The Story of John Bunyan

INTRODUCTION

John Owen is one of the most brilliant minds that England ever knew.

He held a doctor of divinity from Oxford, along with three other degrees from the university.

Eventually, he became the prestigious school’s vice-chancellor.

He was called on to address Parliament in tumultuous times.

He was a personal chaplain to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell.

For many, John Owen is the pinnacle theologian and thinker of a time that produced spiritual giants from the British Isles.

And yet, John Owen, when asked by King Charles II why he loved the preaching of an uneducated tinker named John Bunyan so much, Owed said:

Could I possess the tinker’s abilities to preach, please Your Majesty, I would gladly relinquish all my learning.

John Owen

Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Baptist preachers, shared the same admiration for the man we are profiling today. He recommended Bunyan’s writing to his congregation and said:

Prick him anywhere—his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the Word of God. I commend his example to you, beloved.

Charles Spurgeon

Who is this man? Who is this John Bunyan?

How can a man who barely had the equivalent of a modern-day 6th grade education, write a book that has sold more copies than any other outside of the Bible itself?

And what can we learn from him?

PURPOSE

We will seek answers to these questions today as we look at John Bunyan’s life.

Typically, we are exegeting a text of Scripture from this pulpit each Sunday.

It is my promise to you that for 50 Sundays a year, it will be me or someone else doing just that.

But until the Lord leads us differently, our pastors want to take two Sundays a year to present a sketch of a hero from church history to you.

We met William Tyndale back in July.

Lord willing, we will meet the greatest American theologian we have ever had, Jonathan Edwards, next July.

But today, on the eve of the New Year, one in which we are encouraging the church to read his greatest work—The Pilgrim’s Progress—we will exegete the life of John Bunyan.

*PRAYER FOR SERMON*

EARLY DAYS

BIRTH TO WAR

John Bunyan was born to Thomas and Margaret Bunyan in 1628 in Elstow, England—a couple of miles from Bedford.

Bedford is really the central location of John Bunyan’s life.

Bedford was about 7 hours away from London via horseback.

He was not born into destitution, but his family was extremely poor.

His father was a tinker.

That is actually a very manly job, but it doesn’t sound like it!

He would travel around the area with a bag of tools on his back, making and repairing pots and pans and other metal items.

John was baptized at the local Elstow Abbey, the place his family attended church.

However, Bunyan was not the star pupil of the Sunday School class.

Far from it.

Bunyan, even from a young age was known for his cussing and carousing.

He was a strong, tall kid with red hair and a filthy mouth.

I had but few equals especially considering my years, which were tender, being few, both for cursing, swearing, lying and blaspheming the holy name of God.

John Bunyan

And Bunyan did not keep it to himself. He infected others with his behavior and ran the streets with a gang of other unruly kids, in which he was the ringleader.

And yet, even at this young age, the Lord was drawing this sinful little soul to Himself.

Bunyan said that he would often have nightmares about God’s judgment on him, even as an child.

His father was completely uneducated and he wanted better for his boar of a son, so he made sure that John had tools for being educated.

But this came to an end when Bunyan was nine years old.

His father needed his help in the family business, and so John took up on-job training to be a tinker like his dad.

He traveled with him, learned from him and was preparing to be a tinker.

This means that John Bunyan ended his formal education with what amounts to a 6th grade education.

In 1644, when John was 15 years old, a terrible sickness swept through Bedford and it touched his family in the worst of ways.

First, he lost his mother at only 41 years old.

On June 20th, 1644, John walked in her funeral procession and he had no idea that he would do the same thing one month later as he buried his thirteen year old sister, Margaret.

Margaret was John’s best friend in his home and the loss must have been devastating.

As if all of this wasn’t hard enough to stomach, within weeks of his sister’s death, John’s father had re-married and there was another woman in his mother’s place.

BUNYAN’S ENGLAND

HENRY TO ELIZABETH

But with all of that said, the chaos in Bunyan’s home is just a microcosm of what was going on in the nation.

The England that John Bunyan was born into was one of great turmoil.

A century before the events in Bedford, King Henry VIII had broken from the Catholic church so that he could gain control of the church of England.

He wanted to appoint bishops, tax the church for his profit and set the rules—including ones regarding his ability to annul a marriage.

