Ministry Lessons from the Puritans (with Joel Beeke)

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0:00:34 – (Joel Beeke): I think what’s so important for a minister is you’ve got to be an example of godliness and holiness. Like Robert Murray McShane said, your holiness is critical for your congregation. And seldom will a congregation rise above the level of holiness of their pastor.

0:01:01 – (Matt Smethurst): Welcome back to the Everyday Pastor, a podcast from the Gospel Coalition on the nuts and bolts of ministry. I’m Matt Smetherst.

0:01:08 – (Ligon Duncan): And I’m L. Duncan.

0:01:09 – (Matt Smethurst): And today we’re going to be thinking about Pastoral lessons from the Puritans. There is much to draw from the Puritans when we think about effective pastoral ministry, and to help us do that, we have one of the best possible conversation partners in the world for this particular topic. Joel Beke Joel Beeke is the founder of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, where he now serves as Chancellor and Professor of Systematic Theology and Homiletics.

0:01:39 – (Matt Smethurst): He’s also the founder of Reformation Heritage Books and he himself. Now this is an astonishing stat, and it’s completely true. He has authored, co authored, or edited 250 books. And he also, in all of his spare time, serves as one of the pastors of Heritage Reform Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he’s been since 1986. Joel, thanks for joining us on the Everyday Pastor.

0:02:09 – (Joel Beeke): Great to be with you.

0:02:10 – (Matt Smethurst): Matt and Mike, you’ve spent Joel, you’ve spent decades studying the Puritans, not simply as theologians, but as pastors. What did they understand about pastoral ministry? And of course you can come up with a long list. But what immediately comes to mind when you think of what they understood about pastoral ministry that you think pastors today are especially prone to forget?

0:02:35 – (Joel Beeke): Well, the first thing that comes to mind is they were prayer warriors and viewed prayer as one half of their ministry, as one of them said, and the better half, since it’s listed first in Acts 6. 4. They were prayer warriors and prayed before everything, prayed through everything, prayed after everything. As Joseph Aline said, any faithful pastor will go from his knees to the sermon and from the sermon back to his knees.

0:03:07 – (Joel Beeke): Maybe we do the former, but I don’t think too many of us do the latter. And Then I think that they would really tell us their dependency upon the Holy Spirit, their need to be a Christian before they’re a pastor, even though they couldn’t separate the two in their real life, but always to be mastered by the text they’re working with so that they can master it. In other words, they were masters at making scripture personal to the mind and the soul.

0:03:48 – (Joel Beeke): And John Bunyan put it this way, which is an astonishing thing. He said, I never did preach a sermon that I did not smartingly feel in my own soul. And we miss that too often today. I think, as pastors, I would say those would be the two. Well, let me throw in one more. I think we don’t grasp the magnitude, the dignity, the importance of being a minister of souls. They often called their people souls.

0:04:27 – (Joel Beeke): Not that they were disembodied, but that that was the main part of the human being. And they were physicians of souls. That’s what they were known by. And so they would counsel souls in their different spiritual conditions with a careful spiritual physician. And we tend to, oh, maybe we divide our congregation into saved people and unsaved, and we preach maybe 90% to saved and 10% unsaved. Some ministers don’t preach at all to the unsaved, Just assume everybody’s saved.

0:05:02 – (Joel Beeke): But they would preach to the assured believer, to the concerned believer who lacked assurance, to the backsliding believer. They’d preach to the indifferent unsaved person, to the rebellious unsaved person, to the impressed unsaved person who is held in bondage and seemed to find his way to Christ. So they were much better than we are today at diagnosing different spiritual conditions. And, of course, the remedy for all conditions ultimately is Christ.

0:05:34 – (Joel Beeke): But they knew how to apply Christ to the particular disease of the soul.

0:05:40 – (Matt Smethurst): Right. Well, I’m happy you brought up preaching, because we want to ask you about a few specific Puritans who are representative of some of the best riches of the Puritan tradition. And so, for example, William Perkins, you know, of course, he helped establish what became the Puritan approach to preaching. What can pastors today learn from his emphasis on plain, clear, searching preaching?

0:06:08 – (Joel Beeke): Yeah. By plain preaching, the Puritans did not mean preaching that’s dumbed down totally across the board to a child’s level. But they did say that, being almost all being trained in Oxford and Cambridge, they did say that the level to which a minister must bring his sermon should be such that even older children could understand almost all of it. And yet the most advanced in grace could also get benefit from it.

