R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 595

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Minutes and Years

[image error]Chad Van Dixhoorn is associate pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Vienna, Virginia, and senior research fellow at Wolfson College in Cambridge, UK. He has spent more than a decade studying the Westminster Assembly. In an interview in this month's edition of Tabletalk he tells about his interest in the Westminster Assembly, the project he has organized to collect books and manuscripts related to the Assembly and to make them publicly available. Many of these are now becoming available for the first time.

Read about Dr. Van Dixhoorn and his work in Minutes and Years: The Westminster Assembly Project.

The Legacy of R.C. Sproul and John Piper

At one level, all Christians are the same. We are made in the image of God, saved by the grace of God, and live for the glory of God. We are blood-bought brothers and sisters, members of the same family, children of our heavenly Father.

On another level, we are each unique. The apostle Paul said that the body of Christ is like, well, a body: many parts, each with different shapes and sizes, each indispensable in characteristic and function.

The differences between R. C. Sproul and John Piper are easily discerned, even for the casual observer. I'm tempted to enumerate some of them, but it will be more fruitful to focus on the common threads that tie together their remarkable ministries.

Both men became Calvinists during seminary, as their resistance was overcome by God using a professor who insisted on taking God at his word. Both men discovered and were deeply impacted by Jonathan Edwards during their seminary days. Both men pursued doctorates in Europe before returning to the United States to teach at the college level. Both men started ministries—Ligonier and Desiring God—designed to serve and strengthen the church of Jesus Christ. The landmark books for both men —The Holiness of God (1985) and Desiring God (1986)—are about trembling before and delighting in the one true God. And both men found their ultimate calling not in the classroom but behind the pulpit (though it happened for Dr. Piper at the age of 34 and for Dr. Sproul at the age of 58.).

Theology is not something they merely study and teach. It is something they breathe. The Bible is not something they only read and preach. It is the food upon which they feed. R. C. Sproul and John Piper love Jesus Christ. They love to glory and revel in their Redeemer. Yes, they are extraordinarily gifted preachers, prodigious authors, talented theologians. But they have never gotten over the stunning fact that they were treasonous rebels who were graciously summoned to the King's banqueting table and clothed with the righteous robes of the King's Son. They have now walked with Jesus for decades, but they have never lost their childlike wonder that they have been called God's sons. For them, to teach and preach God's Word is not a duty but a delight. And they will continue to do so, as Dr. Sproul has said, until someone pries the Bible from their cold dead fingers.

Some thought it was hyperbole a few years ago when Time Magazine's feature on Top 10 Ideas Shaping the World included "New Calvinism" (a contrast not to "Old Calvinism" but more to doctrinally ambivalent "Old Evangelicalism"). But in reality, Time had stumbled upon something true. Each year thousands of young people are discovering and celebrating the doctrines of grace and having their world turned upside down. Ligonier Ministries and Desiring God have been two of the means God has used to shape and transform our view of God.

As believers in secondary causation, it's appropriate for us to ask why. Why, under God, are people attracted to the teaching of Dr. Sproul and Dr. Piper? Why do so many folks see them as "spiritual fathers"?

One reason is that younger believers, in particular, have highly attuned "boloney detectors" (to use the technical term). They are hypersensitive to hypocrisy and phoniness. And when they hear Dr. Sproul and Dr. Piper teach and preach, they hear authority and authenticity, truth and love, passion and power, combined in a compelling and arresting way. It's not merely the God-centered, biblically saturated content. It's that this deep theology is creatively presented and passionately believed. These men do not merely teach; they herald, they summon, they exhort, they plead, they yearn. In a way that's difficult to describe in a non-clichéd way, the timber of their voices contains both sorrow and joy. And in that sense, I think they echo the tone of their sorrowful-yet-always-rejoicing Savior.