This took place in 1534.

But in the decades that followed, there was a deadly ping pong in England regarding Catholicsim and Protestantism.

Henry’s son, Edward was the Protestant boy king who reigned six years and steered the country toward Reformation.

His sister Mary was ardently Catholic and took the nation in the opposite direction, killing hundreds of dissenters in the process.

Her sister Elizabeth presented a sort of middle ground—a Protestant nation a Catholic could endure.

But for many in England, Elizabeth did not go far enough.

There were a group of preachers and Protestants who rose up and said that the Church must carry on the momentum of the Reformation and keep reforming.

They saw Elizabeth’s vision as a compromise and they sought to purify the Church of England of all traces of the old Catholic ways.

These people were called Puritans.

John Bunyan grew up in a country where the Puritans and the Crown were at odds.

KING CHARLES AND PARLIAMENT

After Elizabeth’s death, King James came to England’s throne.

You will know him from the King James Bible of 1611.

He reigned until 1625 when his son, Charles I, ascended to the throne of England.

This is when things got really dicey in terms of impending conflict.

Charles was a man who believed in the king’s divine right to rule.

When Parliament would not go along his plans, he simply dismissed them.

In fact, he dismissed them for a full 11 years and ruled without them, starting in 1628.

This left England barreling toward Civil War throughout John Bunyan’s adolescence.

THE FINAL STRAWS

Charles finally recalled Parliament in 1640 in order to secure funds for a war with the Scots.

Parliament had demands if these funds were to be released.

When the Crown and Parliament could not agree on the balance of power or public worship or the spending of money, tensions boiled over.

On October 23rd, 1642, the Battle of Edgehill took place and the conflict between the Charles’ Royalists and Parliamentarian forces was underway.

On one side, those fighting for the crown.

On the other side, those fighting in Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army.

BUNYAN AT WAR

You might wonder, why we are talking all of this English history? Isn’t this supposed to be a day where we recall the life of John Bunyan?

Well, the reason is that this push and pull between Crown and Parliament would have a major impact on Bunyan’s life.

It was constantly sticking its head in his business and effecting his life.

And that starts with him fighting in the Civil War on the side of the Cromwell and Parliament.

Bunyan served in a garrison of 800 soldiers and he was barely 16 years old.

Bunyan recalls a near-death experience he had in the war where someone took his place on duty for the day.

When I was a soldier, I, with others, were drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it; But when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to which, when I had consented, he took my place; and coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head with a musket bullet, and died.

John Bunyan

Clearly this incident stuck with Bunyan as he included it in his autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.

God, who numbers days, had sustained his life.

The war officially carried on for nine years, but Bunyan’s involvement winds down after the first leg ended when King Charles was captured in 1646.

Sometime around July 1647, Bunyan seems to have returned to the place of his birth.

As for England, things were far from peaceful.

In the years that followed, Charles would escape from prison, only to be re-captured.

A second conflict would break out in 1648.

Cromwell’s side was victorious again and King Charles was put on trial for high treason in January 1649.

And then on January 30, 1649, the King of England was beheaded.

England became a Commonwealth and by 1653, Oliver Cromwell was the head of state as Lord Protector.

And during this time, churches and preachers that sought to operate outside of the authority of the Church of England, enjoyed a golden age of religious freedom.

CAROUSING TO CONVERSION

THE ROAD TO REFORM

But John Bunyan was not quite ready to seize the day and use those freedoms for unyielding devotion to Christ.

The military reforms many bull-headed men, but not John Bunyan.

The first thing of note is that Bunyan married.

Amazingly, we really do not know the name of this woman, but there are a lot of indications that it was probably Mary—the biggest of which is that their first daughter was named Mary.

It was a custom at the time for mothers to name their firstborn daughters after themselves.

This woman brought no funds to Bunyan. All she could offer was two books her father had given her.

The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven by Arthur Dent

The Practice of Piety by Lewis Bayly

These are books that Bunyan read with his wife and they did seem to have an effect upon him.

They built a home together in Elstow on the road to Bedford and moved into it in early 1649.

Bunyan went about the work his father had taught him and he had a career as a tinker.

But he also continued to be a bit of a carouser.

He was known around town for cussing.

He was known for doing whatever he wanted on the Lord’s Day.

