Author Archives: John Samson

The Puritan Hunger For The Word

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The following is a slightly refined/edited transcript of a section of Dr. Michael Reeves’ message “The Distinctive Marks of Puritanism” at the Puritan Conference at Grace Community Church earlier in October:

The Puritans were deeply and thoroughly scriptural, which is why they were often misunderstood in their own day. They passionately loved Scripture, Bible study, and the hearing of sermons, gladly traveling for hours to listen to a good long message. Seven-hour sermons were not unheard of.

Many pulpits had an hourglass set in them, some remnants of which can still be seen. One old Puritan joked that he “gave the glass two or three good turns.”

Lawrence Chaderton, the long-lived master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, once preached for two hours, then apologized.

The congregation cried, “For God’s sake, sir, go on. Go on.”

To those who have never found the Bible thrilling, such behavior sounds boring at best or deranged at worst. Yet Europe had been largely without a Bible that ordinary people could read for many centuries. To hear God’s voice, to read his words in their own language, and to discover the good news that God saves sinners not on the basis of their performance but entirely by his grace felt like sunshine breaking into a gray world of religious guilt. Without grasping that, one cannot understand the Puritans.

Consider a typically Puritan event, a sermon by the wonderfully named “Roaring” John Rogers in the village of Dedham in the east of England. In that sermon, Rogers rebuked the people for neglecting the Bible.

He first impersonated God, saying, “I have trusted you for so long with my Bible, and you have slighted it. It lies in your houses covered with dust and cobwebs, and you do not care to look into it. Since you misuse my Bible, you shall have it no longer.”

He lifted the Bible from its cushion as if to take it away.

Then he took the part of the people, fell to his knees, and pleaded, “Lord, whatsoever thou dost take from us, take not thy Bible from us. Kill our children, burn our houses, destroy our goods, only spare us thy Bible.”

He then returned to the part of God, saying, “Say you so? I will try you a little longer. Here is my Bible for you. I will see how you will use it, whether you will value it more, observe it more, and practice it more.”

By these actions the congregation was moved into such a condition that the place became a Bochim, a valley of tears. The people were drenched in their own weeping.

Thomas Goodwin, who reports the event, said that when he went to mount his horse to leave, he hung for a quarter of an hour on the animal’s neck, weeping before he had the strength to climb up, so powerful was the impression on him and on the people after such a rebuke for neglecting the Bible.

That story is incomprehensible unless we appreciate how the Puritans viewed Scripture as the most valuable thing this world affords. Puritanism sought to reform all of life under the supreme authority of God’s Word in Scripture.

Dr. Reeves’ full message found here:

The Gospel Is

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Mike Riccardi writes:

The gospel is… There is a God in heaven who has created you and me, and He is the authority over both of us. He is perfectly holy. “In Him is Light, and there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). The problem is that if we want to have fellowship with God, we have to be light and no darkness at all. And yet here’s the problem: we are darkness. We are sinful. We’ve all broken His law. We’ve all lied, stolen, we’ve all looked with lust, we’ve all been angry with our brothers in our hearts. We’ve all fallen short of the glorious standard of perfection that God requires (Rom 3:23).

We are helpless in bringing about a remedy. No amount of works, no amount of contrition, no amount of bad feelings, no amount of church attendance, no amount of Bible reading, no amount of fasting and prayer can earn forgiveness of our sins and the righteousness which God requires (Titus 3:5).

And yet God is gracious, and He loves us, and as His creatures He wants to display His glory in us by rescuing us from that. And so He sent His Son—God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ—to be born as a helpless little baby (John 1:14; 3:16; Col 2:9). God of the universe, Sustainer of the universe, Himself being sustained in the womb of a teenage Hebrew girl, and upholding the world by the word of His power (Heb 1:3) while He is upheld by the nutrients from her own body! Unspeakable! And in great humility, He grows up with the growing pains of life in a fallen world, though He Himself never being with any sin—without sin entirely (2 Cor 5:21; 7:26).

And He lives a perfectly righteous life. The way that you and I have failed to live before God—the way that we have failed in thought, word, and deed, and fallen short of God’s glory—Christ never did. Not even a thought. He loved God, His Father, perfectly. He always walked in perfect righteousness. He lived the life that you were commanded to live, that I was commanded to live, that we failed to live. He lived that perfect life that God is worthy of.

And not only did He live for us, He died for us. He went to the cross. Our sin demanded death. Our sin demanded eternal punishment. Our sin demanded wrath—just wrath exercised on us for eternity (Rom 6:23).

But because of the infinite worth of Christ’s person, He was on that cross. And on that cross, God exercised upon Him the full fury of His own anger (Rom 3:24–26; 2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:10–14), that was rightly due to me and rightly due to you, and that you will experience if you don’t turn from your sin and trust in this Messiah. Christ was born, lived, died, and was raised (1 Cor 15:3–4). And He rose from the grave after being dead, demonstrating His victory over sin and death.

And now God promises that if you turn from your sin, if you repudiate all that you are and all that you were and all that you love, and you turn away from a life of pursuing sin—and if you repudiate not only your bad works but your good works, if you turn from trying to earn your salvation by all the good deeds that you might want to do as a moral person—if you turn away from all of that (Acts 17:30–31), and you trust in Christ alone for righteousness (Phil 3:7–8; cf. Rom 3:28; 10:4), God promises that He will forgive you.