John Piper turned 65 this year, and R. C. Sproul recently turned 72. They will not be with us forever. What will we say of them when they pass from the evangelical scene? Their mutual mentor Jonathan Edwards put it best when he instructed his flock about the blessing of godly pastors:

Useful men are some of the greatest blessings of a people. To have many such is more for a people's happiness than almost anything, unless it be God's own gracious, spiritual presence amongst them; they are precious gifts of heaven. . . .

Particularly, I would beseech and exhort those aged ones that yet remain, while they do live with us, to let us have much of their prayers, that when they leave the younger generations, they may leave God with them.

When their earthly course is completed, I believe this will be the legacy of R. C. Sproul and John Piper: they labored by the grace of God to leave us with a vision of God.

To Him alone be the glory.

Click here to see John Piper and R.C. Sproul in conversation at the 2011 Ligonier Ministries National Conference.

Justin Taylor is vice president and editorial director of Crossway Books & Bibles in Wheaton, Illinois, and is author of the blog Between Two Worlds.

2011 National Conference Messages Now Available

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Unable to attend or watch the live stream of the 2011 National Conference this past weekend? You can now watch the streaming files or purchase the downloads on Ligonier.org. 

Sinclair Ferguson, Robert Godfrey, Steven Lawson, John Piper, R.C. Sproul, and R.C. Sproul Jr. led the main sessions while Tim Challies and Susan Hunt added additional content through the optional sessions (available as free downloads). Session titles included:

Forty Years of Proclaiming God's Holiness interview with R.C. Sproul & Chris Larson
War on the Word by Steven Lawson
Why the God-Man? by Sinclair Ferguson
Questions & Answers
Defending the Faith by R.C. Sproul
Almighty Over All by R.C. Sproul Jr.
Worshiping the Triune God by Steven Lawson
Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper
Clothed in Righteousness by R.C. Sproul
Ministry Reflections with John Piper & R.C. Sproul
Evangelism & Missions by John Piper
Pleasing God by Robert Godfrey
Twenty-Five Years of Desiring God by John Piper

OPTIONAL SESSIONS: Free Downloads (right click to download)

[image error]Audio | Video  Redeemed Womanhood: Generation to Generation by Susan Hunt
Audio | Video  The Next Story by Tim Challies
Audio | Video  Believing God by R.C. Sproul Jr.
Audio | Video  Pillars of Grace by Steven Lawson
Audio | Video  An Unexpected Journey by Robert Godfrey
Audio | Video  By Grace Alone by Sinclair Ferguson

You can also order the conference set on DVD, CD, or MP3 CD. Be sure to check out conference photos from the weekend.

Free Download: John Piper on the Supremacy of Christ in Calamity

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The congregation of Saint Andrew's in Sanford, Florida, was blessed to have John Piper fill the pulpit on March 27th after Ligonier Ministries' 2011 National Conference.

Download the message (right click to download):
The Supremacy of Christ & the Sorrow of Calamity (Romans 8:18-25)

In this message, John Piper anwsers the question, "Why does this world exist like it is?", by looking at the supremacy of Christ and the sorrow of calamity.

One of the truths we affirm with trembling joy is that God is supreme in all things and that He is Lord of this universe. We don't say that God is supreme in all things except tsunamis or war or calamities. We don't formulate our doctrine of God's supremacy in a rosy world—we formulate it biblically in a real word of pain, suffering, and evil. As Christians, we are called to live an emotional life, weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice. 

It is perhaps surprising to us that God can stand forth with stunning clarity in the midst of evil. The biblical question is, "What's the explanation for this world—futility, calamity, conflict, and misery?" There are two answers that are not the case and four answers that are.

Two Wrong Answers

1. God is not in control. "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father" (Matthew 10:29). The sparrows fall and the dice roll by His divine decree. "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will" (Proverbs 21:1). "I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God" (Isaiah 45:5). Anyone who knows the Bible knows this answer cannot be true.

2. God is evil. God is holy, holy, holy. "This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5). "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today" (Genesis 50:20).