He had a reputation for ungodliness.

But he began to re-think things due to a couple of incidents.

First of all, one day he was cracking off cuss words out in the streets and a woman who was known for being foul-mouthed herself rebuked him for cussing in front of her shop.

She told him he was the most ungodly man she had ever heard speak.

The fact that such a vile woman found him to be too immoral really bothered him.

Secondly, one day he was playing a game of tipcat on the Lord’s Day. Tipcat was kind of a forerunner to cricket.

Bunyan was out in the field playing when he felt a voice in his heart say, “You can have thy sins and go to Hell or you can give up thy sins and go to heaven.”

At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was, as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for these and other my ungodly practices.

John Bunyan

Alongside these incidents, his wife was about to give birth to his first daughter, Mary, who would be born blind.

The birth of a child can have a dramatic effect upon a man.

ATTEMPTS AT REFORM

And so Bunyan set out to reform himself.

As we will find out in a few minutes, he was a man of incredible resolve and strong-willed.

So he decided he would cut out sinful recreation on the Sabbath and he would stop his cussing and he would be faithful to the church.

And he did this with a level of success.

He even served the abbey by pulling the ropes for the bell-tower.

He was able to externally modify his behavior.

But that is all it was—external changes.

Bunyan said that he was “proud of his godliness” and did everything that he did in order to to be spoken well of by others and to be seen by them as a good man.

CONVERSION

But the true transformation for Bunyan began when Bunyan overheard a small group of women talking about Jesus—women that would end up introducing Bunyan to his spiritual father.

The women I am speaking of were from John Gifford’s church.

Gifford’s story was not unlike Bunyan’s.

He also fought in the English Civil War, but was on the side of the Royalists.

In fact, he was scheduled to be executed for his part in opposing Parliament in an uprising in 1648.

However, when his sister came to say her goodbyes to him, she found the men guarding him to be drunk and passed out, so she helped him escape.

You would think this would cause the man to change his life, but he didn’t.

He became a doctor in Bedford, but spent all his money on gambling and booze.

He was also hateful and he was plotting to murder a man named Anthony Harrington, just because Harrington was holy and it bothered him.

But one night, he was gambling and he lost and he cursed the name of God.

He had never done that before and it really bothered him that he had sunk to that depth.

So he went to a small group of Christians—a group that Anthony Harrington belonged to.

And the man he planned to kill helped lead him to Christ.

Gifford grew quickly and exhibited a skill for preaching and he began to lead this small congregation.

In 1650, the same year the Bunyan’s first child was born, they became an official independent church in Bedford.

This church would be one of the great loves of John Bunyan’s life.

One day, Bunyan was roaming the streets and looking for work when he overheard women from Gifford’s church talking about being born again.

He had never heard anyone talk about the new birth like this.

They spoke of Jesus as if they knew Him.

Bunyan went home desiring to know Christ in this way and desiring to be born again.

Intrigued, Bunyan came back and he organized his day so that he could be around these women and hear more about the new birth.

He lurked around them and listened in on their small group, which probably alarmed them.

As the English Civil War ended, there were radical sects of religious fanatics that developed and some of them looked to persecute those who were operating outside of the Church of England, like John Gifford’s Bedford church.

But soon they spoke with him and found out that he was a tinker in the area with real spiritual interests.

They began to talk with Bunyan regularly.

In fact, this evangelism work went on for 18 months.

This is a good reminder that you never know what God will do with your faithfulness. These women were just talking about Jesus each day in a group of friends—likely chatting as they made shoelaces to sell in the marketplace.

They never could have known that it would lead to the conversion of a man named John Bunyan, who would go on to be one of the greatest witnesses to the Gospel in the history of the world.

Be faithful. Talk about Jesus out in the open. You never know what God will do.

After about a year and half of talking with Bunyan, he finally confessed to his new friends that he feared he was not born again.

They immediately connected him to their pastor, John Gifford.

And this was the worst thing that could have happened for Satan’s domain of darkness.

Gifford’s preaching set Bunyan’s world on fire.

One Sunday, he say in the hard, tall-backed pews of the Bedford Church, listening to John Gifford preach from Song of Solomon, applying the text to Jesus’ love for His church.

Here is the verse that led John Bunyan to faith.

