Be Rich in the Word: Reading the Word

The Bible assumes that God is, and it teaches that God created all things to reveal his glory to all creation. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2). 

Further, the Bible displays and declares that God has spoken in order to reveal his character, his thoughts, his affections, his actions, and his purposes and plans for creation. “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40:5). 

It is glorious enough that God created in order to reveal himself, but it is glorious beyond compare that God has spoken in order to make himself known to humankind, the pinnacle of his creation. Since our Creator has spoken to us, our greatest privilege and obligation in life is to listen to what he has said. Listening begins by hearing the words of God read and preached on their own terms, and it deepens by picking up a Bible and reading those words for ourselves day by day. As we do, we reap many rewards, including the following three things. 

First, reading the Bible day by day is a practical way of putting God first and loving him most. Above all things, the Lord calls on people to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, for when he takes his proper place in our lives, all other people and things take their proper places as well. There is no better way to display that his command is our desire than listening to what he has to say day by day. 

Second, reading the Bible day by day is a simple way of getting to know our heavenly Father. Since the words of God reveal the character, thinking, feelings, actions, purposes, promises, and plans of God, they help us not only to learn things about him but to actually know him. In other words, reading the words of God is not simply a matter of learning facts about God, rather, it is about developing an intimate knowledge of God. 

Third, reading the Bible day by day is the best way to grow in our knowledge of the gospel that we might receive the grace of God in Christ and walk in the ways of Christ. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10). 

Friends, the rewards of reading the Bible day by day are great, and plans for doing so abound (see www.navigators.org or the YouVersion app). I urge you, then, to choose a plan and read the words of God that you might come to know God, love God, and walk in his ways. 

Living by Faith: The Faithfulness of God

So far in this series I’ve said that faith is hoping or trusting in God by clinging to his promises through his Word. To put it another way, faith is simply trusting in the faithfulness of God. So much can be said about faith, but if you will remember just this one sentence, it will be enough—faith is trusting in the faithfulness of God. You don’t need a great education or the right background or the right family or the right skills or good looks or straight teeth or money or possessions or anything other than this: simple childlike trust that God is faithful and will do all that he has said he will do. If you have this faith, you can stand in the company of the giants of faith because in the end those giants aren’t giants at all. Rather, they’re simply people who trusted in the infinitely giant faithfulness of God. 

So it is that the author says in verse 2 that faith is the reason the people of old received their commendation: not condemnation but commendation! By “people of old” the author means all of those he goes on to talk about in the rest of the chapter. He means the biblical ancestors who went before us and the early believers who trusted in Christ. And what he’s saying is that these people received commendation, or more literally a testimony, because of this one thing: they trusted in the faithfulness of God. 

As we progress through this chapter, we’ll see that the one testifying of them, the one commending them, the one lifting them up and saying, “Pay attention to this and that one,” is God himself. These men and women are not fleshly heroes, rather, God himself has lifted them up and bid us to carefully consider their way of life. And again, the reason he is willing to do that is because they had faith in him. That is to say, the main thing God wants us to know and notice about these people is not that they were amazing but that they found God to be amazing as they trusted in his faithfulness. God spoke to them and led them, they listened to what he had to say, they trusted in what he had to say, and they discovered that God does what he says he’s going to do. In other words, they discovered that God is faithful. 

So, whereas some people call Hebrews 11 “The Hall of Faith,” we really should call it “The Hall of the Faithfulness of God” because all of the people in this chapter point away from themselves and toward God saying, “The Lord is truly faithful. He is truly amazing. All that he promised came to pass in his time and way. We had to suffer, and there were many hard times. We struggled with our flesh and we failed at so many points. But along the way we discovered that God is truly faithful and we bid you to trust in him, hope in him, and cling to him with us.” 

This is why God is not afraid to draw our attention to these people and say, “Imitate their way of life.” Their way of life was to look to God, listen to God, and walk in the ways of God because they believed that God is faithful: and indeed, God is faithful. So again, faith is simply trusting in the faithfulness of God. It’s not a feeling. It’s not a force, as the word-of-faith people say it is. Rather, faith is the trust a child has in her Father. Faith is the heart of a child that says, “I can only be sure of what I hope for when I hope for what is sure, and what is sure is my Father and his will, words, and ways.” 

