R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 494

Proclaiming the Exclusivity of Jesus Will Result in Persecution

In this short video excerpt from our 2010 National Conference, Alistair Begg speaks on the exclusivity of Jesus and how in church history, and today, proclaiming it results in persecution.

Transcript

If the early Christians had been prepared to have Jesus simply included in the Roman pantheon of the time, then they would have managed to avoid persecution. But they didn't, and they couldn't. The common greetings of the Roman world which affirmed the essential deity of Caesar as their leader and sovereign meant that as they walked in the thoroughfares with each other they would affirm on a daily basis that Caesar is Lord. And as Christians they took the opportunity to say, 'No,' that actually 'Jesus is Lord.' They were beginning to understand that every knee would finally bow to Jesus. And therefore there was a radical difference in the way in which they viewed the culture at their time.

All they had to do was simply allow Jesus to be included amongst the other deities of the time.

'Just don't make a fuss; just find a place for him; why do you have to be these kind of people; why do you have to make such a fuss and bother about Jesus of Nazareth? We're perfectly happy to have a place for Jesus. Look, we already have a plinth for him, and you can put a bust of Jesus there just with the rest.'

'No,' they said, 'we won't do that.' Then they said, 'Well if you don't do that, we'll turn you upside down, we'll stick you in the ground and we'll set fire to you. If you don't do that we will force you to capitulate, or you will die.' And you've read enough church history to know that the context in which the affirmation of the exclusive claims of Jesus was made was one which resulted in the death of those who held most forcefully to it.

But we're a long way away from there and today is a different day, is it not? Here we are in America. Persecution may not be physical for most of us, but it certainly is intellectual. It is social in the every day events of life. And the prevailing mood which allows us to even face this question is a mood which sets itself apart from certainties. That is, apart from every certainty except the certainty that there are no certainties. The notion that somehow or another there is truth to be discovered and to be defined is increasingly missing at every point in our society.

Marks of a True Church: Pure Administration of the Sacraments

The second of the three marks of a true church is the pure administration of the sacraments.

The two sacraments that Christ Himself instituted are baptism (Matt. 28:18–20) and the Lord's Supper (Matt. 26:26–29). Because of our continuing struggle with sin, the visible Word of the sacraments supplements the audible Word of the gospel preached, for God "hath joined [the sacraments] to the word of the gospel, the better to present to our senses, both that which he signifies to us by his Word, and that which he works inwardly in our hearts" (Belgic Confession, Art. 33). As the preaching of the gospel creates faith, the sacraments confirm that faith within us (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 65), just as circumcision did for Abraham, being "a seal (confirmation) of the righteousness that he had by faith" (Rom. 4:11).

To purely administer the sacraments, a church must do so "as instituted by Christ" (Belgic Confession, Art. 29). This means, first, that it recognizes that there are only the two sacraments—baptism and the Lord's Supper—and that it therefore rejects the five other sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church as false sacraments (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 68). Second, this means that it administers the sacraments without the unbiblical ceremonies and elements that have been added to them over the course of history, such as we find in the Roman Catholic Church.

Baptism is to be administered simply with water, in the name of the triune God, and by an ordained minister (Matt. 28:18–20). Whether one is baptized in a church building or at the beach; whether the baptism is done from a font or in a pool; whether it is performed by sprinkling, pouring, or immersion; and whether the minister sprinkles, pours, or immerses once or three times is all indifferent. The Lord's Supper is purely administered when bread (whether leavened or unleavened) and wine are given to those who profess faith and are members of Christ's church, whether kneeling, sitting, or standing. This is to be done with the recitation of the words of institution (as the example of Paul testifies in 1 Cor. 11:23–26), the breaking of the bread ("… he took bread… he broke it… "), and prayer over the bread and wine ("… when he had given thanks… ").

Next week we will conclude by considering the third mark of a true church, the exercise of church discipline.

See also:

Marks of a True Church: Introduction
Marks of a True Church: Pure Preaching of the Gospel
Marks of a True Church: Pure Administration of the Sacraments

This blog series is adapted from Daniel Hyde's book, Welcome to a Reformed Church.

Twitter Highlights (1/27/13)

Here are highlights from our various Twitter accounts over the past week.

His duration is as endless as His essence is boundless (Stephen Charnock).