Song of Solomon 4:1 ESV

Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful! Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead.

Gifford preached that Christ loves His church with constancy. He is faithful and He never stops loving her as His beautiful bride.

The two words that impacted him the most was “my love.”

Though he would struggle with accepting God’s forgiveness for his awful sinning for some time, these words convinced Bunyan of the Gospel’s truth and he believed.

Listen to his words as he recalls his feelings on his walk home from church that day. He was ready to evangelize birds:

I could not tell how to contain until I got home; I thought I could have spoken of his love and of his mercy to me, even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood me.

John Bunyan

ACCEPTING GOD’S LOVE

Now, I would love to tell you that he was off to the races and he never looked back, but that is not the case.

He never went back to his cursing and carousing, but Bunyan really struggled to accept God’s forgiveness for the cursing and carousing that he had done.

Every time the baby Christian tried to pray or take the Lord’s Supper or listen to preaching, his conscience was on fire because he kept thinking of all the ways he had broken God’s laws.

He questioned his salvation to the point that he had a very dark thought:

“Maybe I am a devil myself—or at least devil-possessed.”

This went on for some time.

Satan hounded him about how much he had offended God and tried to convince him that God could never love him.

But this trial of despair ended for Bunyan because of two Scriptures.

First of all, he was sitting at home by the fire one night reading his Bible and these words jumped off the page to him:

Hebrews 2:14–15 ESV

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

Bunyan said these words brought him great relief, when he realized that He knew the One who has the power to destroy the devil.

The second sanctifying Scripture that did away with his doubts regarding his salvation was one he had to look for.

He was walking in a field one day and he realized he had been underestimating a key aspect of the Gospel—the righteousness of Christ.

As I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience…suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, “Thy righteousness is in heaven” and I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there I say is my righteousness.

John Bunyan

Bunyan raced home and searched the Scriptures for a verse that would confirm this confidence he felt in his soul and finally he found it.

1 Corinthians 1:30 ESV

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,

He read this and thought, “Oh Christ! Christ! There is nothing but Christ before my eyes.”

And understanding that his salvation is not dependent on his ability to be holy, but on the perfect righteousness of Christ, Bunyan finally felt secure.

He called 1 Corinthians 1:30 “gold in his trunk.”

Every Christian should have verses like this. We should all have truths from the Word of God that we keep as gold in the trunk of our hearts to drive away doubts and despair and disobedience.

MOVING TO BEDFORD

GIFFORD’S DEATH

At 27 years old, fully converted and committed to the cause of Christ, Bunyan moved his entire family from Elstow to Bedford so that he could be intimately involved in the life of his church.

Bedford was also more centrally located so he could use it as more effective home base for his traveling tinker work.

But not long after arriving, tragedy struck.

Just as Bunyan and his family were moving into their new two bedroom home with a loft on St. Cuthbert Street, his pastor got sick and died.

John Gifford was only a Christian for about five years and died at only 50 years old, but his impact on his church and on Bunyan was profound.

Bunyan stood at his bedside with other church members as he died.

LUTHER’S GALATIANS

Bunyan had lost a mentor, a friend and a pastor. He was broken over it.

But he found a new mentor and friend and pastor in a different man—one that had also passed a century before—Martin Luther.

In the wake of Gifford’s death, Bunyan began to read Luther’s commentary on Galatians and it was life-changing for him.

Well, after many such longings in my mind, the God in whose hands are all our days and ways, did cast into my hand one day a book of Martin Luther; it was his comment on Galatians—it also was so old that it was ready to fall piece from piece if I did but turn it over.

John Bunyan

But despite the state of the book itself, Bunyan devoured it.

In Luther, Bunyan saw himself.

A man oppressed by the law, terrified by sin and crying out for comfort.

And through the writing, Bunyan came to understand the proper relationship between the Law and the Gospel.

Another weight fell off.

He felt free. The Law showed him his sin, but Christ freed him from it.

The Law was a schoolmaster that led him to the Savior.

Luther helped him see that and he came to cherish that commentary above every book outside of the Bible, itself.

I think that Bunyan’s experience with Luther should encourage us to seek out the same relationship with a Christian theologian that has gone before us.

Every Christian should have a dead man that they read regularly.