Four Right Answers

1. The world of calamities exists because God planned a history of redemption and permitted sin to enter the world through our first parents, Adam and Eve. "God saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began" (2 Tim. 1:9). Unmerited favor came to us through Christ before the creation. That means God planned a history of redemption climaxing in Jesus, which means He ordained that there be sin. You can't have redemption unless you have something to be redeemed from. The world is the way it is because God ordained that He permit Adam and Eve to sin.

2. Calamities and conflicts exist in the world because God subjected the world to futility (Romans 8:18-21). Creation was unwillingly subjected to futility in hope that the whole Creation would be set free from its decay. Cancer and tsunamis are in the world because God subjected the world to futility. Why? Because of sin. But why the correlation between physical horrors and moral sin? Because we are not outraged at sin like we should be. We get outraged when we get sick and see natural disasters while making light of our moral outrage. The reason physical, horrible evils are in the world is because they are parables of the moral evil we take so lightly. Our sin against a holy God is ten thousand times more outrageous than the sweeping away of all people on the planet in a tsunami.

3. This world exists in order that the followers of Christ may experience and display that no pleasure and no treasure here compares to knowing Christ. God means for us to be so satisfied in Jesus that when losses come we magnify His worth by not being sad. Everything is loss for the surpassing value of knowing Christ as Lord. Loss is gain. That's what He wants us to show.

4. This world exists like it does to make a place for the Son of God to suffer and die for our sins. We think that God responded to a fallen world with a redeemer, but that's not the order in which it happened. God ordained that there be grace flowing through a crucified Christ before He created this world. Therefore this world is the stage prepared for Christ, the apex of the revelation of the glory of grace. There is terror in the world that Christ might be terrorized. There is trouble in the world so that Christ might be troubled. The ultimate revelation of the glory of God is the revelation of grace flowing to unworthy sinners through a suffering Savior. There could be no suffering Savior had there been no sin, fall, or misery. It's all for Christ. (Romans 5:8)

The deepest answer to terrorism, calamity, conflict, misery, cancer, and death is the suffering and death of the Son of God. He entered our fallen world, bore in Himself the cause of it all, and through His death bought the cure of it all, forgiveness and everlasting joy in the age to come. The world exists to make plain the horrors of sin and the wonders of Christ.

Download the message (right click to download):
The Supremacy of Christ & the Sorrow of Calamity (Romans 8:18-25)

The End of Soap Oprah

"The passing of the Oprah Winfrey Show is surely worthy of being described with that most overworked of clichés, as 'the end of an era.' Except, of course, it is not the end of an era so much as the morphing of Ms. Winfrey's career into a new form. It is hard to imagine that the public has seen the last of her, and the values and culture that her show represented are here for the foreseeable future."

In his contribution to the March edition of Tabletalk, Carl Trueman writes about Oprah's wide-reaching influence in our culture. "I well remember one of my sisters raving about how 'Oprah says this, Oprah says that!' in the late nineteen-eighties, which I expect was about the time her show was starting to enjoy international success. At the time, I assumed it was just another bland American show, designed to showcase beautiful people with vast wealth and minimal personality. In fact, of course, the program proved to be far more than that. It was not simply the chat-show equivalent of a soap opera, designed to fill a few idle moments that the viewing public might have in an afternoon; it became a powerful force within wider society."

Read what he has to say in The End of Soap Oprah.

Glorious Freedom

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You may have been a Christian for some time and yet not grasped your new status in Christ. You may still be intimidated by the domineering character of the tyrant who once ruled over you.

Believers sometimes wrongly assume: "I have sinned; therefore, sin still has authority over me. I cannot possibly have 'died' to sin."

