Joel Beeke Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is

Mike Abendroth and I'm your host. Every day of the week, we do something differently. Mondays, taped sermon from Bethlehem Bible Church, preaching through First Corinthians.

Tuesday, I talk to Pastor Steve about issues in the local church. And on Wednesdays, I like to talk about books.

And we look at two different kinds of books, books that are excellent that you should read and books that you should stay away from.

And I'm happy to say today, I have an excellent book in my hand, Living for God's Glory, subtitled

Introduction to Calvinism by Dr. Joel Beeky. Joel, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

Thank you. Good to be here. Well, I see on the fly leaf that you're the president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.

You're also pastoring at Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation, editor of Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, editorial director for Reformation Heritage Books.

Where do you get all the time, Dr. Beeky? Well, I've got a good wife.

She lets me work long hours. I remember asking Steve Lawson one day, how long do you study a typical day?

And he said, you're gonna get mad at me if I tell you. And I didn't know if he was gonna say one hour, some kind of Saturday night special like Spurgeon might do, or if he was gonna say a lot of hours.

And he said 12 hours a day and I have an excellent wife. And so is that a typical day for you as well?

I would say yes about that, yeah. Well, Dr. Beeky, I'm holding this book in my hands, an excellent book by Reformation Trust, the

Ligonier publisher. And give me an overview of the book, and then we'll talk a little bit more specifically about Calvin 500 and things after that.

Well, it was brought to birth actually through efforts made by Greg Bailey, one of the editors of Sproul's team of Ligonier people.

I was suggesting to him that someone needs to do a book on an introduction to Calvinism that replaces the old, the basic ideas of Calvinism by Henry Meader, which sold tens of thousands of copies way back in the 60s and 70s, but since has languished and is really quite out of date in a number of ways.

And he said, well, what was my idea? And I said, well, I think we should look at, have chapters in the book showing how

Calvinism applies to every area of life, showing its comprehensiveness and its beauty and its fulsomeness for daily

Christian living, and look at different aspects of life like how it relates to marriage and politics and education and basically how it relates to history, the mind, the heart, and the church in various facets.

And he said, well, why don't you do it? Why don't you present a proposal? And I said, well, I'd rather not, I'm too busy.

And but he talked me into it, and I presented a proposal of doing 28 chapters, and I got,

I think, six or seven or eight writers to help me with eight or nine chapters and did the rest myself, and they accepted the book, and within six months, it was out in print.

So it was one of the fastest books I've ever written, but it was an intense time of writing. Now, I looked at the table of contents,

Dr. Beeky, and part one, Calvinism in History, part two, Calvinism in the Mind, part three,

Calvinism in the Heart, part four, Calvinism in the Church, part five, Calvinism in Practice, and then part six,

Calvinism's Goal. As I read the chapters, I mean, I love Dr. Haken and Dr.

Thomas and Dr. Ferguson, but as I read the chapters, I asked myself, I think Dr. Beeky just should have written all the chapters.

Did you ever consider that? Well, I did at the beginning, but some of these men are very important friends in my life, in fact, all of them are, and I just thought they could do a better job than I could in a number of cases, and so I thought that I'd ask them in their area of specialty to contribute.

For example, Calvinistic Ethics by Nelson Klosterman. I mean, this is his specialty, and it would take me many, many hours to produce something close to what he's produced here in just 10 pages.

And in the preface, you said that Sinclair Ferguson wrote the chapter on doxological

Calvinism, and he did it in one afternoon on the final due date.

What happened there? Well, Sinclair Ferguson is a wonderful, wonderful brother.

He's probably one of my top five friends in the world, but he's just barraged with so many requests that when he commits himself to something, he's just always under the gun, just getting things done.

This is not atypical of him, but when the final date was there, because he wanted to get the book out,

I think it was in 2008, yeah, because it's for the 500th anniversary of Calvin in 2009, when the final due date was there,

I just pressed him, and I said, really, it's supposed to be done today, and he said, well, I'll see what I can do this afternoon.

That evening, he sent me a chapter. That is wonderful.

Now, some of our folks on the internet will be familiar with Calvinism and the background and what it is, what is

Calvinism versus hyper -Calvinism. For some of those people listening today on the radio, Dr.