Someone who has run his course faithfully, leaving behind a legacy of knowledge that we can learn from.

It might be a Reformer or a Puritan or a preacher from the 20th Century who has passed away.

It might be John Bunyan, himself!

But every believer should have a dead man they glean from consistently—a man who can become a bit of a pastor to them in their prayer closet.

EARLY MINISTRY

THE FIRST TWO YEARS

At this point, God had brought Bunyan to the place of use. It was time for his soul to be poured out in service.

The doubts destroyed. His faith strengthened.

It was time for the mission.

Just before Gifford’s death, some of the godliest people in Bunyan’s congregation began insisting that he should preach and teach. They said God had given him a gift with words.

Bunyan balked at first because again—he had such a reputation for sinning before conversion that he felt he couldn’t touch a pulpit.

However, his friends in the church insisted that he would get up at a Bible Study and say a few words of exhortation.

As he did, Bunyan said that the church was both affected and comforted by his teaching.

As he taught more at the church and in some surrounding areas, it became obvious that God’s call to ministry was upon Bunyan’s life.

And so, in early 1656, the church gathered for the purpose of setting Bunyan and a couple of others apart to ordain them to Gospel ministry.

The first couple years of his preaching were fiery. Later in life, he lamented that he preached too much judgment and not enough of God’s love in his early days in the pulpit.

But nonetheless, his preaching gained a reputation for being powerful.

Bunyan himself said that he would be preaching at times and see tears running down the faces of his listeners as they took in the truth of God’s Word and this spurred him on to continue the work with vigilance.

DEFENDING THE FAITH

After two years of using his voice, Bunyan then picked up the pen for the first time.

His first book was a response to the heresy of the Quakers that denied the humanity of Christ.

He offered up 40,000 words in his first book. That’s about the size of The Great Gatsby.

The writer and preacher was off and running at the age of 30.

EARLY CRITICS

But not everyone was a fan.

Even before persecution from the state, Bunyan experienced persecution from the church.

On one occasion, he was preaching in a barn five miles west of Cambridge and toward the end of his sermon, Thomas Smith, a Cambridge professor barged into the meeting.

He said that an uneducated tinker like Bunyan had no right to preach and that his preaching on judgment lacked charity.

Bunyan responded by saying, “When were you converted? What signs of eternal life do you have?”

This did not go over well.

Smith wrote an open letter to the vicar of the town, denouncing Bunyan’s ministry and saying he had no right to preach.

Bunyan was officially on the radar of the establishment.

DEATH OF HIS WIFE

Compounding the perils of persecution was tragedy at home.

At only 28 years old, John Bunyan’s wife passed away in 1658 from an unknown disease, shortly after giving birth to their son, Thomas.

This left John as a single-father of four.

Two girls and two boys.

Blind Mary at 8

Elizabeth at 4.

John at 2.

And infant, Thomas.

He would live this way for a full year before marrying his second wife, Elizabeth.

CHANGING TIDES IN ENGLAND

CHARLES II AND RESTORATION

These difficulties at home and in ministry were just the tremors of what was to come—for there were changing tides in England that would have a massive impact on John’s future.

After Charles I was beheaded, England was a commonwealth and was led by Oliver Cromwell.

But Cromwell constantly had problems with an incompetent Parliament and he dismissed and disbanded them on more than one occasion.

After his death, his son took his place and he was only a shadow of the man his father was.

While the balance of power between the monarchy and Parliament would be forever changed in England, this still opened the way for the Crown to be restored.

And it was. Charles II took the throne on May 29, 1660 and England was a monarchy again.

As you can imagine, Charles II was no fan of the sort of Puritanism that was thriving in the Bedford Church and that John Bunyan subscribed to.

A Puritan Parliament had cut his daddy’s head off.

Over a period of four years, Charles would impose strict regulations on anyone who attempted to hold unauthorized worship services outside the Church of England.

He kicked Puritan pastors out of their pulpits if they would not adhere to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

He restricted religious meetings not authorized by the Church of England.

He barred ejected pastors from even coming within 5 miles of their congregation.

All of this left John Bunyan in a compromised position.

In 1660, after the monarchy was restored, the Bedford congregation was kicked out of their building.

They began to work with other independent churches to stand together in the difficulty and meetings started to happen underground.

