R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 603

Links We Liked (2/19/11)

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

Our Own Propaganda: Wives Must Not Believe It - Carl Trueman at his finest: "When asked by a student spouse the other week how she [Trueman's wife] kept up with reading all that I read so that she could support me in my work, my wife's response (worthy of Newman himself) was 'Read what he's reading???  Lovey, I don't even bother to read what he's writing!'   In fact, she famously claims never to have read anything I have ever written."

Did We Rediscover and Previous Generations Forget the Holy Spirit? - "The assumption which became virtually an article of orthodoxy among evangelicals as well as others, that the Holy Spirit had been discovered almost de novo in the twentieth century, is in danger of the heresy of modernity, and is at least guilty of historical short-sightedness."

Spurgeon's Sermon Notes & Other Helpful Resources - We're thankful for our friends at The Resurgence for pulling together some good excerpts from the Prince of Preachers.

Speaking of C.H. Spurgeon, Phil Johnson has the definitive site here.

Alex Chediak has a new blog dedicated to thoughtful, biblical cultural engagement.

Justification and the Literary Imagination - Leland Ryken: "My venture in this essay provides another angle on the concept of 'the Bible as literature.' I have explored what the biblical teaching on justification looks like when it is transmuted into works of imaginative literature—the Bible as literature, that is, as imaginative literature composed by extrabiblical authors."

Eating Black Pudding

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It was years ago now, but I still remember the discussion. I was making my way out of our church building some time after the morning service had ended, and was surprised to find a small group of people still engaged in vigorous conversation. One of them turned and said to me, "Can Christians eat black pudding?"

To the uninitiated in the mysteries of Scottish haute cuisine, it should perhaps be said that black pudding is not haggis! It is a sausage made of blood and suet, sometimes with flour or meal.

It seems a trivial question. Why the vigorous debate? Because, of course, of the Old Testament's regulations about eating blood (Lev. 17:10ff).

Although (as far as I am aware) no theological dictionary contains an entry under B for "The Black Pudding Controversy," this unusual discussion raised some most basic hermeneutical and theological issues:

How is the Old Testament related to the New?
How is the Law of Moses related to the gospel of Jesus Christ?
How should a Christian exercise freedom in Christ?

The Council of Jerusalem, described in Acts 15, sought to answer such practical questions faced by the early Christians as they wrestled with how to enjoy freedom from the Mosaic administration without becoming stumbling blocks to Jewish people.

These were questions to which Paul in particular gave a great deal of thought. He was, after all, one of those appointed by the Jerusalem Council to circulate and explain the letter that summarized the decisions of the apos- tles and elders (Acts 15:22ff; 16:4). Faced with similar issues in the church at Rome, he provided them with a series of principles that apply equally well to twenty-first-century Christians. His teaching in Romans 14:1–15:13 contains healthy (and very necessary) guidelines for the exercise of Christian liberty. Here are four of them:

Principle 1: Christian liberty must never be flaunted. "Whatever you be- lieve about these things keep between yourself and God" (Rom. 14:22, NIV).

We are free in Christ from the Mosaic dietary laws; Christ has pronounced all food clean (Mark 7:18–19). We may eat black pudding after all!

But you do not need to exercise your liberty in order to enjoy it. Indeed, Paul elsewhere asks some very penetrating questions of those who insist on exercising their liberty whatever the circumstances: Does this really build up others? Is this really liberating you—or has it actually begun to enslave you (Rom. 14:19; 1 Cor. 6:12)?

The subtle truth is that the Christian who has to exercise his or her liberty is in bondage to the very thing he or she insists on doing. Says Paul, if the kingdom consists for you in food, drink, and the like, you have missed the point of the gospel and the freedom of the Spirit (Rom. 14:17).

Principle 2: Christian liberty does not mean that you welcome fellow Christians only when you have sorted out their views on X or Y (or with a view to doing that).

God has welcomed them in Christ, as they are; so should we (Rom. 14:1, 3). True, the Lord will not leave them as they are. But He does not make their pattern of conduct the basis of His welcome. Neither should we.

