G3 British Reformation Tour | Voddie Baucham

as i begin let me say also that it has been an incredible privilege uh to be here uh i remember when josh and i first started having conversations about this and it went from do you think to let's do it to this is going to happen um and and now we're here and it has been a unique privilege for me to be a part of this so josh thank you for your your vision uh and leadership with this and partnership with this it has really been a blessing um pray for us we we have been in lusaka for the last four years there at the african christian university um i'll share a little more about that as we go my assignment today and this is this has bothered me the whole time and it's bothered me more the closer we've gotten to it i'm supposed to talk about spurgeon and lloyd jones the future of the referee that's just not going to happen okay there's just no way that that happens tonight um but i i want to i want to focus on on spurgeon but really more than focusing on spurgeon because i don't want to take us too far afield from the idea of british reformation what i want to do is i want to use spurgeon kind of as this fulcrum point and i want to look back and look at spurgeon as a product of the things that we've looked at and learned and talked about and then i want to look forward and i want to see spurgeon as a model for the reformation in our day as well and then in doing that i want to answer the question that people ask me all the time why'd you move to africa um and there's a there's a complicated answer and a simple one um the simple one is that the lord called us there um the the the slightly more complex answer is i had the opportunity to go to lusaka in 2006 for the first time a friend of ours paul washer told me sometime in earl the early 2000s hey there is a guy in zambia that you need to know and at the same time he was telling conrad and beiwe in lusaka there is a guy in america you need to know and so i was invited to come over and preach at the annual conference that they do there in lusakis the annual reformed family conference and i get there and discover that there is this you know at the time two decades old indigenous confessional second london baptist confession 1689 reform baptist movement this vibrant movement there in zambia and having been aware of some of the things going on in missions i knew that this was incredibly unique for something like this to be in existence especially something that was as something that was indigenous and incredibly healthy and vibrant these guys are planting churches they're multiplying they're growing having incredible impact it's a unique country a unique culture it's a constitutionally christian republic there's a british colony that gained their independence just in 1964. so english is uh the official language in zambia so there was no need to learn language or anything there just some very unique things went there and spent a couple of weeks me my oldest son and i came back after that and bridget asked me how was it and i looked at her and i said i think i want to be buried there and you know she wasn't she wasn't too happy because i'll back up a little bit so people have asked me about oxford i told you about our time in oxford what i didn't tell you was a year earlier i had a preaching trip to england and i came back home and she asked me how was it and i said i think i want to go to oxford and and the next year we were there so now i come back from zambia and i say i think i'm going to be buried there mama wasn't happy because that's a little bit different and now there's you know nine kids seven still at home that was way different uh than the trick that we took to oxford and i kept going back almost every year for the next eight years and the african christian university began to materialize several things began to happen um to to to bring the work about and more specifically there was a gentleman in mozambique by the name of ken turnbull he had he and his family had served in brazil and now in mozambique mozambique was a a colony of portugal so the portuguese was language there he spoke portuguese working in brazil portuguese working in mozambique as a homeschool dad they educated their children on the classical education model he had been the chairman of the chemistry department at the university of arkansas phd chemistry from caltech holds three patents um sharp guy who knows his stuff and was very interested in starting a classical christian or semi-classical christian university but the infrastructure wasn't there in mozambique because he also didn't want this to be a colonial effort and a lot of our mission work in africa has been very colonial in nature it has been you know foreigners coming doing something for africans that looks very much like us doing something for africans creating dependency never becoming indigenous and he didn't want to do that so there wasn't the infrastructure but he came to the conference in lusaka and there was infrastructure the churches in lusaka multiplying churches and leaders wanted to start a seminary ken is interested in starting a university they start meeting and talking 2008 or so putting their heads together and the thought was to do both and so 2009 they start talking about this in earnest now all the while i'm going almost every year not on my radar 2012 a representative comes and speaks to our church about things getting closer for the university 2014 we go on a visit and we take everybody um [Music] me bridget seven youngest kids our then soon to be son-in-law we take everybody and we go we're away for a month we go to kenya and then we go down to zambia we're there for a couple weeks and there's more talk about the university and while we're there bridget comes up to me one night and she says it's time for us to do this and i said do what she said you need to be here that was august 2014 august 2015 we were moved and all i can say is that it i fit all of the things that the lord had done to make me who i am were things that fit with this particular work now let me bring this into our context why why was i so interested and so passionate about the african christian university well number one because it was growing