R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 15

God Never Forgets His Promises

The entire life of Joseph is summarized in Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” The teenager we met at the beginning of the story is now over a hundred years old. His life has come full circle, and he is addressing his duplicitous brothers. Their actions, in selling him into slavery, had nothing but evil intent written all over it. Their malevolence can in no way be lessened by the knowledge that things did not turn out as they might have done. Truth is, God overruled their evil actions to accomplish a purpose that neither they nor Joseph could have fathomed. God brought good out of evil. In the words of the Westminster Confession, God in His providence “upholds, directs, disposes and governs all creatures, actions and things” to bring about a sovereignly pre-determined plan (5.1). 

This, God had accomplished through a variety of actions. Joseph’s descent into slavery, followed by a false accusation of rape resulting in a lengthy imprisonment, spelled his downward spiral to the bottom. His life could hardly have been much worse. Only now, from the vantage point of what God had, in fact, accomplished — ensuring that an heir of the covenant promises was in the most powerful position in Egypt at a time when famine engulfed Canaan to ensure the survival of the covenant family — could Joseph look back and see the hand of God. As the puritan John Flavel has been so frequently cited as saying, providence is best read like Hebrew, backwards! Only then is it possible to trace the divine hand on the tiller guiding the gospel ship into a safe harbor. No matter how dark things get, His hand is always in control. Or, as the poet William Cowper wrote in verse:

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense
but trust him for his grace;

Behind a frowning providence
he hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast;
unfolding every hour.

The bud may have a bitter taste,
but sweet will be the flower. 

Providence has wider issues in mind than merely our personal comfort or gain. In answer to the oft-cited question in times of difficulty, “Why me?” the forthcoming answer is always, “Them!” He allows us to suffer so that others may be blessed. Joseph suffered in order that his undeserving brothers might receive blessing. In their case, this meant being kept alive during a time of famine and having the covenant promises of their father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, reaffirmed before their eyes. 

What do you think went through the minds of those disciples who carried the blood-soaked body of Stephen for his burial? Were they saying to themselves, “What a waste! Couldn’t God have spared this godly man so that he might be of use to the church in her time of need? Does God care about us at all?” In all these questions, they would have been showing the shortsightedness that is so much a part of unbelief. They would not have been reckoning on the purposes of God had they asked such questions. For there, at the feet of Stephen’s corpse, stood a man upon whom Stephen’s death had the most profound impact. In hearing the voice of Jesus speak to him and accuse him of persecuting God’s Messiah, Paul learned what is arguably his most characteristic feature: that every Christian is in such spiritual union with Christ that to persecute one of His little ones is to persecute Jesus Himself! 

And what were the purposes behind Joseph’s suffering? At least two are forthcoming in the closing chapters of Genesis: the first on a microcosmic level and the second on a larger, macrocosmic level. Joseph learned first of all that whatever happened to him personally, he was part of a larger purpose in which God’s plan was being revealed. In that case, he could not hold grudges against his brothers, no matter how badly they had behaved. True, they must learn their sin and confess it, and this explains the lengthy way in which Joseph finally reveals himself to them as his brother after first of all making them think that they had stolen from a prince of Egypt. God had used him as an instrument in the spiritual growth of his brothers, and Joseph seems to sense that by his utter unwillingness to hold a grudge against them. 

But secondly, and on a much larger platform, Joseph begins to learn the answer to the question, how will the promises made to Abraham be fulfilled? At one level, the final scene of Jacob’s burial in Canaan attended by a huge entourage of Egyptians seems a curious way to end the story of Joseph. But it is part and parcel of it. In the end, the Egyptians are paying homage to Joseph’s family! When Jacob says to his son, “Make sure that I am buried in the land of promise” (see Gen. 50:5), he is thinking of the promise that God had given to Abraham of a land — a land that at this time they did not possess apart from this burial plot! At the end of Genesis the people of God are nowhere near possessing Canaan. They are going to spend four hundred years in captivity in Egypt. But in Jacob’s burial there is a glimpse of things to come. God has not forgotten His promise. He never does. 

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

Aristotle's Theory of Substance

How do you know that something is “real?” More than abstract speculation, this question should drive us to the Creator of everything that exists. In this brief clip, R.C. Sproul examines how Plato and Aristotle wrestled with the question of “being” and “becoming.” Today, watch the entire message for free.