We have many responsibilities for our fellow Christians, but being their judge is not one of them. Christ alone is that (Rom. 14:4, 10–13). How sad it is to hear (as we do far too often) the name of another Christian mentioned in conversation, only for someone to pounce immediately on him or her in criticism. That is not so much a mark of discernment as it is the evidence of a judgmental spirit.

What if the measure we use to judge others becomes the measure used to judge us (Rom. 14:10–12; Matt. 7:2)?

Principle 3: Christian liberty ought never to be used in such a way that you become a stumbling block to another Christian (Rom. 14:13).

When Paul states this principle, it is not a spur-of-the-moment reaction, but a settled principle he has thought out and to which he has very deliberately committed himself (see 1 Cor. 8:13). When that commitment is made, it eventually becomes so much a part of our thinking that it directs our behavior instinctively. We are given liberty in Christ in order to be the servants of others, not in order to indulge our own preferences.

Principle 4: Christian liberty requires grasping the principle that will produce this true biblical balance: "We . . . ought . . . not to please ourselves. . . . For even Christ did not please himself " (Rom. 15:1–3).

There is something devastatingly simple about this. It reduces the issue to the basic questions of love for the Lord Jesus Christ and a desire to imitate Him since His Spirit indwells us to make us more like Him.

True Christian liberty, unlike the various "freedom" or "liberation" movements of the secular world, is not a matter of demanding the "rights" we have. Dare one say that the American Founding Fathers, for all their wisdom, may have inadvertently triggered off a distortion of Christianity by speaking about our "rights" to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? The Christian realizes that before God he or she possesses no "rights" by nature. In our sinfulness, we have forfeited all of our "rights."

Only when we recognize that we do not deserve our "rights" can we properly exercise them as privileges. Sensitivity to others in the church, espe- cially weaker others, depends on this sense of our own unworthiness. If we assume that we have liberties to be exercised at all costs, we become poten- tially lethal weapons in a fellowship, all too capable of destroying someone for whom Christ has died (Rom. 14:15, 20).

That does not mean that I must become the slave of another's conscience. John Calvin puts the point well when he says that we restrain the exercise of our freedom for the sake of weak believers, but not when we are faced with Pharisees who demand that we conform to what is unscriptural. Where the gospel is at stake, liberty needs to be exercised; where the stability of a weak Christian is at stake, we need to restrain it.

This is all part and parcel of "living between the times." Already, in Christ, we are free, but we do not yet live in a world that can cope with our freedom. One day we will enjoy "the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21). Then may we eat black pudding whenever and wherever we want to! But not yet.

For now, as Martin Luther wrote, "A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one."

As it was with the Master, so it is with the servant.

From In Christ Alone.

$5 Friday Starts at 8 a.m.

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Psalm 23, John Gerstner, Christless Christianity & more for $5 Friday. Sale starts at 8 a.m. Friday and ends 8 a.m. Saturday EST.

View today's $5 Friday sales.

Ask R.C. Live: Watch Tonight at 8 p.m. EST

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Be sure to tune in tonight to watch R.C. Sproul answer questions from an online audience. This live event will run from 8:00-8:45 p.m., so submit your questions now. Tweet your questions using the hashtag #AskRC, or write your questions using Facebook from our live events page.

Watch Ask R.C. Live here

Miss the first Ask R.C. Live session? Watch it now.

Outrage Du Jour

Media, as a general rule, is directed more toward our emotions than our minds. As Neil Postman argued so eloquently in his delightful book Amusing Ourselves to Death, a word based culture tends to be more reasoned, more thoughtful, whereas an image based culture tends to be more emotive, more reactionary. We are a sensate culture accustomed and comfortable with experiencing emotions lightly and at the behest of others. We pay Hollywood to make us fearful, or sad, or excited. But of course the monster isn't real, the sick child just an actor, the rampaging dinosaur a creation of a computer, rather than a mad scientist. We take our emotions in manageable doses by feeling them in contexts that have precious little to do with reality.