0:06:46 – (Joel Beeke): And so it was said of John Elliot’s preaching, who was a missionary to the Indians in America when he died. Cotton Mather eulogized him this way. He said he had such a gift at preaching because the little lambs could walk into the waters of his sermon and the elephants could swim in it. So they were masters at bringing in, bringing in the whole, the whole congregation. And one way they did that was to have a doctrinal point, explain it, but then illustrate it with a powerful illustration that even a child could understand and then bring it home to the conscience.

0:07:33 – (Joel Beeke): So what they did was they first addressed the mind clearly. They called it not only plain preaching, but perspicuous preaching. We would say clear preaching, I guess, and then they would convict the conscience and then they would woo the heart to come to Christ. And by preaching with earnestness and with passion and directness, they were a great contrast in their day to the Anglican preaching of which was much more oratorical, brought in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, words that nobody understood.

0:08:15 – (Joel Beeke): So they related to the common preached, they related to the people, and the common people heard them gladly.

0:08:22 – (Ligon Duncan): Joel Thomas Goodwin is one of the very important Puritans, and I’m sure he’s one of the people that you considered early on as you were thinking about the whole issue of assurance, because he spoke to, to the issue of assurance. But he was also known for his work on the ministry of Christ in heaven on behalf of believers. And he had a particular ability to care for troubled Christians and to encourage discouraged Christians.

0:08:54 – (Ligon Duncan): What can we learn from Goodwin today as we seek to be better pastors to those who are troubled and discouraged?

0:09:02 – (Joel Beeke): What an incredible providence. As you asked me that question just now, give me a few minutes to answer this because this is really. Chills are going up and down my spine right now. Goodman became my favorite Puritan when I was 17 and I read Christ Our Mediator. And he brought me to much more liberty in Christ than I had known when I was delivered at 15. And I devoured everything he wrote, including the wonderful book you mentioned.

0:09:35 – (Joel Beeke): And this past week, I taught a Puritan theology course for 25 hours to the M. Div. Students and four hours to the Ph.D. and THM students. And on Tuesday afternoon, the last hour, I got to discussing this book, my good one, Christ’s Beautiful Heart in Heaven towards his people on earth, his compassionate heart. And the title of my lecture was Christ’s Beautiful Heart and link. I. I had the sweetest moment lecturing I think I’ve ever had in my Life.

0:10:19 – (Joel Beeke): God visited me right in the middle of the lecture. That’s all I can say. And I was overwhelmed by the love of Christ and how he ministers to us from heavenly places through the work, through that book of Goodwin where he talks about how you know even when you can’t pray, even when you’re just overwhelmed with grief and sorrow and impossibility and burdens, and you could just cry out the word Lord, that’s about it. And just appeal to him to pray for you when you can’t pray for yourself.

0:10:51 – (Joel Beeke): And. And I’ve experienced that a few different times in my life that I don’t know how to put it, but I know he was praying for me when I could no longer. I was at my wit’s end. And the comfort of that is just overwhelming. Well, as I was talking about it, those experiences came back in my mind. I was so overwhelmed with the love of Christ, I couldn’t go on lecturing. And I just kept breaking down. And the students stopped typing and

0:11:26 – (Ligon Duncan): they

0:11:26 – (Joel Beeke): were just listening and it was quiet. And when I finished the lecture, there was no questions. I just walked out of the room. And I was so overwhelmed with the love of God. I was walking home. I only lived like 60 seconds from my home. I just felt I have to go tell Mary. God just visited me. And so I just walked home. And as I’m walking home, the love of Christ just. It just overwhelmed me. Just overwhelmed me.

0:11:59 – (Joel Beeke): And I came home and I just embraced my wife. She goes, what’s wrong with you? I said, come into the living room and I will tell you what the Lord did for my soul. We went in the living room and I just poured out my heart to her, just weeping together and all week long. Also yesterday I preached once in seventh through four, and I preached in my own church in the evening. The savor of that is still with me.

0:12:29 – (Joel Beeke): And so Goodwin has been such a blessing to my soul in opening up the fullness of Christ and that I’m an adopted child of God for his sake and that one day I’ll be as holy as he is holy because of what he has merited in glory. I mean, Goodwin has opened my eyes to so many experiential themes. Yeah, I would say whoever you are, read Thomas Goodwin. Read Christ our mediator. Read Christ’s beautiful heaven towards his people here on earth.

