Puritans and Revival VII: Pattern of Regeneration | Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Grazie with Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and author of the

Behold Your God study series. We are in the middle of a series talking about the Puritan impact on the what we call the

Great Awakening. John, why are we focused so much on the

Puritans here? Well, when we look at the evangelical revival and the

Great Awakening, the single most significant tradition or school of Christian thought that contributed to that, it was the

Puritans. They took the great doctrines rediscovered in the Reformation and brought them down into a very practical application kind of way, especially dealing with the question of, well, who is a

Christian and what does a Christian life look like? Obviously, the Puritans dealt with a spiritual context where about 95 % of the population was officially

Church of England in the UK. And so you are pastoring a group of people where 95 % of the people in your town are officially your church member, but they don't show up.

And they've been baptized into their church, but they show perhaps no evidence of a change.

And so you're trying to bring the truths of Christianity, you know, and apply them to that kind of a false view of conversion, a false view of the new birth, a false view of the

Christian life. And so the Puritans wrote a lot about what was not true, what was true, and how that brings glory to God if we, you know, if we live that life.

The 18th century men, same situation. George Whitfield, John Wesley, those guys were in the same state church a hundred years later trying to really see the same things change.

So we, in the Mid -South in particular, find ourselves kind of in the same situation.

Everybody around us is at least evangelical -ish, probably Baptist, and has been, at the age of five, baptized.

When they were asked, you know, kind of the question, do you want to go to heaven or hell? Do you want to join God's team or the devil's team?

I mean, I remember hearing that as a young person. Or do you want to go to heaven with mommy and daddy? Yeah, I mean, so you know, those are questions that a child would find hard to say, well,

I want to go to heaven, but I don't really think I understand enough to make that, you know, public statement. So they pray a sinner's prayer and get baptized often, not always, but often, and oftentimes that approach leads to kind of a false hope.

So the Puritans are pretty helpful there, and their impact on the 18th century revivalist is the same kind of impact we'd like to see them have on our day.

I mentioned last episode we were talking about the Puritans and their doctrines, that when dealing with the issue of revival, whether it was the

Puritan or the Great Awakening men, oftentimes the sermons had nothing to do with revival proper.

They don't preach on how to have a revival, but they preached on the great themes of God's work through His Son, and those themes

God used to really ignite a revival. Here's another example of that. This is actually a

Puritan book that was rebound. Solideo Gloria published it 30 years ago, and I picked it up probably not long out of college,

I guess. It's called The Golden Scepter, and I recently saw an advertisement, and you can put it in the show notes. I think

Reformation Heritage Books were advertising that it's been republished by another company, but here is the title,

The Golden Scepter Held Forth to the Humble. All right, taken from the Old Testament picture of the king holding forth a golden scepter towards you if you come into his presence to say that you're welcome.

All right, preached by John Preston, a Puritan, in 1625 in the city of Cambridge, and so those sermons became a book.

Now, the book is actually on that wonderfully popular passage, 2nd Chronicles 7 14.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then

I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now, that is probably the the best -known passage for talking about revival.

You know, what about repentance? What about prayer? What about seeking the

Lord? What about the restoration of his church? What about how that might affect a land? So, wonderful passage, but when

I got this book thinking I was going to get a book on revival sermons, like sermons about revival, but really instead when he deals with each phrase of that passage in 2nd

Chronicles 7 14, he really talks about the gospel in each one of those, and I thought, well, what use is that?

I already knew the gospel, but as I read the book, I realized it is the great truths of the gospel that conquer us again and again and fuel an earnestness in our seeking the

Lord, much more so, more enduringly so, than kind of the cardboard fire, you know, the paper fire of hearing about some great things

God did for someone else. That's wonderful, but we want fuel. We want oak in the fireplace, so to speak, that will produce an enduring longing and zeal for God to work again in a mighty way in our land.

All right, with that in mind, how did the Puritans teach what the

Bible says about regeneration? How did they teach that and apply that in their day, and then how was that reflected nearly a hundred years later under the ministry of these young men leading the evangelical revival, and you know, what can we learn from that?