Transcript:

In addressing the problem of dualism, and in trying to bring everything into unity, Aristotle developed what we call his “theory of substance.” Plato had his theory of ideas. Aristotle had his theory of substance. And what Aristotle meant by this is that all individual entities, everything that exists in this world, exists as a primary substance. Now, he said two very important things about these individual entities. Remember the concrete entities that we find in this world according to Plato were called “receptacles.” They were imperfect copies of the real ideas that exist in this other world, in the ideal world. For Aristotle, the individual objects, entities, and things that we encounter in this world are real. And they are substantial. And every substance is comprised of two aspects, or two things: matter and form. Sometimes Aristotle’s philosophy is referred to as the “theory of form.” And, I would say that there is no element of Aristotle’s thought that has been more perplexing to later philosophers, who have sought to analyze and understand the depths of his thinking, than his concept of form. And I’ll just mention in passing that even to this day, there is an ongoing debate among experts in Aristotelian philosophy about exactly what Aristotle meant by his concept of form. But in this idea of substance that he distinguishes between matter and form, he finds the resolution of the ancient problem of “being” and “becoming.” Now, remember in Plato, “being” is found in the idea up here, and “becoming” in the receptacle or material things down here. For Aristotle, “being” and “becoming” are found in each individual entity. Every substance that there is, contains within it both matter and form. “Form” is that which gives the object, or the subject, its being. Without participating in being, without containing being, whatever is couldn’t be, so that you couldn’t have any real things or real objects unless there was some being within them. But also, things in this world, physical things, “material things” as we know them, also have elements of change, elements of “becoming.” That is part of the matter of a thing. Let me see if I can illustrate this in our own contemporary ways of thinking. We talk as Christians about a human person as being made up of two distinct substances. This is what we call a “substantial dichotomy,” a duality. This is not a dualism, but a duality of body and soul. And if you don't have a body, then something is lost from your entity, and if you have no soul you couldn’t live at all. So, for Aristotle, within each object, there was matter and form. The “form” is the eternal being and the “matter” is that which is changing and is the locus of potential.

 

Does the creation account prior to the fall support complementarianism?

Were men and women created to play different roles in the world—even before the fall? From one of our live events, Derek Thomas observes the relationship between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

To ask a biblical or theological question, just visit ask.Ligonier.org or message us on Facebook or Twitter.

Read the Transcript

 

Does the Creation Account Prior to the Fall Support Complementarianism?

Were men and women created to play different roles in the world—even before the fall? From one of our live events, Derek Thomas observes the relationship between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

To ask a biblical or theological question, just visit ask.Ligonier.org or message us on Facebook or Twitter.

Read the Transcript

 

Enjoying God Is a Command

While shaking hands at the church door, ministers are sometimes greeted with a spontaneous, "I really enjoyed that!"—which is immediately followed by, "Oh! I shouldn't really say that, should I?" I usually grip tighter, hold the handshake a little longer, and say with a smile, "Doesn't the catechism's first question encourage us to do that? If we are to enjoy Him forever, why not begin now?"

Of course, we cannot enjoy God apart from glorifying Him. And the Westminster Shorter Catechism wisely goes on to ask, "What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him?" But notice that Scripture contains the "rule" for enjoying God as well as glorifying Him. We know it abounds in instructions for glorifying Him, but how does it instruct us to "enjoy him"?

Enjoying God is a command, not an optional extra: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice" (Phil. 4:4). But how? We cannot "rejoice to order," can we?

True. Yet, Scripture shows that well-instructed believers develop a determination to rejoice. They will rejoice in the Lord. Habakkuk exemplified this in difficult days (see Hab. 3:17–18). He exercised what our forefathers called "acting faith"—a vigorous determination to experience whatever the Lord commands, including joy, and to use the God-given means to do so. Here are four of these means—in which, it should be noted, we also glorify God.

Joy in Salvation

Enjoying God means relishing the salvation He gives us in Jesus Christ. "I will take joy in the God of my salvation" (Hab. 3:18). God takes joy in our salvation (Luke 15:6–7, 9–10, 32). So should we. Here, Ephesians 1:3–14 provides a masterly delineation of this salvation in Christ. It is a gospel bath in which we should often luxuriate, rungs on a ladder we should frequently climb, in order to experience the joy of the Lord as our strength (Neh. 8:10). While we are commanded to have joy, the resources to do so are outside of ourselves, known only through union with Christ.

Joy in Revelation

Joy issues from devouring inscripturated revelation. Psalm 119 bears repeated witness to this. The psalmist "delights" in God's testimonies "as much as in all riches" (Ps. 119:14; see also vv. 35, 47, 70, 77, 103, 162, 174). Think of Jesus' words, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:11). Does He mean He will find His joy in us, so that our joy may be full, or that His joy will be in us so that our joy may be full? Both, surely, are true. We find full joy in the Lord only when we know He finds His joy in us. The pathway to joy, then, is to give ourselves maximum exposure to His Word and to let it dwell in us richly (Col. 3:16). It is joy-food for the joy-hungry soul.

Joy in Communion

There is joy in the Lord to be tasted in the worship we enjoy in church communion. The church is the new Jerusalem, the city that cannot be hidden, the joy of the whole earth (Ps. 48:2). In the Spirit-led communion of praise and petition; soul pastoring; Word preaching; psalm, hymn, and spiritual song singing; and water, bread, and wine receiving, abundant joy is to be found. The Lord sings over us with joy (Zeph. 3:17). Our hearts sing for joy in return.

