Questions & Answers with Godfrey, Lawson, Mohler, and Reeves

you all don't want to hear a Q&A session do you so for those of you who are not familiar with Ligonier conferences the Q&A times are a very special time it's something that all the attendees look forward to year after year these are not my questions these are your questions and we we try and get to as many of them as we possibly can and so thankful to be able to have dr. Lawson who shared with us earlier this morning but also joining us dr. Robert Godfrey dr. Mohler of course who is with us and dr. Michael Reeves and you'll hear from dr. Godfrey and Reeves later during the conference so gentlemen welcome let's jump right into this and we'll just take them as they come here so the first question and just just so you get a sense of the stack okay consider that in our pacing to what extent in heaven will we be able to experience God's holiness well our sinful flesh will be eradicated we will be made perfect in Christ we certainly will not become gods or deity by any stretch but we will have only pure thoughts holy thoughts holy affections what will help is we will be given a glorified body like that of the Lord Jesus Christ a body that will never grow weary or tired of praising God and singing his praises and serving God and loving one another so we will have a capacity that will be undiminished regarding our heavenly function so we will have glorified eyes glorify otherwise we would burn up in as a cinder glorified tongue to praise Him glorified hands and feet to serve Him etc so that will be our glorified body and in that will be a fully glorified soul that will be like unto Christ yet not fully Christ because we are simply finite creatures who will be spirits of just men made perfect in heaven but there will be no selfish thoughts there will be no repentance or confession of sin there will be no selfishness there will be no ego we will actually truly know one another in glory and we will have only pure and highest affections for God and love for God there in heaven so that would be the perfected sanctification of which I spoke God is holy and we are not how can God stand us in our sinfulness thinking of now before heaven the answer is that he can stand us in Christ that we stand before God and are able to confidently pray to him saying our Father not because of any inherent righteousness that we have but entirely because God in his complete graciousness declares sinners to be righteous clothed with the righteousness of Christ that righteousness is an alien passive righteousness it means it's not an internally produced thing it is the righteousness not of that individual but the righteousness of Christ and so because of Christ and His righteousness a believer for the sin that is in them is clothed hidden as it were under the righteousness of Christ and the image that John Calvin used in his Institute's to help show that was the image of Jacob approaching his father clothed in the clothing of his firstborn brother and he said we in like manner hide under the precious purity of our firstborn brother Christ that we may be attested as righteous unto his sight say that's exactly right that even from the first moment of Adam's sin and before that God was determined to have a people he created to have a people he created us to bear His image so we could fellowship with him and God was not defeated by the fall into sin but God determined to rescue sinners and he did that through his son that he might have a people so that we can enjoy heaven forever in impurity so it's it's God's plan from eternity realized in history of which we are the gracious recipients the really hard question about heaven is will there be question-and-answer times in heaven I'm the one who has asked the questions we keep trying to lure him into an answer but he's afraid to leave any kind of record or phone how did the Bible get its name how did the Bible get its name Bible books it's a very simple name that became attributed in the early centuries of the Christian Church to the Canon of Scripture often appended with the word holy to set it apart from other sacred writings the way Paul writes to Timothy you have known from childhood the sacred writings so it's another way of saying sacred ID writings just another way of saying Holy Scripture it's so we're saying the the books dr. Mohler another question for you there's a fountain pen question here that you probably don't even want to answer though because you don't like to talk about fountain pens so do you ever get ill or nauseated from all of the news that you read it's a very fair question I've been doing this a long time a very long time and so even a few months ago I would have said I can't afford to let that happen or it would happen every day but maybe it's because I'm getting old or maybe it's really because the news has been so bad what I talked about this morning out of New York for instance and Virginia it's it's made me ill uncomfortable I've had to walk now I've had to walk off several issues before but I haven't walked this one off and it's not something completely new it's just the next step you know but it's just one of those things where you realize we were talking at lunch several of us you know is there any hope for a reversal on this and and I will go back to where I ended the only hope for a reversal on this is a prior recovery of the knowledge of the holiness of God without that I have no hope for some kind of moral recovery and so in that sense the older I get that I think the more biblical we have to be we grow weary of trying to figure out if there's any solution to this and the answer is the only solutions Christ the only solution is some revival that God would bring that would begin with the knowledge of himself so I'm gonna stop because I could just go on with this but yes it does sometimes get to me but people ask me that another way by saying why are you not crushed by this is because Jesus Christ is Lord and because he said upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it so just by God's grace we survived to live another day and face