0:13:05 – (Joel Beeke): And he’s right. It’s far better that he ministers to us from heaven than if we could see him on earth one day. Of course we’ll see him, but because now in heaven, he’s infinite and he can relate to all his children at the same time. And he hears every whisper, every cry to him. And from heaven, he. He ministers to each one of us as if we were his only child. Gibbon says, I mean, what a savior. So, yes, I love that book.

0:13:45 – (Matt Smethurst): Praise the Lord. Thank you for sharing that. And yeah, recommending a couple of specific titles of Goodwins that pastors can pick up who have not yet read him. And I want to ask you, it’s kind of hard to follow asking you about Thomas Goodwin, but I’m going to ask you about another Thomas. When you think of Thomas Watson, what can pastors learn from the way he used in particular, vivid illustration and searching application to bring doctrine home to ordinary Christians?

0:14:21 – (Joel Beeke): Yeah, good question. I always tell people Thomas Watson is the place to begin. I mean, now I tell them, begin with Puritan Treasures for today from Reformation Heritage Books, because we’re doing 200 of them and we got 20 done and they’re edited down so every word a 14 year old can read. So that’s a place really to begin so you don’t stumble over any words. But as soon as you transition to the original writings, because once you read the simpler writings, you’re going to say, wow, I want to read these in the original and go to Thomas Watson. I think he’s the easiest of them all.

0:15:00 – (Joel Beeke): And when God brought me under deep conviction of sin, overwhelming conviction of sin, when I was 14 years old and I couldn’t find Christ, I went to my dad’s bookcase and I read all the Puritans every night from about, well, when I finished my homework, usually around 9:00 o’clock p.m. and I would read till midnight or later and. But the first one I really turned to beside Bunyan. When I was nine years old, I read Bunyan for a while. But when I was 14 and really brought under spirit, work, conviction, the first book I pulled from my dad’s bookcase was A Body of Divinity by Thomas Watson.

0:15:45 – (Joel Beeke): And as a 14 year old, I found it very easy to read. And of course I grew up in the King James Version, so I didn’t have to stumble over, you know, the verbs and that. But Watson is so graphic and unlike some other Puritans, he writes in such short sentences. Sometimes he says in a whole paragraph, we would take a whole paragraph to say. He says it in a few words. For example, association begets assimilation.

0:16:18 – (Joel Beeke): Wow. How long would it take us to say, you know, the friends you have, you’re going to become like them if you spend a lot of time with them. But he says it in three words, so he’s a wordsmith. But also there’s this wonderful savor of godliness in Watson. I ask people to begin with the kingdom of heaven taken by storm, because he looks at how to use all the spiritual disciplines, one per each chapter in that book.

0:16:49 – (Joel Beeke): It’s so rich, it’s so practical. And I don’t know if I’ve ever met a person who’s read a lot of Thomas Watson, hasn’t felt like somehow they’ve grown in holiness, grown in. Grown in being aware of the horribleness of sin, the anti godness of sin. I mean, his book, the Mischief of Sin will cut you down to nothing, but also grown in Christ and in the work of the Holy Spirit. He’s just a wonderful, wonderful author in so many, many ways.

0:17:27 – (Joel Beeke): So he was my favorite author from 15 to 16, then it was Thomas Brooks for about six months, and then it was Thomas Goodman. So I’m really indebted to not so much doubting Thomas, but these three believing Thomases who are just wonderful models for a pastor. And I think what Thomas Watson teaches us, but there’s many, many Puritans that do that, is every single very fitting illustration, has to be very fitting for the text you’re preaching.

0:18:02 – (Joel Beeke): It has to work, can’t be manufactured, can’t just be thrown in. But every single illustration that really works well with the spiritual point you’re making is worth a lot because that’s going to penetrate the mind, the conscience and the soul. And I’ve seen this in the Puritans, in my own, my own reading, but I’ve also experienced it in my own preaching, that when you can find an illustration that really works well, it’s worth a lot in a sermon. It’s like putting fizz in the coke. And the sermon comes alive.