Those outlets outside the mainstream media also know their audience. Whether it is conservative talk radio or Christian blog punditry, even though our perspectives on the issues may differ, our approach to them is essentially the same. We may pull the levers marked 'R' when we vote, but we also like having our strings pulled. So we tune into talk radio to learn all about the outrage of the day. Of course talk radio is in one sense a word based medium. But in another it is shared experience, the theater of the appalled. "On today's episode, we discover that black-hatted fiend is sitting on his thumbs while the mid-east ignites." Or, "Tune in tomorrow as President Bad-inoff tells his helpless citizens, 'You must grow the debt.' And our heroine Congressperson Bauchman replies, 'But we can't grow the debt.'" Of course both sides cheer the end of the melodrama when the hero from China declares "I'll buy the debt." We wring our hands over the latest episode, talk it over at the water cooler, and feel like we're doing something.

Further still to the right are we committed pro-lifers. On Facebook, on our blogs we recount the genuinely heroic work of Live Action that exposed ACORN and now a Planned Parenthood office in New Jersey where a couple posing as a pimp and his underage employee learn how to receive services and avoid messy intrusions from the state. The pimp is even offered a sort of volume discount. We are outraged, as we were a few weeks ago when one abortionist was arrested for murdering seven born babies and one murderous mother. And so we sleep well at night, thinking our outrage is our doing our part, feeling ourselves to be rather fine fellows.

Trouble is our outrage is misplaced. Whatever else the President is doing wrong, it all pales in comparison to this: he uses his office to speak for and to defend the murder of unborn babies. Whatever advice and counsel Planned Parenthood provides for pimps in secret is nothing compared to what they do every day out in the open. The eight people that Kermit Gosnell is charged with murdering are no different from the hundreds if not thousands he murdered within the law. These are distractions.

If our emotional responses were to be rational, to fit with reality, we would be outraged by abortion, when it is done carefully, in sterile places, by competent, licensed, professionals. If our emotional responses were rational, our outrage would not satisfy us, but would goad us. We would respond with shame, that we have done so little. And then we would respond with resolve, that we will labor faithfully, on every front, from the voting booth to the crisis pregnancy center, to the very doors of the murder centers. And finally, we would commit to have our emotions match reality, rather than being led about in circles by the Pied Pipers of talk radio and internet punditry. It is right and proper that we should feel strongly. Neither the day's news nor commentary on it however will bring us there. Instead it's what's not news—babies are being murdered.

 

Bread from Heaven

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"Give us this day our daily bread." (Matthew 6:11)

Jesus teaches us to pray that God would give us daily bread. Obviously Jesus was not telling His disciples to pray only for bread. But bread was a staple in the diet of the Jews, and had been so for many years. Furthermore, bread was a powerful symbol of God's provision for His people in the Old Testament. We remember how God cared for the Israelites when they were in the wilderness after their exodus from Egypt. Life in the wilderness was hard, and soon the people began to complain that it would be better to be back in Egypt, where they had wonderful food to eat. In response to these complaints, God promised to "rain bread from heaven" (Ex. 16:4). The next morning, when the dew lifted, there remained behind on the ground "a small round substance, as fine as frost. . . . It was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey" (vv. 14, 31). When God miraculously fed His people from heaven, he did so by giving them bread.

It's interesting to me that in the language of Western culture, we sometimes speak of one partner in a marriage (it used to be almost exclusively the husband, but not so much these days) as the wage earner of the home. But more colloquially, we call that partner "the breadwinner." Even in our slang, we use the word bread as a synonym for "money." Bread remains, at least in our language, as a powerful symbol of the rudimentary basis of provision for our needs.

