Chris Larson: Welcome. Let’s just allow
the folks that are here to be able to get to know you a little bit better. And one of
the things that is always a fascinating discussion is just to find out your favorite three books.
If you were to say your top three books, let’s just start with that type of a question, and
we’ll start with the church historian down at the end. Robert Godfrey: The Bible. Chris Larson: That was the Sunday School answer. Robert Godfrey: Calvin’s Institutes of the
Christian Religion, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Sinclair Ferguson: He never reads Dostoyevsky. Robert Godfrey: No Sinclair Ferguson: Calvin’s Institutes.
John Owen, volume 2, on Communion with God, and Young’s Concordance. [laughter] It’s
got all of the Bible in it, but it challenges your memory to see if you can put it back
together again. So it’s great for a deserted island. Steve Lawson: I would say the three books
that have most marked my life would be Thomas Watson’s Body of Divinity, which was the
first book that Lloyd-Jones printed to begin Banner of Truth. Reading Watson is just so
easy to read. Second, Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray had a very defining effect on
me that to hold to Calvinistic doctrine does not mean that you’re not evangelistic, but
that to hold to high doctrine would mean that we have great freedom to passionately proclaim
the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I would even add with that, reading Spurgeon’s sermons,
I have all, whatever it is 63 volumes of Spurgeon’s sermons, and reading those sermons had an
extraordinary effect upon my life – what a sermon looks like, the headings, introduction
and passionate pleading for sinners to come to Christ. And then I would say the last,
and it’s the only book that I’ve read, you know, three times, which is Whitefield’s
biography by Arnold Dallimore. It’s a two volume, and it just makes you want to get
on a horse and ride, and to go into downtown Philadelphia or New York, and say, “I’ve
come here today to talk to you about your soul and to preach the gospel.” So those
books have had the most defining effect on me. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: Even though I’ve had the
most amount of time, I’m least confident about what books would go on this list. I’ve
got one, and I’ve got two. It’s the third one that’s a little more difficult. I think
I’m going to borrow the Iain Murray suggestion, and have as my third favorite, Evangelicalism
Divided. As I grew up in the evangelical world witnessing a fair amount of history, to go
back and read what just preceded my awareness was very, very helpful. The second is probably
the most risky one to say out loud, but I will. It’s C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.
There are certainly some troubling thoughts in there, mostly reflections of George MacDonald
unfortunately, but there’s an awful lot of insights. It’s like Lewis in general,
just absolute brilliance next to – that’s right, he’s not a professional theologian.
And then number one, it’s very easy, Luther’s Bondage of the Will. You heard my father talk
about the existential identity with Luther. I have the same affinity for Luther, and that
particular book combines that Luther passion with very helpful and precise theology. So,
that would be my number one. Chris Larson: Reflecting back on Dr. Sproul’s
The Holiness of God, and it’s easy for us to talk about him, since he’s not here,
right? What about his teaching… Steve Lawson: No, he’s here. He’s here.
Trust me. Chris Larson: What about that book and that
teaching has informed just your understanding of Scripture and the emphases that you might
try and bring, that thread of the holiness of God, God’s character, the majesty of
God, as he mentioned it today with Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and that great train of godly
men throughout history? How has that understanding of God shaped your own ministry in your own
sphere? R.C. Sproul Jr.: I’ll start first, since
I was last last time. Listening to my father earlier today recounting – and I’ve heard
the story before of his conversion and those weeks afterwards, and the wrestling and the
realizing that God plays for keeps. Because I’m his son, I didn’t have that same experience.
I didn’t grow up in a liberal church. I grew up in a church where the gospel was preached,
and so I didn’t have that conversion per se, but there was in reading that book for
me a very much, an awakening, almost a baptistic thing, like I can’t inherit this. I have
to own this, because God’s not going to take me by looking at my birth certificate.
He’s a little too holy for that. And so it became this awareness that God is who He
is, not who I want Him to be. That also goes to another story of my father’s about when
he was in seminary and doing some student preaching, he had a little three by five card
that he put on his desk where he did his sermon preparation, and he wrote on that card, “Your
duty is to preach and to believe what the Bible teaches, not what you want it to teach.”
And that sort of posture where the Christian faith is not a commodity that I can mold and
shape, but I’m to be submissive to it, is something that just breathes through the whole
of that book and has helped influence me. Steve Lawson: That book had a profound influence
on my life, Chris. And for me as I read that book, and after I read that book, it’s what
God used in my life. As I was considering where I would pursue my next degree, my thought
was, wherever this man is teaching, if it were possible, I would like to study under
this man. And so having read the holiness of God, that’s why I enrolled in Reformed
Theological Seminary in Jackson, where Dr. Sproul was teaching at the time, just so I
could have a first hand encounter with whoever it is that has written this book. And at that
point, I had not heard a tape nor seen a video, but that book literally grabbed me by the
lapels and drew me up in my seat. Several things about it, number one, just the definition
of holiness, as he makes the distinction, the primary meaning of kadosh to be transcendent,
majestic, high and elevated and lifted up, and then the secondary meaning being moral
purity and without blemish. And I had always just associated it with the secondary meaning
of moral perfection, and that just opened up my understanding even more. I think as
he talked in there about the threefold repetition of holy, holy, holy. Taking that to the superlative
degree was just eye opening. The twofold names for God – Yahweh and Adonai. As he explained,
you know, President – I think it was Reagan – and the difference between the man and
the office and the position and the attribute of God. All of that, for me at that time in
my life was so enlightening as to who God is. Now, the first chapter of that book, where
he runs back to his dorm room and just falls on his knees just conveying a sense of being
in awe over who God is and a sense of astonishment and amazement regarding who God is. That chapter
in there on Luther’s insanity, it’s just a blockbuster chapter. And just the whole
book just sits up and walks. It has legs. It takes you by the hand. It takes you somewhere,
closer to God but yet lower before God. So I think all of those aspects, and I’m sure
more if I had time to think about it. Just… It was written in 1985, is that correct? So
how many… is that 25 years ago, I mean, I didn’t know you were going to ask that,
and it’s been a couple years since I’ve even looked at it. But I don’t know that
I even need to because having read it that first time, it just became etched in my mind,
in my psyche regarding who God is, and all of it really just being a setting forth of
Scripture. It was letting the Bible speak out of that text, out of that passage, and
with great reverence and highest regard for who God is and an understanding of a healthy,
holy fear of God that should govern our hearts. So I can’t think of anything greater that
could be a stewardship passed down to a reader of a book than to draw you up closer to God
like that. So for me, it’s almost like that book sits on my shoulder and continues to,
you know, speak into my ear and guide just in ministry and in life. Sinclair Ferguson: I was struck by what R.C.