— Ligonier Academy (@LigonierAcademy) January 17, 2013

Join Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr. at the Economics for Everybody conference, Saturday, February 2nd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. goo.gl/Mj0GP

— RefBibleCollege (@RefBibleCollege) January 21, 2013

To know that God knows everything about me and yet loves me is indeed my ultimate consolation. —R.C. Sproul

— Ligonier Ministries (@Ligonier) January 21, 2013

Man was never meant to be a god, but he is for ever trying to deify himself (Lloyd-Jones).

— Tabletalk Magazine (@Tabletalk) January 23, 2013

Is there any greater blessing than to be in the presence of Christ, to be with Him, to have Him with us? —R.C. Sproul bit.ly/vC0P6C

— Reformation Trust (@RefTrust) January 23, 2013

Explore the life and thought of one the greatest American thinkers of all time in our newest course, Jonathan Edwards. goo.gl/298EY

— Ligonier Connect (@LigonierConnect) January 23, 2013

Apart from the gospel preached, there is no church. —Daniel Hyde ligm.in/148Q4oU

— Ligonier Ministries (@Ligonier) January 24, 2013

You can also find our various ministries on Facebook:

Ligonier Ministries | Ligonier Academy | Ligonier Connect | RefNet
Reformation Bible College | Reformation Trust | Tabletalk Magazine

Why Did the Pharisees Hate Jesus So Much?

It may well be in the calculus of evil that the only character faring worse than a Nazi is the Pharisee. These were the original black hats. In each of the gospel accounts they are the no-accounts, the very foil of Jesus Himself. We, because we are sinners just like them, ascribe to the Pharisees every conceivable sin that we think ourselves not guilty of. We may have to confess to this sin or that, but at least, we tell ourselves, we aren’t like those guys. In our scapegoating narrative we think that when Jesus showed up the Pharisees hated Him for the simple reason that He was good and they evil. He walked down the street, and they hissed and sputtered. He healed a puppy and they kicked it.

The truth is that the Pharisees did hate Jesus, and He rightly isn’t known for showing them a great deal of grace. He called them out for their hypocrisy. He exposed their inner tombs. But the hatred they felt for Him wasn’t mere sour grapes at His approval rating, nor was it as principled as mere evil versus good. It was rather more craven. They hated Jesus not because He called them names, but because He threatened their security, prestige and income. He was going to ruin everything they had worked so hard for, and getting everybody killed.

The Pharisees had brokered a rather uneasy peace between the powers of Rome, and their own people. Rome, you will remember, had no great desire to remake the cultures their army had conquered. Any nation willing to submit to Rome’s military and political authority could go on about their business. Israel, however, wasn’t a nation given to separating their political and theological loyalties. Thus the rise of the Zealots, that sect who, in the spirit of the Maccabees, sought to remove Rome’s yoke. Thus the uprising in 70 AD that led to the utter destruction of Jerusalem. It was the Pharisees who kept their finger in that dyke. And they made a decent living doing it. It was Jesus, however, who kept poking at the levee.

His popularity, His talk of the kingdom, His affirmation that He was in fact the Messiah, this threatened the uneasy peace. If the people got behind Joseph’s son, Rome would awake, and start killing Jews indiscriminately, not bothering to distinguish the Pharisee party from the Jesus party. This is how Caiaphas came, in a moment of treachery, to speak a gospel truth when he said, “nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and not that the whole nation should perish” (John 11:50). The Pharisees hated Jesus not because He made them look bad with the people, but because He made them all look bad to Rome.

We would be wise to remember this, for the pattern remains. When persecution comes it comes first not from the state, but from that part of the church that seeks to appease the state. The zealous, the faithful, those unwilling to confess that Caesar is Lord will be turned over to Caesar by the feckless, the faithless, those who fear man rather than God. It is those who aspire to maintain respectability, those who remove the gospel’s offense, those who exchange their prophet’s mantle for something more hip, these are they who betray Christ, and His bride. Persecution, in the end, doesn’t divide the church, but exposes where the line is between wheat and chaff. In times of persecution the true church may be burned, but those who escape will only be blown away.

Why Did the Pharisees Hate Jesus So Much? was originally published at RCSproulJr.com

Christ and the Academy: An Interview with D.A. Carson

Here's an excerpt from Christ and the Academy: An Interview with D.A. Carson in the January issue of Tabletalk.

Tabletalk: Skepticism toward Christianity in academia has led to anti-intellectualism among certain evangelicals. How should evangelicals approach scholarship?

