Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: John Bunyan 1

The following message is by pastor John Piper. More information from desiring. God is available at www .desiringgod .org.

In 1672 50 miles northwest of London in Bedford John Bunyan was released from 12 years of imprisonment. Near the end of that imprisonment he Wrote an add-on to his spiritual autobiography called grace abounding to the chief of sinners.

Which he had written sometime earlier. And in that add-on he said something from which I take the title of this message. He quoted 2nd Corinthians 1 9 which says We had this sentence of death in ourselves.

That we should not trust in ourselves, but in God. Who raises the dead? And then he wrote this this scripture I was made to see that if ever I Would suffer rightly I must first pass a sentence of death upon everything That can be properly called a thing of life.

Even to reckon myself my wife my children my health my enjoyment and all as dead to me and Myself as dead to them. And the second was to live upon God That is invisible. There's the phrase That I chose as the title for the message to live upon God That is invisible.

He discovered that if he's to suffer rightly He must live no longer upon Wife or children or health. But upon God he must live upon God. And how good it would be if we could learn to live upon God before We have no choice, but to live only upon God.

For the day will come when this mortal nature will fail and The doctor will say there is nothing more we can do and at that time You may be old enough to have outlived your wife and children. And have nothing to live upon but God and.

So it would be good. It would be good to learn this. I think he spent his life learning it from his early married life. Until he died when he was 60 years old in 1688. So I come to Bunyan with some predispositions about suffering.

What has gripped me most about Bunyan in the six or eight months that I've been reading is his suffering and how he suffered and how he responded to his sufferings and I want to know how to learn from it.

What did it do to him? What might? do to us. And I'll clue you in that I Come to him with Significant Experiences looking at the world and looking at the word and Therefore I'm reading Bunyan through certain glasses and I'll tell you what they are right up front.

So you'll know that whatever distortions are there you can be alerted to them. But I come right now in my 53rd year with this particular church and these particular sufferings and this world. I Come with these kinds of things on my mind.

The church in Indonesia with its church burnings. Sudan With its systematic starvation of Christians and the enslavement of many in the beatings. China With its repression of religious freedom and lengthy imprisonments and harassment.

India with mob violence resulting two weeks ago in Graham Staines being killed along with his two boys. David Barrett's report in this month's missionary bulletin. International bulletin of missionary research estimating 164 ,000 Christian martyrdoms this year.

10 ,000 people dead in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua and Honduras where one of my boys will be heading in a few weeks. 1 ,000 people killed in the earthquake in Armenia. Hundreds being slaughtered in Kosovo and Bosnia before that.

16 ,000 people dying of or being newly infected with AIDS the HIV virus every day. 2 .3 million died in 97 460 ,000 of them children. 8 .4 million children orphaned by AIDS and probably doubling in the next two or three Years not to mention the suffering of my own church tuberculosis lupus Kidney failure heart disease blindness and not to mention the emotional and relational pangs.

For which a Hundred people in this church would gladly endure a clean amputation of their right arm if they could be fixed. So I come to Bunyan with suffering on my mind. Not to mention the word. Through many tribulations you must enter the kingdom of God.

I send you out as Lambs in the midst of wolves. Many are the afflictions of The righteous if they persecuted me they will persecute you if they called the master of the house beelzebub. What will they call you?

To mention a few and so when I hear him say to suffer a right you must learn to Live upon God who is invisible. I want to know what that means and I want to experience that so that when my season of suffering is Intensified to the point of losing all and dying.

I will not lose my joy. Like Habakkuk one of our wedding texts says in chapter 3 verse 17 though the fig tree blossom not. Though there be no fruit on the vines. Though there be no lambs in stall and no cattle in the field.

Yet will I rejoice in God? My Savior. You got to live on God if that's going to come true. The reason that's so important to me is not simply because I I'm scared when I think about dying. Dying the process of dying is scary to me but I Believe God gets most glory in the world.