said this afternoon because, you know, there are essential truths of the gospel that just
get covered over. And they get so covered over that the church fails to recognize that
they’re even there. I remember the editor of Hodder & Stoughton, the publishing company
in the United Kingdom, telling me I think about 1982, just before The Holiness of God,
he asked me to guess how many copies of J. I. Packer’s book, Knowing God, they had
published as their first print run. You know, I made a guess, and he said… It wasn’t
the number… the number surprised me. It was what he then said because he was a man
who had his finger on the pulse of evangelicalism, which was where books were selling in that
period. He said, “Well, we published 2,000 copies.” And then he said, “We weren’t
sure we could sell them because we didn’t know whether there were 2,000 evangelicals
in the United Kingdom who were really interested in knowing God.” And you know, that is,
that’s shocking to us sitting here, but that actually is where the evangelical world
by and large was in the 1970s and into the 1980s, and that was in a sense even more densely
true of the holiness of God. And so you know, I think one of the things we’re all thankful
for is the way, not only the way God shaped R.C. to be able to write such a book, but
that – and this is actually more important, I think – that God was working among Christian
people to make them receptive to the recovery of that truth, because it’s so reminiscent
of Luther saying to Erasmus, “Your God is too manlike, Erasmus.” And that really is
just absolutely a fundamental problem, the… our ability to make God in our own image.
And you know, the recovery of the holiness of God, plus I think it is just such an obvious
truth of Scripture that you can never really discover the depth of your own depravity without
discovering the intensity of God’s holiness. And it’s not possible to taste the sweetness
or riches of grace without in an ongoing way tasting the depth of your depravity. And these
three things are like a… they’re like a triangle that the Christian life simply
revolves around. God is holy. I am sinful. God is gracious. And as God is gracious to
me, I plumb the depths of His holiness more and more, I feel the depths of my sinfulness
more and more, I wonder more and more about the intensity of His grace. And it’s really
hard to believe now, and perhaps because, you know, some of us come from a kind of ancient
Reformed tradition rather than a contemporary evangelical tradition, but the impact of Holiness
of God, and one thinks of some other books that have come out in the last quarter of
a century that have reached way beyond the context that in a sense the authors were originally
writing for, is really a wonderful evidence of sensitivity to what God has been doing
in the world. Robert Godfrey: Well, I’m here as the non-professional
theologian as my book choice clearly demonstrated, and I think as the historian looking at R.C.
and his impact, one of the things that strikes me in the book on the holiness of God but
in his ministry generally is how impressive it is that a man of such learning of really
first rate academic mind is able to take all of that learning that by the grace of God
he’s been able to accumulate and communicate it so clearly and powerfully to the church
as a whole. I think in many ways only the very greatest amongst church leaders have
been able to do that. Luther could do that. He was not only a tremendously insightful
theologian, but he was an arresting preacher. Calvin was the same, not quite as arresting
as Luther, but maybe longer lasting. But this is a really amazing gift, to have first class
understanding and insight and then be able to communicate that more broadly. I remember
a story, and this is oral history, and oral history is never entirely reliable, so R.C.,
Jr. can correct me if I’ve got this wrong. But I first met R.C. when I was a young seminarian
and he was a young college professor at Gordon College. And one of the things he did one
year in his freshman theology class was to hand out the syllabus, and the syllabus said
there would be three papers due, and he gave the dates for the three papers to be due.
Probably several of you have heard this story before. And he said that if you got the paper
in late, you’d fail. So the first date comes, and five people are late. And he says, “Alright,
I’ll take the papers late.” And then the second date arrives, and 20 people are late,
and he says, “Alright, I’ll take the papers late.” And then the third date arrives,
and about 50 people have their papers late, and he said, “You fail.” And of course,
the student reaction was that’s not fair. And he says, “It’s precisely fair. It’s
precisely just. And now you know what it’s like to live under a regime of justice.”
And I bet those students never forgot that lesson about what is really fair and what
is really just and what is really gracious. Sinclair Ferguson: [non-distinguishable comment] Robert Godfrey: I was not one of those students.
But as a non-professional theologian, it made quite an impact, and I think that’s one
of the real remarkable characteristics of R.C.’s teaching ministry. Sinclair Ferguson: What’s a non-professional
theologian? Robert Godfrey: I don’t get paid for it. Steve Lawson: I’m good for nothing, so….
Just to add one other thing, what R.C. said today I think is one lasting effect of The
Holiness of God, the book, which is his statement that theology proper really becomes the defining
interpreter and paradigm through which we see the other areas of theology. After reading
that book, it really had that effect on me long before I heard R.C. make that statement.
It affected my Christian worldview. It affected how I saw Christology, harmatology, soteriology.
It just affected how I saw everything. It really became the lens, the defining lens
by which to see everything through the grid of the holiness of God. And so I think that
book really provided for me from pages of Scripture, not the book itself but the Scripture
that the book spoke of, just an overarching way to see all of theology and to see all
of life. Chris Larson: Dr. Lawson, your discussion
today on “The War on the Word,” considering those comments about how Satan comes along
and twists the Word of God, how can we discern between Satan’s work of twisting, and then
also just our own misunderstanding of Scripture based on the noetic effects of sin? How do
we twist Scripture ourselves, and can we discern the difference between the voice of Satan
and just our own poor understanding? Steve Lawson: Yeah, that’s a very good question.
I would say that Satan corrupts the Word of God at the most strategic and essential parts
that are non-negotiable, that he attempts to corrupt – one, the nature of Scripture
itself. And to miss that is more than just I have a misunderstanding here. The Bible
claims to be the Word of God, and for one to miss that is to miss what is so glaring.
Some 38 hundred times, there is “Thus says the Lord,” or its equivalent. The Bible,
in the Scripture the Bible claims to be this, and so for someone to go astray at that point,
it’s way beyond just a misunderstanding. It’s a blatant denial of what the Scripture
claims of itself. I would move from that to the Trinity, that we are a Trinitarian faith,
and a departure from that is really a denial of Christianity at its most essential point.