0:18:41 – (Joel Beeke): And I’m not talking about shallow illustrations you get from an illustration book. I’m talking about illustrations from your own heart, your own life, everyday life, illustrations from the Bible itself. And Watson is a master at this, taking doctrine and making it come alive through memorable statements, quotable statements that you can’t forget, searching applications, but also everyday illustrations.

0:19:14 – (Ligon Duncan): Reformation Heritage has just produced the collected works of Thomas Watson for people that are listening and interested. You can get almost everything that he ever wrote in that set that RHB has produced. And Joel, I’m a Thomas Brooks fan too. Precious Remedies is one of my favorite books of all time. I’ve read it so many times. That my copies have fallen apart and I’ve had to glue them back together multiple times. And I recommend it to everyone who will sit still long enough for me to encourage them to read Brooks as well. But I want to turn to an American Puritan for just a few moments. And that’s the famous.

0:19:55 – (Matt Smethurst): If you consider him a Puritan, I think it’s debate.

0:19:59 – (Ligon Duncan): That’s the other debate. Right. When does the Puritan era end? But he’s usually mentioned as one of the. The great, if not the greatest, American theologians. And of course, I’m speaking of Jonathan Edwards. And he ministered in remarkable times and he himself was a remarkable man. And I think many people will know his book on religious affections, charity and its fruit, his exposition of 1 Corinthians 13 is superb. We could commend so many things.

0:20:38 – (Ligon Duncan): He was an unbelievably prolific author. But I wonder if you could share with us what you think Edwards has to teach pastors today about spiritual vitality and distinguishing real spiritual vitality from mere emotionalism or religious excitement.

0:21:00 – (Joel Beeke): Yeah, wow, great question. I just want to tell you one thing. You mentioned Brooks as well. Do you know that Brooks is so relatable to even teenagers today? I was at Grove City College with Pastor’s name escapes me, but he had 45 college students that would sit in the front three rows of the church. Not the back, the front. And they were eager students. And he would invite all 45 to come to his house every Sunday night and he would read Thomas Brooks remedies for, you know, against Satan’s devices.

0:21:44 – (Joel Beeke): And he’d read a sentence or two, make a comment or two, and the kids were all sitting on the floor, there wasn’t room to sit, and they would raise their hand, he would call on them and they discuss it. I was moved deeply by the beauty of that evening. And he told me, well, we’ve been going through this book for two and a half years. We only do a half a page a night. That’s how rich the Puritans are. You can talk to young people for two and a half hours from a half a page, and the young people are eager to hear it anyway. Jonathan Edwards. Yeah.

0:22:23 – (Joel Beeke): So I think what people need to understand about Edwards is, I would argue he is a Puritan, but one born out of due time, like Paul said about the. His apostleship. Because to me, the main thing about the Puritan era is not the political views and it’s not even their philosophy, philosophical views. And I realize Edwards was different from the rest of the Puritans as some of his philosophical views.

0:22:52 – (Joel Beeke): But in terms of the main heartbeat of the Puritans, their godliness, their spirituality, Edwards was thoroughly Puritan. So I would say the Puritan movement died out with the death of Matthew Henry about 1714, when Edwards was still a boy. But Edwards was not like Whitefield. Whitefield was different. So you really can’t count Whitefield a Puritan. But Edwards had that very deep spirituality of the Puritans. And he just. His sermons read very Puritan esque, even though, you know, they have their own unique elements as well.

0:23:31 – (Joel Beeke): But in terms of religious excitement and discerning, doing discriminatory preaching between those who are just excited with a temporary faith and those who have a true saving faith, Edwards learned in the ministry how to do that. When the first great Awakening came, he was ready to lay his hands on everything he saw. And he wrote a book called Narrative of Surprising Conversions to defend the vitality of this revival to all the naysayers.

0:24:12 – (Joel Beeke): And there were a lot of pastors in New England at that time who weren’t very Puritan esque and they said, oh, this is just a bunch of emotion. So he told stories about conversion of a four year old, for example, and other people and the genuineness of that and basically said this movement is of God. However, as time went by and another wave of the awakening came, the 1740-42 one, he began to see a lot of religious fervor and excitement that didn’t necessarily bear fruit.

