R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 594

Preaching Christ

"The church of the twenty-first century faces many crises. One of the most serious is the crisis of preaching. Widely diverse philosophies of preaching vie for acceptance among contemporary clergy. Some see the sermon as a fireside chat; others, as a stimulus for psychological health; still others, as a commentary on contemporary politics. But some still view the exposition of sacred Scripture as a necessary ingredient to the office of preaching. In light of these views, it is always helpful to go to the New Testament to seek or glean the method and message found in the biblical record of apostolic preaching."

And this is just what R.C. Sproul does in his contribution to the current edition of Tabletalk magazine. "In the first instance, we must distinguish between two types of preaching. The first has been called kerygma; the second, didache. This distinction refers to the difference between proclamation (kerygma) and teaching or instruction (didache)." Having done this, and having looked to the preaching of the early church, Dr. Sproul asks: "What is appropriate for the transfer of apostolic principles of preaching to the contemporary church?"

You can read his answer in Preaching Christ.

VIDEO: Discover Christ in the Old Testament

David Murray and HeadHeartHand have created a new discipleship resource that is set to be released in just a few weeks. CrossReference aims to help Christians discover and enjoy Christ in the Old Testament. This first series of ten short teaching films centers on Christ's appearances in the Old Testament as the Angel of the Lord.

Every Wednesday for the next few weeks, check out the Ligonier blog, Challies, or HeadHeartHand for a time-limited streaming version of each episode. View the first two episodes:

Episode 1: Bonus Gospel

 

Episode 2: Spiritual Heartburn

If you want to expand your understanding of Christ's person and work, deepen your love, and fuel your Christian service, this series is a great place to start.

The DVD and study guide are available for pre-order, and will be launched at The Gospel Coalition Conference Preaching Christ from the Old Testament on April 12.

The Priority of Preaching

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.'" (Isa. 52:7) I am a firm believer that the ministry of preaching is the greatest calling any man can have in this life. To be a jar of clay housing the inestimable treasure of the gospel is a privilege I can never fully explain. Because of this I am a firm believer that there can never be enough good books on preaching. Christopher Ash's book, The Priority of Preaching (Christian Focus/Proclamation Trust Media, 2009) is one such book. While not being as foundational to the Reformed tradition as William Perkins', The Art of Prophesying (reprinted, Banner of Truth, 1996) comprehensive as D. Martyn Lloyd' Jones', Preaching and Preachers (Zondervan, 1971), or as profoundly insightful as Karl Barth's, Homiletics (Westminster/John Knox, 1991), Ash's work is the kind of contemporary exposition of the ministry of preaching that is needed today.

Who is it written for? In his own words, it was written "for ordinary ministers who preach regularly to ordinary people in ordinary places, who may dream of being world-renowned but are going to be spared that fate" (12). It is also intended for those who listen to preaching week in and week out, to teach them how to pray more effectively and encourage more graciously those who do preach. Ash's view of preaching is simple: "The sermons you and I preach week by week in ordinary local churches are more significant than most conference addresses even if they were to be recorded and played back all over the world" (13). Christians need to hear this today as they are tempted to idolize their favorite conference speaker instead of supporting the "ordinary means" ministry of their local congregation (cf. Westminster Larger Catechism, Q&A 154).

Ash's book packs a lot of exegetical, theological, and practical material in the short span of three chapters and one appendix.

Chapter 1, "The Authority of the Preached Word," is an excellent exposition of Deuteronomy 18:9–22, especially the phrase, repeated in the Gospels, "Listen to him" (Deut. 18:15 cf. Mark 9:7). Ash's thesis is that because the Christian preacher speaks the Word of God he is to be listened to just as the prophets of old were (16). After setting the scene by reminding us that Deuteronomy is a book taken up with the issue of how the covenant people would continue after Moses' death, Ash gives the answer from Deuteronomy that the covenant community would continue through the ministry of preaching (21–23). The rest of the chapter unfolds two doctrinal points derived from Deuteronomy: first, that the preacher exercises the authority of Christ and second, that this authority is derived from the Word of God. The first of these is such an important point in our day when believers think that personal Bible reading is their main source of communion with God. The second of these is vital, for the preacher must realize that he is to toil and labor in the word (1 Tim. 5:17) in order to get the word right and to speak authoritatively. Ash gives a wonderful illustration at the end of this chapter, saying that the true preacher will go into his preparation like a piece of metal to be worked upon an anvil, only to come out hurting because he has been confronted with his sins, yet refreshed that it was God who worked upon him. In other words, only a fool would enter the ministry! But the one who becomes a fool for Christ must not only shape the Word into sermons, but must be shaped by that Word.

