http://www.ligonier.org The broadcast outreach of Ligonier Ministries brings the life-giving truth of God's Word to the world. en-us Fri, 09 May 2008 00:07:00 -0400 Fri, 09 May 2008 00:07:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/images/topbar_logo.jpg The broadcast outreach of Ligonier Ministries brings the life-giving truth of God's Word to the world. http://www.ligonier.org by R.C. Sproul

“The sinfulness of sin” sounds like a vacuous redundancy that adds no information to the subject under discussion. However, the necessity of speaking of the sinfulness of sin has been thrust upon us by a culture and even a church that has diminished the significance of sin itself. Sin is communicated in our day in terms of making mistakes or of making poor choices. When I take an examination or a spelling test if I make a mistake, I miss a particular word. It is one thing to make a mistake. It is another to look at my neighbor’s paper and copy his answers in order to make a good grade. In this case, my mistake has risen to the level of a moral transgression. Though sin may be involved in making mistakes as a result of slothfulness in preparation, nevertheless, the act of cheating takes the exercise to a more serious level. Calling sin “making poor choices” is true, but it is also a euphemism that can discount the severity of the action. The decision to sin is indeed a poor one, but once again, it is more than a mistake. It is an act of moral transgression.

In my book The Truth of the Cross I spend an entire chapter discussing this notion of the sinfulness of sin. I begin that chapter by using the anecdote of my utter incredulity when I received a recent edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Though I was happy to receive this free issue, I was puzzled as to why anyone would send it to me. As I leafed through the pages of quotations that included statements from Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and others, to my complete astonishment I came upon a quotation from me. That I was quoted in such a learned collection definitely surprised me. I was puzzled by what I could have said that merited inclusion in such an anthology, and the answer was found in a simple statement attributed to me: “Sin is cosmic treason.” What I meant by that statement was that even the slightest sin that a creature commits against his Creator does violence to the Creator’s holiness, His glory, and His righteousness. Every sin, no matter how seemingly insignificant, is an act of rebellion against the sovereign God who reigns and rules over us and as such is an act of treason against the cosmic King.

Cosmic treason is one way to characterize the notion of sin, but when we look at the ways in which the Scriptures describe sin, we see three that stand out in importance. First, sin is a debt; second, it is an expression of enmity; third, it is depicted as a crime. In the first instance, we who are sinners are described by Scripture as debtors who cannot pay their debts. In this sense, we are talking not about financial indebtedness but a moral indebtedness. God has the sovereign right to impose obligations upon His creatures. When we fail to keep these obligations, we are debtors to our Lord. This debt represents a failure to keep a moral obligation. 

The second way in which sin is described biblically is as an expression of enmity. In this regard, sin is not restricted merely to an external action that transgresses a divine law. Rather, it represents an internal motive, a motive that is driven by an inherent hostility toward the God of the universe. It is rarely discussed in the church or in the world that the biblical description of human fallenness includes an indictment that we are by nature enemies of God. In our enmity toward Him, we do not want to have Him even in our thinking, and this attitude is one of hostility toward the very fact that God commands us to obey His will. It is because of this concept of enmity that the New Testament so often describes our redemption in terms of reconciliation. One of the necessary conditions for reconciliation is that there must be some previous enmity between at least two parties. This enmity is what is presupposed by the redeeming work of our Mediator, Jesus Christ, who overcomes this dimension of enmity. 

The third way in which the Bible speaks of sin is in terms of transgression of law. The Westminster Shorter Catechism answers the fourteenth question, “What is sin?” by the response, “Sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God.” Here we see sin described both in terms of passive and active disobedience. We speak of sins of commission and sins of omission. When we fail to do what God requires, we see this lack of conformity to His will. But not only are we guilty of failing to do what God requires, we also actively do what God prohibits. Thus, sin is a transgression against the law of God.

When people violate the laws of men in a serious way, we speak of their actions not merely as misdemeanors but, in the final analysis, as crimes. In the same regard, our actions of rebellion and transgression of the law of God are not seen by Him as mere misdemeanors; rather, they are felonious. They are criminal in their impact. If we take the reality of sin seriously in our lives, we see that we commit crimes against a holy God and against His kingdom. Our crimes are not virtues; they are vices, and any transgression of a holy God is vicious by definition. It is not until we understand who God is that we gain any real understanding of the seriousness of our sin. Because we live in the midst of sinful people where the standards of human behavior are set by the patterns of the culture around us, we are not moved by the seriousness of our transgressions. We are indeed at ease in Zion. But when God’s character is made clear to us and we are able to measure our actions not in relative terms with respect to other humans but in absolute terms with respect to God, His character, and His law, then we begin to be awakened to the egregious character of our rebellion. 

Not until we take God seriously will we ever take sin seriously. But if we acknowledge the righteous character of God, then we, like the saints of old, will cover our mouths with our hands and repent in dust and ashes before Him.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/tabletalk/2008/5/1058_Cosmic_Treason article-65 Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=002 audio-2257 Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=003 video-293 Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

The Latin word credo means simply “I believe.” It represents the first word of the Apostles’ Creed. Throughout church history it has been necessary for the church to adopt and embrace creedal statements to clarify the Christian faith and to distinguish true content from error and false representations of the faith. Such creeds are distinguished from Scripture in that Scripture is norma normans (“the rule that rules”), while the creeds are norma normata (“a rule that is ruled”). 

Historically, Christian creeds have included everything from brief affirmations to comprehensive statements. The earliest Christian creed is found in the New Testament, which declares, “Jesus is Lord.” The New Testament makes a somewhat cryptic statement about this affirmation, namely, that no one can make the statement except by the Holy Spirit. What are we to understand by this? On the one hand, the New Testament tells us that people can honor God with their lips while their hearts are far from Him. That is to say, people can recite creeds and make definitive affirmations of faith without truly believing those affirmations. So, then, why would the New Testament say that no one can make this confession save by the Holy Spirit? Perhaps it was because of the cost associated with making that creedal statement in the context of ancient Rome. 

The loyalty oath required by Roman citizens to demonstrate their allegiance to the empire in general and to the emperor in particular was to say publicly, “Kaisar Kurios,” that is, “Caesar is lord.” In the first-century church, Christians bent over backward to be obedient to civil magistrates, including the oppressive measures of Caesar, and yet, when it came to making the public affirmation that Caesar is lord, Christians could not do so in good conscience. As a substitute for the phrase, “Caesar is lord,” the early Christians made their affirmation by saying, “Jesus is Lord.” To do that was to provoke the wrath of the Roman government, and in many cases, it cost the Christian his life. Therefore, people tended not to make that public affirmation unless they were moved by the Holy Spirit to do so. The simple creed, “Jesus is Lord,” or more full statements, such as the Apostles’ Creed give an outline of basic, essential teachings. The creeds summarize New Testament content.

The creeds also used that summary content to exclude the heretics of the fourth century. In the affirmation of the Nicene Creed, the church affirmed categorically its belief in the deity of Christ and in the doctrine of the Trinity. These affirmations were seen as essential truths of the Christian faith. They were essential because without inclusion of these truths, any claim to Christianity would be considered a false claim. 

At the time of the Reformation, there was a proliferation of creeds as the Protestant community found it necessary, in the light and heat of the controversy of that time, to give definitive statements as to what they believed and how their faith differed from the Roman Catholic Church’s theology. Rome itself added her creedal statements at the Council of Trent in the middle of the sixteenth century as a response to the Protestant movement. But each Protestant group, such as the Lutherans, the Swiss Reformed, and Scottish Reformed, found it necessary to clarify the truths that they were affirming. This was made necessary, not only because of disagreements within Reformed parties, but also to clarify the Protestant position against frequent misrepresentations set forth by their Roman Catholic antagonists. The seventeenth-century confessional statement known as the Westminster Confession is one of the most precise and comprehensive creedal statements growing out of the Reformation. It is a model of precision and biblical orthodoxy. However, because of its length and comprehensive dimension, it is difficult to find two advocates of the Westminster Confession who agree on every single precise point. Because of that, churches that use the Westminster Confession or other such confessions, usually limit requirements of adherence by an acknowledgment of “the system of doctrine contained within.” These later Protestant creeds not only intended to affirm what they regarded as essentials to Christianity, but specifically to clarify the details of the particular religious communion that would use such comprehensive confessions of faith.