another onslaught of headlines until he takes us home or comes for his church first Timothy 4:8 says that godliness has benefits for the believer in this life and the next what are these benefits are you I didn't hear the question again say that again Chris sure's first Timothy 4:8 says that godliness has benefit for the believer in this life and the next what are these benefits the benefits of personal discipline in the Christian life is is that the question what are the benefits of Christ in this life [Laughter] [Music] much in every way well every blessing in the heavenly places is ours in Christ Jesus Ephesians 1 verse 3 so there are no blessings outside of Christ they are all all bestowed by the Father because we are in the son applied by the spirit well I mean we just walked through the Ordo salutis and and just walked through those benefits I guess the question deals with more and sanctification as we discipline ourselves well certainly all sin in our life saddens us it strips us of power it deviates us from God's will it forfeits ministry and so as we discipline ourselves the benefits are that we are able to experience more of the abundant life that Christ has come to bestow upon us so we're not antinomian 's we do not believe that the fullness experientially of all the blessings of christ automatically accrue to us if we fail to buff at our bodies and make it our slaves if we fail to flee temptation if we fail to fight the good fight if we fail to walk in obedience to the Lord so those blessings are increased joy I mean you can just read Psalm 51 and everything that David desires as a result of his sin because he failed to discipline himself there's increased joy there's increased peace there's increased power there is effectiveness in ministry sinners will listen and will learn so disciplining ourselves for the purpose of godliness and that word discipline is a Greek word gimnasio a Greek word that we derive gymnasium it refers to working out really a disc laying a side of encumbrances of clothing in order to exercise your body we are to do the same spiritually to set aside other encumbrances in life to make time to work out in the Word of God and in prayer and in fellowship and in ministry and in public worship so the blessings that accrue to us are greatly increased experientially as as we discipline ourselves for godliness so perhaps I shouldn't have tried to answer the questions I even knew what the question was but let's go ahead Michael we need to draw a distinction between union with Christ and communion with Christ by God's grace he establishes believers in a union with Christ which gives them a fixed stable status of righteousness before him but while believers have that fixed status the moment they are born again their communion with Christ is not such a stable thing and they can be obedient or disobedient and when believers live in ungodliness cherishing sins it impedes their communion with God who is the source of all life God is the treasure of believers and for us to have impeded communion with him in our right minds is the saddest thing that could happen in our lives and it is by having communion with him that second Corinthians 3:18 wheel with unveiled face beholding his Gloria transformed into his image from glory to glory it is by communion with him that we become more like him what is it to be like him it is to be full of life freedom from sin freedom from all slavery and you see the difference between Christ and sinners and you think which would you rather be in bondage to sin or free from it there's the great benefit of godliness that you have you're actively pressing in to enjoy the life to which you were called I was raised Jewish and have accepted Christ into my life I struggle with the prophecies in the Old Testament it's not that I think that they don't exist if I'm if I'm struggling to see them as a sorry I'm struggling to see them as real and valid why don't believe them if they are real and true well says in Romans 11 that there is a veil that God has put over their eyes between the first and the second coming of Christ that prevents them from being able to see and God has given them a spirit of stupor lest they be cognizant enough to be able to see that but even going just back to the doctrine of total depravity it is true of the entire human race outside of Christ that one's mind is darkened in sin and blinded by Satan and they are unable to see the gospel 2nd Corinthians 4:4 and 1st Corinthians 2:14 that the natural man cannot appraise the things of the Spirit for he was not even able to do so he has what are see called a moral inability so it's not just true of the Jew it's true of the Gentile as well the whole world has fallen into spiritual darkness and not only in the mind but in the heart the affections are defiled such that people now love what they should hate and they hate what they should love and the will is in bondage so it's not something unique to unconverted Jewish people the same is true of unconverted Gentile people outside of Christ it's the the very simple doctrine of total depravity Romans 3 9 through 20 makes that abundantly clear but added to that almost a double death is God's judgment upon his chosen people in their utter rejection of their Messiah as well as of the offer of the gospel and the kingdom of God and the first coming of Christ and in Romans 11 it's an undeniable reality so that's why you are describing in essence a sunset to a blind person you are describing a Beethoven symphony to a deaf person they cannot see they cannot hear until God gives them eyes to see and ears to hear and no matter how skilled and sharp we are in our presentation of the gospel until God opens their eyes they will not see and until like Lydia in acts 16 until God opens her heart no one will will ever believe so that's what we're up against so you is using the Jewish backdrop of Ezekiel 37 I mean we are called to go to a graveyard and to preach the gospel and only when the wind of heaven blows and there is a spiritual resurrection and they are given ears to hear and eyes to see and a heart to believe will