Chapter 2, "Preaching that Transforms the Church," is another exposition of Deuteronomy, this time chapter 30:11–20. Here Ash derives four themes for transforming preaching. This transformative preaching is based, first, in the reality of God. He is a consuming fire, a jealous God. Ash brings out the fact, in the face of so-called "post-modernism," that just as gravity is a basic fact of life, so too is the reality of God. One of the points at which Ash left me longing for more was the fact that because God is real, we as preachers need to be absolutely gripped by this God as well as with him in our ministry. One interesting turn in this discussion, though, was how Ash says that because God is real, the preacher has a necessity of knowing the real world around him, but especially the reality of the sinful hearts of the people to whom we preach. This transformative preaching also knows, secondly, the stubbornness of people. One of Ash's excellent points of application is his discussion of preaching being neither a monologue nor a dialog, but instead, what he calls a silent dialog. The minister speaks but he does so as if he were dialoging with his audience since he knows their problems, their world, their objections, and seeks to bring the word to them in that context. This transformative preaching understands, thirdly, the urgency of faith. Here Ash deals with the language of and urgency of the phrase "today" throughout Deuteronomy, the Psalms (Ps. 95), and the New Testament (2 Cor. 5:20–6:2; Heb. 3–4). Finally, this transformative preaching must be in awe of the wonder of grace. The preacher needs to be swept up in the "red thread" of Scripture, namely, that it is Jesus Christ who is the center of God's plan of redemption. All Scripture either points forward to him (Old Testament) or back upon him (New Testament).

Chapter 3, "Preaching that Mends a Broken World," focuses on the reality of preaching as the means of bringing together broken sinners into the assembly and presence of the Lord. Here I wish Ash would have given us even more of the wonderful biblical-theological exposition of the theme of God re-gathering his people from the world into one assembly. He gives us some of this, though, to whet our thirst for the Word in this area. His main thrust in this chapter is to offer several helpful applications in our fragmented and overly-technologized culture. For example, although we can access the Word in so many ways today, assembling together as real people in real congregations is utterly necessary and indispensable in God's way of working. In the words of Cyprian, if we will not have the church as our mother we cannot have God as our Father. Ash summarizes this section, saying, "Or, to put it bluntly, a church will be a church so long as it gathers to hear the word, even if none of its members meets in small groups or even reads the Bible on their own!" (99)

The book concludes with an Appendix, entitled, "Give God the Microphone! Seven Blessings of Consecutive Expository Preaching." Given the recent hubbub over the alleged disadvantages of this method of preaching offered by Iain Murray, 'Expository Preaching'—Time for Caution, the seven points offered by Ash are important to assert. Consecutive expository preaching (the lectio continua method) of a section of a book (e.g., Eph. 1, Rom. 8) or an entire book not only has been of hallmark during every revival of great preaching in the ancient church (e.g., Augustine, Chrysostom), Reformation (e.g., John Calvin), as well as in Puritan England (e.g., Thomas Manton), but also: 1) safeguards God's agenda in how he has delivered his word from being hijacked by our agenda, 2) makes it harder for us to abuse the Bible by reading verses and snippets out of context, 3) dilutes the selectivity of the preacher to harp on his hobby horses, pet peeves, and favorite doctrines, 4) keeps the content of the sermon fresh and surprising, 5) makes for variety  in the style of the sermon because of the variety of the word, 6) models good nourishing Bible reading for the ordinary Christian, and 7) helps pastors preach the whole Christ from the whole of Scripture.

