R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 585

Get Dr. Sproul's Series on Fearing God for a Donation of Any Amount

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7), but often we do not fear the Lord as we ought because we forget how He is revealed in Scripture. We tend to view God as a heavenly grandfather, not as one who is a consuming fire. We think God is like us, when instead He is utterly holy. Until we understand who God is, we will not have the right attitude toward Him. In this series, Dr. R.C. Sproul helps us to understand who God really is, showing us the One who is holy. Great for youth.

This week you can get this CD series for a donation of any amount. Messages include:

Encountering God
Holy, Holy, Holy
Inner Sanctum
What Manner of Man Is This?
Cosmic Treason
Fear and Trembling

Offer valid through May 29th. Donate Now .

Human Trafficking in God's World

Dr. Justin Holcomb is a pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, and director of The Resurgence. He is author, along with his wife, Lindsey, of Rid of My Disgrace: Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault. He has contributed an article to the May issue of Tabletalk that looks to the painful subject of Human Trafficking in God's World.

Genesis 3 records the terrible day when humanity fell into sin and shalom was violated. This was a moment of cosmic treason, when Adam and Eve violated their relationship with God by rebelling against His command and fell into the severe ignobility we all experience.

The entrance of sin wrecked the order and goodness of God’s world; it was the disintegration of peace. Sin inverted love for God, which in turn became idolatry, and inverted love for neighbor, which became exploitation of others.

One clear way this exploitation of others takes place is human trafficking. Trafficking is modern-day slavery and is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. It is the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or taking of people by means of threat, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploiting them.

You can read the rest of the article right here.

The Unconditional Love of God

It has become fashionable in evangelical circles to speak somewhat glibly of the unconditional love of God. It is certainly a pleasing message for people to hear and conforms to a certain kind of political correctness. In our desire to communicate the sweetness of the gospel to people and the readiness of God to cover our sins with forgiveness and the incredible depth of His love that is displayed in the cross, we indulge in a hyperbolic expression of the scope and extent of His love. Where in Scripture do we find this notion of the unconditional love of God? If God's love is absolutely unconditional, why do we tell people that they have to repent and have faith in order to be saved? God sets forth clear conditions for a person to be saved. Now it may be true that in some sense God loves even those who fail to meet the conditions of salvation, but that subtlety is often missed by the hearer when the preacher declares the unconditional love of God.

What is heard by people who listen to the evangelist declare the unconditional love of God is that God will continue to love them and accept them, no matter what they do or how they live. We might as well declare an unabashed universalism as to declare the unconditional love of God without clear and careful qualification of what that means.

An interesting contrast can be seen by comparing the preaching of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evangelists with modern evangelists. The stress in earlier centuries was upon the wrath of God directed toward impenitent sinners. Indeed Jonathan Edwards's preaching has been described as evangelistic preaching that employed a "scare theology." That approach has given way to a more positive emphasis on God's love. Of course Edwards also declared the love of God but not without reminding sinners that as long as they remained impenitent, they were exposed to the wrath of God and were in fact heaping up wrath against the day of wrath.

Edwards warned his people that they were more repugnant to God in their sin than rebellious subjects were to their princes. This was part and parcel of proclaiming the gospel of reconciliation. There can be no talk of reconciliation without first assuming there is some prior alienation or estrangement. Parties who are not estranged don't need reconciliation.

There can be no talk of reconciliation without first assuming there is some prior alienation or estrangement.

The Biblical concept of reconciliation presupposes a condition of estrangement between God and man. Much is said of man's hostility toward God. We are described as being God's enemies by nature. This enmity is expressed in our sinful rebellion against Him. The common contemporary view of this is that we are estranged from God, but He is not estranged from us. The enmity is all one-sided. The picture we get is that God goes on loving us with an unconditional love while we are hating Him.

The cross belies this picture. Yes the cross occurred because God loves us. His love stands behind His plan of salvation. However, Christ was not sacrificed on the cross to placate us or to serve as a propitiation to us. His sacrifice was not designed to satisfy our unjust enmity toward God but to satisfy God's just wrath toward us. It is the Father who is the object of the Son's act of propitiation. The effect of the cross is to remove the divine estrangement from us, not our estrangement from Him. If we deny God's estrangement from us, the cross is reduced to a pathetic and anemic moral influence with no substitutionary satisfaction of God.