In our day, there has been a strong antipathy emerging against confessions of any stripe or any degree. On the one hand, the relativism that has become pervasive in modern culture eschews any confession of absolute truth. Not only that, we have also seen a strong negative reaction against the rational and propositional nature of truth. Creedal statements are an attempt to show a coherent and unified understanding of the whole scope of Scripture. In that sense, they are brief statements of what we historically have called “systematic theology.” The idea of systematic theology assumes that everything that God says is coherent and not contradictory. So, though these creeds are not created out of pure rational speculation, nevertheless, they are written in such a way as to be intelligible and understood by the mind. Without such confessions, theological anarchy reigns in the church and in the world.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/tabletalk/2008/4/1050_Norma_Normata article-64 Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2256 audio-2256 Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=292 video-292 Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul
The dark night of the soul. This phenomenon describes a malady that the greatest of Christians have suffered from time to time. It was the malady that provoked David to soak his pillow with tears. It was the malady that earned for Jeremiah the sobriquet, “The Weeping Prophet.” It was the malady that so afflicted Martin Luther that his melancholy threatened to destroy him. This is no ordinary fit of depression, but it is a depression that is linked to a crisis of faith, a crisis that comes when one senses the absence of God or gives rise to a feeling of abandonment by Him.Spiritual depression is real and can be acute. We ask how a person of faith could experience such spiritual lows, but whatever provokes it does not take away from its reality. Our faith is not a constant action. It is mobile. It vacillates. We move from faith to faith, and in between we may have periods of doubt when we cry, “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” We may also think that the dark night of the soul is something completely incompatible with the fruit of the Spirit, not only that of faith but also that of joy. Once the Holy Spirit has flooded our hearts with a joy unspeakable, how can there be room in that chamber for such darkness? It is important for us to make a distinction between the spiritual fruit of joy and the cultural concept of happiness. A Christian can have joy in his heart while there is still spiritual depression in his head. The joy that we have sustains us through these dark nights and is not quenched by spiritual depression. The joy of the Christian is one that survives all downturns in life. In writing to the Corinthians in his second letter, Paul commends to his readers the importance of preaching and of communicating the Gospel to people. But in the midst of that, he reminds the church that the treasure we have from God is a treasure that is contained not in vessels of gold and silver but in what the apostle calls “jars of clay.” For this reason he says, “that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” Immediately after this reminder, the apostle adds, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:7–10). This passage indicates the limits of depression that we experience. The depression may be profound, but it is not permanent, nor is it fatal. Notice that the apostle Paul describes our condition in a variety of ways. He says that we are “afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down.” These are powerful images that describe the conflict that Christians must endure, but in every place that he describes this phenomenon, he describes at the same time its limits. Afflicted, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. So we have this pressure to bear, but the pressure, though it is severe, does not crush us. We may be confused and perplexed, but that low point to which perplexity brings us does not result in complete and total despair. Even in persecution, as serious as it may be, we are still not forsaken, and we may be overwhelmed and struck down as Jeremiah spoke of, yet we have room for joy. We think of the prophet Habakkuk, who in his misery remained confident that despite the setbacks he endured, God would give him feet like hind’s feet, feet that would enable him to walk in high places.Elsewhere, the apostle Paul in writing to the Philippians gives them the admonition to be “anxious for nothing,” telling them that the cure for anxiety is found on one’s knees, that it is the peace of God that calms our spirit and dissipates anxiety. Again, we can be anxious and nervous and worried without finally submitting to ultimate despair. This coexistence of faith and spiritual depression is paralleled in other biblical statements of emotive conditions. We are told that it is perfectly legitimate for believers to suffer grief. Our Lord Himself was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Though grief may reach to the roots of our souls, it must not result in bitterness. Grief is a legitimate emotion, at times even a virtue, but there must be no place in the soul for bitterness. In like manner, we see that it is a good thing to go to the house of mourning, but even in mourning, that low feeling must not give way to hatred. The presence of faith gives no guarantee of the absence of spiritual depression; however, the dark night of the soul always gives way to the brightness of the noonday light of the presence of God.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/tabletalk/2008/3/1042_The_Dark_Night_of_the_Soul article-63 Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2255 audio-2255 Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=290 video-290 Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

I don’t remember the exact words. They went something like this: “He was a thundering paradox of a man.” These words served as the opening lines of William Manchester’s classic biography of General Douglas MacArthur. In this work, MacArthur was shown as a multi-faceted man whose essence could not be crystallized by a single attribute. In like manner, the prophets of the Old Testament were men of multi-faceted and multi-dimensioned responsibilities and behavior. Some of the roles carried out by these prophets include the following: First, the prophets of Israel were agents of revelation. They did not say, they were singularly called and endowed by the charismatic power of the Holy Ghost to speak the Word of God. As agents of revelation, they did not preface their teachings by saying, “In my opinion.” Instead, they introduced their statements or oracles with “Thus saith the Lord.” Though the Old Testament prophets as agents of revelation are popularly conceived as being principally men involved in foretelling, that is, predicting future events, in reality the emphasis of their activity was involved in forthtelling. Forthtelling meant that they were declaring the Word of God to their own time and to their own generations.

The second dimension of the role of the Old Testament prophet was that of being reformers. We must distinguish here between the work of reformation and the work of revolution. The Old Testament prophets had no desire to root up and cast down or to destroy the cultic structure of the nation. Rather, they called the people to return to orthodoxy, not to abandon their history. They called for a return to the terms of the original covenants that God had made with them, to obedience to the law that God had revealed through Moses, and, most importantly, to the practice of true worship as distinguished from all forms of idolatry and hypocrisy. They spoke boldly against formalism, externalism, and ritualism. But in their critique, they did not repudiate the formal, the external, or the ritual. Rather, it was the ism attached to these concepts that expressed the hypocrisy of Jewish worship during the prophetic era. The rituals, the externals, and the forms had been distorted by false forms of worship. 

Third, the prophet carried out the role of the covenant prosecutor. There were legal ramifications in terms of the relationship between God and His people. The structure of that relationship was the covenant, and all covenants had stipulations associated with them as well as sanctions. There was a penalty for disobedience, as well as a reward for obedience. When Israel violated the terms of her covenant, God sent his prosecuting attorneys to file suit against them, to declare his controversy with the people. We see this in Hosea’s announcement when he called the people of Israel to solemn assembly, saying that the Lord has a controversy with His people. The announcement and pursuit of this controversy by reason of law had the prophets speaking not as priestly defenders of the people, but rather as divine prosecuting attorneys pronouncing God’s judgment and wrath upon them.

Fourth, the role of the prophet in Israel, individually and corporately, was to serve in a concrete way as the conscience of the nation. Israel was structured as a divine theocracy. There was no hard-pressed separation of church and state. When the state and the people in it wandered from the ethical structure of the nation, it was the prophet who would prick the consciences of the people and of the kings. Part of the reason the prophets lived such perilous lives was because they were called to speak boldly to the rulers of the nation, which rulers did not appreciate the intervention of the prophet. Rare was the king such as David who gave heed to the intervention of Nathan and who responded with profound repentance (2 Sam. 12:1–15). Normally, the course of the rulers was to follow the way of Ahab, to seek the very life of that prophet who dared to call him to repentance (1Kings 19:1–3). In our own culture, where we have a so-called separation of church and state, it is not the role or responsibility of the church to rule the nation. But it is the responsibility of the church to be the conscience of the nation and to call the state to repentance when the state becomes demonized and fails to serve in the cause of righteousness. 

Finally, the prophets were known as rugged individualists. There were indeed schools of professional prophets who worked together executing their trade for their own livelihood. Traditionally, these were the ones who became the false prophets of Israel. The true prophets were those who usually met with God alone in the wilderness and were given a divine summons to stand against the crowd and against the false prophets. Jeremiah, for example, felt the ignominy and the anguish of always being outnumbered by the false prophets who united in their cause against the truth boldly proclaimed by him. It was Elijah who thought that he was the only one left who had not bowed his knee to Baal. God rebuked him and reminded him that he had preserved 7,000 for Himself, who had not bowed the knee to Baal. These incidents reflect the commonplace experience of the Old Testament prophet who, time after time, was called to stand alone against a secularized nation and an immoral culture. They stood their ground for the truth of God and in many cases paid the ultimate price for it. It’s on the shoulders of the prophets of the Old Testament that the New Testament church establishes the agents of revelation — which are the apostles in the language of the new covenant. And so the foundation of the church of Christ is the foundation of the prophets and the apostles.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/tabletalk/2008/2/1035_Covenant_Prosecutors article-62 Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2254 audio-2254 Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=289 video-289 Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

C.S. Lewis emerged as a twentieth-century icon in the world of Christian literature. His prodigious work combining acute intellectual reasoning with unparalleled creative imagination made him a popular figure not only in the Christian world but in the secular world as well. The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy, though rife with dramatic Christian symbolism, were devoured by those who had no interest in Christianity at all, but were enjoyed for the sheer force of the drama of the stories themselves. An expert in English literature, C.S. Lewis functioned also as a Christian intellectual. He had a passion to reach out to the intellectual world of his day in behalf of Christianity. Through his own personal struggles with doubt and pain, he was able to hammer out a solid intellectual foundation for his own faith. C.S. Lewis had no interest in a mystical leap of faith devoid of rational scrutiny. He abhorred those who would leave their minds in the parking lot when they went into church. He was convinced that Christianity was at heart rational and defensible with sound argumentation. His work showed a marriage of art and science, a marriage of reason and creative imagination that was unparalleled. His gift of creative writing was matched by few of his twentieth-century contemporaries. His was indeed a literary genius in which he was able to express profound Christian truth through art, in a manner similar to that conveyed by Bach in his music and Rembrandt in his painting. Even today his introductory book on the Christian faith — Mere Christianity — remains a perennial best seller. 