In summary, then, Christopher Ash demonstrates the beauty of the ministry of preaching in this little book, which I whole-heartedly endorse.

Daniel R. Hyde (ThM, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary) is the church planter and pastor of the Oceanside United Reformed Church in Carlsbad/Oceanside, California. He is the author of nine books, including Welcome to a Reformed Church (Reformation Trust, 2010).

VIDEO: Tim Challies discusses the ideas behind The Next Story

Many students at this site are likely familiar with Tim Challies and the editorial help he is to us in many areas of Ligonier.org. We congratulate him today on the release of his newest book, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion. At our recent national conference, we asked him to give a brief overview of his book. Here is the video of his message. 

Tim Challies: "The Next Story" from Ligonier on Vimeo.

The Christ of the Old and New

"We have all heard the ancient maxim about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments: 'The new is in the old concealed, and the old is in the new revealed.' While the words concealed and revealed do not entirely accurately describe the relationship between the testaments, they do help us grasp the fundamental truth that the New Testament is found in seed form throughout the pages of the Old Testament and that the Old Testament blossoms forth as a flower in the New Testament."

This is how Burk Parsons begins his editorial introduction to the current issue of Tabletalk magazine. He goes on to say, "the New Testament is called the 'New Testament' for the simple reason that it is, in fact, new. It is new revelation, not merely commentary on previous revelation."

Keep Reading The Christ of the Old and New.

The Place of God's Disfavor

In recent days, the evangelical church has been rocked by Rob Bell's open questioning of the doctrine of hell. Dr. Sproul answers those questions in a forthcoming book, Unseen Realities: Heaven, Hell, Angels and Demons. In the following excerpt from the book, Dr. R. C. Sproul strongly affirms that hell is a biblical concept and a very real place. Unseen Realities, which is jointly published by Christian Focus Publications and Ligonier Ministries, will be released in the United Kingdom in May and in the United States in July.

I suppose there is no topic in Christian theology more difficult to deal with, particularly on an emotional level, than the doctrine of hell. In fact, the doctrine has become so controversial in the modern era that it is almost never addressed.

Old-fashioned revival preaching was characterized by the idea of "hellfire and brimstone." This idea is especially connected with the Great Awakening in the eighteenth century and the ministry of Jonathan Edwards. No theologian or preacher is more associated with the concept of hell than Edwards. I once read a college textbook in which Edwards was used as an illustration of someone who was sadistic because he seemed to preach so often on the subject of hell. That bothered me, because while Edwards certainly believed in the reality of hell, he had a passionate concern for the spiritual well-being of the people in his congregation. The sadistic person takes some kind of delight or glee in contemplating another person's torment or torture, and that was certainly not true of Edwards. He preached on hell so his people would not have to experience it.

What a contrast from that time to our own. We seem to be allergic to any serious discussion of the doctrine of hell. In fact, there has probably never been a time in the history of the church when more people have challenged this doctrine than in our own day. Liberal theologians, of course, completely dismiss it as part of the mythological worldview of primitive people, a concept unworthy of the love of God and of Jesus. Others, even within the professing evangelical camp, have created quite a stir by suggesting the doctrine of annihilationism, which says that the ultimate judgment of the sinner is not ongoing, eternal punishment in a place called hell, but simply the annihilation of the person's existence, and that the great punishment, the great loss, that accompanies annihilation is the loss of the happiness promised to those who will live eternally in heaven. So we have moved away from looking very seriously at the concept of hell. People look back at Edwards and the frontier preachers as theologians who tried to scare people into the kingdom of God by holding out the threat of hell.

However, the concept of hell was not invented by Edwards, by John Wesley, or by any of the frontier revival preachers. Neither was it invented by the Reformers of the sixteenth century or by Thomas Aquinas or by Augustine. It is a biblical concept, and almost everything that we learn about hell in the Bible comes to us, oddly enough, from the lips of Jesus Himself. It is because Jesus spoke so frequently about hell that the church takes the concept so seriously, or at least should do so.