With this definition in mind, the author goes on now in the rest of the chapter to give us a number of examples of faith, all of whom learned what it means to trust in the faithfulness of God and even now are encouraging us to join their number. I pray that as we consider the examples of faith-filled people, that the infinitely faithful God will fill us with faith and teach us to live the same kinds of lives as those who’ve gone before us. 

Book Review: “Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers” (By Christopher A. Hall)

Christopher A. Hall. Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1998). 

This book is both an introduction to how leading Christians from the first seven centuries of the church read the Bible and a guided invitation to read their works. Hall’s aim is to present the method and content of eight representative patristic fathers, four from the eastern church (Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, and John Chrysostom) and four from the western church (Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great). 

He begins by pressing into the modern milieu in order to expose and diminish obstacles that stand in the way of fruitfully reading these ancient texts. He specifically identifies the issues of Enlightenment and postmodern hubris, as well as the Protestant overreaction against church tradition. The necessary response to these obstacles must be a humility that is self-critical and willing to listen to ancient authors on their own terms, in as much as that is possible. Hall then moves on to consider the works of the eight fathers listed above, followed by a treatment of the debate that arose between the schools of Alexandria and Antioch. 

He concludes by offering a middle way between the naïve acceptance of patristic methods and content, and the outright rejection of the same. Specifically, he encourages modern exegetes to follow the fathers in four ways: read the Bible holistically as one book in two testaments, read the Bible Christologically, read the Bible in community (both past and present), and read the Bible within the context of a life of prayer, worship, and spiritual formation. This work is an excellent introduction to the subject, and offers helpful insight for pastors and scholars alike.

Be Rich in the Word: Hearing the Word

The ancient charge that God gave to Israel still applies to his people today. The Lord said to them, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). To hear the Lord is to listen to his words and take them to heart that we might love him with everything in us and walk in his ways. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart” (6:5-6). 

In one sense, the Lord commanded his people to hear his words because they were, for the most part, illiterate people who could not read them. But in another sense, he commanded them to hear his words because he made people in his image to be part of a living, loving relationship with him. Even as a loving father speaks to his children and makes his heart and desires known, so the Lord speaks to his people and makes his glory, will, and ways known. Even as a loving child will listen, trust, and obey her father, so the people of God are called to lovingly listen, trust, and obey their God. 

Then, as God’s people learn to hear his heart and walk in his ways, they’re called to diligently teach those ways to those with whom the Lord has given them influence. “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (6:7). In other words, they’re called to be like their heavenly Father and teach his will and ways to others. They’re called to enter so deeply into his love and wisdom that they live to spread a passion for his glory and purposes. 

Since this life-giving process begins with hearing the words of God, his people are to do what they must to remind themselves to listen to him day by day. “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (6:8-9). These instructions are not so much about the particulars as they are about this principle: remind yourself to listen, and then listen! 

Listen to the words of God by reading them aloud in worship services, in smaller gatherings, at home, and even at work. Listen to the words of God by taking advantage of audio Bibles or Bible apps like YouVersion. Listen to the words of God by sitting under expository preaching where the Bible is explained, illuminated, and applied to life. But whatever you do, remind yourself to listen, and then listen! 

As you do, I have one more word of wisdom for you. While it’s good to listen to large portions of the Bible and a variety of expository sermons, its better to listen to less and do more with what you hear. Train yourself to listen well, understand the meaning, and apply what you’ve heard to life. Remember that loving obedience is the goal of the regular hearing of the Word.

Living by Faith: Clinging to the Word of God

In the last two posts in this series, I’ve said that faith is hoping in God and trusting in God which are really just two ways of saying the same thing. Along the way, I’ve regularly hinted at something I want to make explicit in this post. Specifically, the practical way we trust in God is by clinging to his promises as communicated in his Word and ultimately in his Son. In Hebrews 1:1-2, the author teaches us that in the former days God spoke to his people through the prophets in a host of ways and at a variety times, but that in these last days he has spoken to us finally and decisively in Jesus Christ. God has said all he has to say in and through his Son, and he has preserved the most crucial parts of that speech in the New Testament. And now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God communicates his will and ways through his Word to his children around the world and over time. 