So any denial of the Trinity I think is deeply rooted in Satan’s corrupting of minds. And
specifically, the person and work of Christ and as that affects the gospel itself is Satan’s
beachhead. Every cult goes astray at this point on the person and work of Christ, the
humanity and the deity of Christ. And every cult goes astray at the point of the triunity
of God. And so I think Satan is… is… is diabolically brilliant and is strategic and
so attacks those areas. And I would also then say the gospel itself, salvation by grace
alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, he is continually attacking and trying to
deceive minds into trusting another gospel, which Paul says in Galatians 1, “Let him
be accursed.” I think our misunderstanding of Scripture is in what I would call more
secondary issues of theology. I think everything is important in the Bible. So in that sense,
nothing is any less inspired. But where there can be differences among believers, among
Christians, and even in our own understanding perhaps there is a growth in understanding
in peripheral, more secondary issues. In other words, you can be a Christian and… and miss
the point at a particular point. I mean, I was talking with Sinclair at breakfast this
morning about…, I mean, give me your thoughts on women and head coverings, 1 Corinthians
11. Well, that’s a very difficult passage to wade through. And I told him I had just
been in a church this past Sunday evening where all of the ladies wore a head covering.
At our church all the ladies do not wear a head covering. And so we just talked about
that. I think that that is more of our, as believers, trying to understand what Scripture
is saying in that passage, and there is room for disagreement in the body of Christ. But
Satan is attacking at those areas that define what Christianity actually is and is attacking
not the symbol but the substance, the substance of the Gospel, the substance of what that
head covering would represent, the headship of Christ and being under that headship. So
his attack is not at the point of the symbol but at the point of the substance of what
it represents. So that would just be my first, initial answer at that. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: …weigh in a little bit.
If I understand the question correctly, I’m not sure that it particularly matters. That
is, if every Christian is engaged in a war for their sanctification, and their enemies
are the world, the flesh, and the devil, you know, which one of those enemies’ names
is stamped on the bomb that blew up our sanctification? It doesn’t really matter too terribly much.
The issue is, are we making progress? And how do we make progress? And so I don’t…
I don’t worry about was that me or was that the devil. I need to worry about, am I progressing
or am I regressing? And… but in terms of how to make sure of that, I think what you
said gets very close to the important issues. Any time you are diminishing the scope and
reality of your sin – that could be worldliness, that can be your flesh, that can be the devil
– more importantly, any time you’re diminishing the power of the gospel to deal with your
sin, that might be a hint that’s the devil because one of his names is the accuser, right?
But again, it doesn’t really matter. What we need to do is hold onto, as bad as I am,
Jesus is better. As sinful as I am, Jesus… the power of the gospel is greater than my
sin, as deep and profound as that might be. And when you hold onto those things, then
I think you do make the progress in your sanctification. Robert Godfrey: The other thing I think is
really crucial here is that Christ has called us to be part of His church, and so it’s
in the context of the church that we can weigh whether we’re really understanding the Word
or rather we’re misunderstanding it. You need to be a part of a church that isn’t
a false church dedicated to rejecting and undermining the Word of God. That’s got
to be the very first criteria by which you evaluate a congregation. Does this congregation
stand on and for the Word of God written? And then in the context of that congregation
to really be studying that Word of God with other believers, so that their insight, as
well as particularly the insights of the minister and the elders that God has placed over you,
can really help insure that you are understanding the Word correctly and making progress. Now,
I don’t know about you, maybe it’s just the circles in which I run, but I have met
lots of people who say, “I only want to believe what the Bible says,” but they’ve
never changed their mind about anything, and they know for sure what the Bible actually
says. So they say the right words. They only want to believe the Bible, but in fact, they
only want to believe themselves. And we all really have to resist that as much as humanly
possible. And I think the church is a great place for that to happen, so that we are constantly
talking about, what does the Word really say? And realize that we have to listen to others,
not just to the still small voice in our own head. Sinclair Ferguson: I’ll add a couple of
things here. One is that the… I think the really important, overarching thing is that
we do actually get to know our Bibles really well, especially when I think to a certain
extent, because you know in some ways, I still feel somewhat of an outsider to American evangelicalism.
But we, you know, we want to know the things that are going to do us harm, but you know,
in the old days when bank tellers counted the money. You know, everyone who lived in
that generation told me the way they were taught to be able to tell counterfeit money
was because when they started they were given good money, and they counted it again and
again and again and again and again, and it was by their intimate knowledge of the good
money that they were able to tell the counterfeit. And I think for some Christians, there’s
a tendency to say, “Just tell me where things can go wrong.” Well, that’s endless. And
it’s also in a sense immature because what we want for our Christians is for them so
to learn the good money of the gospel, that they will be able to at least sense the counterfeit
when they see it. So that’s one thing. The second thing is, I’ve always been struck,
the quirky side of me has been struck – he thinks that’s most of me – the quirky
side of me has been struck by Paul saying about Satan, “We are not ignorant of his
stratagems,” or however translated differently. And you know, when I’ve read that passage,
I’ve always wanted somebody in the congregation to stand up and say, “I think we are. Tell
us what they are.” And it seems to me in Scripture that Satan is not a creator. He’s
a creature, and he has a limited number of devices, stratagems that he keeps using again
and again. And one very simple, healthy exercise that any Christian can do is just to look
through, for example, the New Testament letters, asking the question, in what way is Satan
seeking to deceive this group of Christians and to hinder the advance of the gospel among
them? You can easily go through Romans, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, etc., and
there are some very dominant themes there of the ways in which people are being unbalanced
or deceived or hindered. And you just need a little notebook to familiarize yourself
and keep a watch on those dimensions particularly. And watch out for them when they appear in
the world because one of the things it will teach you is that often false teaching begins
not by something that is denied, but by the really central things not being said. You
know, so it may be a marvelous portrayal of Jesus in the gospels, but there’s no cross,
there’s no atonement. And as you become sensitive to Scripture, you think, well, this
is lovely, but it’s not the Christian gospel. Chris Larson: Coming back to you, Dr. Ferguson,
in terms of your lecture today. Thank you for drawing out that distinction between the
trees and the garden, the tree of life and then the tree on which Christ was crucified.