We have to note that although a literary expert, C.S. Lewis remained a layman theologically speaking. Indeed, he was a well-read and studied layman, but he did not benefit from the skills of technical training in theology. Some of his theological musings will indicate a certain lack of technical understanding, for which he may certainly be excused. His book Mere Christianity has been the single most important volume of popular apologetics that the Christian world witnessed in the twentieth century. Again, in his incomparable style, Lewis was able to get to the nitty-gritty of the core essentials of the Christian faith without distorting them into simplistic categories. 

His reasoning, though strong, was not always technically sound. For example, in his defense of the resurrection, he used an argument that has impressed many despite its invalidity. He follows an age-old argument that the truth claims of the writers of the New Testament concerning the resurrection of Jesus are verified by their willingness to die for the truths that they espoused. And the question is asked: Which is easier to believe — that these men created a false myth and then died for that falsehood or that Jesus really returned from the grave? On the surface, the answer to that question is easy. It is far easier to believe that men would be deluded into a falsehood, in which they really believed, and be willing to give their lives for it, than to believe that somebody actually came back from the dead. There has to be other reasons to support the truth claim of the resurrection other than that people were willing to die for it. One might look at the violence in the Middle East and see 50,000 people so persuaded of the truths of Islam that they are willing to sacrifice themselves as human suicide bombs. History is replete with the examples of deluded people who have died for their delusions. History is not filled with examples of resurrections. However, despite the weakness of that particular argument, Lewis nevertheless made a great impact on people who were involved in their initial explorations of the truth claims of Christianity. 

To this day, people who won’t read a Bible or won’t read other Christian literature will pick up Mere Christianity and find themselves engaged by the acute mental processes of C.S. Lewis. The church owes an enormous debt to this man for his unwillingness to capitulate to the irrationalism that marked so much of Christian thought in the twentieth century — an irrationalism that produced what many describe as a “mindless Christianity.” 

The Christianity of C.S. Lewis is a mindful Christianity where there is a marvelous union between head and heart. Lewis was a man of profound sensitivity to the pain of human beings. He himself experienced the crucible of sanctification through personal pain and anguish. It was from such experiences that his sensitivity developed and his ability to communicate it sharply honed. To be creative is the mark of profundity. To be creative without distortion is rare indeed, and yet in the stories that C.S. Lewis spun, the powers of creativity reached levels that were rarely reached before or since. Aslan, the lion in The Chronicles of Narnia, so captures the character and personality of Jesus; it is nothing short of amazing. Every generation, I believe, will continue to benefit from the insights put on paper by this amazing personality.


Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is author of the book The Truth of the Cross.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=61 article-61 Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2253 audio-2253 Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=288 video-288 Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

The gospel of Luke ends with a supremely jarring statement: “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them.  While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.  And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God” (24:50-53).

What is jarring about this passage is, as Luke reports the departure of Jesus from this world, the response of His disciples was to return to Jerusalem with “great joy.”  What about Jesus’ departure would instill in His disciples an emotion of sheer elation?  This question is made all the more puzzling when we consider the emotions the disciples displayed when Jesus earlier had told them that His departure would come soon.  At that time, the idea that their Lord would leave their earthly presence provoked in them a spirit of profound remorse.  It would seem that nothing could be more depressing than to anticipate separation from the presence of Jesus.  Yet, in a very short period of time, that depression changed to unspeakable joy. 

We have to ask what is it that provoked such a radical change of emotion within the hearts of Jesus’ disciples.  The answer to that question is plain in the New Testament.  Between the time of Jesus’ announcement to them that He would soon be going away and the time of His actual departure, the disciples came to realize two things.  First, they realized why it was that Jesus was leaving.  Secondly, they understood the place to which He was going.  Jesus was leaving not in order that they might be left alone and comfortless, but that He might ascend into heaven.  The New Testament idea of ascension means something far more weighty than merely going up into the sky or even to the abode of the heavenlies.  In His ascension, Jesus was going to a specific place for a specific reason.  He was ascending into heaven for the purpose of His investiture and coronation as the King of kings and Lord of lords.  He is King in the highest possible sense of kingship. 

In biblical terms, it is unthinkable to have a king without a kingdom.  Since Jesus ascends to His coronation as king, with that coronation comes the designation by the Father of a realm over which He rules.  That realm is all creation.

The King is already in place.  He has already received all authority on heaven and on earth.  That means that at this very moment the supreme authority over the kingdoms of this world and over the entire cosmos is in the hands of King Jesus.  There is no inch of real estate, no symbol of power in this world that is not under His ownership and His rule at this very moment.  In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, in chapter 2, in the so-called kenotic hymn, it is said that Jesus is given the name that is above all names.  The name that He is given that rises above all other titles that anyone can receive, is a name that is reserved for God.  It is God’s title Adonai, which means the “One who is absolutely sovereign.”  Again, this title is one of supreme governorship for the One who is the King of all of the earth. 

The New Testament translation of the Old Testament title adonai is the name lord.  When Paul says that at the name of Jesus every knee must bow and every tongue confess, the reason for the bowing in obeisance and for confessing is that they are to declare with their lips that Jesus is Lord – that is, He is the sovereign ruler.  That was the first confession of faith of the early church. 

The lordship of Jesus is not simply a hope of Christians that someday might be realized; it is a truth that has already taken place.  It is the task of the church to bear witness to that invisible kingdom, or as Calvin put it, it is the task of the church to make the invisible kingdom of Christ visible.  Though invisible, it is nevertheless real.


Dr. R.C. Sproul is president and chairman of the board of Ligonier Ministries, and he is author of The Last Days According to Jesus.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=60 article-60 Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2252 audio-2252 Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=208 video-208 Sun, 04 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

The rapid spread of the Protestant Reformation from Wittenberg, Germany, throughout Europe and across the Channel to England was not spawned by the efforts of a globe-trotting theological entrepreneur.  On the contrary, for the most part Martin Luther’s entire career was spent teaching in the village of Wittenberg at the university there.  Despite his fixed position, Luther’s influence spread from Wittenberg around the world in concentric circles – like when a stone is dropped into a pond. 

Many means were used to spread Luther’s message to the continent and to England.  One of the most important factors was the influence of virtually thousands of students who studied at the University of Wittenberg and were indoctrinated into Lutheran theology and ecclesiology.  Like Calvin’s academy in Geneva, Switzerland, the university became pivotal for the dissemination of Reformation ideas.  Wittenberg and Geneva stood as epicenters for a worldwide movement.  The printing press made it possible for Luther to spread his ideas through the many books that he published, as well as his tracts, confessions, catechisms, and pamphlets.  In addition to these methods of print, music was used in the Reformation to carry the doctrines and the sentiments of Protestantism through the writing of hymns and chorales.  Religious drama was used not in the churches but rather in the marketplace to communicate the central ideas of the movement – the recovery of the biblical Gospel. 

Students from England, who studied at Wittenberg also had a major impact in bringing the Reformation across the Channel to Great Britain.  Probably the most important person, in the English Reformation was William Tyndale, whose translation of the Bible into English was of cataclysmic importance.  In 1524, he left England for the continent and studied for a period of time at Wittenberg.  His first edition of the New Testament was published in Flanders in 1526, five years after the fated Diet of Worms during which Luther gave his famous “Here I Stand” speech.  Thousands of these Bibles were smuggled into England. 

In addition to those who influenced the English Reformation directly from Luther’s Germany, were those whose influence came by a more circuitous route, via Geneva, Switzerland.  John Calvin himself had to flee from Paris because of the views he learned from his friends who had been influenced by the teachings of Martin Luther.  This Frenchman found his refuge in Geneva, where his pulpit and teaching ministry became known around the world.  Geneva became a city of refuge for exiles who fled there for safety from all over Europe.  Of the countries that sent exiles to Calvin’s Geneva, none was more important than England and the British Isles.  John Knox, who led the Reformation in Scotland, spent some time in Switzerland at the feet of Calvin, learning his Reformation theology there.  Though Calvin was twenty-six years younger than Luther, Luther’s views made a dramatic impact on the young Calvin’s life while he was still in his twenties.  Though Calvin is usually associated popularly with the doctrine of predestination, it is often overlooked that there was nothing in Calvin’s view of predestination and election that was not first articulated by Luther, especially in Luther’s famous work The Bondage of the Will. 