Bunyan would travel and speak at these various meetings, which made him an enemy of the state.

ARREST

On November 12, 1660, Bunyan was on his way to Lower Samsell, 12 miles south of Bedford. He was going to preach to one of these underground church meetings gathered in a barn.

He and his new wife, Elizabeth, knew that he was in danger. The government was spying on him.

As he arrived, he tied up his horse and the farmer who owned the barn pulled him aside and let him know that there was a rumor going around saying the government was planning to come to arrest Bunyan at the meeting.

The farmer and the people suggested it might be a good idea to cancel the meeting.

Bunyan said:

No, I will not stir, neither will I have the meeting dismissed for this. Come, be of good cheer, let us not be daunted; our cause is good, we need not be ashamed of it; to preach God’s Word is a so good a work that we shall be well rewarded if we suffer for that.

John Bunyan

As Bunyan started preaching, there was a knock on the door. The authorities came for John.

He kept preaching a bit and then went with the men.

The next day, he was brought before John Wingate, the appointed Justice of the Peace for the region—a fierce Royalist who had fought for the Crown and now served Charles II.

He wanted to know what made this tinker think he had the right to travel up and down the country preaching.

Bunyan replied:

The intent of my coming thither and to other places was to instruct and counsel people to forsake their sins, and close in with Christ, lest they perish miserably.

John Bunyan

This enraged Wingate. His face went red and he said, “I will break the neck of your meetings.”

Bunyan essentially said, “Maybe.”

Bunyan was placed in the county jail.

He would be addressed in three months.

If he agreed not to preach, he would be released.

If he did not agree, he would remain.

There was no formal criminal charge.

LIFE IN JAIL

Life in the jail was hard.

It was small and damp.

There would have been multiples of people living on top of each other in it.

It would have smelled from body odor and human waste.

The prisoners slept on nothing but straw.

On top of all of that, prisoners did not stay for free. They had to pay their own way to stay in the jail.

Bunyan initially made shoelaces that he would give to his wife, Elizabeth, and their blind daughter, Mary, who visited him often. They would sell them at the market to pay for John’s stay in jail.

This got him all the wonderful amenities, as well as half a loaf of bread a week and two pints of water each day.

And yet, Bunyan was resolute.

I will stay in prison till the moss grows on my eye lids rather than disobey God.

John Bunyan

His resolve was aided by his church members and family who brought him supplies and extra food.

His blind daughter would famously make him soup and bring it to him.

As Bunyan awaited trial, the most painful thing he experienced was the death of a son.

Elizabeth had been pregnant upon his arrest. She had a long labor with the baby and he did not make it.

Bunyan described watching his family suffer from behind jail bars as feeling like his flesh was being pulled from his bones.

THE TRIAL

When the trial finally came, Bunyan would not relent. He said that if he were released, he would go back to preaching immediately.

On this admission, Bunyan was placed back in prison. He would remain there for twelve years.

IMPRISONMENT

These were hard years for John, but he made use of them.

With two books at his side—The Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Bunyan set about writing.

This is what many Puritans did in the 1660’s. They lost their pulpits, so they took to their writing desks.

In 1663, he wrote Christian Behavior and I Will Pray in the Spirit.

He also wrote his last testament, thinking he would die in the prison.

In 1664, he wrote Profitable Meditations.

In 1665, he wrote One Thing Needful, The Holy City and The Resurrection of the Dead.

In 1666, he published his autobiography, Grace Abounding, as well as three other works.

As his writing became more popular, it helped provide income for his family that was much more substantial than what shoelaces could provide.

This sort of faithful use of a time of suffering should inspire us to do the same. It is reminiscent of Paul, writing pastorally to his congregations, while wearing prison chains.

The Christian finds ways to be steadfast in usefulness to Christ in every circumstance.

A BRIEF RELEASE AND JAILED AGAIN

In January of 1672, the tension between the Crown and Non-Comformists started to dissipate.

King Charles II put the Declaration of Indulgence in place, which provided a level of religious tolerance.

The Bedford Church was excited and before Bunyan was even released, they appointed him as their pastor.

However, it would be five months before Bunyan was freed.

He was the first Puritan preacher put in jail by Charles II and he was the last to be released.

Bunyan used his regained freedom to preach and pastor.

