R.C. Sproul's Blog, page 63

$5 Friday (And More): William Tyndale, the Lord's Supper, & Faith

It’s time for our weekly $5 Friday sale. This week’s resources include such topics as William Tyndale, the Lord's Supper, faith, prayer, repentance, the Psalms, and more.

Plus, several bonus resources are also available for more than $5. These have been significantly discounted from their original price. This week’s bonus resources include:

Are We Together? A Protestant Analyzes Roman Catholicism by R.C. Sproul, Hardcover Book $17 $8
The Psalms, ESV , Cloth Over Board, Gray $20 $10
The Daring Mission of William Tyndale by Steven Lawson, Hardcover Book $9 $6
The Last Days According to Jesus by R.C. Sproul, Paperback Book $16 $10
Some Pastors and Teachers by Sinclair Ferguson, Hardcover Book $45 $30
Pray Big: Learn to Pray Like a Disciple by Alistair Begg, Paperback Book $13 $9
Enjoying God by R.C. Sproul, Paperback Book $17 $12
The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson, Hardcover Book $25 $15
City of God by Saint Augustine, Paperback Book $18 $12
The Work of Christ by R.C. Sproul, Hardcover Book $20 $12
Faith Alone by R.C. Sproul, Paperback Book $18 $9
The Legacy of Luther , Hardcover Book $20 $11
Kingdom Feast with R.C. Sproul, DVD $33 $12
Kingdom Feast with R.C. Sproul, Study Guide $15 $8
Tough Questions Christians Face: 2010 National Conference , DVD $75 $15
The Heart of the Gospel: God’s Son Given for You by Sinclair Ferguson, Paperback Book $5 $3.25
Are These the Last Days? by R.C. Sproul, Paperback Book (Spanish) $4 $2.50
Does God Control Everything? by R.C. Sproul, Paperback Book $2 $1
December 2018 Tabletalk: The Promised Messiah , Magazine $3 $1
December 2015 Tabletalk: Contentment , Magazine $3 $1
June 2014 Tabletalk: Guilt by Association , Magazine $3 $1

Sale runs through 12:01 a.m.–11:59 p.m. Friday ET.

View today’s $5 Friday sale items.

Life-Giving Discourse

Here’s an excerpt from Life-Giving Discourse, David P. Murray's contribution to the August issue of Tabletalk:

A wife is crushed as her husband freezes her with the silent treatment. A husband is bruised as his wife carps and criticizes him. A child crumbles as bullies isolate and shame her. An employee falsely praises his boss. Whether it’s the silent tongue, the critical tongue, the bullying tongue, or the flattering tongue, the Bible has one description of them all: “A perverse tongue crushes the spirit” (Prov. 15:4; NIV). If I’ve just described your tongue and its fracturing power, then you need a spiritual glossectomy and transplant.

The good news is that this can be done by the work of the Holy Spirit rather than by the knife and needle of a surgeon. By God’s grace, you can learn to use your old tongue in new ways, in ways that give life rather than crush it. The same verse in Proverbs says, “A gentle tongue is a tree of life.” This “gentle tongue” (or “soothing tongue”; NIV) is literally a “healing tongue.” Let’s take a closer look at this healthy tongue.

Continue reading Life-Giving Discourse, or begin receiving Tabletalk magazine by signing up for a free 3-month trial.

For a limited time, the new TabletalkMagazine.com allows everyone to browse and read the growing library of back issues, including this month’s issue.

Teach Us to Number Our Days

“Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90: 12)

This verse is often treated as if it were a proverb that means, “Life is short, so live wisely.” But in the context of the whole psalm, it means much more than that, as we will see. It is a key part of a meditation on God and on living as the people of God.