the Jew be able to believe but the same is true of a Gentile as well yes just one part of that excuse me part of that question that I think needs to be answered was the first part about prophecies in Scripture and it seemed that that was an issue of of question and so let me just say very quickly there are only first of all every single prophecy of Scripture will be perfectly fulfilled ultimately in Christ but there are three categories of prophetic fulfillment and every single prophecy in scripture will be perfectly fulfilled in one of three ways first of all already fulfilled in the experience of Israel before the incarnation of Jesus Christ or secondly perfectly fulfilled in Christ and in the Covenant of redemption or third still to be fulfilled perfectly in the unfolding of human history under the sovereignty of God there is still that third category and and nothing will be left in any way imperfectly fulfilled all will be perfectly fulfilled of that we have absolute confidence and while believers may be blind to the glorious revelation of Christ prophesied the comparative with which the Old Testament prophecies Christ is simply stunning and this is what particular look at Matthew's Gospel it's wanting to just reel off prophecy after fulfilled prophecy and running through from Genesis I don't just need to pick out say Isaiah 53 which is very often a verse that stuns Jewish readers when they're thinking how possibly could this be fulfilled you simply run through the story of scripture just a few you start with the seed of the woman who will crush the serpent very quickly the fulfillment of that genesis 3:15 promise that gets narrowed down has to be of the line of Abraham than it has to be of the line of Jacob it has to be of the tribe of Judah and it gets narrowed right down we we start hearing details not only of his lineage he'll be of David - Samuel sorry ii samuel 7 and not only it is his lineage get narrowed down we start seeing places which know human could possibly fulfill themselves Genesis 22 a ram is provided instead of Isaac and Abraham says on the Mount of the Lord it future tents will be provided and that happens on Mount Moriah which is where the temple would be built the place where he would die which is why Jesus resolutely sets his face towards Jerusalem Micah 5:2 out of you Bethlehem will come one who be the Shepherd of my people no human individual raising himself up to pretend to be a messiah could arrange for himself to be born at Bethlehem fulfill nearly 400 prophecies be born of the right line die in the right place it's simply impossible to fulfill those hundreds of prophecies that let's think Matthew particularly goes through unless you are God's Christ so I would say to that person I think have a good read through Matthew's Gospel I think sometimes Jewish believers can feel rather isolated and alone and and kind of singular in their experience and we were just talking at lunch today a few of us that what has really been impressed upon me in recent years is the number of people of Jewish descent who I've met we've been converted and I think when we get to heaven will be astounded at the number of people that Christ through the years has individually called to himself and there really will it will really be true that we'll be able to confess all of elect Israel is saved and while God is not working out his purpose through the nation of Israel any longer he is still drawing to himself many members of his covenant people and in that we greatly rejoice is there a verse for age of accountability is this a made up statement or phrase perhaps it might be necessary to explain but what's behind that what's behind that is Pan evangelical theological reasoning which because this Pan evangelical means almost everyone's heard it almost everyone knows what we're talking about there is a certain biblical notion behind the fact that there's greater and lesser responsibility with age you see this in the curse against the the generation and the wilderness they say but your little ones they will enter the kingdom they will enter the the land of Canaan and by the way it's a very interesting way it said there in the opening of Deuteronomy says your little ones who you say know not the difference between good and evil I mean as parents we recognize some different kinds of accountability psychiatrists would come in and say look in early adolescence one of the achievements is the ability of complex analytical reasoning which means a four-year-old thinks but a fourteen-year-old thinks about thinking so and that is a big difference for those of you who are over 14 you think about thinking there are very few four-year-old existentialists because it just it just doesn't work a popsicle solves everything but the Bible's very clear that there is no innocence ever and everything this the same solvent whom I read this morning from Psalm 139 says in sin did my mother conceive me so there's no age of accountability like there is no accountability before this age in the same way that again you parent you you can't believe that you ever have anything other than a sinner this is the doctrine of total depravity if you if you don't believe that you will miss parent from the womb but you don't deal with the four-year-old like you deal with a 14 year old and there is use even a maturity in Christ the age of accountability is a fundamentally kind of neo Arminian revivalist stick pan evangelical notion that wants to say to people there is a moment I thought I was raised so I thought I just figured out I was 13 because it has something to at the bar mitzva and Jesus and the temple and the closer I got to 13 the more worried I became it was a it's a ridiculous notion but it's based upon our experience of greater and lesser responsibility but it it is just simply it drives us back to scripture where there is no innocence the age of accountability was the moment that Adam and Eve took of the forbidden fruit and once Adam's sin is imputed to us then we're accountable from the very beginning there has to be some other answer it also was a Protestant revival istic answer