Could you expand that a little bit further and maybe the other gentlemen can also chime
in on that? It just seemed to be a very helpful thread in being able to see Christ as the
fulfillment of all that went wrong. Sinclair Ferguson: Yeah, I mean, to use the
language of trees is somewhat homiletic, in the sense that the New Testament doesn’t
make much of the fact that there is a connectedness between the tree in the Garden of Eden and
the tree on which Christ was crucified, except that I think woven into it in a manner more
like an echo than a statement, we do have man coming to the tree and the curse falling
upon him because of what happens at the tree. And there is inbuilt into the Old Testament
law that the man who hangs on a tree is accursed of God. And Paul picks that up, doesn’t
he, in Galatians 3:13. To say quite specifically, it’s not accidental that Jesus was not stoned
to death. There is a huge divine significance in the manner in which He died. Now, you know,
that… that’s another exposition of why it is that He dies by crucifixion and not
by any other way. And I think there are… there are at least a number of answers you
can give to that question without exhausting the answer. But that parallel then is rooted
in the notion of Paul in Romans 5:12 to 21. I think it lies behind Philippians 2:5 to
11, that the first Adam is disobedient. The Second Adam is obedient. The first Adam grasps
at equality with God. The Second Adam, who possesses equality of God, doesn’t count
it as a thing to be made a special consideration for Himself but humbles Himself, takes the
form of a servant, and being found in human form, He dies, and not just dies, but specifically
dies the death of the cross. And I don’t know when I first started thinking about this,
but the fact that Jesus… I think I felt that many…. Well, I’ll tell where I began
to think about it was. I began to think that many commentators glossed over what Luke says
about the Lord Jesus at the end of Luke, chapter 2, when he says… well, two things. One,
is the commentators that I’ve read have no idea what to make of Jesus saying to His
parents, “You should have known I was in the temple.” If I had said that to my parents
when I was 12 years old, “You should have known I was on the golf course,” I wouldn’t
have been on the golf course for quite a while. And so there is something happening there
that I think the commentators don’t really get hold of, which is I personally think Jesus
was saying to Mary and Joseph, “It was you that taught me to be here. I was actually
being obedient to you. It was you that taught me Psalm 27, inquiring in the temple of the
Lord. I sat on your knee when you taught me to recite Psalm 27.” But then He goes home,
and He’s obedient to them, even though they’re muddleheaded, which is so impressive. But
then Luke says that He… He went down, and He was obedient to them, and He increased
in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. And I think we have a tendency
to read that, “He grew in stature and in favor with man.” But it says He actually
grew in wisdom. So He had more wisdom when He was 20, than He had when He was 12. That’s
what it means, which really I think for me, and I can tell you the night this happened
to me, and the person who helped me was Professor John Murray. I was an 18-year-old boy, sitting
in a room, listening to him, and he mentioned that text, and just in one of those magic
moments in life, I felt as though he was coming up to where I was sitting. It was in an old
paneled room in Marischal College in Aberdeen in February of 1967. And it was as though
he took my hand and took me to the back wall and said, “Sonny boy, you think this is
a paneled wall, but one of these panels has a handle on it, and I’m going to take you
through that door, and from now on you’re going to discover things that you never imagined
were part of the Christian gospel.” And so when that text dawned on me, that He not
only increased in wisdom but in favor with God, that has to mean He was more in favor
with His heavenly Father in His humanity as the divine person when He was 30 than He was
when He was 12, when He was 33 than He was when He was 30. And there’s some of my congregation
here, and they know that I quite often say, as our Lord was crying on the cross, “My
God, why have You forsaken Me?” His Father was quietly singing, “My Jesus, I love Thee.
If ever I loved Thee, My Jesus ‘tis now.” And He says, doesn’t He, in John 10, “The
reason My Father loves Me is because I lay down My life.” So all of that is a long
way, and I apologize to the brothers for taking the long way around to say that it’s the
reality of His humanity in its holiness that makes the prospect of the cross. It’s not
the suffering at the ordinary level. You think of the saints who have died singing. It’s
the desolation to which His whole being is antithetical. And then when you think about
that as being as it were the last temptation of the Christ, I think it does then shed light
on the first Adam and what is happening there, so that there’s really… there’s a direct
antithesis – disobedience, obedience; one tree, another tree; taking what you want instead
of what God says, taking what God says instead of what with all your soul you want. You want
never to be alienated from the heavenly Father, but that’s what He chooses in obedience.
He is obedient, even to the death of the cross. So that’s a beginning of something. Steve Lawson: Can I ask Sinclair a question? Sinclair Ferguson: No. May I ask Sinclair
a question? [laughter] I need to say that could sound terribly rude, but we dined together
last night, and he asked, “Can I have something?” And then he changed it, “May I have something?”
to the waitress. Steve Lawson: Yes, that was rude. [laughter]
No, my question is, in what way did Jesus increase in favor with God? Sinclair Ferguson: He was a real… Well,
He was a real 12-year-old, and so He didn’t have the capacity of a 20-year-old. He wasn’t
tested as a 12-year-old the way He was in the wilderness. I think He wasn’t even tested
in the wilderness the way he was in Gethsemane. So it’s testing meeting capacity, creating
greater capacity within His humanity, which is, you know, is a great theme in Hebrews.
He learned obedience through the things that He suffered. And you know, so it’s really…
it’s really just the way the New Testament spells out this is true humanity. It’s not
humanity transformed by an infusion of deity, which is, you know, what the fathers of the
church – I would defer to my professional church historian. He gets paid for church
history, to which he has contributed in the last 65 years, but he’s paid for all of
it. But the fathers of the church want to emphasis that though the humanity and deity
of Christ are united in the one person, they don’t slide over into each other. So there’s
no mixture or confusion of the two natures because they realized if you actually work
that through, then you end up with a person who isn’t actually able to be a second man
and the last Adam because you’re not really a man at all. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: I think one of the strategies
of the devil is to assault a cardinal doctrine so that we get so focused on answering that
assault that we miss the fullness of the Biblical story. I don’t think it’s possible to
be too concerned with the legal aspects of our justification. I do think that we’re
insufficiently concerned with Jesus as the Second Adam fulfilling all that the first
Adam was called to fulfill. So that when we have Romans 5 and we get that specific justification
kind of equation, I think also because we have sort of pinched modernist minds, we keep
that in its box, and we don’t want to let the metaphor breathe. But it’s so wonderful
to hear you let the metaphor breathe, Dr. Ferguson. I think we need to plan more of
this for the future. One of my favorite ways to see this is to compare the temptation of
Jesus and the temptation of Eve, like you talked about this morning that… that the
first thing that Satan says to Jesus is, “If you are the Son of God…” The last thing
Jesus heard before he said that was the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased.” So it’s the same kind of assault. And I think also again on the
technical, theological side to go to your question, if we could answer what Sinclair
is talking about, about what it means to grow in favor with God, we would at the same time
answer the sticky question of what is the nature of Adam’s probation status. When
would he have been invited to partake of the tree of life? What would that mean? You know,
was he innocent? Was he merely not positively righteous? All those kinds of technical things
that people like to wrestle over. I think there’s a deep connection between those
two questions. Chris Larson: Following it up here with a
question, did God suffer on the cross? Robert Godfrey: No. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: I’m with you. Chris Larson: We have two no’s. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: The creedal point is that
the humanity and the deity are united in one person without mixture or confusion. Also
the language of the creed is, “Each nature retaining its own attributes.” And one of
the things that we confess about God is His eternal blessedness. And because of that,
we would affirm that it’s impossible for God to suffer on the cross or anywhere else.