In Hebrew, verse 12 begins with the words “to number our days.” This phrase picks up the theme of time that is so pervasive in this psalm. A reflection on time leads us to see how weak we are and how short our lives are: “You return man to dust and say, ‘Return, O children of man!’ . . . You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers... The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away” (vv. 3, 5–6, 10). Here, Psalm 90 shows its connection to the concerns of Psalm 89 about man’s frailty: “Remember how short my time is! For what vanity you have created all the children of man! What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?” (Ps. 89:47–48). Such realism about our weakness is the necessary foundation of any true wisdom. “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am” (Ps. 39:4).

The shortness and weakness of human life are the fruit of sin and judgment in the world. The psalmist acknowledges that sin frankly, saying, “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence” (Ps. 90:8). He knows that his holy God visits His judgment on sinners. “For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh. . . . Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?” (vv. 9, 11). It is surely frightening to think that God’s wrath will equal all the obedience that is due to Him.

Although life is short and the wrath of God terrifying, the mercy and protection of God for His people are great. God is the home of His people: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations” (v. 1). Through all the generations of His people’s existence, reaching back all the way to creation, God has always preserved and protected His people. Even in the garden of Eden, He promised that He would redeem His own (Gen. 3:15). God remains the home of His people because He is the redeeming God.

Moses reminds us that while the life of man is frail and short, God is eternal. “Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (v. 2). Moses takes us back before God created the earth to remind us that our God is before and beyond time and this world. He has always been, and He is sufficient to Himself without us. Moses makes this point in another way in verse 4: “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” Time does not have the same meaning for God that it has for us. For us, a thousand years is a time so long that we cannot really imagine experiencing it. For God, it is no different from a very short period of time. He is eternal, above the time that He created.

This eternal God directs the course of history by His infinite power. Moses, who had seen the power of God often displayed in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, continues to pray that the majesty of God’s works would remain before the eyes of the people: “Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children” (v. 16). As God had brought suffering by His power, so Moses prays that God will send blessing: “Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil” (v. 15). If our need is to number our days by contrasting their shortness with the eternal nature of God, then our prayer to God is that He would teach us: “Teach us to number our days.” We will never learn that lesson in our own strength. We are not only ignorant if left to ourselves, but we suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18). We convince ourselves that we have a long time to live, and as long as we are healthy, we really believe that we will live forever in this body. We need a teacher, and the only teacher who can rescue us from ourselves is God.

This excerpt is adapted from Learning to Love the Psalms by W. Robert Godfrey.

Truth in Discourse

Here’s an excerpt from Truth in Discourse, David Camera's contribution to the August issue of Tabletalk:

“Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter” (Isa. 59:14). There is perhaps no clearer description of the public discourse of our day than this lament by Isaiah. When truth “stumbles,” the very fabric of our society is torn. God established the centrality of truth for His people in the ninth commandment given to Moses on Mount Sinai: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16). To properly understand and apply this word from God, we will look briefly at the context and the actual content of the commandment, and then seek to understand how we can apply the commandment as Christ’s people in light of His coming.

Continue reading Truth in Discourse, or begin receiving Tabletalk magazine by signing up for a free 3-month trial.

For a limited time, the new TabletalkMagazine.com allows everyone to browse and read the growing library of back issues, including this month’s issue.

Is God Disappointed in Our Mistakes or Disobedience?

Sin is no mere mistake. It’s a willful act of disobedience against the holy, righteous God. In this Q&A video from our 2016 National Conference, R.C. Sproul and Michael Reeves warn of the seriousness of sin. Get answers to your biblical and theological questions online as they arise at Ask.Ligonier.org.

Read the Transcript

Living Under Authority

As I read the scriptures, particularly the New Testament, there is a theme that recurs again and again regarding the Christian’s willingness to be in submission to various types of authority. Given the rebellious spirit of our age, that frightens me. It’s all too easy for us to get caught up in an attitude that will bring us into open defiance of the authority of God.

Let’s turn our attention to 1 Peter 2:11–16:

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

Peter is speaking to people who were subjected to brutal, fierce, and violent persecution—the kind of activity that can incite within us the worst possible responses, including anger, resentment, and hatred. But Peter pleads with those people who were the victims of the hatred of their culture to behave in an honorable manner before the watching world. Paul gives a similar plea time and time again that we’re to try to live at peace with all men as much as possible.