When we maintain our stability of faith and our joy of faith. When we have nothing to maintain that faith anymore, but God alone. Then he really gets glory. My little comment about signs and wonders would be God can and does do them and gets glory but not half so much as when according to John 19 or 21 19 We die.

Well, the world will be happy When it gets well. Doesn't take any spiritual Reality to rejoice when you get well. And if you want to tack on God did it the world will say fine. You can say God did it we say science did it but you love it.

I love it, and we know where your treasure is. But they can't say that in the dying hour. When you're rejoicing, I just can't say it anymore. John Bunyan was born in Elstow about a mile south of Bedford November 30th 1628 same year that William Laud became the Bishop of London.

Now that's significant and the reason it's significant is because You can't understand the sufferings of John Bunyan. If you don't understand the political and religious situation that brought it about or a lot of it about William Laud.

Bishop Laud teamed up with Charles the first to resist the parliamentary pressures to gain freedom for the Puritans. So that they wouldn't have to bow to the Book of Common Prayer or experience Episcopal Ordination and so there began to be a very dangerous cleavage between monarchy Charles the first and his religious lackey William Laud and the Parliament with Oliver Cromwell coming on to the scene and being elected to the Parliament in 1640.

1640 I think it was a Civil war broke out between these two groups people loyal to the king people loyal to Parliament the one wanting religious freedom for people like the Puritans and not just them and the other.

Saying that the Church of England should be the state church and there shouldn't be nonconformity with any freedom. Well Oliver Cromwell was a great leader and there was a triumph and Laud was beheaded in 1645 and you need to you need to hear that with the kind of trembling as Though you heard That President Clinton was beheaded this afternoon beheaded.

Not shocked beheaded. You need to feel this because this is the atmosphere in which these Puritans are going to be ministering people were beheaded. Kings the king five years later was beheaded the king was Beheaded and then Cromwell reigned and Presbyterianism reigned.

The Westminster Assembly was gathered earlier. It finished its work in 1646 and now we had the confession and the catechism and it defined the Presbyterian life in England in those days and has to this day.

Great freedom was given. Jews were excluded from the island of England in 1290 and not a Jew was allowed to be in England and They were welcomed back under Cromwell 1655 in particular. His he died 1658 he died.

So that little period there the Commonwealth 1645 roughly to 58 great freedom for the Puritans and other people in England. When he died his brother Richard tried to do it and he couldn't do it. He was not a leader now.

You know what happens when you have weak leadership in a country? There's a lot of chaos there begins to be instability and what do people want when there's instability at all costs? They want stability that will take it with a king or dictator or however, they can take it and so They welcome back Charles the second the son of Charles the first and it's called the restoration the restoration of monarchy 1660 and that's the year Bunyan went to jail so there's a correlation there because with the restoration of monarchy came the restoration of Episcopalism and the act of uniformity in 1662 which in August of that year put 2 ,000 Puritan pastors out of their churches who would not bow to Episcopal ordination or to the book of common prayer.

Now those were the days of John Bunyan's life. The 1660 in the next 18 years that he lived to the end of his life in 1688 were more or less dangerous. Sometimes Okay sometimes Threatened but never anything like we have today.

With such security to be taken for granted that you couldn't be assured that there wouldn't be a bloody Asides like there was in 1685 where the sheriff's killed 300 Puritans as a boy. He learned the trade of Tinker he used the phrase brazier in his will means a metal worker somebody who fixes plows and yokes and other metal instruments with forge and Hammer that was his trade.

He was poor. He had only a grade school. Education. He said I simply learned to read and write. He had absolutely no higher education and no theological education. His notable sufferings began as a teenager.

He was 15 years old. It's 1644 remember the dates now here comes this tremendous national upheaval a civil war is ready to break out and he's 15 years old and his mother dies and a month later his 13 year old sister dies and to make matters worse his father remarries within a month.

He turned 16 and he's drafted for two years into Cromwell's army, so within a space of Two or three months. He loses his mother as a 15 year old he loses his sister as a 13 year old and he swept away from his home as a 16 year old now and he May or may not have seen active service.