So again, the way we trust in God is by clinging to his promises as communicated in his Word and ultimately in his Son. God makes promises according to his purposes, by faith through grace we receive them, and by faith through grace we live our lives accordingly. This is what it means to live by faith: we hear the Word of God, believe the Word of God, and live according to the Word of God. This is not always an easy way of life but it’s a simple way of life, and it gives some focus to the saying I shared with you in the last post, namely, you can be sure of what you hope for when you hope for what is sure. For what is sure is the being of God and the purposes of God both of which are expressed through the promises of God. When we cling to God’s promises we are indeed living our lives on a Rock rather than on sand. 

Every example of faith offered to us in chapter 11 is designed to show us how this works, that is, how we trust in God by hoping in his words. This is true even in verse 3 where creation is in view because we get the idea that the universe came into existence by the power of the words of God from the Word of God. When we wake up and walk outside and see what we see, we believe that it was created by the speech of God because the Word of God tells us that this is so. We look upon creation and live by faith because we cling to our Fathers words about creation. 

Now, at one level, God has given us enough common sense to look at the created order and figure out that some massively powerful and intelligent being made all that we see. In fact, Romans 1 tells us that creation itself is enough to hold us accountable before God and condemn us as fools if we fail to believe in him. But faith is more than common sense. Faith is more than a series of intellectual processes. Faith trusts in God by clinging to his words, and so when our Father says that he created everything out of nothing by simply speaking it into existence, we believe him, and this is faith. Faith is trusting in God by clinging to his promises through his Word.

Book Review: “Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Part II” (By Graeme Goldsworthy)

Goldsworthy, Graeme. “Part II: Challenges to evangelical hermeneutics.” In Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006). 

The thesis of this book is that the person and work of Jesus Christ provide not only the single focal point for proper hermeneutics but for all of reality. Therefore, an evangelical hermeneutic is gospel-driven in that it envisions Christ as the focal point of interpretation—not the theological idea of Christ, but Christ himself. Any hermeneutic that rejects, or otherwise forsakes, this central feature has ceased to be evangelical. 

The fundamental issue in evangelical hermeneutics, then, is not technique but submission to Christ and his Word. This claim does not eschew the need for extra-biblical disciplines or evidences, but it makes these things secondary to the miracle of new birth that comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. 

In the light of this supposition, Goldsworthy devotes section two of his work to demonstrating the ease with which potential or real crises can occur in the life of the church when the Christological center is forgotten or forsaken. He surveys “the eclipse of the gospel” in eight different epochs or disciplines, for example, in the early church and in literary criticism. Although this section is by and large a treatment of secondary literature, it is a helpful and insightful summary of issues that impacted hermeneutics in times past and present. 

Be Rich in the Word: Seven Key Disciplines

Even as the Lord created the heavens and the earth by his words, and even as he called Abraham and Israel and the church into existence by his words, so his people live, breath, and have their being by his words. So passionate was God to help his ancient people understand this truth and take it to heart, that he allowed them to endure long periods of time with little or no physical food so that they would see with their eyes and receive in their hearts the primary importance of their spiritual food, that is, the words of God. 

As Moses wrote, “And he [the Lord] humbled you [Israel] and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3, emphasis mine). Sadly, rather than learning this lesson and delighting in their God, Israel grumbled against him and received severe discipline from him. 

Happily, many centuries later Jesus came to the earth and before his public ministry began, he was driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit where he fasted for forty days and where he was tempted by the devil. During one of his temptations, he quoted from Deuteronomy 8:3 as a way of saying that he understood the primary importance of the spiritual food of God, and that he was content with his Father’s words no matter the cost or consequence. In this way, he defeated the devil’s designs and modeled for all humankind how we are designed to live. 

