Ligonier Ministries: The teaching fellowship of R.C. Sproul

It’s Tuesday as I write, the first Tuesday after the end of Lost. A week has passed since the bewildering end to a mold-breaking, bewildering, television event. I got lost a little late, though of late I think I don’t get Lost at all. That is, I started watching near the end of the second season. It was the first television program I watched via DVD, and with my dear wife stayed up many a late night to watch “just one more.” We waited for Season 2’s release, and watched it also on DVD. From that point however, we put ourselves on the schedule of the network. Keep Reading

Should Christians be on Facebook? What about all the privacy issues that are in the news these days? I sometimes wonder if the devil doesn’t take great pleasure in irony, in watching us turn ourselves inside out while missing the point. While I am on Facebook, and therefore at least hold to a tentative conviction that such is allowable for Christians, there are any number of reasons to raise concerns over it. Privacy and the lack thereof, however, would likely be the last one I would raise. With Facebook’s very public and controversial announcement of its change in policy with respect to privacy, that, however, is what has many Christians concerned. How, I wonder, can a person take a technology that exists to say to the watching world, “Here I am. Come see about me” complain that the world is coming to see about them? Anyone who wishes more privacy can find such easily enough. Don’t use Facebook. If you already do, stop. We are in a moral uproar for all the wrong reasons. We are aghast at the owners of Facebook for daring to change their policy (which, remember, the original policy held out as at their discretion) rather than being appalled at ourselves for implicitly breaking the 8th Commandment. We think because we are a user of Facebook that such makes us an owner of Facebook, and so demand this and demand that from the real owners. Keep Reading

What would you say to a Christian who is thinking of converting to Roman Catholicism? First…don't. After that my approach would likely adjust for the particular person, and what I knew about what was motivating them to make that move. Any approach, however, would look at both personal issues and theological issues. Too often we unwisely focus on one to the exclusion of the other. In my own circles we tend to jump to the theological.  Keep Reading

Like Calvinism and Reformed theology, these two terms are often used as synonyms, but could be understood as genus and species. That is, embracing Calvinism is part of what it means to be Reformed, but not the whole. In like manner some would suggest that theonomy is part of the broader body of convictions described as reconstructionism. Theonomy might be understood as the conviction that the civil law God gave to Israel in the Old Testament ought to be the law of the land in all nations everywhere.  Keep Reading

The one thing I want you to be certain to do is finish reading this column and brush your teeth every evening. I trust at least two things strike you about this opening sentence. First, it’s a rather odd way to begin. Second, why would I tell you there is one thing I want you to be certain to do and then ask for two things? Truth be told, I am following in the footsteps of Jesus, hoping to better understand our calling to follow in His footsteps. He said, Seek first that which is first, not first and second, but first, the kingdom of God. That would have made perfect sense, had He stopped there. But He didn’t. He said seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. That’s two things, or is it? Keep Reading

Imagine, if you would, that you are the most powerful person in the world. Now imagine that you are also the richest person in the world. Would your life be fundamentally different? Would everything that is now ordinary about your life become extraordinary? Not according to the wisest man in the world. King Solomon reigned in Israel at the peak of its power. Israel was at that time a world power, her borders swelling. Solomon likewise enjoyed the wealth of Croesus (the grossly rich Greek king). No one on the planet was as wealthy as Solomon. Better than all this, however, he was gifted by the God of heaven and earth with wisdom. In that wisdom, and in light of experiencing every pleasure, every distraction that the world had to offer, he spoke this heavy nugget: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9). Keep Reading

I read the Bible in English. Which is actually two keys to understanding language. I read the Bible in English, the still, though languishing, language of this country. It is a language I share with Muslim Americans, with secular Americans, with Jewish Americans. We, in this context, speak the same language. But, in English I read the Bible, words that set me apart from Muslims, Jews and secularists. The form of my language is English. The content is, or at least ought to be, the Bible. Keep Reading

One of the telling measures of our own cultural decline is the steady erosion of a sane understanding of the family. Family, we should remember, is on one level what we call a common blessing. God has not restricted the freedom to marry and to raise up children to His redeemed. He has instead blessed all mankind with that liberty, with that calling. The serpent, however, has countless versions of the false family, a dizzying array of communities held together by base and foolish affections. He entices us to look for love in all the wrong places, to draw circles in the sand that will wash away with the tide. Keep Reading

It is natural, though altogether wrong, to think that somehow when we turn the pages that separate the Old and New Testaments that we are entering into more gentle times, that God in the interim somehow became kinder and gentler. We do not see in the New Testament, as we do in the Old, flaming mountains with flashing lightning and earth-shaking thunder. We do not see all the first born of a given nation wiped out in a single night, nor the earth’s whole population, save one family, suffer death by drowning. We do not see Uzzah struck dead for touching God’s ark, nor do we see the prophets of Baal struck down by God’s own prophets. Instead, we meet Jesus. Jesus, we are told, will not break a bruised reed, nor quench a smoldering wick (Matt. 12:20). He is gentle and mild, and utterly determined to bring all His enemies under subjection, to silence every pretender to His throne. Keep Reading

This past Sunday I was blessed with the opportunity to preach, this time at Reformation Orthodox Presbyterian Church near Denver. The pastor there is my friend and co-laborer and Highland Fellow Kevin Swanson. I preached what has become of late what I call my “traveling sermon,” that sermon that I give when I visit sundry pulpits around the country. My text is John 13: 1-17, where Jesus washes the feet of the disciples. I suggest in that sermon that, strangely, we who are Reformed, are often proud of ourselves for being Reformed. I argue that we would likely have joined Jesus in washing the disciples’ feet, missing the point that our own feet are filthy. We confuse believing in the doctrine of total depravity with having a deep sense of our own sin. One is affirming a doctrine, the other a more existential awareness of our own condition. Keep Reading