He will have treated Christ on the cross as if Christ lived your life. And He will then treat you, justly and legally and righteously, as if you lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). And you can be saved to know the God you were created to love and enjoy. You can have the fullness of joy, the eternal pleasures that are at the Father’s right hand in heaven (Ps 16:11), and begin even now, because eternal life is to know God (John 17:3).

Friend, would you repent? Would you turn from your sin and trust in this perfect Savior to avail for you before God, to pay for your sin and to provide your righteousness?

Death and Life are in the Power of the Tongue

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I want to write briefly about a verse we all know. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Proverbs 18:21).

One error of the word-of-faith movement is to interpret texts like this out of context or in a woodenly literal way.

I received an email this week warning people to “watch their confession,” claiming that harmless phrases such as “My head is killing me” can open the door to calamity, even a brain tumor or death. The idea is that death is in the power of your tongue, not God’s, and that He cannot do anything if you “speak death” over yourself. In this view, your words tie God’s hands, which is a jaw-dropping low view of God and a terribly shallow reading of Scripture. You are even told to avoid saying “that tickled me to death” for the same reason.

Breathe a sigh of relief. Idioms do not kill.
Like all pernicious teaching, it has severe consequences. If someone is not being taught the right thing in a church, they are being taught something else. That “something else” can harm far more than we might first realize. Many wounded, grieving families have been told that a child’s death must have come because a parent “spoke death” with the tongue, based on a misreading of this verse. That is both false and cruel.

Scripture never teaches that stray words open a legal door for Satan to kill. Jesus rejects the blame game in suffering, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed” (John 9:3). When a tragedy was reported to him, he did not tie it to the victims’ special sins (Luke 13:1–5). God himself says, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal” (Deuteronomy 32:39). Our days are written in his book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16). Even when Satan afflicts, he does so only within limits God sets (Job 1:12; 2:6). In Christ we have this comfort, that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38–39). So to every bereaved parent we say, the Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and your words did not cause your child’s death (Psalm 34:18).

Proverbs 18:21 is both precious and true, but it is not teaching that a casual phrase like “this is killing me” hands Satan permission to harm us. Scripture never says that idioms open spiritual doors to the devil. God alone numbers our days, and the evil one cannot take a single step apart from God’s sovereign allowance. “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” “Behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life” (Job 1:12; 2:6).

So what does the verse teach?
What this proverb, and others, teaches is both simpler and far weightier than the shallow word-of-faith interpretation. In context, the verse reveals that the tongue has real influence for ruin or for flourishing. “From the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is satisfied by the yield of his lips” (Proverbs 18:20). Our words can wound or heal, condemn or acquit, tear down or build up. “A fool’s lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating. A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul” (Proverbs 18:6–7). “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” “A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit” (Proverbs 12:18; 15:4).

Guard the unity of the church
Our tongues can destroy the unity of a local church. God calls us to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). Yet “a dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends” (Proverbs 16:28). “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases” (Proverbs 26:20).

Scripture warns that “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16). So we are told to “watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them,” and to deal firmly with divisiveness in the church, “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him” (Romans 16:17; Titus 3:10).

The goal is peace and maturity. “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment,” and “above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (1 Corinthians 1:10; Colossians 3:14). “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:15). When hurt arises, our Lord gives a better way. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone” (Matthew 18:15). Quiet, direct, loving conversation preserves unity.

How the proverb works
In Proverbs 18:21 the expression behind “in the power of” is the Hebrew idiom “in the hand,” meaning control or influence. It is not about occult mechanics or verbal charms. Throughout the Bible the pair “life and death” functions as a moral, covenant summary. “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15). James reminds us that the tongue can set a whole life ablaze, yet he never says our idioms summon demons. “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). Jesus teaches that our words reveal our hearts, which God will judge. “You brood of vipers. How can you speak good, when you are evil. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:34–37).

Providence and comfort
The Lord orders and governs all things. The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession says this plainly in Chapter 5, “Of Divine Providence,” paragraph 1, where God “upholds, directs, disposes, and governs all creatures and things, from the greatest even to the least.” He orders all things, and ordinarily uses means, which is why our words carry real moral weight. This frees tender consciences from superstition and calls all of us to holiness of speech.

A simple practice
So let us walk in wisdom together. Choose words that give grace. Before you speak, ask, ‘Will this edify?’ ‘Will this help?’ Drop needlessly cynical phrases if they nourish unhelpful attitudes, not from fear, but from love.

Pray with me, “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips,” and consider committing these verses to memory: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” and “Know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (Psalm 141:3; Proverbs 18:21; James 1:19).

Parents, model this for your children. Small group leaders, set the tone in your gatherings. All of us, let us seek a church culture where speech is truthful, kind, timely, and zealous to preserve unity.

The gospel gives both power and pattern. Christ saves us by grace, renews our hearts, and then trains our tongues. As He forms us, our words will more and more become instruments of life and builders of peace.