R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 27

Our Authoritative Standard

Here’s an excerpt from Our Authoritative Standard, David B. Garner's contribution to the March issue of Tabletalk:

Pundits doggedly seek to persuade us to buy their interpretation of the world and their convictions of right and wrong. They burrow counsel into our ears, seeking a path to our hearts. Though as Christians we are outfitted to think with the mind of Christ, “plausible arguments” can still threaten to take us “captive” by ensnaring our lives in a moral web “not according to Christ” (Col. 2:4–8).

Thankfully, navigating life does not depend on us. God has given us His Word through His prophets and Apostles. In His Word, we find the reason for creation and promises for the future state of affairs. We understand God, man, sin, and salvation. God discloses His sovereign love, indefatigable forgiveness, and glorious grace. We discover divinity, dignity, depravity, and deliverance. He not only tells us why we die; He informs us how to live.

Continue reading Our Authoritative Standard, or begin receiving Tabletalk magazine by signing up for a free 3-month trial.

For a limited time, the new TabletalkMagazine.com allows everyone to browse and read the growing library of back issues, including this month’s issue.

New Documentary: Discovering the Holiness of God

From those early days in the Ligonier Valley Study Center, R.C. Sproul was driven by one overarching desire: to teach people who God is. In this video, watch as Stephen Nichols reveals how the Lord prepared Dr. Sproul to bring trusted biblical teaching to people around the world.

For a limited time, we’ll send you Stephen Nichols’ new biography, R.C. Sproul: A Life , as our thanks for your donation of any amount in support of this ministry founded by Dr. Sproul fifty years ago. We’re grateful for your support that enables the truth of God’s Word to spread to the ends of the earth.

This video has been shared by permission of Crossway.

Save Up to 90% on over 200 Digital Resources

For one week only, you can save up to 90% on over 200 digital resources. Build your theological library with video and audio teaching series downloads, ebooks, audiobooks, and more—all starting at $1.

Don’t miss this opportunity to stock up on trustworthy teaching and discipleship resources that you can access in an instant. This sale includes a variety of ebooks for $1 each, audiobooks, audio teaching series, and music downloads for $3 each, and video teaching series downloads for $5 each.

The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon ebook by Steven Lawson $7 $1 (Save 85%) In Christ Alone: Living the Gospel-Centered Life ebook by Sinclair Ferguson $9 $1 (Save 88%) The Hard Sayings of the Apostles audio teaching series with R.C. Sproul $10 $3 (Save 70%) audio teaching series with R.C. Sproul $30 $3 (Save 90%) Union with Christ video teaching series with Sinclair Ferguson $24 $5 (Save 79%) Why We Trust the Bible video teaching series with Stephen Nichols $12 $5 (Save 58%)And More

This special sale ends March 13 at midnight ET.

 

What Does It Mean That the Trinity Is Three in Person but One in Essence?

The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that God is three in “person” but one in “essence.” From one of our live events, Sinclair Ferguson explains why the church developed these words in order to speak carefully about our transcendent God.

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

Read the Transcript

 

What Is the Gospel?

There is no greater message to be heard than that which we call the gospel. But as important as that is, it is often given to massive distortions or over simplifications. People think they're preaching the gospel to you when they tell you, 'you can have a purpose to your life', or that 'you can have meaning to your life', or that 'you can have a personal relationship with Jesus.' All of those things are true, and they're all important, but they don't get to the heart of the gospel.

The gospel is called the 'good news' because it addresses the most serious problem that you and I have as human beings, and that problem is simply this: God is holy and He is just, and I'm not. And at the end of my life, I'm going to stand before a just and holy God, and I'll be judged. And I'll be judged either on the basis of my own righteousness–or lack of it–or the righteousness of another. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus lived a life of perfect righteousness, of perfect obedience to God, not for His own well being but for His people. He has done for me what I couldn't possibly do for myself. But not only has He lived that life of perfect obedience, He offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy the justice and the righteousness of God.

The great misconception in our day is this: that God isn't concerned to protect His own integrity. He's a kind of wishy-washy deity, who just waves a wand of forgiveness over everybody. No. For God to forgive you is a very costly matter. It cost the sacrifice of His own Son. So valuable was that sacrifice that God pronounced it valuable by raising Him from the dead–so that Christ died for us, He was raised for our justification. So the gospel is something objective. It is the message of who Jesus is and what He did. And it also has a subjective dimension. How are the benefits of Jesus subjectively appropriated to us? How do I get it? The Bible makes it clear that we are justified not by our works, not by our efforts, not by our deeds, but by faith–and by faith alone. The only way you can receive the benefit of Christ's life and death is by putting your trust in Him and in Him alone. You do that, you're declared just by God, you're adopted into His family, you're forgiven of all of your sins, and you have begun your pilgrimage for eternity.

