage bed and food is the specifics in view sex and eating are not to be demeaned and So when I say God-centeredness what I mean is not that all you think about is God, but that you think of all in relation to God food sex Children shoes health sunshine broken clutches and everything else.

Everything relates to God and what I just cry for in my people is That they would be just God Besotted. I love that phrase that Mark Noll used in describing Jonathan Edwards. He was a God-besotted person.

Anything you've touched had to do with God. Those are two or three things that come to my mind To a controversy. That's a thrilling story all the historical implications of faithfulness in prayer. Who knows what will come in a hundred years?

That was Tom's point. Can gnaw the Burma fellow. Another three four minutes here. Go ahead. We have not bothered to compile a list of biographies but a good what go ahead Tom. For each one I Can I make a that's exactly what I would have said so that's that's the first thing to say and my second thing to say is this most Contemporary biographies are very thin they are excessively Otheological.

You read Mary Drury on William Carey. You can't find a thing about his theology hard. You don't know what drove the man Contemporary biographies. You don't give a rip about what drove the early missionaries and that's all I care about.

So, you know what you do you go to the library and You you get these old tattered versions that have no more copyright laws on them anymore and you photocopy them. They're not available and you say now what would you pay for this and in a used rare bookstore?

$60 $40 $50 for one of these old gyms like the the Journal of Henry Martin. You can't get that but you can photocopy it for $15 or cheaper depending on where you get your machine so if I were you I would pick out the people you want to read and then go back and find their journals and their diaries and their letters and Copy them out of a library on paper bind them yourself with a loose-leaf binder and read a few each day.

Or if you can find a classic biography that is Theologically astute then spend your time on that but there's just a lot of stuff. That's so thin today. You've got more important things to do with your time.

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