The “therefore” of verse 13 introduces a key manifestation of living honorably before the watching world. We’re to submit ourselves to the ordinances of man. Why? I find the answer startling and fascinating. The Apostle’s admonition is that we’re to submit for the Lord’s sake. But how is obedience to human ordinances done for the Lord’s sake? How does my obedience to my professors, my boss, or the government in any way benefit Christ?

To understand this, we have to understand the deeper problem that all of Scripture is dealing with—the problem of sin. At the most fundamental level, sin is an act of rebellion and disobedience to a higher law and Lawgiver. The biggest problem with the world is lawlessness. The reason people are violated, killed, and maimed in battle, the reason there are murders, robberies, and so forth is that we’re lawless. We disobey, first of all, the law of God. The root problem in all of creation is disobedience to law, defiance of authority. And the ultimate authority of the universe is God Himself.

But God delegates authority as He reigns and rules over His creation. God raises up human governments. It is God who instituted government in the first place (Rom. 13). That’s why Christians are called to honor and pray for the king, pay their taxes, and submit as much as possible to the authorities in all things—because the authorities are instituted by God. Moreover, He shares supreme authority with Christ, who said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given [by the Father] to me” (Matt. 28:18). So, no ruler in this world has any authority except that which has been delegated to him by God and by His Christ, who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Thus, disobedience to the lawful commands of earthly authorities is ultimately disobedience to God and to Christ because they ordained the governing authorities.

The world has gone crazy in lawlessness, but we’re to be different. Wherever we find ourselves under authority—and we all find ourselves submitting to various authorities—we’re to submit to that authority. Nobody in this world is autonomous. Every one of us has not just one boss, but several bosses. Everyone I know, including me, is accountable not to just one person but to all kinds of authority structures. Throw a brick through a store window, and you’ll find out quickly that you’re accountable, that you’re under authority, that there are laws to be obeyed and law enforcement officers to make sure the laws are obeyed.

Christians are free in Christ, but we aren’t to use our liberty as a license for sin, because even though on the one hand we’re free, on the other hand we remain indentured servants.

We’re bondservants to God. We’re slaves of Jesus Christ. So, even if the rest of the world is running on the track of anti-authority and anti-submissiveness, we aren’t allowed to join in. We’re called to be scrupulous to maintain order. There is such a thing as law and order that God Himself has ordained in the universe. And we’re called to bear witness to that, even by suffering through uncomfortable, inconvenient, and sometimes painful submission to the lawful rules of even those authorities who do not recognize God, for even the godless authorities have been established by God.

I think we all have experiences where we bristle and chafe under authority and under mandates with which we vehemently disagree. Let me just suggest as a matter of practical consideration that if we look to these human institutions or these human persons who are tyrannical, unfair, unjust, and all that, and we seek to submit to them individually or even institutionally, considered in and of themselves, we will find it extremely difficult to submit with any kind of good attitude. But if somehow we can look through them, look past them, look over them, and see the One whom the Father has invested with ultimate cosmic authority, namely, Christ Himself, we’ll have an easier time submitting. We’ll find help with our struggle to submit when we recognize we’re submitting ultimately to Christ, because we know He’ll never tyrannize or abuse us.

This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.

Carl Henry

How should local churches engage with their communities? From his series A Survey of Church History, W. Robert Godfrey examines the thinking of Carl Henry, a prominent Protestant leader in 1940s America.

