The New Birth

I love to see that Dr. Piper is beginning a new sermon series on the new birth. I've been wondering for a few years why this has been so neglected in our time compared with the preaching of the Puritans (Sibbes, Owen, Charnock, Howe et al) and that of the two Great Awakenings (Edwards, Whitefield, Wesleys, Nettleton et al). I went to sleep last night listening to a sermon of my dad's which closed with an offering of the gospel in which the new birth and the awakened spiritual taste buds which go with it was explained, and I was thinking about how that was right on but rarely heard today.