0:24:52 – (Joel Beeke): And so he became more convinced of Jesus statement by their fruit you shall know them and understood that there’s always chaff with the wheat in the midst of revival. And that’s when he wrote the most major theological classic of spirituality that’s ever been written in America, Religious Affections. And in religious affection he’s saying you can know whether it’s just mere excitement or whether it’s the true work of God. When you look at the marks of grace, the fruits of grace, of a great love for Christ and a greater love for holiness and more humility, more tenderness of conscience, more love for the Scripture, more love for God’s people, perseverance and obedience.

0:25:45 – (Joel Beeke): When you see Christ in people, people more like Christ, which gets accentuated tenfold in the midst of a true revival, you’ll be able to discern pretty accurately for those who are really saved in that revival and those who aren’t, well, it’ll fade away. That emotion will fade away over time. That’s why it’s called temporary faith. After all, it’s temporary. So Edwards classic is very convicting in the first part when he talks about all the different things that you can experience that still not be the true work of God.

0:26:25 – (Joel Beeke): It’s discerning. It strips you of your own righteousness. But that’s good for us and that we search for the real thing and he gives you the real thing in the latter part of the book, Joel

0:26:37 – (Ligon Duncan): the three of us have had the privilege of serving congregations that want us to pray, want us to study the Scripture, want us to talk about God. Sadly, not every congregation has that desire for their pastor like we have enjoyed. My congregation wanted me to be in the Word and wanted me to be praying for them and wanting me to be talking about God, whether I was visiting the hospital or in a meeting.

0:27:09 – (Ligon Duncan): That was an aspiration they had for their pastors. But it is possible for pastors to slip into a professional mode when we’re studying the Bible or praying or talking about God. What are the things that you have done in the course of your life to make sure that you’re keeping up communion with God yourself in the ordinary means of grace, even while you’re preparing to serve those ordinary means to the people of God?

0:27:42 – (Joel Beeke): My deliverance in Christ when I was 15 years old was. Was overwhelming. I really thought I was a reprobate. I thought I was going to hell. And to have the gospel opened up for me became so precious. It was overwhelming. And then when God called me to the ministry when I was 16, I made a vow to him I’d spend the whole of my life, yeah, serving him. And just. I want to be like Caleb, follow him fully.

0:28:14 – (Joel Beeke): And so I. I don’t know how else to say it, but I just love everything about the ministry. I. I love serving people. I love doing funerals. I love doing weddings. I love being by myself preparing for sermons. I love preaching. It’s all overwhelming sometimes, but I love it. And I love people and I love their souls. And I say to my students often, you know, if you don’t love souls, get up and walk out of the seminary. You’re not called to the ministry.

0:28:52 – (Joel Beeke): But I think what’s so important for a minister is you’ve got to be an example of godliness and holiness. Like Robert Murray McShane said, your holiness is critical for your congregation. And seldom will a congregation rise above the level of holiness of their pastor. Now, that’s an awesome thing. And I know I have people in my congregation that are more holy than me, and I treasure them. I go to visit them because they usually pastor me more than I pastor them.

0:29:27 – (Joel Beeke): But to a minister, I would say this. Have a firm resolution in your mind, in your heart, that you will flee worldliness on every hand, stop watching stuff that is sinful in any way, shape or form. But I just want to be sold out completely for the things of God. And that doesn’t mean I can’t laugh and have fun with my family and play games. Of course I can. And I love my kids, I love my grandkids, but I also love to talk to them seriously.

0:30:07 – (Joel Beeke): And I love the statement of Thomas Boston. Thomas Boston said, I will do nothing in my life where I don’t leave the savor of Christ behind. So when I walk out that door visiting that 88 year old widow for the 44th time in 40 years of ministry and just spend another 45 minutes with her on her birthday, she should be able to say, that minister who just walked out the door, you know, I really like him. He’s easy to talk to and he’s enjoyable to be with.

0:30:49 – (Joel Beeke): But most of all, he’s a godly man and he loves my soul. And, you know, he brings me Christ every time he comes. That’s what I want her to be able to say. And I think that that’s so important. We’re called to be the ambassadors of Jesus Christ, so we’re to bring him wherever we go. Whether it’s in the airplane, the person sitting next to us, or whether it’s to our own elder who’s downcast in church, or whether it’s our wife who’s discouraged about something in life.

0:31:25 – (Joel Beeke): Bring Christ, Bring Christ. Bring Christ and Joel.