So let's kind of jump in there. The definition of regeneration that the Puritans gave, well, there were many, but let me give you their official definition, and that shows up in the

Westminster Confession of Faith, and it does it in a pretty academic way, so if you're listening on the podcast, and it's easy to zone out when people are reading complicated paragraphs, hang with me.

We'll get through it. And also know you can always go to Mediagrace .org. We have in the show notes, particularly with paragraphs like this one that might be more helpful to read and to see than to hear.

We always try to make a point to write those things out. Right, good.

So let's see what they said. They said in the Confession that regeneration is

God's calling a man out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ.

So there's the great transition from spiritual death to spiritual life in Christ. The manner of doing this, it says, is described further as enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone and giving unto them a heart of flesh, renewing their wills and by His almighty power determining them to that which is good and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ.

So if we put that in everyday language, it is being brought from spiritual death to spiritual life in Christ through a new nature.

And this renewal of our nature occurs when God by His Spirit opens our understanding.

You know, we understand now what used to just be Bible words on a page. Captures our heart, gives us a soft response of heart and frees our will to make the right choices.

And this produces a change in the life and effectually draws us to Christ.

And we would say, and the first great result of a new nature is that we believe and repent, what we call conversion.

So we're really looking at the divine side of the beginning of the Christian life and then conversion is the human side, the human response.

Regeneration being the work of God. Now that's the big official definition. Let me give you some simpler definitions by some individual

Christians. Richard Baxter, famous Puritan, writes this, regeneration is to have a new heart or disposition and a new conversation.

The old word meaning a new lifestyle. So new heart, totally new disposition on the inside which produces a new lifestyle.

Ezekiel Hopkins, he wrote a book on the doctrine of regeneration and he gives a slightly fuller picture in this quote.

He says, regeneration is a change of the whole man in every part and faculty thereof from a state of sinful nature to a state of supernatural grace whereby the image of God that we defaced and lost by our first transgression, speaking of the

Garden of Eden, is again in some good measure restored. Another Puritan, Thomas Cole, wrote in his little book on regeneration and he says it this way, regeneration is a wonderful work of God, the

Holy Ghost, begetting or birthing the elect unto himself by engrafting them into Christ from whom they derive a spiritual being and in whom they live spiritually forever and ever, growing up daily into his likeness till they share, growing up daily into his likeness till they come to the stature of a perfect man in him.

So different definitions emphasizing different things about regeneration, how it happens, what it produces, what it involves.

Now those definitions are reflected years later in the writings of the

Great Awakening or the Evangelical Revival leaders, but what we notice with this transition from 17th to the 18th century is something that I do appreciate, all right, and that is there's always a simplification.

Rarely do you see a George Whitefield or a John Berridge or William Grimshaw or Daniel Rollins taking a

Puritan definition of something which is pretty precise and making it more precise. Usually they take the

Puritan definition and looking at the people in front of them who might not have been really up to that level, they simplify it.

Now they don't lose the content, but they simplify it in a way that I think is pretty helpful for us, so I'm always glad to hear what they say.

This is what Whitfield writes, regeneration is the receiving of a principle of new life imparted to our hearts by the

Holy Ghost, changing us, giving us new thoughts, new words, new actions, new views, so that old things pass away and all things become new in our souls.

John Berridge, one of the co -workers with Whitfield, he writes this, in our regeneration a divine principle is implanted in us or a spiritual nature is bestowed on us, capable of growth, yet if left to itself would wither and die.

It is completely dependent upon the continual influence from God for its support and growth.

So it's the beginning of the Christian life, but that's not all there is to the Christian life. There has to be growth and that comes as we walk with the

Lord. Really I would think again we want to emphasize that these views that they express were not just the views of Calvinists.

These were views that even the Armenians held. John Wesley believed that God had to regenerate, you know, so while there would be some minor differences, this was a doctrine that basically the

Protestants agreed upon until the early 19th century when Charles Finney, famous preacher, who was able to report enormous numbers of conversions through using a new technique, never heard of before in that day, the sinner's prayer, or he called it the prayer faith, we call it the sinner's prayer, and able to say, well 800 were converted this week.