After the Korean War ended, South Korea was left with a large number of children who had been orphaned by the war. We've seen the same thing in the Vietnam conflict, in Bosnia, and in other places. In the case of Korea, relief agencies came in to deal with all the problems that arose in connection with having so many orphan children. One of the people involved in this relief effort told me about a problem they encountered with the children who were in the orphanages. Even though the children had three meals a day provided for them, they were restless and anxious at night and had difficulty sleeping. As they talked to the children, they soon discovered that the children had great anxiety about whether they would have food the next day. To help resolve this problem, the relief workers in one particular orphanage decided that each night when the children were put to bed, the nurses there would place a single piece of bread in each child's hand. The bread wasn't intended to be eaten; it was simply intended to be held by the children as they went to sleep. It was a "security blanket" for them, reminding them that there would be provision for their daily needs. Sure enough, the bread calmed the children's anxieties and helped them sleep. Likewise, we take comfort in knowing that our physical needs are met, that we have food, or "bread," for our needs.

This petition of the Lord's Prayer, then, teaches us to come to God in a spirit of humble dependence, asking Him to provide what we need and to sustain us from day to day. We are not given license to ask for great riches, but we are encouraged to make our needs known to Him, trusting that He will provide.

When we pray in general, the only way we will see the hand of God's providence is in general.

If we find that God's hand seems to be invisible to us and that we cannot discern His providential intrusion into our lives, that may be due partly to the way we pray. We have a tendency to pray in general. When we pray in general, the only way we will see the hand of God's providence is in general. As we enter into prayer, this conversation and communion with God, and put our petitions before Him, pouring out our souls and our needs specifically, we see specific answers to our prayers. Our Father has invited us to go to Him and ask Him for our daily bread. He will not fail to provide it.

Excerpted from The Prayer of the Lord by R.C. Sproul

An Exciting Lineup of Doctor of Ministry Courses

This month, several of the students who were part of our inaugural Doctor of Ministry classes in July 2009 will be completing their required coursework and preparing to begin their major written projects. We were pleased to offer courses on Missions and Evangelism with Dr. Steve Lawson and on the Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament with Dr. D.A. Carson.

This Summer, Dr. R.C. Sproul and Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr. will be co-teaching the course on the doctrine of justification (July 11–15). Dr. Dennis Johnson of Westminster Seminary in California will be teaching our preaching class (July 18–22). Next January, Dr. Ron Gleason, author of a new biography of Herman Bavinck, will be joining us to teach the Reformed Philosophy of Ministry class, and Ligonier Teaching Fellow Dr. Sinclair Ferguson will be returning to teach our class on Worship. In the Summer of 2012, Dr. Robert Letham, author of The Holy Trinity, will be joining us to [image error]teach a class on the doctrine of the Trinity and its significance for Christian worship.

We are thankful to all of these men for their willingness to serve pastors in this way. We are also grateful for the pastors who have been working through this demanding program.

One of these men, Pastor Drew Dinardo has said of the program:

I cannot conceive of a better institution to continue biblical, theological, and pastoral education than Ligonier Academy (D.Min). I have found the course selection ideal, the professors exceptional, class reading and instruction insightful, and the interaction with other like-minded pastors edifying. The spiritual and intellectual benefits to me personally, as well as to the congregation which I serve, have been incalculable. If you are searching for a degree program that is biblically and theologically grounded, intellectually demanding, ministry focused, philosophically practical, and pastor-schedule sensitive, look no further.

If you are a Pastor seeking further training from a Reformed perspective, the Ligonier Academy D.Min. program is designed for you.

For even more information about the Doctor of Ministry program, click here.

The application deadline for those desiring to begin coursework this Summer is March 1.

To download a copy (.pdf format) of the Application for the D.Min. program, click here.

Because the D.Min. program serves the educational goals of pastors, missionaries, and others in full-time ministry, admission is granted only to ordained men who possess a Master of Divinity degree or its equivalent and three years of ministry experience. Exceptions to these admission requirements are considered on a case-by-case basis, and in such cases admission may be granted only on a provisional basis.