Joy in Tribulation

Here, indeed, is a divine paradox. There is joy to be known in the midst of and through affliction. Viewed biblically, tribulation is the Father's chastising hand using life's pain and darkness to mold us into the image of the One who endured for the sake of the joy set before Him (Heb. 12: 1–2, 5–11; see Rom. 8:29). We exult and rejoice in our sufferings, Paul says, because "suffering produces . . . hope" in us (Rom. 5:3–4). Peter and James echo the same principle (1 Peter 1:3–8; James 1:2–4). The knowledge of the sure hand of God in providence not only brings stability; it is also a joy-producer.

All of this adds up to exultation in God Himself. In Romans 5:1–11, Paul leads us from rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God (v. 2) to joy that comes in tribulation (v. 3) to exulting in God Himself (v. 11; see Ps. 43:4). The unbeliever finds this incredible, because he has been blinded by the joy-depriving lie of Satan that to glorify God is the high road to joylessness. Thankfully, Christ reveals that the reverse takes place in Him—because of our salvation, through His revelation, in worship's blessed communion, and by means of tribulation.

Enjoy! Yes, indeed, may "everlasting joy . . . be upon [your] heads" (Isa. 51:11).

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

$5 Friday (And More): The Westminster Confession of Faith, Marriage, & Grace

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as the Westminster Confession of Faith, marriage, grace, the Apostles' Creed, John Calvin, and more.

Plus, several bonus resources are also available for more than $5. These have been significantly discounted from their original price. This week’s bonus resources include:

Pillars of Grace by Steven Lawson, Hardcover book $28 $14 The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson, Hardcover book $25 $15 Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism by Joel Beeke, Hardcover book $24 $14 What We Believe: Understanding and Confessing the Apostles’ Creed by R.C. Sproul, Paperback book $17 $10 The Prince’s Poison Cup by R.C. Sproul, Hardcover book $18 $8

Sale runs through 12:01 a.m.–11:59 p.m. Friday ET.

View Today's $5 Friday Sale Items

 

The Pilgrim’s Progress with Derek Thomas

The Christian life is one of conflict against the world, the flesh, and the devil. And that fact serves as a palpable reminder that we cannot trek through it without the One who has already overcome the world.

On May 3, 2021, Reformation Bible College streamed The Pilgrim’s Progress, a special message from Derek Thomas to begin RBC’s new Rare Book Room Series. This lecture on John Bunyan and his classic book provided a close look at Bunyan’s life, helping us discover how his writings may equip us not just for now, or for next week, or for next year, but for the entire journey that lies ahead of us as Christians.

This message was streamed on the Reformation Bible College YouTube channel, as well as the RBC Facebook and Twitter pages.

The Rare Book Room Series features individual academic lectures from distinguished speakers, highlighting books from the Rare Book Room on the Reformation Bible College campus. Interested in visiting and seeing it for yourself? Schedule a tour of the college today.

 

What Is Anxiety?

Here’s an excerpt from What Is Anxiety?, William Barcley's contribution to the May issue of Tabletalk:

Anxiety appears to be escalating in the world today. According to one health organization, “Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S.” Studies have shown that anxiety has been on the rise even among teenagers over the last several years. Just two years ago, Barnes & Noble, one of the largest book retailers in the world, announced that sales on books dealing with anxiety had surged, increasing by 25 percent. All this was before the outbreak of the recent pandemic. No doubt, anxiety has increased even more over the last year.

I have a childhood memory of someone saying about my father, “Oh, he’s just a worrier.” It was stated in a lighthearted, half-joking way. Yet, it was true. My dad was a worrier. After my grandfather sold the family business, my dad went about building his own business from the ground up. It was difficult, demanding work that consumed his time and attention. His business became very successful, but those years were also very stressful. All this was on top of his concern for his six children. As a pastor with six children of my own, I am my father’s son. I also battle worry—for my children, for my flock, and often for the sheer weight of my responsibilities.

According to Scripture, anxiety is a serious matter. Jesus commanded His disciples, “Do not be anxious about your life” (Matt. 6:25). Similarly, Paul wrote, “Do not be anxious about anything” (Phil. 4:6). These verses are not meant to be comforting advice, along the lines of “Everything is going to be all right.” They are biblical commands. To break them, therefore, is sin.

Continue reading What Is Anxiety?, or begin receiving Tabletalk magazine by signing up for a free 3-month trial.

 

The Role of Repentance in Salvation

Do we need to have a certain degree of remorse for our sin before we can truly become a Christian? In this brief clip, Derek Thomas explains how a proper understanding of the gospel helps us understand the right place of repentance in the Christian life.