0:31:30 – (Matt Smethurst): Along those lines, you have a new book coming out, Thriving in Lifelong Ministry. You’ve been serving the same congregation in Grand Rapids for almost years, four, 40 years. So what has kept your ministry spiritually alive over that length of time? Not just productive or busy, but alive.

0:31:49 – (Joel Beeke): Well, in spiritual life, there’s always ebbings and flowings. And I can’t say I always have. What I told you about earlier, you know, where I’m just overwhelmed to the point of tears with the love of God. I wish I had it more often. But I can say what helps me the most to stay in a more spiritual mode and frame of mind is just a regular use of the spiritual disciplines. But I must say I’ve been reading the Puritans since I was a teenager and I always have a Puritan book going.

0:32:34 – (Joel Beeke): And I have other books going too, all the time. I love having three, four books going at the same time and dipping into all of them and reading them from COVID to cover. But I must say, it’s the Puritan book, usually, that does the most for my soul. And I also. I have three or four books going of my own books all the time, as well. Probably shouldn’t, but I do. And there’s deadlines, and so sometimes there’s pressure, but I usually find that that book that is most spiritual in nature that I’m working on does the most for me.

0:33:17 – (Joel Beeke): And I think that if I had to say this, maybe one of the most important things I’m trying to say in this interview is the reason why I wrote this new book was I’m getting older. I’ll be pushing. I’m pushing 74 now. And so I want to be faithful to God to the end. I want to be thriving to the end. My good friend Jeff Thomas from Wales planted that seed in me about 20 years ago, he said, and he’s. He’s like 88, 87, I think, and he’s going strong, preaching everywhere.

0:33:54 – (Joel Beeke): And I’ve got another friend who’s 91, preaching all around, and. But Jeff always said to me, I just pray that I won’t fade away like other ministers. I pray that I’ll keep my zeal to the end. And I think the only way you can do that is by being in the spiritual disciplines and enjoying them and enjoying everything about the ministry and just keep on going. Persevere and love the Lord. Love your people, love your wife, love your family, love sermons, love listening to other men preach, love fellowshipping with God’s people, love fellowship with other ministers. I mean, there’s so much good to do today.

0:34:34 – (Matt Smethurst): Lig once commended your book on criticism for helping pastors develop a tough skin and a tender heart. How do you actually do that? So how do you learn from criticism without becoming either crushed by it or. Or calloused by it? And then, of course, we just think, well, and how does a pastor know the difference between criticism he needs to hear and criticism he needs to simply absorb and move past.

0:35:00 – (Matt Smethurst): What wisdom would you commend?

0:35:02 – (Joel Beeke): Well, first of all, I wrote the book because I’m kind of a failure in this area because I’ve been trying to develop that tough skin for 50 years, and I’ve never arrived. You know, the old statement, a pastor must develop the height of a rhinoceros in the heart of a child. And I’ve got the heart of a child. I’m very tender guy, actually. No doubt about that. My mother was that way. My Brothers and sisters are that way, but I don’t have the height of a rhinoceros and I just can’t make it there.

0:35:40 – (Joel Beeke): So that’s why I wrote in the preface of my book, because I’ve been through a lot of criticism and there was a split in our denomination. It was very painful and very, very painful. And I. I wrote my preface. This is the only book in my entire life I’ve ever written that I feel fully qualified to write because I have so much experience in the field of criticism.

0:36:12 – (Matt Smethurst): And just so listeners know what we’re talking about, the book is called Pastors and Their A Guide to Coping with Criticism in the Ministry.

0:36:20 – (Joel Beeke): Right, right. It’s published by pnr, but you can get it at steepest discount price from Reformation Heritage Books. So what I do is I give 10 major remedies and I co authored it with Nick Thompson’s help. And I would say the number one remedy is just consider Christ. That’s what’s helped me the most in my life. Consider Christ. And I’ve learned to know myself that when I get severe criticism, I’m pretty much going to have a sleepless night that night.

0:36:54 – (Joel Beeke): And I’ve just learned to adjust to that. Say, okay, I’m going to take a longer nap tomorrow, but I’m just not going to fight this all the way through. And usually after I sleep on it, pray over it, consider the source, consider the content, consider how to respond. Call one or two very close friends. I have a very faithful friend who helps me a lot, gives me wisdom, and my wife is very good for advice.