Well how do you know? Well because they asked Jesus into their heart. Because 800 people said this prayer. Yeah, because they said the prayer and that had never been used before in that way, and so nobody had ever been able to boast those kinds of numbers, so he kind of became an overnight sensation, and his views, which sadly were often not biblical, his views became the prevalent view of the next generation, and we have never recovered from that especially in America.

Finney's views of regeneration basically are the average view of the churches in our land.

Yeah, and you know I didn't realize that until we as a church read through Revival and Revivalism by Ian Murray, and I just want to take just a real quick break and just say, you know,

I know we've mentioned that book, particular book, in the podcast a few times, but let me encourage you to go read that.

I was talking to a friend about it the other day, and he just asked the question, how do you think that we went from, you know, the mind of the

Puritans and the great men of God who God used in the revivals to today, and the kind of evangelicalism that we have, particularly in the

South in America, and all I said was, read the book, because it does help you understand how we got to now, and some of the doctrines of Charles Finney, and how that, you know, the ripples that we still feel from that as well, so go read the book.

It's well worth your time. Yeah, and the real shift in Finney was from a God oriented, a

God originating work in regeneration, that God makes us alive, that God gives us a new nature, that God gives us a new heart, that God opens the eyes of our heart, to a man originating, that man by being persuaded by the preaching, or by reading the

Bible, man is persuaded to the point that he is, that he has a strong enough determination to no longer live for myself, but I'm deciding that my ultimate goal in my life will be for Jesus Christ, and not for self, and Finney basically called that regeneration, and that is not what the

Bible talks about when it talks about regeneration, though that decision is very important. When we talk about regeneration, the significance of regeneration is not only what we mentioned last time, that it's the starting place of Christianity within us, this new nature, this new life.

God awakens us, turns our face toward his Son on the cross, and we suddenly, all these things we've heard all of our life, you know, these things suddenly come together, and we no longer fight against these truths, but we find them, you know, irresistibly beautiful, and we give ourselves to that God, we trust ourselves to him.

It's the beginning, it's the opening of the gate, the rest of the Christian life is just walking on that path, but regeneration is also important because of the way it's interconnected with everything else that God does in our life from that point forward, so sanctification.

Sanctification is simply that new life that God placed within us, that new nature working, it's those great realities now working themselves out into every area of the life, you know, so it's like there's a new life here, and it's starting to spread, and it needs to get to every fingertip and toe and earlobe and everything, and also the fact that because regeneration is this new life, it helps us to understand, you know, assurance.

Do I see evidences of a new birth? If someone is alive, if a child is alive, there are evidences of life, there's activity, there's certain things we expect to see.

It's not perfect. A child is a child, not a mature adult, but a baby

Christian is a baby still, but there are some things that are there now that weren't there before, and it also helps us to understand the nature of grace, that it was such a free expression of God's love that he made us alive, like a new creation or a new birth.

It's not something we did to ourselves that made us look better to God, and he decided to respond.

So there's just so many ways that it connects. When we talk about salvation, the word salvation is an umbrella term, but within that big term of salvation, we have everything from, you know,

God's choosing and God's calling and drawing and to conviction and regeneration and faith and repentance, justification, union with Christ, you know, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification.

All of that is interconnected, and it really, it's a great benefit to us, and it guards us against a lot of error.

If we can keep those things connected, keep them from pulling apart, and keep them in a right order. Obviously, birth precedes activity.

Creation, a new creation, creation precedes, you know, the effects of the creation.

So the planting of a tree precedes fruit and leaves growing on the tree.

So all the things we see, the changes we see happening in the Christian, are ultimately the product of God starting a new life within us.

And I think that it also illustrates the fact that, as dependent as we are at the moment of conversion,

I mean, it is a work of God. It is all of God, but then as we begin down this path, like you mentioned the path of sanctification, we're no less dependent.

We're no less needy, and I think that's one thing that we tend to forget, that I tend to forget as we progress in the

Christian life and on this path, because at the moment you begin to think, okay, I've got this under control.

I can do this under my own strength. You immediately realize, no, I can't.