I remember my mentor, Dr. John Gerstner, giving a series of lectures on hell. In that series, Gerstner made this comment: "The idea of a hell that involves some kind of eternal punishment at the hands of a just and holy God is so profoundly difficult for us to handle emotionally, that the only person who would have enough authority to convince us of the reality of such a place would be Jesus Himself."

Whenever I enter into discussions about the doctrine of hell, people ask, "R. C., do you believe that the New Testament portrait of hell is to be interpreted literally?" When we look at some of the statements that are made about hell in the New Testament, we see that it is described in various ways—as a place of torment, as a pit or an abyss, as a place of eternal fire, and as a place of outer darkness. When people ask me whether these images of hell are to be interpreted literally, I usually respond by saying, "No, I don't interpret those images literally," and people typically respond with a sigh of relief.

One of the reasons that classical orthodox theology has tended not to interpret these images literally is because, if you do, you have a very difficult time making them agree with one another. If hell is a place of burning fire on the one hand and a place of outer darkness on the other hand, that's difficult to reconcile, because usually where there's fire, there's light. You can't have fire in a total darkness. So there is a collision of images there.

If we take the New Testament's descriptions of hell as symbolic language, we have to remember the function of symbols. The function of figurative language or metaphorical language in Scripture is to demonstrate a likeness to a reality. A symbol is not the reality itself. The symbol points beyond itself to something else. The question is whether the reality to which the symbol points is less intense or more intense than the symbol. The assumption is that there's always more to the reality than what is indicated by the symbol, which makes me think that, instead of taking comfort that these images of the New Testament may indeed be symbolic, we should be worrying that the reality toward which these symbols point is more ghastly than the symbols. I once heard a theologian say that a sinner in hell would do anything he could and give everything he had to be in a lake of fire rather than to be where he actually is. So even though we don't know exactly where hell is, how hell operates, and what it is really like, all of the imagery our Lord uses suggests that it is a place we don't want to go. It is a place of unspeakable pain and torment.

Again, the question is raised whether the punishment that people endure in hell is physical punishment, since the Scriptures speak about the resurrection of the body not only for the believer but also for the unbeliever, which means that a person in hell after the last judgment will be in a resurrected body suited for his punishment. Because so much of the language of hell in the New Testament refers to corporal punishment, many have drawn the conclusion that hell does indeed involve a relentless, endless, physical kind of suffering.

That may be the case, but other theologians have suggested that the essence of the punishment is in the torment of the soul, in being cut off from the blessedness of the presence of God and from His grace. Even to carry around that spiritual distress within a resurrected body would be torment enough. But, in the final analysis, these are issues about which we can only speculate.

Let's look for a moment at some of the passages in the New Testament that speak of this place called "hell." In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the talents, and toward the end of this chapter, Jesus says: "For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (vv. 29-30).

One of the questions people ask me is this: "Do you think that hell is separation from God?" I usually give a kind of enigmatic reply to that. First I say, "Yes, hell is a separation from God." Again, people breathe a sigh of relief when I say that. I think that when they hear me say that, they imagine that hell is simply a place where God is completely absent, not something terrible like a lake of fire. They imagine that it is just a place where people gather, such as in Jean-Paul Sartre's little play No Exit, where they're confined and condemned to a miserable existence dealing with each other, without the presence of God. But I then say, "Before you breathe a sigh of relief that hell represents the absence of God, let's think about that for a moment."

In the normal language of our culture, I see frequent allusions and references to hell. You've heard them. Someone comes back from a tour of duty in the military and uses the expression, "War is hell." Or someone who has endured great physical suffering says, "I went through hell in that experience." Those kinds of statements must be understood as hyperbole, that is, as obvious exaggeration. If we could find the person who is the most miserable person in the world today, the person who is experiencing suffering at the worst possible level, that person still is deriving certain benefits from the presence of God. God's graciousness, His benevolence, what we call His common grace, the grace that He gives to all people, is not totally removed from any individual during this lifetime. But in hell, it is removed. Being in a place where the blessings and the grace of God are utterly absent would be far worse than anything that could possibly befall us in this world. So, I don't take a lot of comfort in thinking that hell is the absence of God.