Some of the exiles from England under Calvin’s tutelage set upon the task of translating the Bible into English.  This Bible, called the Geneva Bible, was the first Bible to have theological notes printed in the margin, which notes were heavily influenced by Calvin’s preaching.  This Bible was the predominant Bible among the English for the next hundred years before it was supplanted by the popular King James Version.  It was the original, official version of the Scottish Presbyterian Church.  It was the Bible of Shakespeare, the Bible the Pilgrims brought with them on the Mayflower to America, and it was the Bible of choice among America’s early colonists. 

From Wittenberg directly to England, or from Wittenberg to Geneva to England, in this roundabout route, the seeds of the Reformation that were planted in Germany sprouted into full bloom as they made their way into the English empire.  To trace the pathway from Wittenberg to London, one must follow a series of circuitous routes, but the origin of that movement in Wittenberg is unmistakable, and its influence continues even to this day.

Dr. R.C. Sproul is president and chairman of the board of Ligonier Ministries, and he is author of Truths We Confess.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=58 article-58 Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2251 audio-2251 Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=287 video-287 Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

The adage tells us that there is a destination, the road to which is paved with good intentions.  It is the destination that we would prefer not to reach.  Good intentions can have disastrous results and consequences.  When we look at the revolution of worship in America today, I see a dangerous road that is built with such intentions.  The good purposes that have transformed worship in America have as their goal to reach a lost world – a world that is marked by baby boomers and Generation Xers who have in many ways rejected traditional forms and styles of worship.  Many have found the life of the church to be irrelevant and boring, and so an effort to meet the needs of these people has driven some radical changes in how we worship God.

Perhaps the most evident model developed over the last half century is that model defined as the “seeker-sensitive model.”  Seekers are defined as those people who are unbelievers and are outside of the church but who are searching for meaning and significance to their lives.  The good intention of reaching such people with evangelistic techniques that include the reshaping of Sunday morning worship fails to understand some significant truths set forth in Scripture.

In Romans 3, Paul makes abundantly clear that unconverted people do not seek after God.  Thomas Aquinas understood this and maintained that to the naked eye it may seem that unbelievers are searching for God or seeking for the kingdom of God, while they are in fact fleeing from God with all of their might.  What Aquinas observed was that people who are unconverted seek the “benefits” that only God can give them, such as ultimate meaning and purpose in their lives, relief from guilt, the presence of joy and happiness, and things of this nature.  These are benefits the Christian recognizes can only come through a vital, saving relationship with Christ.  The gratuitous leap of logic comes when church leaders think that because people are searching for benefits only God can give them, they must therefore be searching after God.  No, they want the benefits without the Giver of the benefits.  And so structuring worship to accommodate unbelievers is misguided because these unbelievers are not seeking after God.  Seeking after God begins at conversion, and if we are to structure our worship with a view to seekers, then we must structure it for believers, since only believers are seekers.

The purpose of corporate assembly, which has its roots in the Old Testament, is for the people of God to come together corporately to offer their sacrifices of praise and worship to God.  So the first rule of worship is that it be designed for believers to worship God in a way that pleases God.  

Another erroneous assumption made in the attempt to restructure the nature of worship is that the modern generation has been so changed by cultural and contextual influences – such as the impact of the electronic age upon their lives – that they are no longer susceptible to traditional attempts of being reached by expository preaching.  So the focus of preaching has moved in many cases away from an exposition of the Word of God.  We assume this alteration is necessary if we’re to reach the people who have been trapped within the changes of our current culture.  The erroneous assumption is that in the last fifty years, the constituent nature of humanity has changed, as if the heart can no longer be reached via the mind.  It also assumes that the power of the Word of God has lost its potency, so that we must look elsewhere if we are to find powerful and moving experiences of worship in our church.  Though the intentions may be marvelous, the results, I believe, are and will continue to be catastrophic.   


Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is author of the book The Truth of the Cross.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=56 article-56 Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2250 audio-2250 Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=286 video-286 Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

Today, the word honor has all but disappeared from the English language.  I speak about honor because the dictionary lists the term honor as the chief synonym for the word integrity.  My concern in this article is to ask: “What is the meaning of integrity?”  If we use the pedestrian definitions given to us by lexicographers, such as we find in Webster’s dictionary, we read several entries.  In the first instance, integrity is defined as “uncompromising adherence to moral and ethical principles.”  Second, integrity means “soundness of character.”  Third, integrity means “honesty.”  Fourth, integrity refers to being “whole or entire.”  Fifth and finally, integrity means to be “unimpaired in one’s character.”  

Now, these definitions describe persons who are almost as rare as the use of the term honor.  In the first instance, integrity would describe someone whom we might call “a person of principle.”  The person who is a person of principle is one, as the dictionary defines, who is uncompromising.  The person is not uncompromising in every negotiation or discussion of important issues, but is uncompromising with respect to moral and ethical principles.  This is a person who puts principle ahead of personal gain.  

We also see that integrity refers to soundness of character and of honesty.  When we look to the New Testament, for example, in the epistle of James, James gives a list of virtues that are to be manifested in the Christian life.  In the fifth chapter of that letter at verse 12, he writes, “But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but let your ‘yes’ be yes, and your ‘no,’ be no,  so that you may not fall under condemnation.”  Here James elevates the trustworthiness of a person’s word, the simple statement of yes or no, as a virtue that is “above all.”  What James is getting at is that integrity requires a kind of honesty that indicates that when we say we will do something, our word is our bond.  We should not require sacred oaths and vows in order to be trusted.  People of integrity can be trusted on the basis of what they say.  

We look back to the Old Testament to the experience of the prophet Isaiah in his vision recorded in chapter 6 of that book.  We remember that Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up as well as the seraphim singing the Trisagion: “Holy, Holy, Holy.”  In response to this epiphany, Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me,” announcing a curse upon himself.  He said the reason for his curse was because “I am undone” or “ruined.”  What Isaiah experienced in that moment was human disintegration.  Prior to that vision, Isaiah was perhaps viewed as the most righteous man in the nation.  He stood secure and confident in his own integrity.  Everything was being held together by his virtue.  He considered himself a whole, integrated person, but as soon as he saw the ultimate model and standard for integrity and virtue in the character of God, he experienced disintegration.  He fell apart at the seams, realizing that his sense of integrity was at best a pretense.  

Calvin indicated that this is the common lot of human beings, who as long as they keep their gaze fixed on the horizontal or terrestrial level of experience, are able to congratulate themselves and consider themselves with all flattery of being slightly less than demigods.  But once they raise their gaze to heaven and consider even for a moment what kind of being God is, they stand shaking and quaking, becoming completely disavowed of any further illusion of their integrity.  

The Christian is to reflect the character of God.  The Christian is to be uncompromising with respect to ethical principles.  The Christian is called to be a person of honor whose word can be trusted. 


Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is the author of the book A Taste of Heaven.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=55 article-55 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2249 audio-2249 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=284 video-284 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 theophany or through a burning bush or through a pillar of cloud, but we will see Him in His essence. We call this in theology the visio Dei, the vision of God, which is also called the beatific vision. It is called the beatific vision for the simple reason that the sight of the unveiled refulgent glory of God will be the supreme experience of blessedness that any redeemed creature can ever experience. I long for that experience. For now I walk by faith and not by sight, and I think the most difficult thing for any Christian in their service to God is to worship and serve an invisible deity. 

In the incarnation, we have the highest visible manifestation of the invisible God. But we are living in an age where the presence of God the Father has been eclipsed in our very midst. The latest poll still shows that close to 95% of the people in America affirm their faith or belief in the existence of God. However, when we scratch beneath the surface and look at the God that people are affirming, it’s some higher power or some nebulous force — anything but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And yet even though people affirm theoretically the idea of the reality of God, we live in this country as if there were no God. We live as practical atheists. 

The church has been moved to a reservation and been allowed to continue her ministry as long as her ministry is personal and private and stays out of the public square. As soon as we walk into the public square and question government ethics, then the hammer falls upon us very quickly. One of the reasons that God is eclipsed in our country is because of us, because we have not manifested Him and His Word with the boldness that our fathers have done. No one has ever thrown a stone at me for preaching the Gospel. I’ve not been cast into prison. But the price to pay in our country today for preaching is a small one as long as long as we keep it contained where it’s safe. And that’s something we have to look at in our own hearts. 

In the middle of the 20th century, a book was written by the Jewish existential philosopher Martin Buber entitled, The Eclipse of God. In it, he talked about how the knowledge of God the Father had all but disappeared from our understanding. Thus, in the Christian community, we have practically become Unitarians. That is, all our focus tends to be on God the Son at the expense of the other persons of the Trinity — especially God the Father. In so doing, we forget that it was the Father who sent the Son to reconcile us to Him, our Creator, and to provide us with an example on how to live coram Deo, before the face of God.

Now one of the things we have to say about this eclipse is that just like an eclipse of the moon or the sun, we know that these entities are not destroyed. All that happens is the light of the sun is temporarily obscured from our view or the reflective light of the moon is hidden for a short period of time. But the eclipse doesn’t do anything to the nature of the moon or the nature of the sun. The sun is still there and still shining. The moon is still there. So when Buber talked about an eclipse of God, he wasn’t saying that somehow God has died or God has been somehow impaired in His being, but rather people’s cognition of God has been obscured.

