R.C. Sproul: Post-Christian Christianity

Oh hey hey this is not a graduation ceremony I didn't just like get a diploma I got a marriage renewal thank you so much and thank you so much for coming we really love to come to Seattle you know why because we know that this is a barren wasteland for the Christian faith and so the Christians who come to this conference from the northwest come really hungry and excited to be renewed and encouraged for their work and ministry in their neighborhoods and communities and so again thank you very much for being a part of this I'd like to take a moment to read a portion from the Gospel according to st. Luke beginning at chapter 13 and verse 22 which will be my text for this afternoon he went on his way through towns and villages teaching and journeying towards arou silom and someone said to him Lord will those who are saved be few and he said to them strive to enter through the narrow door for many I tell you will seek to enter and will not be able when once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and he began to stand outside and to knock at the door saying Lord open to us then he will answer you I do not know where you come from then you will begin to say we ate and drank in your presence you taught in our streets that he will say I tell you I do not know where you come from depart from me all you workers are evil in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out and people will come from the east and the west from north and south and recline at table in the kingdom of God can you pray with me my father and our God as we contemplate in this hour the abysmal spiritual condition of this world and of our nation we know that our only hope is in you and in your redemptive power and so we plead that by thy Spirit you will give us the capacity to rest our confidence and our hope and you and to rejoice in your reign as our King for we ask it in Jesus name Amen so far throughout this conference we've looked at various questions of how the culture came to be what it is through past endeavors and we could answer that question by pointing to various watersheds in human history before Socrates and Plato and Aristotle came on the scene as ancient philosophers there was a widespread period of skepticism which some have called the birth of humanism with the philosopher Protagoras whose motto simply was this homo men surah meaning man the measure the idea was that man is the measure of all things but I don't for a minute think that Protagoras was the real father of humanism I think the father of humanism predated protagonist's when he approached the young woman and said to her you shall be as gods so the birth as we've heard repeatedly in this conference of the secularism and materialism that we've been examining was in genesis 3 but in terms of more recent history and various watersheds that have taken place we've looked at the powerful influence of Charles Darwin and others but I'd like to consider another point in the history of theoretical thought before I get to this text in the year 1776 some colonists and the Declaration of Independence which provoked a war called a Revolutionary War that lasted until 1783 and many historians have argued that the American Revolution was the most significant revolution in the history of Western civilization now I don't deny that that was a significant revolution but I personally believe that there was a more significant revolution that took place five years after the writing of the Declaration of Independence and it took place in Germany when a philosopher and a book entitled critique their einen fur moved the critique of pure reason the heretofore obscure philosopher Immanuel Kant had been moved to write this critique by one of his philosophical predecessors from Scotland David Hume who took the philosophy of empiricism which was the major movement among scientists at that time to a conclusion of radical skepticism now many people think that David Hume disproved or denied causality one of the most fundamental laws of thinking and certainly fundamental to the whole scientific enterprise but I think a close reading of Hume will reveal that he did not deny causality what he denied was our ability to perceive it we know that when the rain falls the grass gets wet and we rush to judgment assuming that the reason why the grass got wet is because the rain fell on it the Hume said that's an assumption we cannot prove well this philosopher in Germany said if humans right with the skepticism of the ability of the senses to perceive reality accurately that would spell the death of science and so it was said that Hume took empiricism to its graveyard and because of that Immanuel Kant said he was awakened from his dogmatic slumbers by the scepticism of David Hume and he said about the task to create a philosophy that would resurrect as it were the trustworthiness of the senses and of scientific inquiry in in order to do that what he did was that he made one of the most important distinctions in the history of theoretical thought caught divided reality into two spheres an ultimate metaphysical sphere that he called the Newman 'el realm which he distinguished from the lesser realm that he called the phenomenal realm now when he talked about the phenomenal world he didn't mean it was phenomenal in the sense that it was terrific what he meant was the phenomenal world is that world of phenomena that world that we can interact with in terms of our eyes our ears our hands and so on that the five senses can analyze evaluate predict and manipulate through scientific inquiry and practice and he said as people with minds and senses we can come to some meaningful understanding of the reality of this phenomenal world that is open to our perceptions but he said this other world the transcendent world the world that goes above and beyond physics the realm of metaphysics which we would call the realm of the supernatural is beyond our ability to penetrate and he said there are three things located in the Newman 'el worlds he delineated them as God the self and the Dingaan Zeke or the thing in itself and many of you probably have no idea what he meant by the thing in itself and could even