For More Information

Please contact or have your pastor contact us about the D.Min. program:

E-mail: admissions@ligonier.org
USPS:

Ligonier Academy Admissions Office
400 Technology Park
Lake Mary, FL 32746

Phone: 407-333-4244
Fax: 407-333-4233

Vehicles for Giving the Self

Throughout 2011 we are conducting interviews with influential pastors, scholars, and artist. This interview column will serve to show the lives and ministries of these interviewees, in order to stir our readers on to live more holy lives. This month the editors of Tabletalk interviewed Michael Card.

TT: Please tell us a little about the sort of ministry you are involved in these days.

[image error]MC: The ministry I am involved with these days is fundamentally the same one that's been going on for thirty years: trying to facilitate biblical understanding through any means available to me. In the past this has been primarily through music, but increasingly I have more opportunities to simply teach, often in connection to concerts.

TT: What project(s) are you working on currently?

MC: I am currently working on volume 2 of a series on the Gospels called "The Biblical Imagination Series." The project derives its direction and method from William Lane's statement: "We must engage with Scripture at the level of the imagination." In my own small way I am trying to advance and develop that idea by working through the gospels.

Read more in Vehicles for Giving the Self: An Interview with Michael Card.

Cruise to the Cradle of Christianity with R.C. Sproul

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Join R.C. Sproul along with Ligonier Teaching Fellows Robert Godfrey and R.C. Sproul Jr. as we take a journey to the cradle of Christianity on our 2011 Study Cruise, September 3 through September 15. Visit the cruise website for more information.

What Does the Ligonier Logo Mean?

[image error]Many Ligonier students ask us about our logo and if there is a particular meaning behind it. It's a good question. For a ministry that seeks to be biblically wise in all of our words and actions, our constituents know there must be a story behind the Ligonier "tree" and how it came to be the symbol of an international Christian education and broadcasting ministry. As we are now in our fortieth year of ministry, it's good to remember our roots, so to speak.

Symbols are important. From cave paintings in Lascaux to Egyptian hieroglyphics to the pictures carved on the signs of medieval shopkeepers for the illiterate masses, symbology is something very human. Companies and their advertising and graphic design agencies spend billions of dollars every year on brand development exercises. Communicating with symbols allows us to quickly communicate concepts, ideas, and movements. The idea for the Ligonier "tree" logo came from the ministry's first patron, Mrs. Dora Hillman. The land on which the Ligonier Valley Study Center was established in 1971 was filled with trees, and Mrs. Hillman was always planting more. Rumor has it that she even had Dr. Sproul out on the property doing some planting in those early days. So from the beginning, there was a multi-generational vision for Ligonier Ministries.

Embodied in this idea for the Ligonier "tree" is the idea of growth for the Christian. The Lord in His Word exhorts His people to grow. While we are called to retain a childlike faith, it is no sign of health to remain a babe in Christ (1 Cor. 3:1–2). Ligonier serves those Christians best who are purposeful in seeking to grow in their love and obedience to Christ.

The biblical symbol we are given in Psalm 1 is also instructive. The growing believer is pictured as a mature tree growing heavenward, planted in good soil beside the life-giving water. The Word of God is the soil in which the man or woman of God grows. There is a direct correlation between our focused study and retention of God's Word and our joy, stability, and productivity as Christians. The contrast in Psalm 1 is with the scoffer who refuses to hear the Lord and is therefore like chaff, blown away by the slightest breeze.

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But the tree does not grow unto itself. Trees beget trees. Such it is in the church as the Lord moves mightily in His people to bring about the benefits of His gracious covenant in Christ. For His promise and our hope is a covenantal one: that those who love Him will grow strong in Him, and that growth will produce fruit, and that fruit will produce seed that grows into saplings who will eventually become enduring arbors in their own right.

The truth of God's Word in the hearts and hands of His people multiplies to others as we seek to be faithful to His Great Commission. In the same way, it is engrafted into Ligonier's mission, passion, and purpose to reach as many people as possible with the knowledge of God and His holiness. The desire of this ministry—the teaching fellowship of R.C. Sproul—is to come alongside the church to proclaim, teach, and defend the character of God until all of the elect are gathered.

Chris Larson is executive vice president of Ligonier Ministries.