But we know one story where he was called upon to be a sentinel and a man said I'd like to take your place. You take mine and the man was killed with a musket ball through the head. And so he got at least that close to military activity.

This is a 16 year old boy Who just lost his mother he comes home? He is not a believer. He writes about himself. I was the very ringleader of all the youth that kept a company in all manner of vice and ungodliness.

He married he was 20 years old or 21 and We never learned the name of his first wife. It's a remarkable thing. She bore him four children and the first one Was blind at birth Mary. So his Marriage which might have been a relief to him from the sufferings of the earlier teen years Proves to enter with a tremendous burden and and the burden of course.

In our day, we've had that happen in our church. Is great then. Picture what it might have been for a young woman who had all the burden of a household and a blind daughter baby daughter to care for and then three more children follow back-to-back and Then when he's thrown into prison, she's 10 years old and he said it was like pulling skin from his Bones to leave his daughter Blind daughter alone with his wife with no means to care for them.

So he made laces in prison and things like that. But she brought with her to this marriage this pagan man's life. Two books that was her entire bringing one was called the plain man's pathway to heaven and the other was called the practice of piety and she told stories of her godly father and He began to read these books.

And he began to be awakened. Mary Elizabeth John Thomas were the names of his children and in his first five years of marriage he was profoundly converted. Now the process of the conversion was Agonizing and when you read grace abounding get it if it's up there.

It's a little short book 120 pages. It is very frustrating to read there are no dates in it. You can't tell when anything is happening and You can't tell what he thinks is his conversion because it seems to happen several times and then he experiences these extraordinary temptations and then he thinks he's committed the Unforgivable sin and drops into despair and depression for two years and then he begins to come out but most of the biographers seem to Make this the decisive moment and they're probably right.

So let me read you the decisive Moment, there were several good moments, but they seem to be followed by dripping I mean by drifting away and I I don't know what he thought about those. One day He's about 25 years old here I suppose One day as I was passing into the field This sentence fell upon my soul.

He's been soaking himself in the scriptures and in these books. But feeling unconverted This sentence fell upon my soul thy righteousness is in heaven and Me thought with all I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand.

There I say was my righteousness. So that wherever I was or whatever I was doing God could not say of me. He lacks my righteousness for that was just before him. I Also saw moreover that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better.

Nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse. For my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself the same yesterday today and forever. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons my temptations Fled away so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God the ones he's referring to there are the texts about the unforgivable sin and Esau and Crying out and not being able to get forgiven those terrible texts those scriptures left off to trouble me.

Now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and the love of God now one of the influence if that sounds familiar. Who's that sound like? A Another great person who had a conversion somewhat like that.

Well Wesley, I'm thinking of Luther. Okay, sounds like a lot of people. The reason I mentioned Luther is because he attributes so much to Luther. Here's what he says the God in whose hands are all my days and ways did cast into my hand one day a Book of Martin Luther's it was his comment on Galatians.

I found my condition in his experience so largely and profoundly Handled as if his book had been written out of my heart. I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon Galatians accepting the Bible before all other books that ever I have seen as most fit for a wounded conscience.

That's an amazing tribute and he's not the only one. 1655 now the matter of his soul is settled. The church Nonconformist Church in Bedford pastored by John Gifford asks him to do some exhorting in the fields and behold a Great preacher is discovered.

17 years was to pass before he would be licensed and become the actual official pastor of this church when he gets out of prison in 17 1672. But he became a very powerful Preacher and stories are told to the effect that hundreds would come from around to hear him.

From the villages and when he went to London if one day's notice were given Seven o 'clock the next morning before work 1 ,200 people could gather John Owen. The great intellect of the Puritans lived in London at this time would hear him every chance he got and when the King Charles asked Owen why do you go to hear a tinker preach when you have all this learning his answer was I would willingly Exchange my learning for the tinker's power of touching the men's men's Hearts, so, you know, this man had a tremendous gift for preaching.