out of this reform movement the refere the reformation hasn't stopped amen the reformation hasn't stopped and it's been happening in in zambia and interestingly enough one of the gentlemen who was the main gentleman to to bring baptist work to zambia was a missionary who was sent out from matat spurgeon's church which is one of the reasons there's such a strong indigenous reformed baptist movement there um and so here's this movement and then here's this school that's going to start this classical christian liberal arts biblical worldview university based on the same model and foundation as oxford cambridge and harvard on the same philosophical model in the african context where this real transformation is happening with a very young country with an open door for christian work and christian ministry because again it's a constitutionally christian republic where there are not some of these same obstacles and where we're having the opportunity to do things looking back at all the mistakes that have been made and looking forward at all the incredible potential listen europe is gone europe has fallen europe has fallen and we used to think that africa was going to be evangelized by europe and during the colonial era there was that thought right we're going to take the gospel to africa and and in many ways that happened during the colonial era but not completely not appropriately not thoroughly and there's a lot of syncretism a lot of unhealthy quasi-christian movements that have attached themselves to the african traditional worldview and african traditional religions and it's it's bad it's just bad some of it is heretical others based on easy believism this soft pedaling of a gospel that's not really a gospel and now europe is gone and islam looms large in the north of africa so how how is god going to do that work of evangelizing africa not from the north because europe's gone i believe it's going to happen from the south and i believe this indigenous movement that's been happening in zambia for the last three plus decades is a bulwark in the south that is being used and that is going to be used for this great work and sometimes it's overwhelming to think about the potential of that so when i say we're a semi-classical biblical worldview university what does that mean all of our students currently were offering degrees in agriculture business education fine arts and theology on the undergraduate level on the graduate level offering beginning to offer a couple of degrees theology degrees we're getting ready to add at the undergraduate level probably um political science chemistry and and biology our goal is to be a leading research institution in sub-saharan africa the leading academic institution in sub-saharan africa the oxford in cambridge and harvard of sub-saharan africa and it's doable and not just because of the high commitment to academics but a commitment to biblical worldview throughout all of our programs not like christian universities in the united states where you're a christian university and you have christians in your theology department and you have good theology in your theology department but the person who's teaching psychology is doing the exact same thing that the state university is doing they just sign you know a statement of faith that is big enough broad enough to drive a mack truck through now all of our lecturers are confessional 1689 folks and one of my jobs is in the area of faculty development teaching all of our faculty how to understand their discipline and teach it from a biblical worldview so the person who teaches political science who's never taken a class from a biblical worldview your phd we have our new president by the way is a harvard phd um never taken a course from a biblical worldview a harvard lawyer and a phd never taken a course from biblical worldview so do you then just say great teach this class from a biblical worldview nope it's my job to teach you number one how to understand your discipline from a biblical worldview and then walk you through the process of creating from the ground up a course that reflects the biblical worldview from beginning to end not just teach the same thing they do at harvard and pray before and after class but everything from beginning to end from a thoroughly biblical worldview and confessional incorporate the 1689 in your lectures in chemistry and math it's an amazing thing all of our students learn latin their first year for their entire first year why because we're a classical christian liberal arts biblical worldview university and we want to create linguists why should we rely upon people from the west to come to africa to translate the bible into african languages no at acu we're going to raise a generation of linguists the likes of which we've been talking about since we've been here who will then translate the bible into the languages that their hearts speak so this is the kind of stuff that's going on this is this is why at you know i guess it was 45 i guess that was 45 at the thought this is why at 45 we made the decision to move to sub-saharan africa with my wife and our seven youngest children because of the importance of of this work um i say there's nothing like it really in sub-saharan africa there's very few things like it in the world there's only a couple of places that are doing anything like this so be praying for us now that's sort of the the end of where we're going let's back up and talk about spurgeon in this context we we know spurgeon we know spurgeon as the prince of preachers and we'll talk about spurgeon as the prince of preachers but what i want to do is i want to put this in context spurgeon is born in 1834 he comes to pastor what we now know as the metropolitan tabernacle at in 1853. he's called there when he's 19 years old never spent a day in seminary by the way but he's called there when he's 19 years old why is this significant remember that we've talked about the fact that the reformation was not just about theology it's not just about a theological transformation but this is a worldview issue there's this this medieval worldview and the gospel comes crashing in on this medieval worldview and it's not enough to just take the truths of