D.A. Carson: A long essay on this topic would only begin to explore the subject. I concur that some anti-intellectualism is nothing but a thoughtless reaction to the skepticism toward Christianity found in many academic circles. But some of it is the pride of those who can do things with their hands but who do not or cannot make much of intellectual pursuits. Intellectual arrogance is still arrogance; blue-collar arrogance is still arrogance. The right response, for the Christian, begins with repentance and contrition, and a generous recognition that God gives different gifts to human beings in general and to the church in particular. Where the anti-intellectualism is a defensive posture against skepticism in academia, surely the right Christian response is the example of the Apostle Paul, who was determined to bring every thought into submission to Christ. That means we ought to be encouraging our best and brightest to demonstrate love for God with their minds and hearts, taking on the strongholds of intellectual lostness with exactly the same kind of missionary zeal that we want to take on the strongholds of, say, Islam and Buddhism. Moreover, the need is not just evangelistic and apologetic. Much of this work should be motivated by a passionate desire to offer God our best in every domain of life, whether we are grinding valves on a motorcycle engine or wrestling with the magisterial voices of the Western philosophical tradition. The Kuyperian vision of not one square inch where Jesus does not say, "This is mine!" is not a restrictively geographical sweep.

Continue reading Christ and the Academy: An Interview with D.A. Carson online or download the app and read January's issue of Tabletalk for free.

$5 Friday: Worship, Parenting, & The Arts

It's time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week's resources cover such topics as worship, parenting, the arts, a Christian conscience, apologetics, the book of Joshua, the Apostles' Creed, and more.

Sale runs through 12:01 a.m. — 11:59 p.m. Friday EST.

View today's $5 Friday sale items.

Marks of a True Church: Pure Preaching of the Gospel

The most fundamental of the three marks of a true church is the pure preaching of the gospel. Apart from the gospel preached, there is no church.

We see this in the example of our Lord, who began His earthly ministry by preaching—"From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand'" (Matt. 4:17)—and concluded it by sending out His apostles to preach and continue His work—"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matt. 28:19–20).

Apart from the gospel preached, there is no church. —Daniel Hyde

The apostle Paul addressed the importance of preaching the doctrine of justification when he said:

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news." But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Rom. 10:14–17)

To purely preach the gospel, a minister must preach that sinners are justified by the free grace of God alone, which is received through faith alone, which itself is a gift of God, and that this faith is placed in and rests on nothing except Jesus Christ the Righteous. Churches must see to it, in the words of the famous hymn, that those in the pew understand, "My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus' blood and righteousness." It was the loss of this truth in the Roman Catholic Church that so troubled the Reformers. As the Italian Reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) said about the Catholic Church, "They have undoubtedly corrupted doctrine, since they deny what Scripture affirms: that we are justified by faith alone."

The Reformers understood justification to be purely preached when the Word is "rightly handl[ed]" (2 Tim. 2:15). A part of using the Word properly involves recognizing that it has two elements: law and gospel. The law is to be preached in all its terror, while the gospel is to be preached in all its comfort as that which the law cannot do (Rom. 8:3–4; CD, 3/4.6). Simply put, the Reformers taught us to preach Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:23). If a church preaches any other "gospel," whether it is explicitly faith plus works or some insidious version of "get in by faith, stay in by obedience," it is not in conformity with the "teaching of Christ" (2 John 9) but with that of an antichrist counterfeit. Anything other than the doctrine of justification sola fide is what Paul termed "a different gospel" (Gal. 1:6), which brings with it an eternal anathema (Gal. 1:8–9)

Next week we will consider the second mark of a true church, the pure administration of the sacraments.

See also:

Marks of a True Church: Introduction
Marks of a True Church: Pure Preaching of the Gospel

This blog series is adapted from Daniel Hyde's book, Welcome to a Reformed Church.

Doubt-Killing Promises

Here's an excerpt from Doubt-Killing Promises, Justin Taylor's contribution to the January issue of Tabletalk.

Even though Charles Spurgeon lived about two hundred years after John Bunyan, I think Spurgeon regarded Bunyan as a friend. He said the book he valued most, next to the Bible, was The Pilgrim's Progress. "I believe I have read it through at least a hundred times. It is a volume of which I never seem to tire."