Ten years into his marriage this unnamed woman. His wife died. He's 30 years old and he has four children under ten. One of them blind. Within a year he marries Elizabeth. Elizabeth was a great woman.

Also the year after that he's arrested. She's pregnant. She has four children. She inherited one of them's blind. She's pregnant. He gets arrested and she miscarries and loses the baby. I have crossed out in my manuscript, but I just feel like I can't pass over this.

This great instance in Elizabeth's life. I just must pay tribute to the women and in Bunyan's life though they had a hard time of it and he may not have treated them entirely all the way he should but She goes to London to appeal.

Now, this is a village woman this woman with no education. Goes to the higher-ups of London and they put her off and say wait until the the court comes to Bedford. So she waits six months or so and the court comes to Bedford.

So you got three judges. She's gonna go before these major judges because they've put here's her husband in jail. And who knows what might happen to her and she has four children. And a recent miscarriage to contend with.

Would he stop preaching they ask? My lord, he dares not leave off preaching as long as he can speak. What's the need of talking? There is need my lord. For I have four small children that cannot help themselves of.

Which one is blind and we have nothing to live upon but charity of other people. Matthew Hale with pity asks if she really has four children being so young. My lord, I am but mother-in-law to them. Having not been married to him yet two full years.

Indeed. I was with child when my husband was first apprehended but being young and unaccustomed to such things I being smade at the news fell into labor and So continued for eight days and then was delivered, but my child died.

Hale moved with the other judges. With pity moved with pity yet the other judges hardened themselves. He's a mere tinker. Elizabeth yes, and because he's a tinker and a poor man. He's despised and cannot have justice.

One. Mr. Chester is enraged and says he will Just preach and do as he wishes. He preaches nothing but the Word of God she says Mr. Twisdon in a rage he runneth up and down and do it harm. No my lord. It is not so God hath owned him and doth much good by him.

The angry man his doctrine is the doctrine of the devil she my lord. When the righteous judge shall appear it will be known that his doctrine is not of the devil. Well, we'll break it off there you get a flavor for Elizabeth.

Otherwise, she would not have been able to last the 12 years that She did without him 12 years in prison Voluntarily because all he had to say was I will no longer preach and he could have gotten out.

He was asked will you recant? Will you forswear will you renounce his answer if nothing will do unless I make my conscience a continual butchery and slaughter shop unless Putting out my own eyes. I commit me to the blind to be led as I doubt not is desired by some.

I have determined the Almighty God being my help and shield yet to suffer if Frail life might continue so long even till the moth shall go on my eyebrows Rather than thus to violate my faith and principles.

So you see some of the stuff he's made of as well. It was a torment for his family and he often agonized over well Over whether he was doing right by them. He said the partying with my wife and Poor children hath often been to me.

They could visit him from time to time have often been to me like the pulling of the flesh from my bones. Oh The thoughts of the hardship I thought my blind Mary Might go under would break my heart to pieces.

And yet he stayed 12 years later 1672 he's released under the Declaration of Religious Indulgence. He's immediately licensed he's been functioning pastorally for these this church because they joined him in prison a lot being arrested as well as Visiting and so he was functioning as pastor in some ways, but he was licensed immediately.

He bought and Refurbished a barn for a church and that's where he ministered for the next 16 years Years until he died in London in 1688 the census figures seem to suggest that there may have been a hundred and twenty non-conformists in Bedford in 17 1676 so perhaps he has a church of a hundred and twenty people plus people who may have come from around the surrounding Villages and God was merciful to him during those 16 years because even though blood was being shed By many Puritans in those years he escaped Imprisonment and indeed God spared him from ministry until August of 1688 he traveled up to London under two Purposes one to settle a dispute between a man in his church and his father Where there was a lack of reconciliation and he succeeded at that reconciliation and two was for a preaching assignment but it rained so hard as he is returning for one of the districts around London that he was Soaked to the bone and got a fever and on August 31st 1688 at the age of 60 he died away from his wife and Children and probably they didn't even have enough advance notice to know that he was dying.