When someone asks me, "Is hell the absence of God?" I answer by saying "Yes" in the sense that it is the absence of God's benefits, the absence of His benevolence, His graciousness, and so on. But I think that if the people in hell could take a vote or have a referendum to deport one person from their midst, to expel one person from hell, I think that the universal vote would be given to God, because the person who is most unwelcome in hell is God Himself. As far as the people in hell are concerned, it would be wonderful if God would desert them altogether.

The problem with hell is not simply the absence of God's graciousness. It is the presence of God that is so difficult. God is present in hell because He is omnipresent. The psalmist declares, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there" (Ps. 139:7-8). If God is everywhere in His being, then certainly He is in hell as much as He is anywhere else. The problem, then, is what He is doing there. He's there in His judgment. He is there in His punitive wrath. He is present in hell as the One who executes His justice on those who are there. That's why I say that anyone who is in hell would most want God, more than anyone else, to leave. This is our fundamental nature as sinners—to be fugitives from the presence of God. The very first sin provoked Adam and Eve to flee from the presence of God and hide themselves from Him. The last thing they wanted after they experienced guilt and shame was for God to be present. And that, if you can multiply it infinitely, is the experience of those who are in hell.

Jesus says that hell is the place of outer darkness. To understand the force of that, we have to think of it in light of the Old Testament imagery about the outer places and the outer darkness. We remember that God described two alternatives for those who received His law. To those who kept the law, He promised blessedness, and for those who renounced, rejected, or disobeyed His law, He promised His curse. The whole concept of curse in the Old Testament was articulated with the imagery of darkness, of an outer darkness, the darkness that was outside the commonwealth of Israel, outside the camp. Conversely, the presence of God was described as a place of light where the glory of God radiated all around. So when Jesus warns about the outer darkness, He's warning about the place of the curse, the place where the light and radiance of God's countenance does not shine.

Also in Matthew 25, Jesus says that those who will be cast into the outer darkness will experience "weeping and gnashing of teeth." This is a concrete image that any Jew would understand, and one I think we can all readily comprehend. There are different kinds of weeping. There is the weeping of those who mourn. There is the weeping of those who are in pain. And there is the weeping of those who are deliriously happy. But when we add to this notion of weeping the idea of gnashing of teeth, it is obvious that Jesus is not describing a pleasant circumstance. He is talking about a deep, mournful kind of wailing. But the gnashing of teeth, as we see in the New Testament, is often associated with hatred. When the crowd heard Stephen proclaim the Word of God, they gnashed their teeth in fury (Acts 7:54).

When a person spends time in hell, his relationship with God does not improve. The person goes to hell in the first place because he is hostile toward God. As he experiences the outer darkness where he weeps, he gnashes his teeth in ever-greater hatred of his Maker.

The nature of hell is not completely clear to us. That is why people often ask me questions about hell, questions to which I do not always have easy answers. However, because our Lord tells us so much of what we know about hell, I believe these questions are important ones.

Reprinted with permission of Christian Focus Publications from Unseen Realities: Heaven, Hell, Angels and Demons, copyright 2011 by R.C. Sproul.

Twitter Highlights (4/3/11)

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

Reformation Trust We are a generation that has lost the fear of God. -Steven Lawson



Ligonier We have conflicting feelings about the [holiness of God]...on the one hand it fascinates and on the other it terrifies. -R.C. Sproul



Tabletalk Magazine "Not only the worst of my sins, but the best of my duties speak me a child of Adam" William Beveridge.



Ligonier I don't reach out for a Savior unless I first am convinced that I have a need of a Savior. -R.C. Sproul



Ligonier Academy The church is God's new humanity, a colony where the Lord has established a foretaste of the renewed unity and dignity of the human race.



Ligonier Every sacrifice I've ever offered has been marred & sullied & compromised by the sin that I bring with it. -R.C. Sproul



Reformation Trust Where there is faithful teaching and preaching of the Word of God...the people rise up to the heights of heaven's throne. -Lawson

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

Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?