Paul unambiguously contradicts this thinking. Sin has no authority over anyone who is in Christ. You are no longer under its dominion. You have received a new identity. You have died out of that old kingdom. You have been raised through Christ into the new kingdom where He—not sin— reigns. From this vantage point, you can look back to your former king and his kingdom, and say: "You once ruled over me, but no longer. I am a citizen of the kingdom of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He alone reigns over me now." You may not yet be what one day you shall be; but thank God you are no longer what you once were (Rom. 6:17–18).

Sin has no authority over anyone who is in Christ. You are no longer under its dominion.

Paul asks the Roman Christians: "Don't you know this? Was there a slip-up in the teaching you were given? Around the time you were baptized and came into the fellowship of Jesus Christ, did no one tell you that this is what it means to be a Christian?"

Perhaps that was true in some of the early churches. Believers did not always know these things. Perhaps no one told them. If so, it is all the more likely to be true in contemporary churches. Perhaps no one has explained to you that no matter what Tyrant Sin, in all his various guises, may say, we are no longer under his dominion. He no longer has grounds for blackmail. He has no right to paralyze us into thinking that we can never make any real advance in the Christian life because we will never be free from this prevailing sin.

I enjoy reading crime novels and have frequently relaxed on long journeys by reading the novels of Margaret Perry. Many of them are set in nineteenth- century London.

One of her central characters is a detective named William Monk (not to be confused with the American TV detective Adrian Monk). His life and adventures are made the more intriguing by an event in his past. While a police officer in London, he was thrown from a horse-drawn cab driven at high speed. Monk survived but lost his memory. As a result, he finds himself in situations where he is at a great disadvantage because he has no memory of what happened to him in the past. He does not know who he really was, so he does not clearly understand who he really is.

That is a basic problem for many Christians. We lose touch with the person Scripture says we really are. Perhaps we never really understood that becoming a Christian meant receiving a new identity in Christ.

Paul is saying: "Christians of Rome, you need to understand who you really are. You are people with a new citizenship. You are no longer under the dominion of sin. That makes a radical difference to the way you live the Christian life. It releases you from captivity."

It is easy to read this passage, and say: "Paul, you are not talking about me. I certainly don't think of myself as someone who has died to sin."

If that is true, a serious accident has taken place. You are like William Monk, constantly in situations you cannot handle properly because you suffer from spiritual amnesia. You do not clearly understand your identity in Christ. You are always trying to piece things together, but never getting the picture clearly.

But when you begin to understand that in Christ you died to sin and have now been delivered from the dominion of sin; that you are no longer under its bondage; that you no longer need to be a victim of its subtle paralysis—then you find yourself saying not only "Isn't this amazing grace?" but "What glorious freedom Jesus Christ has bought for me on the cross."

Excerpted from By Grace Alone.

Twitter Highlights (3/27/11)

Here are some highlights of the 2011 Ligonier Ministries National Conference from the Ligonier Twitter feed.

Ligonier We are called to get knowledge but even more to get wisdom. You can't get a right heart without a right mind. -Sproul #lmnc



Ligonier You do not change the Word because you think the culture should hear it a different way. -Steven Lawson #lmnc



Ligonier Often false teaching begins not by something being denied but by the really central things not being said. -Sinclair Ferguson #lmnc



Ligonier As bad as I am, Jesus is better. -R.C. Sproul Jr. #lmnc



Ligonier God's God-exalting purpose for the universe causes me to soar. I just love to think of God's God-ness. -@JohnPiper #lmnc



Ligonier I feel most safe in the presence of God. -RC Sproul #lmnc



Ligonier God doesn't want us to make up ways to please Him. He wants us to please Him in the way He has revealed. -Robert Godfrey #lmnc

You can follow the conversation and see all the tweets from the conference by clicking the #lmnc hashtag.

Our various ministries are also on Facebook:
Ligonier Ministries | Ligonier Academy | Reformation Trust | Tabletalk Magazine

What is the "RC Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics?"