Since, from God’s perspective, his people literally live by his words, then it is surely his desire that we make much of his words, not only in our thinking and speaking, but in our manner of life. Indeed, if we live by the words of our Father, let us join Jesus by delighting in the words of our Father! Or to put in the words of Paul, let’s allow the Word to dwell richly in us (Colossians 3:16-17)! 

To this end, I will be posting a series of blogs in the next several weeks that will summarize seven key disciplines: hearing the Word, reading the Word, studying the Word, meditating on the Word, memorizing the Word, applying the Word, and teaching the Word. My hope is to explain each discipline but more so to encourage us to engage in all of them. Again, since the people of God live by the Word of God, let us delight in the Word of God together! Let us be rich in the Word! 

Living by Faith: Trusting in God

In Hebrews 11:1-2, the author writes, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.” So, what is faith? Last week I said that I’d offer two interrelated answers to this question, the first of which is this: faith is hoping in God according to his word. For a little more detail, see the last post in this series. 

The second answer is this: faith is “the conviction of things not seen.” This is just a logical extension of what the author has already said because many of the things our Father leads us to hope in have yet to come to pass. But faith gives thanks to God as though they have already come true because faith is this deep inner conviction that if God says something, it’s as good as done. 

So, faith listens to God and believes that what he has said is reality, even though it may not be presently visible or provable, in the scientific sense of that word. For example, when our Father says that one day Jesus will come again and explode onto the sky with a glory we cannot imagine so that every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth will bow before him and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father—even though we haven’t seen this with our eyes, we cherish it in our hearts because we know that our Father is faithful, that he’s trustworthy, and that he will surely do all that he’s said he will do. 

In the fall of 2000, the Lord led me to spend a great deal of time meditating on these verses, and I remember being out on a prayer walk in the mountains one day thinking about what they mean. I can still remember exactly where I was at the time and what the sky looked like and where the sun was positioned in the sky. As I thought about these verses, I eventually said to the Lord, “Father, I want so much to believe what you’re teaching me here. I want to have faith. I want to be sure of what I hope for and I want to have deep conviction about things I don’t see. I want to believe that what you’ve said is in fact true but, Father, I’ve been disappointed so many times and I don’t know how to live like this. I don’t know how to have faith.” 

Then, as I sat in silence and listened to the Lord, I eventually heard his still, small voice saying something like this: “Son, you can be sure of what you hope for when you hope for what is sure.” ’ll leave it to God to say whether or not he actually spoke these words to me, but I will also say with all boldness that this sentence suddenly popped into my mind, it squares with Scripture, and it's has marked my life for many years now. 

As I digested and meditated on this sentence, I came to see that the only thing that is sure is the being of God, the purposes of God, and the promises of God. Everything else is sand, no matter how solid it seems. The great empires of the world, including the United States of America, are only sand and they will not stand the test of time. The great financial systems and products of the world are only sand, as we clearly saw in 2008 and following. Great companies and good companies and jobs that seem so secure are, at the end of the day, only sand and cannot be trusted in. So many kinds of relationships in our lives, as important and permanent as they seem, are only sand. Physical and mental and emotional health is only sand. Life itself is only sand. It’s a vapor. It’s a blade of grass that can be taken in a moment and that, even if long, is only a moment anyway. 

Friends, nothing but God is sure in this life. His being is sure. His word is sure. His will is sure. His ways are sure. His purposes are sure. His steadfast love is sure. His faithfulness is sure. And since our hope is only as sure as what we’re hoping in, we Christians are learning to hope in God and God alone. As we grow in this grace, we gain a deep conviction that everything God has said will come to pass so that his purposes and promises are as certain to us as if they’d already come about. Again, faith is this deep inner conviction that if God says something, it’s as good as done. In other words, faith is trusting in God. 

Book Review: “Biblical Interpretation Then and Now” (By David Dockery)

David Dockery. Biblical Interpretation Then and Now: Contemporary Hermeneutics in the Light of the Early Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1992). 

In this introductory work, David Dockery offers a synthesis of the hermeneutical methods of the early church from Jesus to Augustine, from the first century to the fifth century. His concern is not so much to assess the relative accuracy of patristic interpretations in light of Scripture, nor to summarize the content of their thought, but to unearth the principles and methods that patristic exegetes utilized in order to interpret the Scriptures. 