Beeky, could you give us an overview of what Calvinism is, why we're not worshiping

John Calvin? Talk a little bit about the theological shorthand for the sovereignty of God, so people, when they hear the word

Calvinism, they don't recoil in horror with some kind of fatalistic system.

Yes, this is probably one of the main reasons why I wrote this book, so those who are familiar with Calvinism could hand it to their neighbor and say, this is what

Calvinism really is all about, beyond something that's just 10 or 15 pages about the so -called five points of Calvinism, which really are important for the doctrine of salvation in Calvinism, but Calvinism is so much, much more than that, and so I'm aiming to show that Calvinism is a whole way of thinking, a whole way of life, a whole way of practice, a whole way of spirituality, and really,

Calvinism does go back to John Calvin in the 16th century, but its essential teachings really are

Pauline in the New Testament, and basically what Calvin is doing is organizing

Paul's theology and explaining it, so we would believe that to be

Calvinistic is to be biblical. I know that grates on some people's ears, but we think as we read the scriptures that though Calvin may have erred in some small areas, he got the big picture right and the main doctrines right, and he really teaches what the

Bible teaches for the main, so it began in the 16th century. Really, what happened is that through Calvinism, there was an offshoot from Lutheranism, so Protestantism was now divided as of 1529 into Lutheranism and Calvinism, and Calvin's name sort of came to dominate, it's really called the

Reform Movement more accurately. Calvin's name just sort of came to dominate because he was the organizer and the systematician, if you will, of the

Reform Movement. Basically, what Calvin is saying is that salvation is completely to the glory of God alone, it's based on scripture alone, it's effected through Christ alone and his saving work for us on the cross, and it's applied to us by the

Holy Spirit, and it's sheer grace, it's grace alone, so that every aspect of salvation, every aspect of truth we owe to God, we're depraved sinners, we're needing

God, we're needing his grace, and he comes to us in Jesus Christ, and experientially, that is the experience of our soul works that grace within us, and then we want to live the whole of life to the glory of God, so we lose, or rather, a lot of our self -centeredness is crushed, we're still sinners, of course, still far too self -centered, but what happens when we really embrace

Calvinism is we want to be godly husbands, we want to be godly in the workforce, we want to be godly in every area of life.

Well, when I was thinking about that sin principle that dwells within us and why we need redemption and why we need to have

God elect us, I was looking in your book and you have Edwards' quote, when I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell.

And Dr. Beeky, would you agree with the statement that if you're having a hard time dealing with election, unconditional election, it's probably because you don't understand what total depravity really is?

Yes, I think that's a very accurate assessment. Many people raise the question, who are not

Calvinists, how could a loving God damn anyone to hell?

But if you really understand the God of Scripture and you understand your own depravity, the amazing thing is not that God reprobates anyone to condemnation, the amazing thing is that he elects anyone to salvation.

I mean, the angels fell and he didn't give them a possibility of being restored. There are devils and there will always be devils.

But with man, with fallen man, out of his sheer sovereign goodness and love and pleasure, he opened the way of salvation and calls sinners to it and draws them into it, and it's all just wonderful, wonderful grace.

In other words, if there was no election, you and I and no one else would ever be saved because we'd all go our own way to perdition.

Well, Dr. Beeky, this is Mike Abendroth at No Compromise Radio. We're talking to the people in Worcester, Massachusetts and those on podcasts across the country and maybe the world, who knows.

And I'm talking about the book, The Reformation Trust Book, Living for God's Glory, An Introduction to Calvinism.

And I would heartily recommend this book for those who have never read anything about Calvinism and also for those who'd like to understand it better.

I think of the Thomas and Steele small booklet, and I also think this is a better book because it deals with some of the practical implications of Calvinism.

Dr. Beeky, on page 42, I loved it when you said, as Calvinists, we are enamored with God.

We are overwhelmed by His majesty, His beauty, His holiness, and His grace.

And you say on that same page that Romans, it's a doctrinal text of the

Bible, but the main doctrine for Romans is not grace, faith, belief, or law, but what's the greatest doctrinal issue in the book of Romans?