But it only lasted for a few years.

In 1675, John was jailed again and once more, the charge was for preaching outside the authority of the Church of England.

A PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

It was during this imprisonment that he penned his greatest work.

He wrote the great allegory for the Christian life, “A Pilgrim’s Progress.”

When he first finished it, and sent it around to his Puritan friends, some of them encouraged him to keep it to himself.

The writing was seen as novel. It wasn’t the usual Puritan business of writing a 7 point sermon on one verse.

It was a long allegory filled with poetic language and vivid imagery.

The world had never really seen anything like it.

But Bunyan did publish it.

The world learned the story of Christian, a man who leaves the City of Destruction, seeking the Celestial City.

On his way, he experiences all sorts of worldly characters who try to dissuade him, godly characters who help him and experiences everything from conversion to persecution to death.

Over 100,000 copies sold in its first decade.

To this date, it has been translated into over 200 languages, has at least 1500 editions and it has never been out of print.

Only the Bible has done better.

And like many of the books of the New Testament—it was written by a man in prison chains.

RELEASE AND FINAL YEARS

Finally, on June 21, 1677, John Bunyan was released from prison for good.

And oddly enough, this came about because of the man we started with today.

John Owen, the prolific and preeminent theological mind of 17th century England, used his political pull to get John Bunyan out of jail.

Owen was determined that the tinker would preach again.

Bunyan, in classic Bunyan fashion, made good use of the next eleven years of his life.

From the age of 49 to 60 years old, Bunyan pastored the Bedford church and preached everywhere he could get to.

Sometimes he was preaching to his small congregation he loved so dearly.

Sometimes he was in London preaching to 3,000 people at 6am.

He traveled around and preached to so many that he earned the nickname, “Bishop Bunyan.”

He also became a heralded author and carried on writing after the success of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

He wrote a sequel to his great allegory about Christian’s wife, Christiana.

He also published the classics, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, The Holy War and The Jerusalem Sinner Saved

All in all, he penned 18 books in the final eleven years of his life.

10 of them came in the final three years alone.

DEATH

In 1688, at 60 years old, Bunyan rode horseback through a storm to London for ministry purposes.

Upon arrival, he had fallen ill and he came down with a dangerous fever.

He laid in bed in his friend, John Strudwick’s home, dying.

His final words were:

Weep not for me, but for yourselves. I go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no doubt, though the meditation of his blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner; where I hope we ere long shall meet, to sing a new song, and remain everlastingly happy, world without end.

John Bunyan

He was buried in Bunhill Fields—a graveyard in London that many Puritans and Non-Comformists were laid to rest in.

His grave is within shouting distance of John Owen.

Owen was always adamant that Bunyan—the uneducated tinker be seen as a spiritual giant alone with the rest of the highly educated Puritan preachers.

In the end, he had his wish.

Bunyan’s body was planted with the other redwoods, like Thomas Goodwin, Isaac Watts, John Gill and many more.

CLOSING THOUGHT

As the band returns to close us out and we consider Bunyan’s life, we must say that he was a pilgrim who poured himself out for the glory of God.

He lived all of life—whether free or locked up—to the glory of His King.

We have no reason to believe Bunyan did not experience the sweetness he describes at the end of his famous allegory:

Just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I look in after them, and, behold! The city shone like the sun. The streets there were paved with gold, and on them walked many men and women, young and old, with crowns on their heads, palm branches in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises with.

The Pilgrim’s Progress

We don’t know what might lie ahead of us in this year.

We might have a year in which we suffer.

We might have a year filled with triumphs.

For some of us, this could be the last year you have on this earth. We never know—regardless of how old we are.

So then, as we approach 2024, in the manner of Bunyan and in the model of Christ, pour out every ounce of your life for God’s glory.

Your talents.

Your gifts.

Your suffering.

Your time.

Your words.

If you can sing, sing.

If you can write, write.

If you are a skilled evangelist, evangelize.

If you are a behind-the-scenes servant, then sweep hard behind the curtain.

But whatever you do, give it all.

The time is short. The Kingdom is at hand.

2024 is not a year to hold back. It is a year to give everything.

Be like the tinker from Bedford.

Bleeding Bibline.

A prisoner for Christ.

A faithful pilgrim.