Perhaps one of the reasons Spurgeon resonated with this classic was its realistic portrayal of depression, doubt, and despair. Spurgeon and Bunyan, like their Savior, were men of sorrow, acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3). When Bunyan went to prison for preaching the gospel, his heart was almost broken "to pieces" for his young blind daughter, "who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides." Spurgeon's depression could be so debilitating that he could "weep by the hour like a child"—and not know why he was weeping. To fight this "causeless depression," he said, was like fighting mist. It was a "shapeless, undefinable, yet all-beclouding hopelessness." It felt, at times, like prison: "The iron bolt which so mysteriously fastens the door of hope and holds our spirits in gloomy prison, needs a heavenly hand to push it back."

Continue reading Doubt-Killing Promises online or download the app and read January's issue of Tabletalk for free.

John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul Discuss the National Tragedy of Abortion-On-Demand

Yesterday and today on Renewing Your Mind we're airing a discussion between Dr. R.C. Sproul and special guest, Dr. John MacArthur, on the moral crisis and national tragedy of abortion-on-demand in our country.

Dr. Sproul organized this discussion after reading a transcript of a sermon from Dr. MacArthur on this important issue. Grateful for the courage with which Dr. MacArthur proclaimed the clear teaching of Scripture, Dr. Sproul was comitted to getting this message into as many people's hands as possible.

Today only, call us at 800-435-4343 and we'll send you a free copy of Dr. MacArthur's sermon plus part-one and part-two of his Renewing Your Mind discussion with Dr. Sproul.

Abortion and the Campaign for Immorality (Part 1)

Abortion and the Campaign for Immorality (Part 2)

Roe v. Wade: A Generation Lost

Forty years ago US involvement in Vietnam was winding down. War in the Middle East broke out during Yom Kippur. But all was quiet on the evangelical front, when a graver, bloodier war was declared in the hallowed halls of the United States Supreme Court. January 22 the Supreme Court released their decision in Roe v. Wade. That decision, purportedly flowing from the unseen penumbra and emanations of the Constitution, ruled that no state could prevent a woman from destroying her unborn child up until the moment of birth.

While the issue had been in the public eye since the beginning of the sexual revolution the evangelical church was not only less than outspoken, but less than certain on the issue. Two years before Roe the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution calling for legal abortion to protect the life of the mother, including her "emotional life." Paul Jewett, professor of systematic theology at Fuller Seminary, was committed to the pro-abortion perspective.

...there is only one thing that can wash the blood from our hands, the blood from His. —@RCSproulJr

The evangelical pro-life movement began quietly in 1975 when Harold O.J. Brown, working with C. Everett Koop, opened the Christian Action Council. What woke the evangelical conscience, however, was Francis Schaeffer, also with Dr. Koop, releasing the video, Whatever Happened to the Human Race, in 1979. Over six million were already dead. In 1984 sitting President Ronald Reagan published Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation. Six million more were dead.

In the mid 1980's evangelicals began getting more aggressive, joining with Roman Catholics in "rescues" across the country, blocking access to abortion mills. Federal legislation, RICO and FACE, and perhaps Paul Hill put an end to rescues. Not long after the Crisis Pregnancy Center movement exploded, growing into the 1990s. By the time George W. Bush took office over thirty million babies had been murdered. Under President Bush the political planets aligned such that the White House, the House and the Senate were all under the control of Republicans. Seven of the nine Supreme Court judges were appointed under Republican presidents. Eight years into the new century and ten million more babies were dead.

It is not my intent to challenge the effectiveness of any organization, any strategy, or any party. I have, in one way or another, been deeply involved in them all. Rather my intent is to highlight the deep gap between how we think about abortion forty years later, and the reality. We think in terms of strategies, movements, parties, and avert our eyes from the body parts. Strategies, movements, parties are all abstractions. The babies are real, and they are really dead. The anniversary is just a date on the calendar. The babies are dead, not fifty million of them, but one of them, fifty million times.

We must be politically active. We must serve moms in crisis. We must speak prophetically to both the world and the church, remembering that one in six abortions is procured by an evangelical. First, however, we must weep. First, our hearts have to be broken, lest our pro-life activities lead us to forget. First we must repent because for a generation we have thought and acted like a movement, while every day babies are being murdered. First we must recognize that the problem isn't how many were killed over the past forty years, but is instead how many will be killed in the next forty minutes. We must pledge not to not forget what has happened, but to not forget what is happening. Last we must remember that there is only one thing that can wash the blood from our hands, the blood from His.

To learn more about this important subject, get the eBook edition of R.C. Sproul's Abortion for only 1¢. Offer expires 1/31/13.