pragmatically and I can say this is a Baptist capital b22 infant baptism and the confirmation that came as a natural process and many of traditional Lutheran and reformed denominations and it was emphatically a response to Roman Catholic notions of baptism and the sacrament of baptism so we kind of have the sacrament of the age of accountability it isn't in the Bible the age of accountability you might say is conception but but we do recognize that we speak to a 14 year old differently than a four year old but in both cases we are talking to a sinner who desperately needs salvation found only through faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ what does it what does it mean that our righteousness medics must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees how righteous must we be well we've had to be perfectly righteous standard in the presence of God and the Pharisees had no righteousness of their own they only had self righteousness which is as filthy garments in the sight of God isaiah 64:6 so when he says except your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees in other words except you have more than zero you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven well how much righteousness well he says at the end of that chapter in Matthew 5 and verse 48 you are to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect that's how much righteousness you need a perfect righteousness but as dr. Mohler just pointed out we have already been imputed the sin of Adam so it's too late to even try to live a perfect life because that would be sufficient to send us all to hell just simply Adams sin alone so how much righteousness a perfect righteousness which none of us have so the point Jesus was making is even those who had appear to have the most righteousness of anyone on the earth you would have to even go further than that how far to the perfect righteousness of God himself and in heaven that was my mother clapping up there so do you think they were clapping for you or for righteousness for the righteousness what is your opinion about observing Lent we've noticed some more Protestant evangelical churches having special lent services even Ash Wednesday as well as encouraging practices such as fasting well as the Puritan here let me say I think we should follow what the Bible teaches about pursuing righteousness and holiness and spiritual disciplines and it's a great potential problem to invent practices that we then convinced ourselves are spiritually profitable now the Bible commends fasting in certain circumstances stances so certainly a call to fastest is not wrong and I'm not opposed absolutely to remembering the events in the life of our Lord we're thankful remembrance at times in the year but our Lord nowhere encouraged us to take 40 years of 40 days yeah never mind 40 days to follow his practice in the wilderness a practice which in his own life he did only once so to suggest that we ought to have 40 days of Lent annually seems well beyond anything our Lord actually did you're looking very furrowed with your brow and what am i unclear okay and so I would say we would be much much better off to follow biblical disciplines that are in very sad neglect in our time particularly acknowledging Sunday as a Christian Sabbath the Lord calls us to honor the Sabbath day in the most unequivocal way it seems to me and we ought to honor it by being in church at least morning and evening are you gonna clap for that and we have to turn to our ministers and say why are you trying to starve us we want the Word of God we wanted at least twice why can't we have three services on Sunday so I you know I think I think that's always the question with spiritual disciplines too often human humanely invented spiritual disciplines drive out divinely instituted ones and that's never to our benefit there's something else about spiritual disciplines that can be problematic john calvin said that where there is great ritual there is usually great wickedness and what he meant by that was he was looking at for example the Ash Wednesday practice of putting Ash in a cross or some shape on your forehead which is testifying to all the world I am being outwardly show Italy repentant and the seams in that theology as there was so explicitly a medieval Roman Catholicism a lack of awareness that the real problem is in the human heart deeper than the human behavior and simply by performing in an outward way I'm actually just putting on the outward show of righteousness masking the fact that I'm a white and tomb and so these these human traditions tend to be very superficial in their understanding of righteousness and utterly superficial in their understanding of human sin and so they can't actually deal with these things whereas meeting with God's people under something to hear God's Word expounded is the gospel impacting lives not merely an outward show of performance amen I'd just like to add something to that I think your the questions that Jesus was asked what must I do to be saved how can we what must we do that we can do the works of God in John chapter 6 we desperately want to do something we want to do something we want to be seen as doing something I I'm very troubled by this development and evangelical ISM but I want to diagnose at least partly why it exists it exists because we have so much superficial evangelicalism that has a little gospel and and and so little biblical content that it doesn't look like we're doing anything and this is where we must remind ourselves that we stand by the gospel of Jesus Christ we stand on the Scriptures and we expect the ordinary means of grace to mark the experience of God's people and where you find the ordinary means of grace depreciated and superficial don't be surprised you find people trying to put Ash crosses on their forehead because they're looking for something and and so you have a generation of younger evangelicals and there's no more older baby boomers - they're looking for something all they've had superficial nothing and this looks like something it looks halfway serious halfway serious but you're