Do you remember what you wrote? Well, I think I probably wrote that it's just God. God in all

His awesomeness and all His theological dimensions and all His practical reality and all

His love that He pours out into our hearts. Well, that's exactly right. You said that the greatest theological statement in Romans begins with God.

God gave them over. God will give to each person according to what He has done. God set forth a propitiation.

God justifies the ungodly. And isn't that what we're really saying Calvinism is? Looking at the world, looking at God through His perspective versus our perspective as fallen creatures.

Yeah, that's why the Reformers actually developed as one of their primary mottos, incorum

Deo, which is literally translated in the face of God. We speak about getting in someone else's face a bit negatively, but if you really love someone and they're in your face, so to speak, it's a very pleasurable, wonderful experience.

It's awesome at times because intimacy is always awesome. But that's what the

Reformers were really after, a really personal encounter with the great God of the universe, the great

Savior of mankind. And so they wanted to live all of life incorum

Deo. Dr. Bickey, how has the book been received so far in the evangelical culture of books and publishing?

Well, they printed 13 ,000 as the first press run, which was quite encouraging, and those have sold out.

And now there's a second press run. I think it was 6 ,000. And it's going well.

It's not going gangbusters, but it's going well, I think. Do you think it's slow in,

I don't want to say it's slow in its popularity, but when people get a big book today, and I'm looking at the book and it's over, it's about 400 pages long, do people today, they just want to have an easy book to read some kind of Cliff Notes version of Calvinism?

Well, I intended it to be a popular book. I tried to write simply, and that's one of my main goals, is to write simply and directly about the various subjects.

But I did intend it to be 200 pages, and it was just really hard to look at all the different aspects of Calvinism and keep it too small.

So it did get a little bigger than I thought I wanted it to get. But the feedback

I've gotten from people so far has been encouraging about that. Well, Dr. Beattie - Once they get into it, they seem to enjoy it.

So that's great. I'm not saying it to flatter you, but I really enjoyed the book, and there are some folks that need to just read such a book so they can see the implications of this great doctrine.

And doctrine affects methodology, the way we think, doxology, and I think that's what your book does, is shows us that this is more than just, you know, these are the five points that you need to memorize.

This is tulip, but I like the practical application. Since this is no compromise radio,

I have to ask you this question. Dr. Beattie, on page 81, you're talking about universal redemption, and you're talking about Arminians, and you say, and I think it's quite bold and quite accurate, but tell me what you're thinking when you said that universal redemption slanders

God's attributes, it slanders God's wisdom. That's a pretty tough statement, statement, those are pretty tough statements, and also it slanders

God's justice. Yes, well, if you consider that God elects people as the

Bible says, in accord with his son who died for those same people, and the spirit who works in those same people, if you actually believe in Arminian universal redemption of whatever stripe it may be, you're actually making a discontinuity within the

Godhead, because you're saying something like this, well, Jesus died for everyone, but the father only saved certain people, or you're saying

Jesus died for everyone, and therefore when everyone is not saved, the logical conclusion is that God was powerless to save certain people, which gives you an impotent

God. So we believe that when we read the Bible, there's a consistency in the

Godhead that Jesus didn't die for a single person in vain.

His salvation is offered, his blood is offered to every hearer of the gospel, but by nature, man rejects that, and will never ask for it, but God makes us willing in the day of his power, and so the spirit works in us and draws us, and when he draws us, as we come to faith and repentance in Jesus Christ, we learn that it's

God's grace that did the drawing, or we never would have asked after him. Amen. Dr.

Beakey, tell us about some of the issues in evangelicalism today that you think some of our listeners should watch out for, things that are happening in the culture of,

I guess we have to use the word loosely, evangelicalism. What's coming down the pike that we might be aware of to guard ourselves against imbibing?

Well, that's a broad question, brother. Well, I made it broad enough that you could take it whichever way you want.

Okay, well, one thing that really troubles me is when Reformed people, or even

Calvinists, will say something like this, you just have to believe in Jesus Christ and you'll be saved, and they just keep saying only one thing, believe in Jesus and you'll be saved, as if that's all scripture has to say about becoming a

Christian, and I think then you fall into the trap of the so -called evangelical easy -believism, which to me is very problematic.

To truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is no small thing, it's a full -life commitment. And when people from the pulpit or in the pew or in society make it sound very simple and very easy in the sense that, well, that's all you have to do, and then it's over, and then you've got assurance of faith and everything's well,

I think it does an injustice to Christianity. It's not true to the biblical data, which shows that Christians live through great trials and that really becoming a

Christian involves surrendering your whole life to the Lord, and eventually it alienates people because as they move on, they realize if they just made a decision by themselves for themselves and go on living a worldly lifestyle,

Christianity won't speak to them and they'll feel disillusioned, and often they'll leave it altogether.

Or also live it in a very shallow way, trying to keep the world in one hand and Christianity in the other and live a mixed life.

I think a lot of these people are deceiving themselves for eternity, and I think they need to go back to the

Scriptures and discover what it really means to believe the gospel and to believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ. Along those lines, Dr. Beeky, are there any, in your studies, are there any

Puritans or Reformed folks or those who would call themselves Calvinist who would practice some kind of Finney -like altar call at the end of their service?

I've just been reading The Great Invitation by Errol Holson. I can't really think of anyone, at least that I would respect, who would use some kind of manipulation like that at the end of the service, some kind of, you know, come up here, believe this, you're good, here's assurance.

It seems, guess what I'm getting at is, isn't there a link between what we believe and what we do, and if we believe and have been taught by the

Spirit of God what we call Calvinism, it should flesh itself out, it should incarnate itself into ministry, shouldn't it?

Yes, yes. There have been a few preachers that have said, you know, right after preaching, if you wanna come and discuss, you know, soul issues with the preacher, please come to my study right away after the sermon, and that's fine, because then you can deal with people one -on -one, but when you make it public and they all come down to the front, it's almost as if you're setting imprimatur on it and saying, now these people are saved, and the public display often becomes a substitute for the inward saving work of the

Holy Spirit, which goes a lot deeper than just taking a few steps forward. So, yeah,

I think that is very troubling, and I'm trying to rack my brain, but I can't think of anyone who I would say was truly reformed in Church history that's done that.

I do think it was a 19th century innovation by Charles Finney, which has been perpetuated and enlarged upon in a variety of ways ever since, with,

I think, disastrous results. Well, I was thinking about Wesley, even, an Arminian, who didn't do altar calls either.

No. That's exactly right. I love in your book, you quote William Perkins, and out of all the folks who know about Puritans, I think maybe you know the most, or at least you've written a wonderful book about each of the

Puritans. William Perkins says about preaching, here's the issue with preaching, to preach one

Christ by Christ to the praise of Christ. And Dr.

Beeky, tell me a little bit, and tell our listeners a little bit about the propulsion these days in the pulpit to preach moralism, to do good, to be good, whether that's seeker -sensitive preaching, or whether that could be maybe in some reformed circles where Christ is, he's almost forgotten, and maybe we're preaching through Ephesians over four years, and we forget to remind people that they're in Christ, so therefore live out who you are.

How important is it to preach Christ, and if we don't, is it moralistic?

Well, the word moralistic is bandied about quite freely today. There are moral imperatives in Scripture, but ultimately all the moral imperatives flow out of living a life that's in union with Christ, and so we get our strength for sanctification and all moral, true moral living out of Jesus.

And so Christ really, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 .30, he's made of God unto us to be our wisdom, our righteousness, our justification, our sanctification, and our full redemption.

So the preacher that doesn't begin and center and end in Christ in all his sermons really isn't preaching.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2 .2, I determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.

So what you notice in Paul is that all his doctrines, even common practical moral issues, they lead back to Jesus.

So if he's talking about how should we live as a husband, he says, well, treat your wife the way

Christ treats the church. How should you live as a wife? Show the respect the church shows to Christ.

Thank you for being on the show. I hated to cut you off because I could just sit and listen to you preach and talk about the

Lord all day, living for God's glory. I'd encourage all of our listeners to get a copy of this, An Introduction to Calvinism on Reformation Trust.

Thank you for being a guest today. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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