care less but philosophers through the ages have sought to know not only outward appearances but the essence of things not simply being able to observe a tree but understand the significance of tree-ness why acorns produce oak trees and not elephants there's something essential found in that acorn something like DNA or intelligent formative design that Kahn said we can't penetrate to that essential level of things nor can we know with any degree of reasonable certainty than nature of the self something we take for granted that we ourselves that we are persons that we have souls but no one has ever measured a soul no one's ever looked at a soul under a microscope the non-physical aspect of our human existence in personality is unknowable through scientific inquiry well so far so bad the ultimate problem came with the location of God in the new mono world beyond the reach of scientific inquiry again Conte didn't say there's no God what he's saying is if there is one we can't know anything about it because you can't get to the Newman already narration Lessing said that there was an unbridgeable chasm between the phenomenal world and the newman 'el world this became known as Lessing's ditch it's so wide you can't get over it it's so deep you can't get under it there is no way across the chasm between this world and the next in order to demonstrate that caught gave the most thorough going virtually exhaustive criticism of the classical traditional intellectual arguments for the existence of God such arguments were the glue of the medieval University that said that God that theology is the queen of the sciences and philosophy her handmaiden but in consecrate ich the queen was not only de throned but basically sent off into exile he tried to argue and did argue too many people's satisfaction that the classical arguments for the existence of God the argument from cosmos or the cosmological argument the teleological argument the argument from design the ontological argument the argument being and even the moral argument for the existence of God all failed in their attempt to give us real knowledge of transcendent reality that was revolutionary because prior to that even though not everybody in the world was a theist and every professor in the university in Europe would admit to existing the existence of God it was politically incorrect to deny the existence of God because it seemed that the arguments for his existence heretofore were so compelling that no rational creature no educated person would dare to challenge those conclusions until Kant's critique I didn't come here today to praise Him or to bury him but only to point out this great watershed before I continue let me say that though he was convinced that his critique was valid we could have Steven Maher wrote a book on Kant's doubt because he had a doubt at two points he was bothered and restless by two things he just couldn't shake he said the two things that haunted him were the starry skies above and the moral law within his famous study of the categorical imperative and his later book on the critique of practical reason indicated that he knew that there was nothing up there there was fundamentally no basis for ethics as Dostoyevsky said if God does not exist anything is permissible but God couldn't get rid of that haunting sense of the moral law within or as a physicist the overwhelming impact of the starry sky above and the intricate design that it seemed to display but you know when you follow the history of philosophy you'll see that generally speaking what happens is one school of thought solves a problem raises a new one the new problem is then resolved by the next school of philosophy which leaves certain anomalies that haven't been answered until the next school comes along and improves but when you get to Conte Kant's like that evolutionary tree turned upside down after quant a whole host of philosophies were spawned including Marxism including humanism includes including logical positivism including existentialism including relativism and including pluralism now those are all I can mention secularism those are all different isms that have their distinctive characteristics that differentiate one of them from the rest but they all had one thing in common skepticism with respect to the supernatural and to God and so all of them shared a common premise of phenomenology that it was manifested ultimately in materialistic natural that we've heard so wonderfully examined by dr. Mohler and dr. Maier and but the the point was if you take God out of the equation there is no way to come to ultimate reality you must be satisfied with the here and now you can still speak of having truths but no truth purposes but no purpose existences but no essence humans but no humanity and so it goes and so what emerged was a form of relativism which in every period of skepticism in the history of theoretical thought in the West skepticism has led to relativism and it's twin sister pluralism because if there's no absolute truth and all truth is relative then all truths are equally valid or invalid and so pluralism is that philosophy that says there is no singular truth as we've heard but rather plural truth and no one ever has the right to claim exclusive truth the claim exclusivity in truth is to be guilty of the worst politically incorrect sin that of narrow-mindedness rather the supreme virtue of relativism and pluralism is broad-mindedness now that idea has not only captured the University and the scientific community but it has also in many regards captured the church I often hear people either being described as or describing themselves as being broadly evangelical you ever heard that term broadly even now what is a broad evangelical that's a hard term for me to define well I'm going to go ahead and take a crack at it I can think of two possible definitions for the concept of the broad evangelical the first one is an evangelical who's overweight in that regard I am a broad evangelical the other definition for broad evangelical is it's an oxymoron describing a pretend Christian an oxymoron describing a pretend Christian because if you are a Christian and think like a Christian and believe as a