Will You Pray for Awakening? Download Your Free Prayer Guide

We live in a world that needs awakening. Millions of people do not know Jesus Christ. The church itself needs renewed zeal for the truth, for spiritual growth, and for missions. Scripture reveals how this awakening comes about: by a powerful movement of the Spirit of God. It also tells us that when just two men—Paul and Silas—prayed, the earth itself shook (Acts 16:25–26). So we are dedicating the entire year of 2021 to pray for awakening, and we hope you will, too.

To help as many people as possible, we produced this free prayer guide. Download it today at PrayForAwakening.com, find it in the PrayerMate app, or order the prayer booklet in packs of ten to share with your loved ones.

To use the guide, find the prayer that corresponds to the current week. Each week of the month focuses on a different group to pray for, starting with you and your family and expanding to the world and the global church. You can also share your desire to #PrayForAwakening on social media.

MARCH PRAYER FOCUS:

Week 1: Pray that you and your family will know the love of Christ and respond in love and obedience to Him. “To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:19)Week 2: Pray that the members of your church will be full of zeal to serve Christ and bear witness to Him in your community. “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” (Rom. 12:11)Week 3: Pray that God will send renewal to your nation and turn the hearts of many to Christ. “That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” (Acts 3:20)Week 4: Pray that the nations and their leaders will fear the name of the Lord and seek His glory, not their own. “Nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth will fear your glory.” (Ps. 102:15)Week 5: Pray that you and your family will submit yourselves to God such that all of you will resist the devil and that he will flee from you. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)

We hope this prayer guide encourages you this year and in future years. Join us in praying fervently for a mighty movement of God’s Spirit today, thankful that He has graciously promised to hear us, and confident that He will answer our prayers according to His will.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Four Ways to Read the Book of Revelation

The book of Revelation can be difficult to understand, and Christians disagree on how to interpret the visions presented in its pages. In this brief clip, R.C. Sproul summarizes four of the leading approaches to interpreting the last book of the Bible.

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Transcript:

The four basic approaches to the book of Revelation—and these are not the only approaches—but the four basic ones that compete with each other for acceptance are what we would call the “preterist” view, the second is the “futurist” view, the third is the “historicist” view and the fourth is the “idealist” view. Now these represent four clearly distinctive approaches to interpreting the last book of the New Testament. And briefly, the differences are these. The preterist view interprets the book of Revelation as basically already having been already fulfilled in the past. It interprets the book of Revelation as dealing substantively with events that were near at hand and took place within the confines of the first century, most chiefly the destruction of Jerusalem in seventy AD with the dispersion of the Jews into all of the world. The futurist view sees the book of Revelation as a blueprint for a series of events that will precede the future return of Jesus. And so, for the most part, the futurists believe that the things that are recorded for us in the book of Revelation have not yet taken place, at least from chapter six thorough the rest of the book. The historicist view, or the “historical chronology” view teaches that the book of Revelation starts with that its immediate concern in the first century with the local churches that had been established. But beginning at chapter six and going through the rest of the book, what we see is a pattern of a description of events that take place at various periods through world history, so that you have a schematic approach to the whole of church history. And the fourth approach is the idealist view, which sees that the book is basically symbolic, and it talks about periods of conflict and resolution that take place all the time in the history of the church, and the book is not designed to give us a chronology of specific events that will take place at specific times, but rather to communicate the fundamental message of the triumph of the gospel and of Christ’s kingdom in times of conflict and persecution. So, you can imagine how one approaches the book of Revelation in one of these systems that will give a significantly different understanding of the message of the book.

 

Is There Hope for a Child Who Turns Away from Christ as a College Student?

We have reason to hope and pray for our unbelieving children, even if they have walked away from the faith they once professed. From one of our live events, watch as R.C. Sproul and Derek Thomas deliver words of comfort for concerned parents. Get answers to your biblical and theological questions online as they arise at ask.Ligonier.org.

Read the Transcript

 

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.

$5 Friday (And More): Theology, Scripture, & Jonathan Edwards

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as theology, scripture, Jonathan Edwards, Moses, George Whitefield, the five solas, 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:

Knowing Scripture by R.C. Sproul, Paperback book $16 $10 The Christ of Wisdom by O. Palmer Robertson, Paperback book $20 $14 Jonathan Edwards by Simonetta Carr, Hardcover book $18 $10 City of God by Saint Augustine, Paperback book $18 $12 The Last Days According to Jesus by R.C. Sproul, Paperback book $16 $10And More

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

View today’s $5 Friday sale items.