In Christ the obstacle of estrangement is overcome, and we are reconciled to God. But that reconciliation extends only to believers. Those who reject Christ remain at enmity with God, estranged from God, and objects both of His wrath and of His abhorrence. Whatever kind of love God has for the impenitent, it does not exclude His just hatred and abhorrence of them that stands in stark contrast to His redeeming love.

Excerpted from Loved by God.

Twitter Highlights (5/22/11)

Here are some highlights from the various Ligonier Twitter feeds over the past week.

Tabletalk Magazine "The flesh inclines us more to believe a temptation than a promise" - Thomas Watson.



Reformation Trust If doctrine doesn’t matter, then truth doesn’t matter... -R.C. Sproul



Reformation Trust God always does what He pleases, as He pleases, when He pleases, where He pleases, & with whom He pleases. -Steven Lawson



Tabletalk Magazine We sing about 'amazing grace' and speak of 'amazing grace,' but far too often grace has ceased to amaze us - S. Ferguson



Ligonier The devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist. http://t.co/GvENAIk



Ligonier If ever there was a time that there was nothing, what there would be now…is nothing. -RC Sproul



Ligonier The problem with Harold Camping is that he's lost the Gospel. He's lost Christ. -Robert Godfrey

You can also find our various ministries on Facebook:
Ligonier Ministries | Ligonier Academy | Reformation Trust | Tabletalk Magazine

An Interview with Mark Driscoll

Mark Driscoll is co-founder and preaching pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. In addition to his pastoral duties, he is cofounder of the Acts 29 church planting network and founder of The Resurgence, which publishes books under Re:Lit, releases albums under Re:Sound, trains missional leaders under Re:Train, and hosts numerous training conferences and events. His blog at The Resurgence is among the top five most popular Christian blogs on the Internet. Pastor Driscoll has authored twelve books; most recently he co-authored Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe.

The May edition of Tabletalk featured an interview with Driscoll. You can read it in An Outpost of Jesus' Kingdom: An Interview with Mark Driscoll.

Watch Now: Q&A with R.C. Sproul & Ligonier Teaching Fellows

Miss yesterday's Q&A? The stream is now available for viewing.

Watch as R.C. Sproul and Ligonier Teaching Fellows Sinclair Ferguson, Robert Godfrey, Steven Lawson, and R.C. Sproul Jr. engage in this round-table discussion covering topics such as dispensationalism, regeneration, election, evangelism, and Harold Camping.

Faux Pearls

Maslow was wrong. Well, he was right before he was wrong. It is true enough that we all have a hierarchy of needs.  Some things are more important than others. Trouble is, he didn’t know what the most important things were. Foundational in his system are those things necessary for survival, things like food and water. King David had a different, a better perspective. He said that the Lord was His Shepherd, and he shall not want (Psalm 23:1). David, at this point, has no green grass, and no still water. To be sure God does provide these things, but before He does, David already has everything he needs, the Lord for His Shepherd. Survival is still up in the air, but David has already finished with his worrying. He has what he needs.

One of the most foundational principles in the modern marketing of the church is the notion that we need to tap into not Maslow’s needs, but “felt needs.” This language leaves open the question of what is truly needful, and calls us instead to make our pitch for what our target audience believes their needs to be.  Is our target market afflicted with fear? Offer them peace. Is our market suffering from ennui? Offer them excitement, adrenaline.

We serve a big God. He does indeed give us not just peace, but the peace that passes understanding. We serve also a thrilling God. He is no tame lion. So why wouldn’t we meet the lost at their point of need with all the riches our God has to offer in Christ Jesus? Because our greatest need is to stop worshipping ourselves. When we market Jesus, telling people that He will provide for them this or that, when we list the bullet point benefits awaiting those who will walk the aisle we do not meet people where they are, but leave them where they are. Their problem, which is my problem, is self-worship. If the glory of God is that He allows me to better serve myself, I am still worshipping myself. When He becomes a means, I remain the end. Jesus didn’t tell us to count His benefits. He told us to consider the cost, and to take up the cross.