the gospel and put them on top of this medieval worldview the medieval worldview it it has to go it has to be confronted and so this happens and the reformation comes and and we see this transformation now we fast forward a few centuries and we're in spurgeon's time and there is a different world view that has to be confronted with the gospel why just take off a few things for you remember he comes to this pastorate in 1853. david hume lived from 1711 to 1776 we saw that monument to him in scotland so spurgeon is born into this world this world of empiricism the industrial revolution takes place from 1760 to about 1830 or 40. again spurgeon comes along right after the industrial revolution 1853 he comes to pastor the church 1859 darwin publishes origin of species the world it is a changing in the 1800s well let me back up 1844 to 1900 that's the area that that's the that's the time period of frederick nietzsche again right smack dab in the middle of spurgeon's pastorate in the 1800s karl marx emile durkheim max weber they transform the social sciences they give us what we now know as sociology we know about sigmund freud's work in psychology all of these things now analyzing man's problems apart from the scriptures trying to find solution to man's problems apart from the scriptures there's major scientific breakthroughs during this time and there was incredible optimism and understandably so the first electric relay the first telegraph morse code the first light bulb the telephone the periodic table we got that in 1869 discovery of the moons around mars 1877. pasteur's vaccine against rabies aspirin in 1889. the first section of the london underground was opened in 1863. are you getting the picture all of this is happening during spurgeon's era all of a sudden man is the measure of all things you see the the world used to look like this to the to the medieval mind it was this world where we live that is controlled by the world of the ancestors and in the world of spirits and then the realm of god and there is this fear because of these powers that are above us that control everything now in the 1800s we're not afraid of anything because we control everything we understand now the very origins of the universe we don't need nietzsche says god is dead why does he say that why is this his declaration during this era because science is advancing so far so fast that people by the end of the 19th century believe there's no more discoveries to make god is no longer necessary we used to need god to explain things to us because we weren't as sophisticated as we are now but now we don't need god because man is god there is nothing above my head everything that i need to know is right here there is no god so in spurgeon's day there was the need for almost another reformation in his church he followed a few other pastors one of them was this guy named john gill another one was benjamin keach and john ripon some of the greatest names in baptist theology here's another thing that you need to understand about spurgeon the reformers that we've heard about thus far come out of catholicism and either go to lutheranism or to anglicanism and in some instances when we're up in scotland to presbyterianism to early presbyterianism but you still have a state church and in the case of anglicanism you still have a state church that looks a whole lot like the roman church and so there's another group of reformers the radical reformers these are our ancestors as baptists and the steps that we take are almost unthinkable and there were baptists who were martyred for taking the steps that we took against things like baptism rejecting infant baptism which meant two things on the one hand when you reject him from baptism you say that the baptism that you gave me when i was an infinite when i was an infant is illegitimate that's why they were often referred to as rebaptizers right because essentially they're saying it's illegitimate baptism is for believers it's not by sprinkling the word means to immerse now what we've been hearing about over and over again was people being burned at the stake a favorite for baptists was drowning you believe in baptism by immersion will baptize you to death and so spurgeon is in that line the line of the radical reformers his confession would have been the second london baptist confession of 1689. again william and mary 1688 confession which came about in 1677 ratified in 1689 don't lose the symbolism there and so here is spurgeon the prince of preachers the church under spurgeon went from about 20 250 people to over 5 000 and they had to move to what we know as the metropolitan tabernacle his sermons were reprinted in many languages and in newspapers all over the world by the following monday phil johnson writes more than 25 000 copies of spurgeon's printed sermons were sold weekly the sermons were compiled in 63 thick volumes that are still being published today and they are they comprise some 25 million words the man was a machine and he died just before they started recording voices you can hear lloyd jones and sometimes on saturday evenings we'll listen to lloyd jones it takes a while to learn to listen to the welshman but once you once you get used to it right fantastic we don't know what spurgeon sounded like and i think there's an important point here spurgeon was a reformer in the midst of a literate culture we live in a post-literate culture people know how to read they know the rudiments of reading but but but they don't know how to read right people know c-a-t is cat but people pick up a spurgeon book or something by one of the puritans and their head hurts by the second page amen people read through modern christians read through one of spurgeon's sermons and halfway through they're asking well wait a minute what is he saying because we we don't know how to read we don't know how to bear down follow complicated arguments but when you read one of spurgeon's sermons please know that during his era thousands of these were reprinted because people read things like that and the theology was better because they read things like that we need another reformation we've lost something because people don't read anymore we've lost something because people