And therefore the suffering touches on His humanity. Now, some people object, but if
you say that, then how do you get the infinite value of the atonement. And the church, as
our professional historian, I think, will affirm, has affirmed that the infinite value
is because the human suffering is that human which is in union with the deity. And that’s
why it is nevertheless infinite value without God suffering. Robert Godfrey: I think we might put in as
a historical footnote, which is all historians are useful for is footnotes. There was a further
discussion of this in the history of the church under category of the communicatio idiomatum,
the communication of properties between the divine nature and the human nature. And one
of the helpful things the church fathers did say on this point is that it is legitimate
rhetorically or linguistically to apply something that strictly applies only to one nature to
the other because they are united in the person. And so the great proof text of that is in
Acts, chapter 20, although there is a textual variant there, that talks about God’s blood.
Well, we know that God doesn’t actually have blood, but the One who bled for our sins
and salvation is so truly and fully God that linguistically it’s legitimate to say that
God’s blood was spilled on the cross. But we have to recognize this as being somewhat
metaphorically, not literally in terms of the natures. If that footnote is not helpful,
then just press delete. [laughter] Sinclair Ferguson: That’s a really helpful
point. The rhetorical, you know, the fathers speak about the impassable becoming passable,
but they don’t mean that in the incarnation the Lord ceases to be the Second Person of
the Trinity, but that He assumes a nature in which He can be passable, namely a human
nature. So that when Paul says in Philippians 2, “He emptied Himself,” he goes on to
express in what sense He emptied Himself, not by losing His deity but by assuming our
humanity. So He empties Himself, not by losing something but by taking something. And as
R.C., Jr. says difficult though it is for us, we need to keep these two natures of Christ
distinct in our thinking, united in the one person, but as we watch Him, we see Him experiencing
the full reality of our humanity. And it’s true and full humanity. It’s not added to
by a mixture of deity, and it’s not diminished in any sense be a mixture of deity. Chris Larson: A question came along relating
to the gospel. How does it help us when we feel enslaved to sin in our Christian walk?
How does the gospel help us when we feel enslaved to sin in our Christian walk? R.C. Sproul, Jr.: One of those other strategies
that I like to speak about of the devil that comes up all the time is what I call the diabolical
art of simultaneous translation, where we read our Bibles, and our minds see the words,
but we turn them into something safe and reasonable. I’ll be talking a little bit more about
this tomorrow in my breakout session on my book Believing God. But one of the ways that
we do this is we come to this promise, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” Those are the actual
words, and then what we hear is, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins.” And we stop there. But the promise of the gospel is not merely
– and again, this goes to focusing on the justification issue, and we can’t overemphasize
that – but it’s not merely that our sins are forgiven. The good news is that we are
being made into the image of Christ. And the promise is that if He’s begun this work
in us, He will be faithful to carry it until the day of Christ Jesus. So the good news
isn’t merely you’re square with God now, and you better stay good because, you know,
He’s not going to come back and do this again. The good news is our past sins, our
present sins, our future sins, they are not only forgiven, but we are being cleansed.
This is the work of Christ. This also goes again to the Adam and Eve imagery because
in Ephesians, chapter 5, we see the parallel between a husband and a wife and Jesus and
His bride, and Jesus is said to be about the business of washing His bride. That’s me.
That’s what Jesus is doing now. He’s cleansing me from all unrighteousness. It’s a big
job. I know. It’s a big, big job. And while He’s doing it, the devil’s there beside
us saying, “Oh, you’re so filthy. You’re filthy. You’re filthy.” And you have to
say, “Yes, I am. Jesus is cleansing me.” And so don’t understand the gospel so narrowly
that you miss the promises of God. This is what Jesus came to do. And so it’s a glorious
gospel that doesn’t stop, so just keep listening to it. Steve Lawson: You know, I would add Romans
12:1 and 2, you know, “Therefore by the mercies of God,” and the truths of the gospel
that Paul has already laid out, beginning in eternity past and going through the work
of Christ upon the cross. “God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us,” the act of justification, and all of our eternal security
in chapter 8, God’s sovereign grace in chapter 9, and just carrying all forward, and then
Paul in that climactic moment then, because of the mercies of the gospel, appeals to us
to present our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice. And so it is just… it is illogical.
It is… It is inconsistent. It’s inconceivable for me to continue to present my body to sin
when I have been set free by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, their work together.
And then, you know, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind.” You know, obviously that that is an important key, the renewing of
my mind, because as my mind goes, my affections and then my will follow. And I think of that
text in relationship to the question, that contemplating and digging deep into all that
God has done for us in the gospel should have a revolutionary effect on us. And then the
first imperative of Romans in Romans 6:13, that we are to reckon our bodies to be dead
to sin, alive unto God, and to act upon what we know to be true, is of great importance.
I know Sinclair just finished preaching through the book of Romans and could add much to Romans
12:1 and 2 as it relates to sanctification. But that’s what jumps to the forefront of
my mind. Sinclair Ferguson: I think it’s really helpful
too – and Steve just touched on this at the end in Romans 6 – to remember that we
are justified by grace alone through faith alone, but the faith by which we are justified
is also the faith that unites us to Christ. And what Paul is saying, for example in Romans
6, and I think very wonderfully in Colossians 3, is that the faith that unites us to Christ,
brings us really into a new order of reality altogether, in which the dominion of sin over
our lives has once and for all been broken. And why we need to keep hearing the gospel
is because we actually doubt what the gospel says. And when we look in, we see all kinds
of evidence that the presence of sin is still very, very real. And we need to learn to distinguish
between the fact that the dominion of sin has been broken, although the presence of
sin remains until the day when the presence of sin is finally banished from our lives.
So that there is just an ongoing struggle in the Christian life over indwelling sin,
but the only way to make advance in that struggle is the recognition that its dominion has been
broken, even although its presence continues. And I suppose, you know, many… many of us
have used the illustration that Oscar Cullmann made famous in his book Christ and Time describing
the fact that… using the illustration from the end of World War II that there… there
was… there was a D-Day in the conflict, but after that D-Day, there were many, many
battles being fought before V-E Day or V-J Day, that lives were lost, that blood was
let, but there was no going back on the fact that the victory, decisive victory had been
won, the neck of the enemy force had been broken. And so the New Testament uses the
language of the dominion of sin being broken, the power of Satan actually being broken,
but at the same time recognizes that we are in that period between D-Day and V-Day, and
while we’re in that period, we will go through many struggles in our Christian life until
glory. But that notion of union with Christ, the breaking of the dominion of sin, that
gives us the ability to wrestle against the presence of sin until the day when the very
presence of sin is banished from us. I think it’s just very helpful for us. Robert Godfrey: I would just say that the
language of Scripture reminds us that we do sometimes feel most intensely these sorts
of struggles and battles with sin and do in fact feel that we’re still enslaved to sin.