No. The god Muslims worship is, in reality, an idol.  In terms of their own theology, however, he is a single person, transcendent. The God Christians worship, on the other hand, is the maker of heaven and earth. He is one being and transcendent, who exists in three persons, which are also immanent.  Neither the one-ness nor the three-ness of God are tangential attributes. They are instead essential attributes; they define who He is. Move away from that definition and you move away from the true and living God. That same God has spoken in His Word, the Bible. He has not spoken again in the Koran. The God we worship did not send his most important prophet hundreds of years after the ascension of Jesus. The differences are too many to list. The overlap is here- in both instances we have a creator, a unity, a judge, one who transcends, who gives law, who is called "God." (Allah is not a distinct name for God, but is simply the Arabic word for "God.) To suggest that they are the same would be like arguing that since my sister and I both live in central Florida, both have red hair, both work for the same organization, both have the same parents and both think my wife is wonderful, that we are in fact the same person.

The better question is this- given the obvious and yawning gap between who God actually is and what Islam says their god is, why would anyone try to pretend that they are the same? It could be for the sake of earthly peace. At least some people in both faith groups are weary of all the killing. If our killing of each other, which includes ongoing wars in the middle east, ongoing attacks on our own soil, all the way back to the Crusades, is grounded in different views of who God is, and if we can agree we're both right, then we can all lay down our arms. Or it could be a ruse in the ongoing battle. If Islam can get the Christians to lay down their arms, they can win more victories. If Christians can get Muslims to relax, maybe we'll be able to tell them about Jesus.  We build bridges for evangelism. They build bridges to attack. My suspicion is that we, on the Christians side, affirm such nonsense for a very simple reason- we don't believe. This kind of nonsense is not the result of succumbing to Islam, but on both sides, succumbing to the unbelieving spirit of our post-modern age.

The Bible teaches clearly that those who do not trust in the finished work of Christ alone will spend eternity in torment. To deny Jesus, His incarnation, His perfect life, His atoning suffering and death, His resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father is to be damned. Islam does just that. Islam not only does not look to the work of Christ for atonement for sins, they have no doctrine of grace at all. One cannot worship the true and living God while denying His Son.  If the Bible's message here is true, it is false that we worship the same God. And we are in grave danger to suggest otherwise.  Islam is a false religion, created by a false prophet who gave the world a false book. The Christian faith is true, because Jesus is the Word, and His Word is true.

Links We Liked (4/2/11)

Here is a round-up of some of the notable blogs and articles our team read this week.

Bonus Gospel - David Murray introduces his new series CrossReference, a new series of ten films on Christ's appearances in the Old Testament as the Angel of the Lord. The series is called CrossReference and aims to help Christians discover and enjoy Christ in the Old Testament. We are pre-selling the DVD in the Ligonier store here.

When Sin Plays Dead - What do you do when sin plays dead? In other words, how do you know if you've successfully slain sin? To answer those questions, I'll share what I've learned biblically from John MacArthur and John Owen about what killing sin is not.

Dale Ralph Davis on Preaching Christ in the OT - Collin Hansen corresponded with Dr. Davis and asked him to share advice for preachers and teachers who want to grow in their ability to handle all of God's Word.

Reformation: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow - Here's a forthcoming book by Carl Trueman that looks good.

Columns from Tabletalk Magazine, April 2011

The April edition of Tabletalk is out. This month's issue looks at how a humiliated and exalted Messiah is revealed in the Old Testament, as well as how Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled those expectations.. Contributors include R.C. Sproul, John Piper, John Sittema, Albert Mohler, Jason Stellman, Elyse Fitzpatrick and R.C. Sproul Jr.

We do not post all of the feature articles or the daily devotionals from the issue, so you'll have to subscribe to get those. But for now, here are links to a few select columns and articles from this month:

"The Christ of the Old and New" by Burk Parsons
"Preaching Christ" by R.C. Sproul
"Meeting Jesus at an Old Testament Feast" by John Sittema
"Googling Ourselves to Death" by Jason Stellman
"Young Women, Idolatry & the Powerful Gospel" by Elyse Fitzpatrick
"Holding the Line: An Interview with Albert Mohler"
"The Victory Parade We Don't Deserve" by R.C. Sproul Jr.
"Killing Anger" by John Piper

*****

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