doing something and you can be seen as having done something so expect in a church where there's weak preaching weak praying weak communion to the Saints weak him singing weak worship weak Bible preaching expect to find people looking to do something and this is where we need thick robust preaching worship where the ordinary means of grace are so glorious you're not trying to go find something to tell yourself you've done something if the people of God are energetically biblically engaged an authentic Christ centered biblically driven worship they're not going to be looking for something else to do regarding Christian Liberty what is a good balance between holiness and our sanctification and our Christian Liberty I have a friend who places great emphasis on Christian Liberty - I feel the detriment of holiness and sanctification there is no balance here at all as if those holiness and Liberty and we try to walk between the two freedom is found in holy obedience to Christ and nowhere else we'll go to an easy one then if Satan fell and sinned against God in heaven does that mean there is sin in heaven well that is where the sin took place was in heaven and was cast down to the earth that's why he was cast down because the sin of rebellion cosmic treason as RC would say was committed against God face to face in his very presence as he was lifted up and pride and sought to elevate himself above the throne of God and was so persuasive in his rebellion that he persuaded a third of the Angels to join him which now had become demon spirits some loose on the earth and others already confined in the bowels of Hell so yes there was sin in heaven of course there was sin in heaven that's where Satan sinned when he was Lucifer against God but there will be no sin in heaven upon oh yeah sure absolutely thank you for tithing that up since the Roman Church rejects the gospel our Roman Catholic baptisms valid why or why not [Applause] saundra folk sound reform folk differ on that question and still can love one another maybe so Charles Hodge for example the great Presbyterian teacher at Princeton in the mill the 19th century believed that Roman Catholic baptism was valid because it was done with the biblically appointed element of water and in the name of the bibley biblically appointed Trinity and so he said baptism in the Roman Church was valid the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Hodges absence rejected his position and said it was not valid so there you have even Presbyterians disagreeing amongst themselves to the extent that baptism is a fulfillment of circumcision in the New Covenant one might suggest one wouldn't want to be circumcised twice so it is an important question to be sure that one is not violating the the command and this is why at the time of the Reformation there was so serious debate about the Anabaptist position because since the days of Justinian it had been illegal in Europe to be rebaptised it was a capital crime to be rebaptised it was on that basis that some Annabeth toasts were drowned so it is an important question and there are different points of view there are and we're you know what this this this is an intentional respectful disagreement on these certs I will simply say that Baptists never get to the question entertained by Presbyterians as to which infant baptism is efficacious and legitimate and which is not believers baptism means believers baptism and it's fascinating in the Catholic example because nothing is the greater proof I would argue of the Baptist position than the Catholic necessity of a proxy to stand in and say I believe on behalf of an infant so I'm going to leave my Presbyterians aside for further debate in the future but I'm going to say when you ask the question immediately about Roman Catholic baptism and what they call the sacrament of baptism this is very very easy no I do not believe it is legitimate efficacious I don't believe it's baptism I'll have to leave it at that one does have to remember that BAP that Roman Catholics do sometimes convert adults who were pagans and have become Roman Catholic so it's not immersion as Baptists trees all over North Africa until they get over it that's right so were those people baptized or not if they were baptized as believers in Christ in simple obedience to Christ in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit then it was not the fact that the Catholic Church baptized them in any sacramental sense that could be in any way efficacious it would be their mere obedience to Christ I must hold the hypothetical possibility that someone in contradiction to the sacramental teachings of the Roman Catholic Church actually was a closeted Baptist in which case yes there would be a efficacious baptism I usually don't like Al's answers on baptism but I'm pretty happy with that one you know Chris just add one thing that actually doesn't have anything to do with the baptism part oh I agree with dr. Mohler to say that someone is converted by the Catholic message is flat wrong because they preach a corrupted gospel it is not a true gospel so if someone is converted if a Catholic is converted they are not converted by the Catholic message which is based upon salvation by works they would only be saved by a biblical definition our presentation of the gospel that would be clarified by the Reformation position so even that I would just totally reject in Baptism is just simply a symbol of the reality of salvation and if you have a false understanding of what salvation is then even your baptism is distorted because it doesn't even reflect the one true saving gospel of Jesus Christ it is identifying with a false gospel did you join me in thanking our panelists this afternoon [Applause]

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

Views: 11,755

Rating: 4.89011 out of 5

Keywords: ligonier, ligonier ministries, ligonier conference, ligcon, w robert godfrey, robert godfrey, steven lawson, steve lawson, mohler, albert mohler, michael reeves, question and answers

Id: F1_tJdRas7A

Length: 43min 19sec (2599 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2019