As needy as I was at that moment that God opened my eyes to my sin and opened my eyes to His holiness, that neediness that I felt in that moment is the same neediness whether I feel it or not.

I am just as needy to progress in the Christian life as I was to begin the Christian life.

And the Puritans and the revivalists, they understood that and could communicate and articulate that so well.

Let's talk about the different trends in the history of the church in Britain in particular.

We see it reflected in the colonies as well, but how did this doctrine develop? During the

Reformation, the doctrine of regeneration was not a primary doctrine they visited. In a sense, when you think about the

Reformation, it's like rediscovering the great object of truths of the gospel, all right. It wasn't that the

Reformation had to say to the Catholic Church, don't you realize that Jesus is the Son of God and that God is a triune being?

And the Catholic Church had already embraced that. But we're dealing with the fundamental object of truths of salvation like justification by faith, all right, by grace through faith.

You know, those kinds of great, the heart of Christianity. Then when you come to the

Puritans a hundred years later, basically, you're watching that work its way outward. You're watching the

Puritans say, okay, we already understand that justification is a gift of God. It's a gracious thing and it's received through faith, all right.

Now, it's not good works that make me right with God, but now that I am right with God, I want to understand this working of God, not for me, the object of truth, but the subject of truth.

How does God work in a person and can we understand that? And does that affect the way we help each other?

And it does. And so they looked a lot at the work of the Holy Spirit, particularly in regeneration and in sanctification, a holy life.

So when we move from the Reformation to the Puritans, all right, we're gonna see that progression.

But what happened in the English Church? Well, in the English Reformation, you know, we have the 39 articles and those are pretty good, pretty solid articles, basic Protestant truths.

But when it comes to the liturgy of the church, so the official things that the church authority says, okay, if you're a priest in the

Church of England and you baptize this infant, this is what you say at this point, and then you do this, and then this is what you pray, then you do this, that, you know, so it's a liturgy.

And it's a very clearly spelled out process. And so when the liturgy was written, we see there that the kind of what

I would consider Roman Catholic kind of leftovers, tendencies, really start to show up.

And the liturgy of the Anglican Church was one thing that Whitefield and those men and the

Puritans said, we cannot agree with that. Okay, so that 39 articles, yes, they're very

Protestant. But this is moving back toward Catholicism. So I want to give you an idea of kind of what the

Puritans reacted against, and later the evangelical men. In the Anglican liturgy and homilies, the official sermons they were supposed to give, dealing with baptism, we find their doctrine of regeneration showing through a lot.

In one liturgical place, it's called the Ministration of Public Baptism of Infants.

All right, so this is what you're supposed to do as a pastor when you baptize an infant. It talks about the fact that baptism actually is connected with regeneration.

It causes a new birth in the infant. Before the baptism of the infant, the priest is to take the infant and to pray these words, quote, give thy

Holy Spirit to this infant that he may be born again and be made an heir of everlasting salvation, end quote.

All right, so God, I'm about to put this infant, sprinkle the water on this infant, give your Holy Spirit to him so he can be your child.

Now, that's not just a covenantal baptism of a Presbyterian. It's certainly not a Baptist baptism where we're saying this is a public declaration, but it's a very

Roman Catholic -like view. And then another prayer the priest is directed to pray is this, sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin and grant that this child, now to be baptized therein, may receive the fullness of thy grace.

So again, we're certainly something, the view of the Anglican is something's actually happening through the water.

All right, let me give you another. After the baptism, the priest is directed in the liturgy to pray this, or to give a prayer of thanksgiving that God has been pleased, quote, to regenerate this infant with his

Holy Spirit, end quote. So very clear. The Anglican Church had chosen a view of baptism that was pretty mechanical.

Through doing this baptism, God was, by His Spirit, through the water,

He was putting His Spirit within that infant, and that infant was now born again. Now, if that's true, then

Puritans preaching to all these people who are officially church members, they're preaching to people that have already been born again.

And same thing with Whitefield and those men 100 years later. And the Puritans, and the evangelical men in the next century, violently disagreed with that.