I think you can find some of that in Psalm 51, and depending on how you read it, I think
you find it in Romans 7. And the question was almost in the very language of the crying
soul in Romans 7, and where that crying soul, who I believe is a Christian, comes to is
that although he feels wretched and enslaved in himself, he still looks away to the work
of Christ. “Who will deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ.” It’s in the work of Jesus Christ that we have hope, that we do have
deliverance. And then he goes on to talk about the power and work of the Holy Spirit within
us. And that’s critical as well, as R.C., Jr. was saying. We are not just forgiven.
We are also renewed. And the Spirit is at work powerfully to increasingly help us to
see that we’re not enslaved to sin, but that we can more and more experience liberation
in Christ. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: I also like to remind people
that one of the paradoxes of sanctification is the less dirty you are, the more aware
of how dirty you are. It is like if you fell in a mud puddle and you had glasses, you wouldn’t
know how dirty you were until your glasses started to get a little bit clean so you could
see. And that’s really where we are. The further away from sin we get the closer it
looks, and that can be discouraging until you realize that, and then it can actually
be somewhat encouraging. The fact that you’re aware of your sin is a good sign that the
Spirit is at work in you. Chris Larson: Have there been any points in
your own Christian walk where you’ve struggled with assurance of salvation? R.C. Sproul, Jr.: Yeah, we’re all worried
about you, Bob. [laughter] Sinclair Ferguson: You’re the church historian. Robert Godfrey: I did at the very beginning
of my Christian life. I talk about it in my little book that I’m giving an optional
seminar on that you’ll all want to attend. But I, yeah, I really as a junior in high
school heard the gospel. I believed that I was a sinner and I believed that Jesus was
the Savior of sinners, but I wasn’t really sure if I believed enough that I would be
saved. And I wrestled with that for months. And it was really the Reformation that helped
me through that. I had lots of good evangelical friends who kept saying, “Well, do you have
a personal relationship with Jesus?” And that’s not a bad question, but as a high
school kid, I didn’t know what that meant, you know. He doesn’t sit in my living room.
I don’t ask Him questions. We don’t talk back and forth in the way that every other
sort of personal relationship I knew anything about related. But as I learned more of the
language of the Reformation, the question was, “Do you believe the promises of God?”
And that’s sort of how I came to peace. You know, if I keep saying, I’d like to
believe, but I’m not sure I believe enough. Jesus says, “Come,” but I don’t know
if I’ve really come, then I’m really in the end of the day saying He’s a liar. And
that was sort of the path by which I came to some peace in the matter. Sinclair Ferguson: Yes, for quite a long time
actually, and I think like Bob, although I didn’t discover about the Reformation theology
as early as Bob did. Robert Godfrey: I was closer to the Reformation
than you were. Sinclair Ferguson: He was by a few years.
I think I stumbled on the notion that what I needed to do was to hold onto the promises
of God. I remember for months on end in prayer, holding onto God’s promise in James, you
know, “Draw near to Me, and I will draw near to you.” Whatever you feel, it’s
true. It doesn’t matter what you feel, Ferguson, God’s Word is true. And the day will dawn
when you know experientially that it is really true. I think another thing, and I’ve noticed
this with quite a lot of people. You know, I mean I believe that there is a certain kind
of assurance built into faith because you are trusting Christ as Savior, and there is
a kind of assurance of Him. But then what we often think of as assurance has got a good
deal to do with the way we think about ourselves in relationship to Christ. And that’s not
the same thing as the way we are in relationship to Christ. There are lots of Christians who
think they are under the dominion of sin, and that’s how they feel. But the Scriptures
say they’re not under the dominion of sin, so they aren’t under the dominion of sin.
And I was just the kind of person who I wouldn’t have assurance about anything very much, and
therefore, I think just as a psychological being, and we are psychological and spiritual
and rational and volitional. As a psychological being, there were certain hindrances of a
natural kind, and I think the Westminster Confession addresses that, the recognition
that in the lives of some people there are natural things that need to be melted away
in our whole view of ourselves and the world before we can really take in that He loves
us and He’s never going to leave us. And in that sense, assurance is a kind of relational
thing, just as… just as a young man’s relationship to a young woman, you know. He
may find it almost impossible to take in that this young woman really loves him and doubt
it. Even although she gives him every evidence, he still may not be able to take it in because
he just cannot believe that somebody like this girl would actually love somebody like
him. And there is a dimension of that – I think a kind of individual and personal and
psychological level that the gospel needs to keep working away at. And I think probably
all of us in the room who are pastors, most congregations have somebody like that, who
will very reluctantly come to us and open themselves out, and we’ve got to speak the
gospel to them again until the gospel itself brings them through, and they learn He loves
you just because He love you. And you need to look there, you know, like what’s the
hymn? You know, “When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me all the wrong within,
upward I look and see Him there who made an end of all my sin.” Because the sinless
Savior died, you know, it’s upwards. And that’s… Isn’t that what Luther was teaching
us when he said, you know, basically we are in turned and the gospel turns us out to Christ.