don't write anymore not like this we've lost something because people don't follow through with these kinds of arguments there's a book the why johnny can't preach have you seen this book and one of the arguments is that we no longer teach the close reading of texts we're not reading analyzing and memorizing poetry anymore we don't read things that are complex the news is written on a sixth grade level because people can't handle or bear with things beyond that we need another reformation and isn't it interesting the reformation comes and the war is get the bible into the language of the people so that the people can read the bible and we get the bible into the language of the people and now people have the bible but they don't read the bible that they have in their language and preachers aren't preaching churches are filled with pastorettes preaching sermonettes for christianettes we're not preaching it's it's self-help it's therapeutic we're not bearing down on theology and forcing people to think we don't follow confessions anymore we have statements of faith that are this big on a website why most christians today wouldn't read through second london or westminster their head would hurt by paragraph two or three and then they'd come away saying why are we putting god in a box we need another reformation but there is another reason spurgeon was involved in a well-known controversy called the downgrade controversy most people are not aware of this controversy they know the name but listen to the way that he summarized it in his first downgrade article believers in christ's atonement are now in declared union with those who make light of it believers in holy scripture are in confederacy with those who deny plenary inspiration those who hold evangelical doctrine are in open alliance with those who call the fall a fable who deny the personality of the holy ghost who called justification by faith immoral and whole that there is another probation after death it is our solemn conviction that there should be no pretense of fellowship fellowship with known and vital error is participation in sin he could have written that last week he could have written it last week and these compromises were coming because individuals wanted to accommodate the spirit of the age new theories about how we got the bible new theories about how the world and how man came into being and so we create new theologies so that this rapidly changing scientific world will stop looking down on us they say god is dead and your bible is irrelevant because we now know that man evolved we now know that the world is far older than you think and we come and we say wait wait wait we have new theories we can reread genesis for you so that you'll like us so that you'll accept us only they don't but there's a worse problem when we compromise again spurgeon writes assuredly the new theology can do no good towards god or man it has no adaptation for it if it were preached for a thousand years by all the most earnest men of the school it would never renew a soul nor overcome pride in a single human heart we need another reformation because again he could have written that last week we're seeing the same kinds of compromises we're seeing the same kinds of compromises with individuals who who no longer believe that the bible is sufficient and who look around to the social sciences some of those things that came about during spurgeon's era they look around and say tell us o wise ones what we need to believe about man and what we need to believe about god tell us oh great ones what we need to say so that you can like us please tell us what we can do in order to not be on the wrong side of history to which spurgeon and i say preach the word amen and you'll never find yourself on the wrong side of history you may find yourself on the wrong side of the powers that be you may find yourself on the wrong side of a sword or the wrong side of flames but you will not be on the wrong side of history because god writes history and he doesn't have an eraser because he doesn't make mistakes it has been absolutely incredible to see the things that we've seen to walk the streets that we've walked to commemorate the things that we've commemorated but i hope that as we prepare to leave that you recognize that this history is still being written this reformation is not over this war with god's truth has not ended our adversary the devil did not run away with his tail tucked between his legs in the 16th century he's not done but to quote martin luther even the devil is god's devil amen he's not done but he's also not in control there is one who is and he sits enthroned in the heavens and he does whatever pleases him he is sovereign over the ends as well as the means and the means they've always been the same those ordinary means of grace and we continue to misinterpret them or run away from them but they're the same those same word-based means gospel ministry and baptism and the lord's table and prayer of god's people they haven't changed you know what's changed we have before the reformation the chief piece of furniture in the church was the table because the theology was based around the mystery of the eucharist and the people way out there who could not understand it the reformation comes and the architecture within the church changes and now the principal piece of furniture is a pulpit and they're high and tall and big and masculine and awe-inspiring because the word of god is now in our day you walk into a church and the greatest thing you see is not a table you won't see one because we don't do the lord's supper anymore it's not a pulpit you you may get a lectern and you may get some fiberglass something that's brought up there to hold something on no no no no now it's a stage because we've gone from the sacrament to the sermon to the show we've run away from the word and this reformation that we need is just like the other reformation that we need it's a reformation of solar scripture it's a reformation that says his word is true his word is sure and his word is sufficient amen you

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Length: 40min 3sec (2403 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021