The baptism did not make you born again. I mean, look at, I mean, put it into context.

They were speaking to a people who were firmly convinced, no, I'm settled with God.

I was baptized as a child. That's all that I have to do. There's nothing more. You don't have to talk to me about regeneration.

And the Puritans and Whitefield and these men were coming, understanding what was truly at stake.

Their argument wasn't just against bad doctrine. Their arguments were for the souls of men and women surrounding them.

Yeah, certainly. And so that, you know, you can see why they're so earnest in this and willing to, you know, risk the ire of an entire nation that would say, you know, if a

Puritan or a Whitefield, I remember reading that one of the bishops said about George Whitefield when he first started preaching, if, you know, if George Whitefield would just kind of turn his preaching toward repentance, we'd be okay with it.

Because he's an earnest young man. He's a great preacher. He, you know, he has crowds of 10 ,000, 15 ,000, 20 ,000 people listen to him out in the fields.

But when he tells church people, and that's 95 % of the population. All the Church of England.

Right. When he tells Church of England people, you need to be born again, he's dead wrong. They've already been born again.

What they need to do is just do better. And so Whitefield said, no, they don't need to do better. They're going to have to be actually born.

So that's what the Puritans reacted against. Now in reacting against that, the Puritans in following in line with the

Reformation more closely, moved away with John Calvin's emphasis from regeneration being the spirit and water.

That's, you know, the pre -reformation. Calvin said, no, spirit and word. That God generally regenerates.

He awakens us. He makes us alive to Him. He makes us capable of responding wholeheartedly, mind, heart, and will.

As the gospel is being presented, the spirit causes that to come to us with an effective power.

And it's not just the words of a preacher, you know, what they would call the external call. The preacher saying, trust, believe, repent.

Now there's an internal call. There's the voice of the Spirit of God Himself in a sense speaking to us within saying, believe, get up, walk, come.

And suddenly, you know, we find ourselves willing, able to do so. Desiring.

Yeah, yeah. So again, understanding, desiring, and choosing are all freed in the work of regeneration and we run to Christ.

So the Puritan made that real shift. The Spirit is the agent, they would say, of regeneration.

He's the one that gives the life. The instrument in the hand of the Spirit is generally, and this is being a bit simplistic, but generally, it is the preaching of the gospel when that happens.

Whereas before that, you know, the Anglican Church saying, no, the Spirit gives regeneration, but He does through the water.

Okay. And so you can see that that makes a big difference on how you approach Christianity. I should bring the gospel to the person

I work next to. I should talk to my kids about the work of Christ. I should pray that God would make those words effective instead of I should take him down and get him baptized at the church.

I mean, just think about the way that that would impact. I mean, you know, I've got four young kids and just thinking of the impact that would make on raising them.

If I'm raising them believing, okay, you have been baptized and therefore you are already regenerate, that would certainly color the way that I teach them about sin and about the impact of sin and about, you know, our need of regeneration versus an understanding that no, regeneration has to work.

Like God has to work in their life for regeneration. The presentation of the gospel there, the ongoing application of gospel truth, the explanation of sin in their lives, all of those things are indeed colored and even changed by our understanding of that.

Yeah, yeah, certainly. It really does. It's a radically different approach and it's what distinguishes the evangelical.

Historically, if you use the word evangelical, fundamental to that is the belief that everyone must be born again.

Which is why you must evangelize. Yeah, and so, and the gospel is the great tool that the

Spirit uses. You know, it is the seed of the gospel, you know, that He plants in the renewed heart and sprouting from that is this repentance and faith that goes to God through Christ.

Now, so the Puritans made quite a big emphasis on that and we're going to see in our, in future episodes, that they really gave a lot of time in examining kind of a biblical psychology.

How does God generally do that? I mean, what does it look like an individual? You know, what about conviction?

What about despair? What about hope? What about legal righteousness? Well, I'll just try harder.

What about, you know, the interplay of repentance and faith? And so they really, we could say they tended to map out the general observable process of God dealing with the soul to bring us from death to life.

And that has a lot of value. There are some dangers there. We'll talk about that.