Even though God has not been pleased to reveal Himself to us as He is visibly, yet as the Scriptures tell us, He has not left Himself without a witness. The heavens declare the glory of God, and we are told again and again in the Scriptures that the whole earth is filled with His glory. Not that there are a few obscure hints buried in the bushes available to only some gnostic elite group that can probe creation and get a glimpse here and there of the glory of God. No! God has filled His creation with His glory. It’s all around us. Maybe it’s beneath the surface. But if it’s beneath the surface, it’s not far beneath the surface. All we need to do is look, and there it is. John Calvin said that we as sinners walk through this magnificent theater of divine creation as people wearing blindfolds. On the one hand, I like that metaphor because it describes that our failure to see the glory of God is somewhat willful. On the other hand, I see a weakness in that metaphor because it suggests that even though the glory is there, we never see it, but we do see it. We can’t obliterate it. As much as we hide our eyes from the glory of God, the glory of God still breaks through, but it is obscured. Instead of looking to the deus revelatus of which Luther spoke, we concentrate on the deus absconditus, the way in which God remains hidden from our view. 

Nevertheless beloved, the task of making the invisible God visible to a fallen world is given to us. It’s given to the church. As I come to the twilight years of my own ministry, my greatest concern this day is the concern for the church in making God visible to our own people. Periodically when the session meets at our own church, we go over every item in our worship service and we ask, “Is this biblical? Is this useful to make the invisible God manifest?” What drives me more than anything else is to have the congregation walk away from the worship service saying, “Surely God was in that place. When I came to worship at that church, I was overwhelmed by an immediate sense of the presence of God.” I think that’s what God wants to have happen in the church on Sunday morning.  


— Dr. R.C. Sproul, excerpt from the 2004 Pastors Conference, Overcoming the Eclipse of God]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=54 article-54 Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2248 audio-2248 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=283 video-283 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

Quicumque vult – this phrase is the title attributed to what is popularly known as the Athanasian Creed.  It was often called the Athanasian Creed because for centuries people attributed its authorship to Athanasius, the great champion of Trinitarian orthodoxy during the crisis of the heresy of Arianism that erupted in the fourth century.  That theological crisis focused on the nature of Christ and culminated in the Nicene Creed in 325.  Though Athanasius did not write the Nicene Creed, he was its chief champion against the heretics who followed after Arius, who argued that Christ was an exalted creature but that He was less than God.  

Athanasius died in 373 AD, and the epithet that appeared on his tombstone is now famous, as it captures the essence of his life and ministry.  It read simply, “Athanasius contra mundum,” that is, “Athanasius against the world.”  This great Christian leader suffered several exiles during the embittered Arian controversy because of the steadfast profession of faith he maintained in Trinitarian orthodoxy.  

Though the name “Athanasius” was given to the creed over the centuries, modern scholars are convinced that the Athanasian Creed was written after the death of Athanasius.  Certainly, Athanasius’ theological influence is embedded in the creed, but in all likelihood he was not its author.  

The content of the Athanasian Creed stresses the affirmation of the Trinity in which all members of the Godhead are considered uncreated and co-eternal and of the same substance.  In the affirmation of the Trinity the dual nature of Christ is given central importance.  As the Athanasian Creed in one sense reaffirms the doctrines of the Trinity set forth in the fourth century at Nicea, in like manner the strong affirmations of the fifth-century council at Chalcedon in 451 are also recapitulated therein.  As the church fought with the Arian heresy in the fourth century, the fifth century brought forth the heresies of monophysitism, which reduced the person of Christ to one nature, mono physis, a single theanthropic (God-man) nature that was neither purely divine or purely human.  At the same time the church battled with the monophysite heresy, she also fought against the opposite view of Nestorianism, which sought not so much to blur and mix the two natures but to separate them, coming to the conclusion that Jesus had two natures and was therefore two persons, one human and one divine.  Both the Monophysite heresy and the Nestorian heresy were clearly condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, where the church, reaffirming its Trinitarian orthodoxy, stated their belief that Christ, or the second person of the Trinity was vere homo and vere Deus, truly human and truly God.  It further declared that the two natures in their perfect unity coexisted in such a manner as to be without mixture, confusion, separation, or division, wherein each nature retained its own attributes.  

The Athanasian Creed reaffirms the distinctions found at Chalcedon, where in the Athanasian statement Christ is called, “perfect God and perfect man.”  All three members of the Trinity are deemed to be uncreated and therefore co-eternal.  Also following earlier affirmations, the Holy Spirit is declared to have proceeded both from the Father “and the Son.” 

Finally, the Athanasian standards examined the incarnation of Jesus and affirmed that in the mystery of the incarnation the divine nature did not mutate or change into a human nature, but rather the immutable divine nature took upon itself a human nature.  That is, in the incarnation there was an assumption by the divine nature of a human nature and not the mutation of the divine nature into a human nature.  

The Athanasian Creed is considered one of the four authoritative creeds of the Roman Catholic Church, and again, it states in terse terms what is necessary to believe in order to be saved.  Though the Athanasian Creed does not get as much publicity in Protestant churches, the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation are affirmed by virtually every historic Protestant church.


Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel and he is founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=53 article-53 Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2247 audio-2247 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=282 video-282 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

“The God hypothesis is no longer necessary to explain the origin of the universe or the development of human life.”  This assertion was at the very heart of the movement that took place in the eighteenth century that we call the Enlightenment. God’s existence was seen as no longer necessary because He had been supplanted by the “science” of that period that explained the universe in terms of spontaneous generation.  Here we see an example of pseudoscience supplanting sound philosophy and theology.

Added to this, we have the agnosticism of the titanic philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that it is impossible for science or philosophy to acquire knowledge of the metaphysical realm of God.  It was declared that all knowledge must be restricted to the realm of the natural.  With the combination of Kant’s agnosticism and the hypothesis of the Enlightenment, the door was open wide to a thoroughgoing philosophy of naturalism.  This philosophy captured in its wake the academic theologians of Europe in the nineteenth century.  

Out of this came nineteenth-century liberalism with its militant anti-supernatural perspective.  The liberalism of that era denied all of the supernatural elements of the Christian faith, including the virgin birth of Jesus, His miracles, His atoning death, and His resurrection.  

The impact of liberalism and neo-liberalism on the church left it basically as a worldly, nature-bound religion that sought refuge in a humanitarian social agenda.  This is the approach to Christianity that has all but completely captured many of today’s mainline churches throughout the world.

However, in the last few decades, we have witnessed a comeback of sorts of the supernatural.  Yet this increasing interest in the supernatural has been driven in large measure by a fascination with the occult.  People are now interested in demons, witches, spiritualists, and other occultic phenomena.

The Christianity of the Bible is a religion that is uncompromisingly supernatural.  If we take away the supernatural, we take away Christianity.  At the heart of the worldview of both Testaments is the idea that the realm of nature is created by One who transcends that nature.  

With the renewed interest in the supernatural that comes with the occult, we must be ever vigilant to make sure that whatever understanding we have of the supernatural is an understanding that is informed by the Bible and not by paganism.  Sheer naturalism is paganism with a vengeance, but so is the occult.  What we need is an understanding of the supernatural that comes to us from the supernatural, from the Author of the supernatural, who reveals to us in His Word the content of the supernatural realm – so that our understanding of angels, or demons, or of spiritual beings comes from God’s self-revelation and not from human speculation, neo-gnostic magic, or other forms of pagan intrusions.  Again, we must insist that without the supernatural, Christianity loses its very heart, and this writer cannot understand why anybody would attach any great significance to Christianity at all once it’s been stripped of its supernatural elements.


Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is author of the book The Truth of the Cross.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=50 article-50 Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2246 audio-2246 Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=207 video-207 Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

“It is the will of God.” 

How easily these words fall from the lips or flow from the pen. How difficult it is to penetrate exactly what they mean. Few concepts in theology generate more confusion than the will of God.

One problem we face is rooted in the multifaceted way in which the term will functions in biblical expressions. The Bible uses the expression “will of God” in various ways. 

Augustine once remarked, “In some sense, God wills everything that happens.” The immediate question raised by this comment is, In what sense? 

Some distinctions made by theologians include the following:

THE DECRETIVE WILL OF GOD
This is sometimes described as the sovereign efficacious will, by which God brings to pass whatever He pleases by His divine decree. An example of this may be seen in God’s work of creation. When God said, “Let there be light,” He issued a divine imperative. He exercised His sovereign efficacious will. It was impossible for the light not to appear. The decretive will can have no other effect, no other consequence than what God sovereignly commands. 