Transcript:

In the late 1940s, a prominent Protestant leader began to argue that we really ought to revive the word “evangelical.” That leader was Carl Henry, a man who would have a very profound impact on conservative American Protestantism for a number of decades. He wrote in 1947 a book called The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Notice he still is using the phrase “fundamentalist” to describe himself. He is not embarrassed, but he says in this book, "I recognize now that the word 'fundamentalist' has taken on so negative connotations and maybe some of that negativity is deserved." He said, "It seems to me that we as fundamentalists have become too withdrawn from the nation, from the general cultural development of the period in which we live. We need to be more engaged." Secondly, he said, "I think we have become too individualistic in our approach to Christianity. We have so stressed the importance of individual conversion that we haven't really thought enough about the church and about the community of Christians." Thirdly, he said, "We have almost entirely backed away from concern about social issues and just talked about private morality." We talked in the previous series about how many social issues were addressed in rather progressive ways by conservative Protestants in the 19th century. As we come into the 20th century, there continued to be social concern early in the century. The last great battle was for prohibition; that was the great conservative Protestant cause. "If we can only get rid of demon rum, we will remake the country." It didn't work out so well, as it turned out, but that was a great moral crusade. It was a moral crusade not just in the name of individual piety, but it was a crusade in the name of social improvement for the poor who were spending too much on alcohol and so forth. Henry is saying we need to recapture some of that social vision as well as a church vision and engage with the world around us.

Final Day: Save 50% on 60+ Teaching Series

Video teaching series from R.C. Sproul and other gifted teachers help you grow in your faith and apply the truth of God’s Word to every aspect of life. Today is your last day to save 50% on select teaching series.

As our resource library continues to expand, so can yours. Each series is carefully prepared to help you understand and apply important truths from the Bible, theology, church history, the Christian life, or worldview and culture. Save 50% on trusted teaching today so you can keep it forever.

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What Is a Biblical Church?

What constitutes a biblical church? From one of our Ask Ligonier events, Derek Thomas sets forth several classic marks of a true church that are derived from principles in God’s Word.

Do you have a biblical or theological question? We invite you to ask Ligonier.

Read the Transcript

What's the Answer to the Modern Day Church?

We now stand in the twenty-first century, almost five hundred years removed from John Calvin's time, but we find ourselves in an equally critical hour of redemptive history. As the organized church was spiritually bankrupt at the outset of Calvin's day, so it is again in our time. Certainly, to judge by outward appearances, the evangelical church in this hour seems to be flourishing. Megachurches are springing up everywhere. Christian contemporary music and publishing houses seem to be booming. Men's rallies are packing large coliseums. Christian political groups are heard all the way to the White House. Yet the evangelical church is largely a whitewashed tomb. Tragically, her outward facade masks her true internal condition.

"We Want Again Calvins!"

What are we to do? We must do what Calvin and the Reformers did so long ago. There are no new remedies for old problems. We must come back to old paths. We must capture the centrality and pungency of biblical preaching once again. There must be a decisive return to preaching that is Word-driven, God-exalting, Christ-centered, and Spirit-empowered. We desperately need a new generation of expositors, men cut from the same bolt of cloth as Calvin. Pastors marked by compassion, humility, and kindness must once again "preach the Word." In short, we need Calvins again to stand in pulpits and boldly proclaim the Word of God.

Charles H. Spurgeon shall have the final word here. This great man witnessed firsthand the decline of dynamic preaching and issued this plea:

We want again Luthers, Calvins, Bunyans, Whitefields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our foemen's ears. We have dire need of such. Whence will they come to us? They are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the church, and will come in due time. He has power to give us back again a golden age of preachers, and when the good old truth is once more preached by men whose lips are touched as with a live coal from off the altar, this shall be the instrument in the hand of the Spirit for bringing about a great and thorough revival of religion in the land...

I do not look for any other means of converting men beyond the simple preaching of the gospel and the opening of men's ears to hear it. The moment the church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her. It has been through the ministry that the Lord has always been pleased to revive and bless His churches.

May Spurgeon's heartfelt prayer be answered once again in this day. We do want Calvins again. We must have Calvins again. And, by God's grace, we shall see them raised up again in this hour. May the Head of the church give us again an army of biblical expositors, men of God sold out for a new reformation.

This excerpt is adapted from The Expository Genius of John Calvin by Steven Lawson.