But in general, I would say very valuable for us today to help us to be wise guides of souls, wise soul physicians.

Now, the Puritans give all this emphasis on the work of God through the gospel, changing a man and a woman.

When the Puritans fell out of favor with the culture. So at the end of, you know, of the protectorate,

Oliver Cromwell and the parliament are no longer in power, but a king is restored.

So we call this period the restoration, the restoration of a monarchy. Well, British people link

Puritans with parliament, Puritans with the death of a king. And so when the king comes back, there's a real anti -Puritan attitude.

So look, whatever is Puritan, I'm against it. So if the Puritans taught that the new birth was indeed

God making us alive within and through the preaching of the gospel, and then from that flows all the changes, so that regeneration is the beginning and everything comes after from that.

Then they just totally reject that and say, well, if it's Puritan, I hate it. And so what happened was this great pendulum swing, and this is important because it sets us up for the great awakening in the evangelical revival.

From 1662 to about 1730, during that period, we've got the ejection of the

Puritan ministers. They're out. The Church of England is under people that hate Puritan teaching. The culture pretty much hates everything

Puritan. And so there's a new view of regeneration, and it kind of could be described in two categories.

Well, we still have the baptismal issue, but then I would say there's more of a, by the time Whitefield comes along in 1735, there's more of a kind of a liberal tendency.

That is, a lot of people are not even agreeing that baptism does it, but a lot of people in the church, thinkers, liberals, would say things like this.

Well, really regeneration is the end of a process. So you go to, you get baptized. Good. You go to church.

That's good. You learn these moral codes, right and wrong, the golden rule. These are all good. And little by little, by obeying these things, you become a better and better person.

And the end of the process is that you're a new creature. That's Catholicism.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It is the process. It is a process of you climbing a ladder. And the culmination is life.

Whereas the Bible and the Puritans and the evangelicals said, no, life has to be the first thing.

And it's a free gift that we're not earning. And from that flows that wonderful transformation.

So that was the scene when George Whitefield comes before the eyes of the public and preaches his sermon on regeneration.

And it becomes the most wildly popular sermon. And it really shakes them up. You mean, being baptized wasn't enough?

You mean, becoming a better and better person isn't leading to regeneration?

You mean, it's something that God does in a moment? And it's God that does it and not man?

It's a divine act just as much as birth is not what I did to myself, but I'm the beneficiary of what someone else did.

Creation didn't make itself. It's the beneficiary of what God did. So you mean to tell me that God takes the first step in all of this?

God awakened me. God opened my eyes and softened my heart and freed my will. And that was the beginning of everything.

And it's a free gift? Yes. And then that changed everything, you know, really in the lives of the listeners.

And we'll talk about that as we look exactly at exactly what did they teach about the doctrine of regeneration?

And how did they apply that particularly in evangelism? How would you answer the question, who is

God? Would you focus on what he offers? Would you focus on what he promises?

In Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, Dr. John Snyder answers the question by focusing on God's attributes.

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or click the link in the description below. Imagine just how freeing it must have been for a person who has spent their entire life hearing, what you have to do is work hard, and at the end of your life, hope that regeneration will come.

And all of a sudden, a preacher comes and says, you have work on the wrong side of this.

It's the work of Christ. Salvation is a gift and it is a gift freely offered to you.

The work has been done. Life is offered to you. It is the work of God.

Imagine how freeing and how hopeful and helpful and life -giving that message truly must have been.

And our prayer is that that is the message that you hear. And it is the message that you give as you discuss the beauties of the gospel to those around you, to your family, to your co -workers, to friends and loved ones.

And so, consider that this week. We want to end this week with a prayer by Matthew Henry.

Our Father in heaven, we come to you as children to a Father, able and ready to help us.

We beseech you. Let your name be sanctified. Enable us and others to glorify you.

Let your kingdom come. Let Satan's kingdom be destroyed. And let the kingdom of your grace be advanced.

Let us and others be brought into it and kept in it. And let the kingdom of your glory be hastened.

Give us this day our daily bread of your free gift. Let us receive a competent portion of the good things of this life and let us enjoy your blessing with them.