THE PRECEPTIVE WILL OF GOD
The preceptive will of God relates to the revealed commandments of God’s published law. When God commands us not to steal, this “decree” does not carry with it the immediate necessity of consequence. Where it was not possible for the light to refuse to shine in creation, it is possible for us to refuse to obey this command. 

We may have the power to disobey the precept. We do not have the power to disobey it with impunity. Nor can we annul it by our disregard. His law remains intact whether we obey it or disobey it. 

Yet we still observe the acute difference between the light’s obedience to God’s creative decree and our disobedience to God’s moral, preceptive decree. How do we account for this?

A common way to resolve this conundrum is by appeal to a distinction between the sovereign will of God and His permissive will.

This distinction between God’s sovereign will and His permissive will is fraught with peril, and it tends to generate untold confusion.

In ordinary language the term permission suggests some sort of positive sanction. To say that God “allows” or “permits” evil does not mean that He sanctions it in the sense that He grants approval to it. It is easy to discern that God never permits sin in the sense that He sanctions it in His creatures.

What is usually meant by divine permission is that God simply lets it happen. That is, He does not directly intervene to prevent its happening. Here is where grave danger lurks. Some theologies view this drama as if God were impotent to do anything about human sin. This view makes man sovereign, not God. God is reduced to the role of spectator. This ghastly view is not merely a defective view of theism; it is unvarnished atheism.

Whatever God “permits” He sovereignly and efficaciously wills to permit. If I have a choice to sin or not sin, God also has a choice in the matter. He always has the ability and the authority to stop me from exercising my will.

In the treachery perpetrated by Joseph’s brothers, it was said, “You meant it for evil; God meant it for good.” God’s good will was served through the bad will of Joseph’s brothers. Their acts are judged together with their intentions, and they were rightly judged by God to be evil. That God brings good out of evil only underscores the power and the excellence of His sovereign decretive will.

Excerpt is taken from Tabletalk magazine, August 1993.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=45 article-45 Mon, 18 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2245 audio-2245 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=281 video-281 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 By R.C. Sproul

The next time you attend a prayer meeting, pay close attention to the manner in which individuals address God.  Invariably, the form of address will be something like this, “Our dear heavenly Father,” “Father,” “Father God,” or some other form of reference to God as Father.  What is the significance of this?  It would seem that the instructions of our Lord in giving the model prayer, “The Lord’s Prayer,” is emulated by our propensity for addressing God as Father.  Since Jesus said, “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father,’” that form of address has become the virtual standard form of Christian prayer.  Because this form of prayer is used so frequently, we often take for granted its astonishing significance.  

The German scholar Joachim Jeremias has argued that in almost every prayer that Jesus utters in the New Testament, He addresses God as Father.  Jeremias notes that this represents a radical departure from Jewish custom and tradition.  Though Jewish people were given a lengthy number of appropriate titles for God in personal prayer, significantly absent from the approved list was the title “Father.”  

God has only one child, His only-begotten Son, the monogençs, which restricts this filial relationship to Christ.  We do not have the natural right to call God “Father.”  That right is bestowed upon us only through God’s gracious work of adoption.  This is an extraordinary privilege, that those who are in Christ now have the right to address God in such a personal, intimate, filial term as “Father.”  Therefore, we ought never to take for granted this unspeakable privilege bestowed upon us by God’s grace.  We note in the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus instructs us that now when we pray, we are to refer to God as “Our Father.”  Again the “ourness” of this relationship is grounded in the unique ministry of Jesus by which, through adoption, He is our elder brother and He gives to us those privileges that by nature belong only to Him.  Now, by adopting us, He says that we may regard God, not only as His Father, but as our Father.

The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is found in the words, “Hallowed be Thy Name.”  The opening address, “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” is simply that, an address.  From that address, Jesus instructs His disciples to offer certain petitions in prayer.  The first and chief of those petitions is that we pray that the name of God will be hallowed.  This is also extraordinary in that as the prayer continues, we ask that the will of God be done on earth as it is in heaven and that His kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven.  Both of these desires can only be met when and if the God of the kingdom of heaven and of earth is treated with supreme reverence, honor, and adoration.  When we fail to observe the third commandment, when we fail to honor God as God, and use His name as a curse word, or in a flippant, careless manner, we fail to fulfill this first petition.  Perhaps nothing is more commonplace in our culture than the expression that comes from people’s lips on many occasions, when they say simply, “Oh, my God.”  This careless reference to God indicates how far removed our culture is from fulfilling the petition of the Lord’s Prayer.  It should be a priority for the church and for every individual Christian to make sure that the way in which we speak of God is a way that communicates respect, awe, adoration, and reverence.  How we use the name of God reveals more clearly than any creed we ever confess our deepest attitudes towards the God of the sacred name.

Dr. R.C. Sproul is chairman of Ligonier Ministries and senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=48 article-48 Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2244 audio-2244 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=280 video-280 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians contains one of the most neglected texts found in the New Testament (5:31-32): “‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” In this passage Paul refers back to the original institution of marriage in creation. He cites Genesis 2:24 including the reference to the result of marriage by which the two become “one flesh.”

In what sense does marriage effect a union of one flesh? This question catapults us squarely into the face of mystery. Surely the marriage union does not annihilate the personal identities of the individuals who are united. Before the wedding there are two distinct persons with two distinct personalities. After the wedding there are still two distinct persons with two distinct personalities. Yet now the two have become “one flesh.”

It is facile to assume that the phrase “the two shall become one flesh” refers exclusively to a spiritual union that is to occur in the bond of marriage. Certainly marriage is designed to effect a spiritual union. There is to be a oneness of mind and spirit. But the Bible speaks of one “flesh.” The union is wholistic. Two persons come together to take effect a physical as well as spiritual union.

The physical union of marriage may involve something more than a sexual union but by no means less. The sexual union is a vital part of the marriage relationship. Sexual union is not merely for recreation or for procreation. It includes the mystery of the two becoming one flesh. So crucial to the sexual union is the becoming of one flesh that Paul appeals to this mystery as grounds for avoiding illicit sexual relationships. He forbids fornication, indeed calls us to “flee” from it in the context of saying: “Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For ‘the two,” He says, ‘shall become one flesh’” (1 Cor. 6:16).

The context of this discussion in Corinthians includes a link between our union with Christ and our union with our mates. Paul says, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not!” (1 Cor. 6:15). 

Here Paul links our union with Christ and His body with the mystery of sexual and marital union. We recall that in Ephesians Paul said, “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

At the heart of Christianity is the doctrine of the mystical union of the believer with Christ. Faith links us directly into Christ. We become in Him and He in us. This mysterious union is carried over into the relationship between Christ and the church. The church is His bride with whom He has effected a real, profound, and powerful union.

We normally assume that the image of the church as the bride of Christ is a metaphor borrowed from the institution of human marriage. In this case the earthly serves as the model for the heavenly. Perhaps that is the intent of Scripture. I am not sure. It may well be the other way around. It may be that the earthly estate of marriage is based upon the heavenly model of the mystical union of Christ and His bride. Marriage is the reflection of the heavenly reality, not the basis for a heavenly image.

Excerpt taken from Tabletalk magazine, July 1994.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=46 article-46 Mon, 21 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2243 audio-2243 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=278 video-278 Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

This column’s title, “Right Now Counts Forever” is designed to focus attention on the relevancy of our present lives to the eternal destinies we all face.

We live in a culture that places the stress on “right now.”  Short-range goals, pragmatic methods of problem solving, a quiet hysteria to make it happen “now,” all point to modern man’s despair regarding the future.  The unspoken assumption is that it’s “now or never” because there is no ultimate future for mankind.

Our Christian assertion is that there is more to our lives than “now.”  If there is not, then even the “now” is meaningless.  But we say now counts.  Why?  Now counts because we are creatures who have an origin and a destiny that is rooted and grounded in God…. (Tabletalk, May 1977)

It has been thirty years since I penned my initial essay under the byline “Right Now Counts Forever.”  It was in the decade of the ’70s, at a time when our culture was still reeling from the deleterious effects of the war in Vietnam, and even more significantly from the radical moral revolution that marked the decade of the 1960s.  History has shown that that moral revolution of the ’60s has introduced far more change into life in the United States than the political revolution of the 1770s.  Our culture was described in the ’70s as one that was strongly influenced by secularism.  The principal motif of secularism is that life is cut off from eternity.  All life must be lived in the here and the now, in this saeculum, for there is no eternal dimension.  On the heels of secularism came the philosophy of relativism.  Though relativism was embraced on many sides in the 1970s, it has since become so firmly entrenched in our culture that the estimated number of Americans embracing some form of philosophical or moral relativism reaches over 95 percent.  In this regard, our culture has moved from what was then called neo-paganism to a culture now of neo-barbarianism.  Though Roe v. Wade was already in place when I penned my first essay, the proliferation of abortion on demand, which reaches a million and a half a year, has so marked our culture as a culture of death that all vestigial remnants of our civilized culture die with the death of every unborn baby.  Our nation is a nation at war with itself, where values, family, and morality so split asunder families and counties, states, and the nation, that the unified basis of our former civilization has been shattered.