Subscribe to Ligonier’s YouTube channel to watch hours of free biblical teaching.

Transcript:

How much sin do you need to forsake in order to come to Christ? How much remorse do you need to have? How much sense of guilt do you need to have before you can come to Christ? And all of a sudden, repentance—and repentance is a requirement, of course—but the quality of my repentance can become the standard, the marker of my justification. And all of a sudden, I’m justified not by faith alone, but I’m justified by the quality of my repentance. And all of a sudden, it’s a performance. It’s our obedience. It’s our works. And you can dress that up in very fanciful, spiritual language that sounds very biblical. “Do you need to repent in order to be a Christian?” Yes and no. Yes, we need to repent, but it’s not our repentance that justifies us. It’s not the quality of our repentance that justifies us. In the history of the church, this has sometimes been labeled “preparationism,” that you need to prepare yourself in order to come to Christ. You need to be in a certain frame of mind. You need to have gone through various stages in your recognition of your sinfulness before you can come to Christ. And this affected certain aspects of Puritanism, particularly in New England in the late 1600s, early 1700s. And Thomas Boston was adamant that this was incorrect, that it violated, it undermined the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Paul hadn’t come to Galatia to offer “religion,” a moral code of behavior that would produce a certain kind of citizenship in Europe. He had come to offer a message of grace. He had come to offer freedom in Christ. He had come to emancipate those who by nature are slaves and in bondage and to set them free, to be what God intends them to be, to become children of God and heirs of God.

 

What Is Providence?

One way in which the secular mind-set has made inroads into the Christian community is through the worldview that assumes that everything happens according to fixed natural causes, and God, if He is actually there, is above and beyond it all. He is just a spectator in heaven looking down, perhaps cheering us on but exercising no immediate control over what happens on earth. Historically, however, Christians have had an acute sense that this is our Father's world and that the affairs of men and nations, in the final analysis, are in His hands. That is what Paul is expressing in Romans 8:28—a sure knowledge of divine providence. "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."

Immediately thereafter, Paul moves into a predestination sequence: "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified" (vv. 29–30). Then Paul concludes: "What then shall we say to these things?" (v. 31a). In other words, what should be our response to the sovereignty of God and to the fact that He is working out a divine purpose in this world and in our lives? The world repudiates that truth, but Paul answers this way:

If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (vv. 31b–37)

One of the oldest sayings of the ancient church summarizes the essence of the relationship between God and His people: Deus pro nobis. It means "God for us." That is what the doctrine of providence is all about. It is God's being for His people. "What then shall we say to these things?" Paul asks. If God is for us, who can be against us, and who can separate us from the love of Christ? Is it going to be distress, peril, the sword, persecution, suffering, sickness, or human hostility? Paul is saying that no matter what we have to endure in this world as Christians, nothing has the power to sever the relationship we have to a loving and sovereign providence.

The word providence is made up of a prefix and a root. The root comes from the Latin videre, from which we get the English word video. Julius Caesar famously said, "Veni, vidi, vici"—"I came, I saw, I conquered." The vidi in that statement, "I saw," comes from videre, which means "to see." That is why we call television "video." The Latin word provideo, from which we get our word providence, means "to see beforehand, a prior seeing, a foresight." However, theologians make a distinction between the foreknowledge of God and the providence of God. Even though the word providence means the same thing etymologically as the word foreknowledge, the concept covers significantly more ground than the idea of foreknowledge. In fact, the closest thing to this Latin word in our language is the word provision.

Consider what the Bible says about the responsibility of the head of a family: "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim. 5:8). The responsibility is given to the head of the household to be the one who provides and makes provision; that is, that person has to know in advance what the family is going to need in terms of the essentials of life, then meet those needs. When Jesus said, "Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on" (Matt. 6:25), He was not advocating a careless approach to life. He was talking about anxiety. We are not to be frightened; we are to put our trust in the God who will meet our needs. At the same time, God entrusts a responsibility to heads of households to be provident, that is, to consider tomorrow and to make sure there is food and clothing for the family.

The first time we find the word providence in the Old Testament is in the narrative of Abraham's offering of Isaac upon the altar. God called Abraham to take his son Isaac, whom he loved, to a mountain and offer him as a sacrifice. Quite naturally, Abraham anguished under a great internal struggle with God's command, and as Abraham prepared to obey, Isaac asked him, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" (Gen. 22:7). Abraham replied, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son" (v. 8). Abraham spoke here of Jehovah jireh, "God will provide." That is the first time the Bible speaks of God's providence, which has to do with God's making a provision for our needs. And of course, this passage looks forward to the ultimate provision He has made by virtue of His divine sovereignty, the supreme Lamb who was sacrificed on our behalf.

This excerpt is from R.C. Sproul's newest book, Everyone's a Theologian.