Accordingly, although he references numerous leading lights from the early church, he focuses his attention on the representative works of Justin, Irenaeus, Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Theodoret. He then seeks to relate his synthesis to contemporary hermeneutics, a feature that he considers somewhat unique to his work. 

While the synthesis is accurate, well-balanced, and helpful, Dockery’s application of it to contemporary hermeneutics is brief and therefore fairly superficial. Nevertheless, the work of scholars and pastors alike will benefit from this book and I heartily recommend it.

Be Rich in the Word: Drink Deep and Overflow!

In the last post in this series, we looked at Colossians 3:1-17 in order to get a sense of Paul’s flow of thought in this chapter. As we reach the end of these verses, we’re thrust back to verses 1-2 because the questions become these: how would Paul have us seek the things that are above, where Christ is? How would he have us set our minds on things that are above, and not on things that are on earth? Even if we want to do these things, how do we do them?

Letting the Word Dwell Richly in Us
I think Paul answers in verses 16-17 where he writes, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

In these verses, Paul issues one primary exhortation which he sees overflowing in three particular ways, so let’s first consider the exhortation and then we’ll look at the implications. The exhortation is this: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” The phrase “the word of Christ” is the gospel. It’s the word about Christ that was and is and will be preached in the world. It’s the word of Christ in the sense that, like all the words of God, the gospel was and is will be primarily be spoken by the Son, Jesus Christ, so that the gospel we preach is the gospel he preached. And it’s the word of Christ in this sense that Christ himself is the essence of the word. In other words, Christ himself is the gospel. He is our life. He is our forgiveness. He is our cleansing. He is our healing. He is our righteousness. He is our holiness. He is our all in all. Ultimately, the word of Christ is Christ!

But that said, I think Paul is calling us to seek and set our minds on Christ by saturating our lives with the word of Christ that’s contained in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The gospel is not God’s “Plan B” but his “Plan A” which he conceived before the foundation of the world and has been revealing from the dawn of creation to the current moment, primarily by the things that are contained in his Word. So, while “the word of Christ” is more than the Bible, the content of that word is expressed in and stabilized by what’s in the Bible.

Paul knows very well that Christ himself dwells in every believer by his Spirit, but here he’s exhorting us to allow the words of the Bible, all of which express and stabilize the gospel, to dwell in us. The word here for “dwell” means “to establish a dwelling in something,” so that Paul is urging us to have more than a superficial relationship to the Word of God. Indeed, he wants us to allow the word of Christ to establish a dwelling place inside of us. He wants the word of Christ to occupy us. He wants the word of Christ to have a central place and controlling influence in our lives.

This is why he exhorts us to let the word of Christ establish itself richly in our lives. This word can also be translated “abundantly,” so that Paul’s desire for us is that we would be filled to overflowing with the word of Christ. In 2019 I rode my bike along the Mississippi River from Memphis to Minneapolis along with some friends. Since there had been a number of high-volume storms up and down the river that year, it was overflowing much of the way. Indeed, the water was so richly dwelling in it that the water couldn’t be contained by it!

In like manner, Paul wants the word of Christ to dwell richly in us because he knows that this is the way that believers have always sought the Lord and set their minds on things that are above. As King David wrote, “I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways” (Psalm 119:15). For him, these were not two things but one and the same thing. To meditate on the words of God is to fix our minds on the ways of God. And to be rich in the word of Christ is to seek and set our minds on Christ. Oh, how high a place God has given to the word of Christ in the lives of those who belong to him and believe in him!

Letting the Word Overflow from Us 

As the word of Christ dwells richly in us, Paul instructs us to teach and admonish one another out of the overflow of the word in our lives. The leaders of the church have their place in teaching the Word, but God’s vision for his people as that we would all be made competent by his Word and able to instruct and even correct one another in love according to his Word. The leaders have been given authority to instruct and every member has been given authority to minister, but it’s the word of Christ itself that works with such power in our midst.