0:37:24 – (Joel Beeke): But if I consider Christ, what he endured being totally innocent and what I have to endure, which is nothing compared to what he endured, and I’m usually at least a little bit guilty some way, shape or form, who am I to complain? We have to follow him who suffered so that we might be saved and enter into glory. And how shall we enter into glory without suffering behind Him? And he never promised us an easy life, but he did promise us a blessed life.

0:38:03 – (Joel Beeke): So I try to focus on Christ’s sufferings and what he endured, and also his promises that he will bring me through all things, work together for good. That’s the best promise in the whole Bible for me to those who love God. I love God.

0:38:22 – (Ligon Duncan): God.

0:38:23 – (Joel Beeke): That means everything he does in my life will work together for good. And so I just trust that somehow. And if I look back at the biggest afflictions I’ve gone through in my life today, I wouldn’t trade them for anything, because when you go through deep ways, you guys know that I’m sure you become a far better pastor. You don’t have to experience exactly what everyone else experiences to have a compassionate heart, but you have to be broken.

0:38:54 – (Joel Beeke): You have to be broken like Peter. And I’ve been broken. I’m a broken vessel. But through that brokenness, I feel much more compassion for other people in need. And so consider Christ. Consider the source. Consider the person was doing the criticizing. But above all, consider. Consider Christ. And here’s the other thing. I learned this from an old minister. He said, if the critic is right, go to him and say, you’re right. Thank you for criticizing me.

0:39:29 – (Joel Beeke): And change and tell him how you’re going to change. If the critic is 50% right, go tell him, you know what? You’re right in some areas that I’m going to change those areas. If the critic is right in 10%, go tell them, thank you for your criticism. I’m going to change this one. You don’t say little thing, but change this one thing. If the critic is not right at all, you’ll go back and you tell them. I’ve consulted with some people, I’ve prayed about it, and I’ve decided not to change. But thank you anyway for bringing the criticism.

0:40:02 – (Joel Beeke): But whatever you do, bring closure to the criticism, whether you change or whether you don’t change and then move on. And the worst thing you can do is let a criticism fester in your heart. Now, also, what I learned from somebody else was give your best attention to the enemies in the church. We had a lady in our church that joked, if you watch our minister, when he comes out of church, he often goes to those people that appreciate him the least.

0:40:40 – (Joel Beeke): And that’s purposeful on my part, quite honestly, sometimes I do that. Not all the time, but in the last 30 years, ever since the denominational split, I mean, the unity in our church is just unbelievable. So I don’t even think about this much anymore because anyone who didn’t like my ministry was gone. But earlier on, I would purposely do that often because here’s the point. Every minister needs close friends.

0:41:12 – (Joel Beeke): But if you come out of church and you just go up to your close friends, you alienate people, you become a cliquish minister, but you want to win those who are sitting on the fences. So you want to go spend time with them, you want to show interest in them, and you want to love your enemies. And when you love your enemies and you’re kind to them and you’re praying for them, it’s pretty hard to hate people you pray for, so I do it selfishly for my own soul that I can actually love them more as well.

0:41:42 – (Matt Smethurst): Thanks for sharing that. And I want to end where we started, actually, with asking you a question, Lig, and that’s about the Puritans. How were the Puritans helpful for you in your ministry as a pastor?

0:41:56 – (Ligon Duncan): Well, they were helpful to me, first of all, in my own area of assurance. The Puritans deeply ministered to me in my own struggle for a robust assurance of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But they also helped me to preach. And that’s one of the reasons that I love Precious Remedies so much, is that just as Joel was talking to us about the way that the Puritans applied the Scriptures to different places where the people in the congregation were reading books like Precious Remedies actually challenged my application in preaching to recognize that not everybody in the congregation is in the same place when I’m applying the Word. And I need to be aware of different kinds of sins, different kinds of temptations, different kinds of struggles to speak to those things in the application of the Word. So the Puritans helped me personally spiritually, and they helped me preach better would be the way I would answer that.

0:43:05 – (Matt Smethurst): Matt, Wonderful. Well, Joel, thank you so much for joining us. And this is freshly motivating me to dive into the Puritans and Thomas Goodwin in particular, afresh. And I trust it’s going to do the same for many pastors. Thanks to all of you who have listened. Please share this episode with a friend in ministry so we can continue to help pastors find fresh joy in the work of ministry.