One thing, however, has not changed in the past thirty years, and that is the fact that because God reigns, everything that happens today has consequences that last well into eternity.  It is as true today as it was the first time I picked up the pen for my byline, that what happens right now counts forever.  Let the culture be paganized, let the culture be barbarian, but let the church be the church and never negotiate the eternal dimension of life.

Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is the author of more than sixty books.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=44 article-44 Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2242 audio-2242 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=277 video-277 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 We hope this interview with pastor and author Dr. Steven J. Lawson will encourage you as much as it did us:

Ligonier Ministries:  Please tell us about your call to the ministry.

Steven Lawson:  By the sovereign grace of God, I was called into the ministry when I was twenty-four years old. During my college years, I started a high school ministry, and I began to teach the Bible on a weekly basis. At that time, God also opened up opportunities for me to preach in various churches, which had a powerful effect of stirring up my heart to serve Him. After graduating from college, the strong preaching of my pastor, Dr. Adrian Rogers, was another powerful force in my life. It was then that God placed a burning desire within me to proclaim His Word. I suddenly had to preach. At this point, I knew God had called me into His ministry.

LM:  What men, living or not, have influenced you most in your ministry?

SL:  Among men who are living, those who have most shaped my ministry are Drs. R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur. While in seminary, Dr. Sproul was my most impactful professor, and he influenced me in a profound way. Subsequently, Dr. MacArthur has deeply forged my approach to expository preaching, and has shaped my own personal life. Of those men not living, several have especially moved me, most notably, the bold preaching of Charles Spurgeon, the relentless drive of George Whitefield, the fearless courage of Martin Luther, and the unwavering discipline of John Calvin.

LM:  If you could communicate one thing to the average Christian today, what would it be?

SL:  What I want most for every Christian is that they know who God is. This generation suffers from a low view of God. His glory has been obscured. I want to help correct this, and exhort believers to developing a transcendent view of God. The Lord is so much more holy and sovereign and righteous than we can imagine. I desperately want believers to know that it is only by His supreme mercy that He has saved us for Himself. Only then can they grow stronger in the grace and knowledge of Christ. Moreover, we must know that God is the architect of an eternal plan for us, and He is ushering forward His purposes on a grand scale by building up our faith and radically changing our lives. 

LM:  Why did you decide to write Foundations of Grace?

SL:  As a pastor, I started meeting every Friday morning at six o’clock with a group of men in our church to teach them the doctrines of grace. Starting with the book of Genesis, I taught through the entire Bible, addressing virtually every verse that speaks to the doctrines of grace, until concluding with the book of Revelation. Each week, I wrote a detailed handout for our men, which became the basis for the book. During that time, I saw God revolutionize their lives, as well as my own. I felt strongly that these truths deserved, and even demanded, a larger audience.

LM:  What is so important about the doctrines of grace?

SL:  The effects of the doctrines of grace are vast in their influence upon the life of the believer. Ligon Duncan wrote an endorsement for Foundations of Grace, and he said it best. The doctrines of grace, Dr. Duncan wrote, are “joy-giving, life-changing, Christ-exalting, God-glorifying, missions-motivating, evangelism-encouraging, discipleship-promoting, soul-transforming, heart-animating, and life-altering.” 

LM:  Please tell us about your new book, The Expository Genius of John Calvin.

SL:  My new book, The Expository Genius of John Calvin, is about the profound and prolific preaching of the great Genevan reformer. It gives an overview of his life, a survey of the distinctive features of his pulpit, and a challenge to follow his example. Calvin’s commentaries have long been admired, but unfortunately, his sermons have been often neglected. This present hour screams for more expositors, and I am convinced that examining Calvin’s preaching will be impactful in seeing raised up a new wave of biblical preachers. His expositions are full of energy, and life, and passion. I believe there is much to learn from the preaching of this supremely gifted man. 

Dr. Steven J. Lawson is the senior pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama. Dr. Lawson serves on the board of directors of The Master's College and Seminary and the ministerial board for Reformed Theological Seminary, and teaches with Dr. John MacArthur at the Expositor's Institute.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=34 article-34 Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2241 audio-2241 Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=276 video-276 Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400  The Expository Genius of John Calvin.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/docs/ExpositoryGeniusJohnCalvin_Sample.pdf article-36 Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2240 audio-2240 Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=206 video-206 Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

When we speak of the reality of grief, we are talking about pain.  It is a pain that penetrates the skin of a person and plunges to the deepest recesses of the person’s being.  It is a pain that grips the soul with a vise-like pincer that brings with the pain an excruciating sense of mourning.  We use the term grief to describe pain that assaults the deepest level of our being.  We often use the metaphor of the broken heart. The broken heart really describes a weeping soul, a soul that is cloaked in the darkest night.

When we speak of grief, we speak about an emotion of which the Scriptures are profoundly aware.  We speak of an emotion that was most poignantly manifested in the life and the experience of our Lord Himself.  Jesus was described as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.  His acquaintanceship with grief was not merely a sympathetic or empathetic awareness of other people’s pain.  Rather, His experience of grief was a pain that He felt within Himself.  To be sure, His pain was the result of His perception, not of His own shortcomings, but of the great evils that plague this world.  

On the other hand, when we experience grief, our grief is usually wrapped up with some kind of personal loss.  In my own experience, when I think of grief, there are only a few personal recollections that force their way into my mind.  The first and most painful was the grief associated with the death of my father when I was seventeen years old.  This was the man who, humanly speaking, was the anchor of my soul, the rock of stability in our home and in my life.  When he was reduced to frailty and became incapacitated by multiple strokes, and wasted away finally to death itself, I was driven to despair.  The loss of this man, who was my greatest earthly hero, left a scar on my soul that remains even to this day.  I also think personally of my sense of loss when my dear friend Jim Boice was taken home to glory in 2000.  It was not simply the loss of a friend, but a loss of a comrade in an ongoing battle that left me with such sorrow.  The pangs of that sorrow were multiplied by my sense of loss, not only to me, but to the church of our time.  

Beyond those personal losses, the loss of friends, the loss of comrades, always bring to me a certain measure of grief.  In my own heart, however, I know that nothing grieves me more than to see the Gospel compromised in the church.  It’s not the wickedness of the pagan that breaks my heart.  It’s the compromise of the Christian that grieves my soul.  Finally, when I look at grief, as I experience it in my life and read of it in Scriptures, I know that with it always comes the clear and present danger of an emotion that can turn sour.  Yet the emotion itself is perfectly legitimate.  If we fail to deal with our grief, if our mourning goes beyond sorrow into bitterness, then we have allowed pain to abscess and become poison.  We must examine the griefs we experience and take care that they never become the occasion for sin.  They never did that to Jesus.  We pray they won’t do it to us.


Excerpt is taken from Tabletalk magazine, April 2007.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=35 article-35 Mon, 02 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2239 audio-2239 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=316 video-316 Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 by R.C. Sproul

The term apologetics has its origin in the Greek word apologia meaning “a reply.” 

Apologetics as a special science was born out of a combination of a divine mandate and the pressing need to respond to false charges leveled against the early church.  God requires that we be prepared to give a “reason for the hope that is within us” (1 Peter 3:15).  In this regard the apologist echoes the work of the apostles who did not ask people to respond to Christ in blind faith. The apostolic testimony to Christ was buttressed both by rational argument and empirical evidence. 

The early church apologists, such as Justin Martyr, gave “replies” (usually addressed to the Roman emperor) to clarify and defend the faith against false charges.  It was reported, for example, that the emerging sect of Christians was seditious, irrational, and cannibalistic (meeting in secret to eat somebody’s body and blood). Justin replied by clarifying the Christian position on civil obedience, philosophy, and the Lord’s Supper.

At first the stress on apologetics was defensive.  It replied to objections and misrepresentations used against Christian truth claims.  Later it developed into a more pro-active science in seeking to develop a full-orbed Christian philosophy in which the truth claims of Christianity were set forth in a reasoned intellectual system of thought.

Reformed theology has a firm conviction that only God can convert the sinner.  No amount of rational argument, cogent evidence, or forceful persuasion can change the heart of the unbeliever unless that sinner is first regenerated by God the Holy Spirit.  Armed with this conviction some in the Reformed camp conclude that rational apologetics is either an exercise in futility or positively harmful.

As one thoroughly convinced of Reformed theology, I am in total agreement with the thesis that apologetics alone cannot convert the sinner.  But I do not further conclude that apologetics is therefore unnecessary.

There are several vital tasks left for apologetics to perform.  