Jesus didn’t tell us to count His benefits. He told us to consider the cost, and to take up the cross.

I don’t need to survive. I need to die. I need to do the will of my Father in heaven. That must be my meat and my drink. I need His life, His death, His Spirit, His Word, His fruit, His resurrection, His promise, His obedience. I need Him. And I need to come to understand that every other desire, no matter how pious, is the pathway to death.

The glory of God isn’t that He so potently serves me. The glory of God is that in His grace He teaches me to serve Him, working in me to do and to will His good pleasure. Every good gift, every drop of still water, every blade of green grass, is designed to show us Him. They are just the shimmering reflection of the one true gift, the one needful thing, the Pearl of Great Price.

$5 Friday - Doctrine, Science & Believing God

This week find $5 Friday resources on science, marriage & divorce, fundamental doctrine, and the life of Christ. Sale starts Friday at 8 a.m. and ends Saturday at 8 a.m. EST.

View today's $5 Friday sale.

Get Dr. Sproul's Series on Apologetics for a Donation of Any Amount

“We cannot know that God exists,” is something you thought would never be uttered from the mouth of R.C. Sproul. In Silencing the Devil, Dr. Sproul delivers the most common and forceful arguments against truth, God, and the Bible. But even Dr. Sproul as the Devil’s advocate is no match for his mentor, John Gerstner’s ability to turn false reasoning to dust. This series, while entertaining, is an effective and practical tool for defending the faith in this faithless world.

Today you can get this DVD series for a donation of any amount. Messages include:

Can We Know Truth?
Is There a God?
Is the Bible Inspired by God?
Is God or Man Sovereign?
An Interview with John Gerstner

Offer valid through the end of day today, May 19, 2011. Donate Now.

Harold Camping: False Prophet?

As I type we are still days away from the purported rapture of the church, as predicted by Bible teacher and radio guru Harold Camping.  Though his first prediction, that Jesus would return in 1994 failed, that hasn’t kept him from predicting, nor his followers from expecting that Jesus would come for His own May 21, 2011. Which raises the question- when the sun rises again on May 22, are we warranted in concluding that Harold Camping is a false prophet? The Bible, after all, says that one way to distinguish the false from the true prophet is to see if their prophecies come true. What God speaks happens. What men predict usually does not.

Despite this, and my confidence that Christ’s return will not occur in a few days I would argue that this does not mean Camping is a false prophet. It means instead that he has erred as an exegete. That, while sad, disappointing, and perhaps for some disillusioning, is not nearly so bad as being a false prophet. What’s the difference? The false prophet is the one who says, “God has revealed new information to me and called me to reveal it to you.” The false, or erroneous exegete merely says, “God has spoken in His Word, and I understand Him to be saying this…” In both instances we have a man saying God is saying something God has not said. In the latter, however, the Word of God in the Scripture remains the sole final and binding authority on men.

In the internet age we often miss these kinds of distinctions. Consider the creation debate. I am a young earth guy. Have been for decades. The issue matters to me. I believe the Bible to be abundantly clear on the issue, and believe those who deny the young earth view to be wrong. I don’t believe, however, that they are self-consciously denying the Bible. I know of no evangelical scholar who has said, “God, in the Bible, teaches a young earth view. God and the Bible are wrong.” These folks don’t deny the Bible. They simply misunderstand it.

Just like you and me. If being wrong about what the Bible teaches is the same as denying the truthfulness of the Bible, we are all guilty. Not a one of us is right about everything the Bible teaches. Which means in turn, if we have opportunity, that we should show grace to the disappointed May 22. They were wrong, and thankfully then will know it. We, however, will still find our errors difficult to nail down.  Let us pray that their eschatological disappointment will lead them to correct a far more grave error, their understanding of the church. We are the body that often misunderstands God’s Word. We are the body which is often led astray. But we are those who affirm that the Bible is true in all that it teaches, including its teaching that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. May we see on May 22 not the return of Jesus, but the return of these prodigals to His church. And may we feast together with them, remembering that such once were we.