Further, as the word of Christ dwells richly in us, Paul instructs us to sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thanksgiving in our hearts to God, in other words, he encourages us to let the word of Christ crescendo in the worship of Christ. Indeed, as we grow in our understanding of the grace of God in Christ, we cannot help but sing out the praise of Christ because we all sing about what we love. Perhaps we ourselves don’t always do the singing, but at the very least, we love to hear singing about the things we love. When I was in the world, I loved to hear rebellious people sing about rebellious things because I loved the world. Now that I’m in Christ, I love to sing about the glory of Christ and hear other people sing about the glory of Christ because I love Christ. Friend, a heart that sings is a heart that loves, and when the word of Christ dwells in us richly we’ll sing about him as an overflow of our love.

Finally, as the word of Christ dwells richly in us, Paul instructs us to do everything we do, in word or deed, in the name of Christ, always giving thanks to God the Father through him. In other words, he wants us to live for the glory of Christ as we live by the word of Christ, and he wants us to give thanks and give thanks and give thanks all along the way. This way of life brings honor to God, joy to our souls, and blessing to others.

Conclusion 

God’s desire for our way of life is so simple but it’s also serious. It’s the key to growing up into Christ. It’s the key to bearing fruit in this life. It’s the key to increasing in joy, even in the midst of trials and tribulations. It’s the key to gaining perspective and perseverance. It’s the key to gaining the power we need to overcome the world and battle against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. It’s the key to coming into the fullness of what God the Father desires for his people. Oh, what inexhaustible treasures are contained in this simple exhortation: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.”

Living by Faith: Hoping in God

In Hebrews 11:1-2, the author writes, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.” So what is faith? Well, the Bible has a lot to say about that question and many books have been written in answer to it, but let’s stay close to what the Word of God says right here and define it in two inter-related ways, one of which I’ll present in this post and the other of which I’ll present in the next post in this series. 

First, the author says that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” Now, as for those who believe in God through faith in Jesus Christ, exactly what do we hope for? Ideally, we hope that the things God has said are true, are in fact true. We hope that the things God has said will happen, will in fact happen. In other words, as believers, we hope in the will, words, and ways of God because we trust God. 

When our Father says that something is true, we have an assurance that it is in fact true. When our Father says that something’s going to happen, we have an assurance that it is in fact going to happen. We don’t just hope in random things that this world or our flesh would have us hope in, rather, we hope in the purposes and promises of our Father as expressed through his words because we trust him. So, we can say that faith is hoping in God according to his word.

Book Review: "Puritan Preaching in England" (by John Brown)

John Brown. Puritan Preaching in England: A Study of Past and Present (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001 [1900]). 

John Brown's Puritan Preaching in England is a compilation of nine lectures on the subject that were delivered at the Yale Divinity School in October, 1899. Therefore, it’s of limited use in some respects, and yet presents a lively and edifying account of the subject. 

Brown defines "Puritan" in a broad sense as those who have given more emphasis to the Scriptures in their life and preaching than to their various ecclesiastical traditions. Defined as such, he was compelled to begin his series of lectures with a consideration of the pre-protestant preachers Charles the Great, the “Preaching Friars,” and John Wycliffe, each of whom, to some extent, made Protestantism and Puritanism possible. He then considers the ministries of such leading lights as John Colet and the reformation preachers, the Cambridge Puritans, Thomas Goodwin, John Bunyan, and Richard Baxter, concluding with a treatment of the then contemporary ministries of Thomas Binney, Charles Spurgeon, R. W. Dale, and Alexander Maclaren. 

The common thread that weaves through this array of preachers and ministries is that they possessed a fervor of devotion to God and a closeness of fellowship with him that was centered on the reading, study, memorization, and meditation upon Scripture. This lively attachment to God and his Word produced preaching ministries that were faithful to the Scriptures, instructive for the people of God, and full of the zeal that makes the Scriptures come alive. Indeed, the heart of Puritan preaching is the Word of God come alive in the midst of the people of God. Brown concludes that this heart, rather than any particular manner of preparation and delivery, should characterize the modern pulpit as well.