So, that’s me. Steve Lawson: Obviously, I’ve struggled
with many things and wrestled as we all have with many things, but for whatever reason
I have not gone through times of doubting my salvation. I think probably more just the
simplicity of trusting Christ has by the Holy Spirit kept my heart with a sense of inner
peace regarding my relationship with God. At the end of John Newton’s life, you know,
he began to lose his memory, and he as he was preaching when he would lose his thoughts
would gather himself by coming back to this same point, which is I am a great sinner,
and Christ is a great Savior. And just the simplicity of that thought, I mean, would
to God we could all just lose our minds and live and bask in that knowledge that I am
a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior. Growing up, I grew up in a very Arminian church,
and so I was never taught eternal security of the believer, and I always had an inner
assurance that I was saved. When I was in high school, I remember looking around at
the other guys on the football team and realizing I know I’m saved, and I’m fairly certain
they’re not saved, and I had the fear that when I would die, it would be the flip-flop,
that I would die lost, and they would die in Christ and be saved. And then when I was
in college and for the first time heard the truth of preserving grace and sustaining grace
and eternal life, that was the most liberating thing I had ever heard in my life. I mean
literally, it was like not just being saved all over again, but like multiple times being
saved all over again. That it wasn’t me holding onto God, but God holding onto me
would preserve my relationship with Him. That was the most glorious thing I’d ever heard
in my life, other than that Christ had died for me. And even with Spurgeon, he said after
his conversion, “That was the bait that drew me to Christ.” He said, “I knew if
I needed to be saved, and I knew that I needed to give my life to Christ, but I wasn’t
certain if I would give my life to Christ, that I would be able to remain in Christ,
that I would be able to keep myself saved.” And he said, “When I heard the truth of
the eternal security of the believer and the perseverance of the saints,” he said, “I
found that to be an irresistible bait, and my soul was drawn to Christ, that if I did
once believe upon Christ, if I did once commit my life to Christ, that He would save me and
save me forever, that He would preserve me in grace through both time and eternity, that
I found it irresistible, and that I was compelled to do what that minister said to do in the
snowstorm.” When Spurgeon couldn’t get to the church that he was trying to get to,
and even the preacher could not get there, and a layman stood up and preached from Isaiah
45, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth.” That my heart was just
irresistibly drawn to Christ and to believe in Him, but it was in part because he knew
if I ever once believed in Christ, He would save me forever. And so I was gloriously helped
by the understanding of eternal security of the believer. Although I can say where my
struggle was, would I be able to keep myself in Christ. I never did doubt, nor have I since
that I am in Christ, and I am saved. And then when I came to discover all the various reasons
in Scripture for the preserving of the elect in Christ, you know, that’s just glorious
news. So anyway, that’s been my experience. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: I think my experience is
probably closest to Bob’s. I think he touched on there’s two different kinds, at least
two different kinds of doubt. Is it true? And do I trust? And I never went through the
first one at all. I always believed the Bible was God’s Word, that Jesus was His Son,
that He died for sinners, that He was raised from the dead, etc. I never actually thought
about it in terms of doubt. I never was in a place where I thought I’m not sure if
I’m saved. I was in a place where I thought I’m sure that I’m not, and that’s when
I was in high school and sort of the reverse of you and your football team. I’m persuaded
that I’m not a Christian, and I’m witnessing to my friends, calling them to repent and
believe because I know it’s true, and if they don’t repent and believe, they’re
going to go to hell. And I remember lying in bed at night, actually looking at the tree
outside my window thinking, you know, if the wind blows and knocks that down and it kills
me, I’m going to hell. I mean, I believed it was real. I’m going to hell. And whether
it was a cure for doubt or whether it was a cure for unbelief, eventually I thought,
well, this is really stupid. I don’t want to die and go to hell. And I am a sinner.
I know I’m a sinner. I know Jesus came to save sinners. And Lord I need You to cover
my sins, and I need You to welcome me, and you know, since that time I haven’t had
that struggle. Chris Larson: Well, just a few more minutes
left. One question came through as far as, what is the greatest need in our pulpits today
in the church? R.C. Sproul, Jr.: I’ll go first again. No,
go ahead, Bob. Robert Godfrey: Well, I just was thinking
of something Steve said, that one of the leaders of the, was it, emergent church – I can’t
keep all these things straight, emerging churches, emergent churches – but whoever said that
he set out to be obscure. I think there are way too many ministers who are good at that.
And I just think our churches need clear, careful, consistent exposition of the Word.
[applause] Now, all of you who are clapping ought to ask, do you actually encourage your
minister to spend time in the study? [applause] In the long run, there is no good preaching
except for ministers who are enabled to be in the study, studying the Word, and congregations
have to help ministers do that, especially the ministers who are really good at visiting.
Some of them have to be tied in the study, and you have to help them with that. R.C. Sproul, Jr.: I don’t in any way want
to disagree with what Bob said, but in seeking to follow what… or to submit to what I’m
about to say, my answer would be instinctively courage, that we need courage in our pulpits.
And by that I don’t mean boldly denouncing Rob Bell. I have ventured a guess that very
few of your pastors would find themselves in any hot water if they boldly denounced
Rob Bell. Now, Rob Bell should be boldly denounced. Don’t misunderstand where I’m going. What
I’m saying is we need pastors who have the courage to speak to the sins of their congregation.
[applause] And where it really takes courage to do that I am persuaded that the only way
you can know the sins of your congregation is to look deeply at your own sins. That shepherds
and their sheep are going to tend to have the same weaknesses, and if you can…. And
that goes back to the Scriptures and the study because that’s how you see your sin. It’s
that mirror. If you can look deeply into the Word of God and honestly and see where you
have fallen, then you will preach into the lives of your congregation, and you will,
of course, preach the good news of Jesus Christ. And when you do both of those, of course,
you are preaching expositionally, exegetically, and powerful things happen. Sinclair Ferguson: Yeah, you know, I think
we need to… what’s the question, Chris? Chris Larson: What do we need in our pulpits
today? Sinclair Ferguson: Yeah, I thought that’s
what it was. I think, you know, it’s easy to think we need… we need… we need a Steve
Lawson in every pulpit, which would be… [applause] would be splendid. But actually
we realize what we need is the man or men God has given us as we are this particular
group of people in this particular place at this particular time, really has a sense that
he is doing the most important thing in the world for us. I had a… I had a woman in
the congregation I served in Glasgow who was… she was a biological scientist. She had made
enormous strides in developing a way of extending, considerably extending in some cases the lives
of people who had inoperable brain tumors. She was just a… just a very brilliant woman.
She was also very humble. Not all that many people in the congregation knew what she actually
did or had accomplished. And I’d known her and her husband since… well, since I was
23, you know, and had been long time friends. And I commented to her on the enormous value
of what she did. And this was dispositional, the way she slightly dismissed it, but I’ve
never forgotten what she said to me. She said, “What I do is good, but what you do, that’s
really important what you do.” And it’s quite easy in the midst of all the rough and
tumble of the week and the months in ministry to lose sight of the fact that when you go
to expound the Word to your people, you’re doing the most important thing in the world
for them. That’s one thing. The second thing I would say is this, that I think we need
to recapture the wonder of what the Spirit does through preaching. I often, you know,
I’ll look out in the congregation, and I see, you know, Mrs. Smith is there or Mr.