(1) Pre-evangelism.  In defining the essence of saving faith the Reformers distinguished among three elements:  (a) content of data of faith (notitia); (b) objective truth of the content (assensus); (c) personal trust or reliance on the truth (fiducia).  The third, fiducia, can only be wrought by the operation of the Holy Spirit via regeneration.  The first two are assisted by apologetics.  The heart cannot trust what the mind does not affirm.  There can be assent (assensus) without trust (fiducia) but not trust (fiducia) without assent (assensus).

(2) Restrain evil.  Calvin argued that one value of apologetics was to “stop the mouths of the obstreperous.” Here apologetics, though not able to convert the infidel, can restrain the unbeliever from unbridled assault against the faith.  

(3)  Support believers.  Converted Christians can become so easily intimidated by intellectual critique that they lose their boldness to proclaim the Gospel. They are also vulnerable to being assailed by doubts.  

(4) Commonplace benefits.  There is benefit to culture derived when Christianity enjoys a status of intellectual credibility.  When the faith is relegated to a reservation of personal religion or piety based solely on sentiment, it has difficulty informing the institutions that shape culture.  Where Christian truth is established with credibility, it has a salutary effect on culture.  

The apologetic task is difficult, complex, and never-ending.  Yet it is the mandate of God to us.  The responsibility is ours; its success is God’s.

Excerpt taken from Tabletalk magazine, July 1991.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=33 article-33 Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2238 audio-2238 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=314 video-314 Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 Right Now Counts Forever, March 2007

by R.C. Sproul

REGENERATION PRECEDES FAITH. This assertion that captures the heart of the distinctive theology of historic Augustinian and Reformed thought is the watershed assertion that distinguishes that theology from all forms of semi-Pelagianism. 

The semi-Pelagian would argue that despite the ravages of the fall, man still has an island of righteousness left in his soul, by which he still can accept or reject God’s offer of grace. This view, so widely held in evangelical circles, argues that one must believe in Christ in order to be born again, and so the order of salvation is reversed in this view by maintaining that faith precedes regeneration. 

However, when we consider the teaching on this issue as found in John’s record of Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus, we see the emphasis that Jesus places on regeneration as a necessary condition, a sine qua non, for believing in Him. He says to Nicodemus in John 3:3: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  The must-ness of regeneration of which Jesus speaks is necessary for a person to see even the Kingdom of God, let alone to enter it. 

The weakness of all semi-Pelagianism is that it invests in the fallen, corrupt flesh of man the power to exercise faith. Here, fallen man is able to come to Christ without regeneration, that is, before regeneration. On the other hand, the axiom that regeneration precedes faith gets to the very heart of the historic issue between Augustinianism and semi-Pelagianism. 

In the Augustinian and Reformation view, regeneration is seen first of all as a supernatural work of God. Regeneration is the divine work of God the Holy Spirit upon the minds and souls of fallen people, by which the Spirit quickens those who are spiritually dead and makes them spiritually alive. This supernatural work rescues that person from his bondage to sin and his moral inability to incline himself towards the things of God. 

Secondly, regeneration is a monergistic work. “Monergistic” means that it is the work of one person who exercises his power. In the case of regeneration, it is God alone who is able, and it is God alone who performs the work of regenerating the human soul. The work of regeneration is not a joint venture between the fallen person and the divine Spirit; it is solely the work of God. 

Thirdly, the monergistic work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit is an immediate work. It is immediate with respect to time, and it is immediate with respect to the principle of operating without intervening means. The Holy Spirit does not use something apart from His own power to bring a person from spiritual death to spiritual life, and when that work is accomplished, it is accomplished instantaneously.

Fourthly, the work of regeneration is effectual. That is, when the Holy Spirit regenerates a human soul, the purpose of that regeneration is to bring that person to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Regeneration is more than giving a person the possibility of having faith, it gives him the certainty of possessing that saving faith. 

The result of our regeneration is first of all faith, which then results in justification and adoption into the family of God. Nobody is born into this world a child of the family of God. We are born as children of wrath. The only way we enter into the family of God is by adoption, and that adoption occurs when we are united to God’s only begotten Son by faith. 

Finally, it’s important to see that regeneration is a gift that God disposes sovereignly to all of those whom He determines to bring into His family.

Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is the author of the book A Taste of Heaven.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=40 article-40 Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2237 audio-2237 Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=313 video-313 Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 Right Now Counts Forever, February 2007

by R.C. Sproul

At the heart of the message of the book of Job is the wisdom with respect to answering the question as to how God is involved in the problem of human suffering. In every generation protests arise saying that if God is good, then there should be no pain, no suffering or death in this world. Along with this protest against bad things happening to good people, have also been attempts to create a calculus of pain, by which it is assumed that an individual’s threshold of suffering is in direct proportion to the degree of their guilt or the sin they have committed. 

In the book of Job, the character is described as a righteous man, indeed the most righteous man to be found on the earth, but one whom Satan claims is righteous only to receive blessings from the hand of God. God has put a hedge around him and has blessed him beyond all mortals, and as a result the Devil accuses Job of serving God only because of the generous payoff he receives from his Maker. The challenge comes from the evil one for God to remove the hedge of protection and see whether Job will then begin to curse God. As the story unfolds, Job’s suffering goes in rapid progression from bad to worse. His suffering is so intense that he finds himself sitting on a dung heap, cursing the day he was born, and crying out in relentless pain. His suffering is so great that even his wife counsels him to curse God, that he might die and be relieved of his agony. What unfolds further in the story is the counsel given to Job from Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Their testimony shows how hollow and shallow is their loyalty to Job, and how presumptive they are in assuming that Job’s untold misery must be grounded in a radical degeneracy in Job’s character. 

Elihu gives several speeches that carry with them many elements of biblical wisdom, but the final wisdom to be found in this great book comes not from Job’s friends or from Elihu, but from God Himself. When Job demands an answer from God, God responds with this rebuke, “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?... I will question you, and you make it known to me” (Job 38:2-3). What ensues from this rebuke is the most intense interrogation of a human ever brought to bear by the Creator. It almost seems at first glance as if God is bullying Job, in as much as He says, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (v. 4). God raises question after question in this manner. God hammers away at the inferiority and subordination of Job in His interrogation. God continues with question after question about Job’s ability to do things that Job cannot do, but that God clearly can do. Finally, Job confesses that such things were too wonderful. He says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (42:5-6)

What is noteworthy in this drama, is that God never directly answers Job’s questions. He doesn’t say, “Job, the reason you have suffered is for this or for that.”  Rather, what God does in the mystery of the iniquity of such profound suffering, is that He answers Job with Himself. This is the wisdom that answers the question of suffering – not the answer to why I have to suffer in a particular way, in a particular time, and in a particular circumstance, but wherein does my hope rest in the midst of suffering. 

The answer to that comes clearly from the wisdom of the book of Job: that the fear of the Lord, awe and reverence before God, is the beginning of wisdom. And when we are befuddled and confused by things that we cannot understand in this world, we look not for specific answers always to specific questions, but we look to know God in His holiness, in His righteousness, in His justice and His mercy. Therein is the wisdom that is found in the book of Job.

Dr. R.C. Sproul is minister of preaching and teaching at Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is the author of the book The Lightlings.]]> http://www.ligonier.org/article.php?&article_id=39 article-39 Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=2&id=2236 audio-2236 Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.ligonier.org/launch_mediacenter.html?tabID=1&id=311 video-311 Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400
On March 15–17, R.C. Sproul will be joined by Al Mohler, John MacArthur, John Piper, and Ravi Zacharias as Ligonier Ministries hosts its 20th annual national conference, Contending for the Truth, in Orlando, Florida. The purpose of this conference is to exhort believers to become articulate defenders of the Christian faith. The lectures and question-and-answer sessions provided will present a thorough overview of the most significant assaults on Christianity in our day and help Christians understand and uncover the faulty reasoning lying behind such attacks. Today, many use postmodern philosophy to threaten the absolute truth of the Gospel. This conference will help believers critique their assumptions and intelligently affirm the reality of objective, eternal, non-negotiable truth to a society that denies its very existence. Registration is now being taken for this conference.

In the fall, we will be offering three regional conferences in Portland, Oregon; Charlotte, North Carolina; and a third location yet to be determined. The topic will be the sovereignty of God. We will also be hosting our 5th annual pastors conference in Orlando, Florida.

On June 16–23, we will set sail on the 2007 Canada & New England Discovery cruise to explore God's creation and grow in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Dr. Sproul will lecture on developing Christian character as we journey through the backdrop of sites important to world history and the development of Christian theology and Puritan thought in the New World.

In December 2005, Renewing Your Mind with Dr. R.C. Sproul (RYM) began broadcasting to more than fourteen million subscribers on the National Religious Broadcaster's (NRB) channel 378 on DirecTV®. This year, RYM will begin airing the Dust to Glory series for thirty minutes on Sundays at 4:30 p.m. EST instead of the previous daily format. This endeavor with the NRB network strengthens Christian broadcasting by providing quality programming on church history, Bible study, and cultural issues.

Several new resources are set for release in 2007 from our music division, Reformation Trust, and