I'm so glad you asked. Hermeneutics, of course, is the science of interpretation, typically Bible interpretation. There are any number of basic, fundamental principles we all ought to be aware of. One principle argues that we interpret less clear passages in light of more clear passages. Anyone who builds a theology on that text that mentions "baptism for the dead" is likely all wet. A second principle reminds us to interpret the historical sections of the Bible in light of the didactic, not the other way around. Here we learn our understanding of Christian marriage from Jesus' reminding the Pharisees that from the beginning it has been one man and one woman. We don't develop our understanding of marriage by looking at Solomon's family portrait. The Bible, in its historical books, tells us all sorts of things people did wrong. When it is teaching, rather than giving us true history, it tells us what we need to know. For a simply wonderful introduction to proper biblical interpretation, let me commend to your reading Knowing Scripture, by a completely different RC Sproul.

The RC Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics is a tad more personal, and not just for me, its namesake. I did not, by the way, name this after me because of my pride. I named it for me because of its subject matter- stupid people. The principle is this- "Whenever you see someone doing something really stupid in the Bible, do not say to yourself, 'How can they be so stupid?' Instead say to yourself, 'How am I stupid, just like them?'" You see it's all too easy to look down our noses at those unsophisticated, pre-modern  people in the Bible, and to pat ourselves on the back for not being like them. Trouble is, we are like them. We think, for instance, that had we been sent to spy out the Promised Land we would have come back like Joshua and Caleb, confident that God can deliver the land. Chances are, 10 in 12 in fact, that we would have been among the frightened and foolish crowd.

This principle is born out of two more basic ones- people don't change, and people are sinners. If we see a sin crop up in the Bible, it's extremely likely that we will struggle with that same sin. Because we are sinners, however, we sinfully think ourselves not to be sinners. That, of course, is just what the sinners in the Bible thought about themselves.  The Bible is a mirror, and we are ugly. If we would be changed by it, we have to be willing to face that reality. We need to learn to see ourselves in the sinners in the Bible in order to rightly learn from the Bible.

Which reminds us of the first corollary to the RC Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics. Whenever you are reading a story in the Bible, whether it be a parable or even history, and you want to know how it applies to you, you have to first know who you are in the story. Here's the Corollary- You are the sinner. If there are two sinners in the story, such as the Prodigal Son parable where both sons were sinners, you are both.

The Bible is a mirror. And we ought to be able to look at our own sin. Wishing it away does nothing. Jesus, however, is busy washing it away. We can boldly face the fullness of our sins because we live in light of the fullness of His grace.

2011 Ligonier National Conference - Session 13 (John Piper)

[image error]The final session of this year National Conference went to John Piper who was asked to reflect on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his groundbreaking book Desiring God. Much of what he did this morning was summarize what he has been teaching all these years, because in all these years, he has not changed the focus of his ministry. But he sought to address some of the misunderstandings and to fill in some of the gaps that have been raised in the years since he wrote the book.

He said that the book came out of the tension of having to choose between him being happy and God being glorified in his life. The origin of Desiring God is a desire to be happy. Our hearts are desire factories because God made them that way. You can't choose to not want to be happy, so there has to be a solution to your quest to be happy being right and God's desire to be glorified being right. He waded right into this tension twenty-five years ago and has remained there throughout his ministry.

Particularly interesting was the way in which Piper drew lines between Desiring God and some of his other books. He did this as a means of answering a question he has often been asked: How can you believe that God makes much of us? We understand what we are to make much of God, but are we really to believe that God seeks to make much of us? This was the main issue at the heart of his book God Is the Gospel. And so Dr. Piper spent the bulk of his message defending his view that God does make much of us, at least in a certain way.

Because this blog is meant to be just a short summary, and because the message will soon be available online, I will leave it to you to hear his stirring defense and to encourage you that you are precious to God, that it is his joy and to his glory to make much of you.

Let me leave you with just one great quote:

I can lose everything on the planet and gain one thing—Christ—and call it gain.