Jones is there. They just lost husband or wife. They are burdened about their health
or worried about their job. And here I am with a word that is going to rip up their
consciences, and I sit, saying, “Lord, you know, how did I get into this mess?” And
then I realize that if Christ is held up to the congregation, it doesn’t matter who
they are, what’s happening in their life, as long as Christ is held up in His Word,
He Himself is absolutely sufficient for all the needs of all of the people in this church
right here and now. [applause] So that I think we need to grasp that preaching is more than
an exegesis of a piece of literature, but it actually is the proclamation of the all-sufficient
Christ. Then the third thing, I think, that we need, and I feel this very much is that
alongside these two things, it becomes evident in our preaching that we love our people to
death. And I… you know, John Newton helped me when I was a teenager, and I think it took
a long time for me to quite understand what he was talking about. But Newton says in one
of his letters, as an older man, he says, “I think now my people would take anything
from me because they know I really love them.” And I think particularly when you’re younger
that’s a really important thing to learn – not just the first part of the sentence,
“they’ll take anything from me,” because I’m their minister. But that people will
take anything from you from the Word, as long as they know you love them to death. And God
gives a diversity of gifts. You know we are just mailmen at the end of the day with different
kinds of gifts, you know. Look at us, we are very diversely gifted. And I think these core
things would just transform ministry in the pulpit. I think there’s a lot more than
what happens in the pulpit that’s needed. But as far as things that happen in the pulpit,
I think those are important. Steve Lawson: Yeah, I would say, of course,
I’m not able to hear all the preaching that’s going on because I’m in the pulpit preaching
myself, although I see on television, I hear on radio, I go to conferences, I read what’s
in print, and I read what’s, you know, being bought in stores and have an idea of what’s
being preached. In 1 Timothy 4:13, Paul, I think, gives a very simple overview for what
preaching is, the component parts, where he says, “Until I come, give attention to the
public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching.” I think it really matters
to God how His Word is preached, and I think there is a certain simplicity about preaching,
that too many preachers try to make this complicated and try to make it complex, and they overcook
and over analyze what preaching really is. You read the text. You explain the text. And
you apply the text. And I’m amazed at how little reading of the text there is in most
preaching, how very little explaining with historical background, word studies, progressive
revelation, cross references, etc., that there is to make the Scripture come alive in its
meaning where lights are coming on, and then how… and then the exhortation from the text.
So that’s one thing that I would say is, I mean, we really need to get into the text
as quick as we can, to have a short porch to a large house, to have a short introduction
to a large exposition of the text itself, and to get into that text and just never leave
that text, and to be just continually a mouth piece for that text, and to say only what
the text says and all that the text says, as well as to apply it, and with that to do
so – I mean, the words have been mentioned here – clarity, and with conviction and
courage, and I would add the element of passion, that true preaching involves an element of
zeal and passion where it becomes contagious. And that comes through different personalities
in different ways. But Martyn Lloyd-Jones was once asked the difference between preaching
and teaching. It was a young man asked him that, and Lloyd-Jones says, “Young man,
if you need to ask me the difference between preaching and teaching, then you’ve obviously
never heard preaching because if you’ve heard preaching, you wouldn’t ask me the
difference.” And I think preaching stands on the shoulders of teaching, that with all
preaching, there must be teaching, there must be the teaching of sound doctrine, there must
be the exposition of the passage, but it must go beyond information, and it must involve
all of the elements of true Biblical preaching, which is it involves motivation and inspiration
and confrontation and invitation and summons and bringing people to forks in the road and
calling for the verdict and summoning them to go one of two ways as a result of this
message, that there is something that they must know, something they must feel, and something
they must do as a result of this sermon. And too many sermons are either just all intellect
and no affections and no challenge to the will, or it’s just all exhortation, and
there’s no doctrine, there’s no theology, and there’s no renewing of the mind. And
true Biblical preaching must address the entire person – mind, affections, and will. And
this past Sunday, I preached up in Grand Rapids, which is a very Reformed area, and what struck
me was what people said to me after I preached. I ended the message by issuing the gospel
and calling people to faith in Christ and trying to knock out every prop under them
that they would be trusting in or holding onto that is not true saving faith. And so
when the sermon was over, it was really interesting. People came up to me and said, “Wow, we’re
not used to having the gospel preached to us.” And they said, “I guess you do that
because you live in the south.” This is the host church of the, you know,… anyway.
And they said, “You must do this because you’re a Baptist.” And then the head elder
or whatever came up and said, “We’ve never had an altar call.” Well, I didn’t give
an altar call. An altar call would mean you’d come to an altar. There was no altar call.
There was just simply the pure proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and a calling
for people at this very moment to believe in Jesus Christ. Now Spurgeon has a great
sermon that is called “Now.” That’s the title of the sermon, “Now.” And it’s
from 2 Corinthians 6:1 and 2, “Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, today is the
day of salvation.” Lloyd-Jones said this, “A lecture can be given at any time. You
can give a lecture next week, next month, next year. You can put a lecture in your hip
pocket and just hang onto it until you’re asked to give it. But a sermon must be given
today. A sermon must be given now.” And so there is a sense of urgency about a sermon.
You must… I must preach this, and you must hear this, and you must respond to this now.
And so there… you know, “Boast not yourself of tomorrow, for you know not what a day may
bring forth.” And… And for there to be a sense of the present tense, imperative verb.
“Enter through the narrow gate.” “Come unto Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden,
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me.” A delayed obedience
is no obedience. Delayed obedience is disobedience. Delayed obedience is unbelief. And so I think
that that’s what’s missing in pulpits today, is there…. There is a lack of Biblical
content. There is a lack of theological fiber. And there is a lack of a sense of urgency.
I believe the most powerful preacher on the planet is the Calvinistic expositor, who is
an evangelist in the pulpit. He is the only preacher who plays with a full deck. [applause]
He is the only one who has all 52 cards at his disposal. He preaches a high view of God.
He preaches the Bible. He magnifies grace. And he calls for commitment to Christ. And…
and we are hyper-Calvinistic when we are not burdened for lost souls, when we do not preach
the gospel, when we do not call people to commitment to Christ. We are borderline hyper-Calvinists.
And I would rather have a red heart… red hot Arminian than to have a hyper-Calvinist,
where there’s at least life – misguided life, but there’s at least life. And so
that’s just my humble estimation of what is missing in pulpits today. And there’s
just too many talkers, and too many sharers, and not enough preachers who preach the Word
of God. [applause] One last sentence, and then I’m finished. We need lectures. I lecture.
We need the classroom. So in no way does that diminish any of that. There must be the lecturing
and the teaching of the Word of God. I mean, that is critical, that is the rudder of the
ship. But it’s got to go beyond that, and there must be a kerusso, the herald going
into the town square, which is what the word preaching is drawn from in the book of Acts,
the ambassador dispatched from the King’s throne, who goes to the perimeter of the empire,
who goes into the village, who cups his hand, who gathers everyone in the village together
around him and makes an official proclamation on behalf of the ambassador and who issues
the decree. And so there just needs to be more of that kind of urgency and a lofty sense
that I have been sent here by God to proclaim His Word to those who are here today. Now,
there is a sense of destiny about this message before God. Anyway, that’s what needs to
be recovered. That’s it. That’s all I have to say. Chris Larson: Let’s thank our teaching fellows.