Christian then you are by definition a narrow thinking person which by today's cultural standards is a vice but by the measurement of the incarnation of truth and the perfect son of God is a virtue now to the text Luke tells us that Jesus went on his way through towns and villages teaching and journey toward Jerusalem he was on his way to his death he was on his way to fulfill his mission as the Lamb of God to be sacrificed there but in one sense he was taking his time not missing any opportunity in Galilee to proclaim the kingdom of God and so on the way to Jerusalem he would stop at every village and every town he would heal the sick and he would teach concerning the kingdom and Luke tells us that while he was making this journey somebody came up to him with a fascinating question listen to the question and before I ask this question repeat this question I want you to as you hear it ask yourself for just a moment because I don't want you to go to sleep for the rest of the message but ask yourself for just a moment how would I answer this question if somebody came up to me and asked me this question what would I say well what's the question the person comes and said Lord will those who are saved be few have you ever wondered about that you know I watched these polls and how people answer them and everything and it seems like on any ethical issue or any theological issue those who are giving a sound biblical response to the poll or always in a very small minority usually under 10% and you wonder when you hear these things how can so many people be so desperately wrong and what in the world and what out of the world will happen to these people well a majority of people who have ever lived on this planet go to heaven or will be just a remnant will the majority of people who are alive today go to heaven or will they go to hell if you go to funeral services of your friends or Queens who died the only answer you can give to that question is obviously an overwhelming number of people who are now in this earth or recently departing from it will certainly go to heaven how must be reserved for people like Hitler and Stalin Idi Amin and those guilty of the worst kinds of atrocities against humanity but when you go to funerals you know I've never been to a funeral where the minister said our poor departed brother is roasting right now in hell have you ever heard that now in our supreme doctrine of justification in America is not justification by faith or even justification by works but justification by death all you have to do to go to heaven is to die because obviously the overwhelming number a people so broad and wide is the mercy and great grace of God then almost everybody gets to heaven isn't that right Jesus or is it a minority a small minority a few well how does our Lord answer that question he answers that a couple of ways that I want us to consider Lord will those who are saved be few and he said strive to enter through the broad door because there is so much room in that broad door and that road is so wide that it will never get too crowded am i inching towards catastrophe you know that's not what he said he said strive to enter by the narrow door now there's a parallel passage that Jesus gave at the end of the Sermon on the Mount and I think you're familiar with it where he said at least it's in my Bible I can't I find it 7:13 son this page that's right where he says similarly thank you by the way I was in the right church the wrong Pew enter by the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and those who enter by it are many for the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life and those who find it are few again this is not my opinion this is the teaching of the Lord Jesus and he sets before his disciples two contrasts a narrow way and a broad way or a straight way in a narrow door and a wide way and a broad door and the other contrast is with respect to the number of those who go each way those who go the broad way that leads to destruction are many those who go the straight way to the narrow gate are few now here's what I hear Jesus say that most if not the vast majority of human beings that you know and that I know on their way to hell and if they were to die tonight would go to hell you could also say to me statistically that there's a significant number of people in this room right now who if they die tonight would wake up in hell because they're on the broad way that leads to destruction now Jesus is not denying justification by faith when he says strive to enter in to the narrow gate as he does here in Luke's version strive to enter through the narrow door for many I tell you will seek to enter but they won't be able they think they can get through the narrow door by living on Broadway here's the problem it gets worse Jesus doesn't stop there about the few and the many the narrow and the wide but he said when once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside to knock at the door saying Lord open to us they don't just say who's ever in there please open to us they say Lord Lord open the door and Matthews first he said they will say to him Lord Lord didn't we do this in your name didn't we do that in your name and Jesus said and I will say to them who are you please leave you workers of iniquity now he knows cognate a cognitively every one of those people that's knocking at the door but he doesn't know them savingly and so he says you are not known by me in a redemptive way so I can't hear your knocking at my door it's too late I can remember walking and down a hall in a house back in Pennsylvania there was a mirror on the wall and as I walked past that mirror I caught a reflection myself which if not a pleasant experience but as I looked in the mirror the thought struck me what if you're deceiving yourself about the state of your soul what if you are going to hell I was terrified Jesus said Lord open to us and he will say I do not where you're from and you'll say well we ate and drink and your president we came to the Lord's table we celebrated Holy Communion you taught in our streets I was there when you came through our village and healed the paralytic I saw that I was at the wedding feast that came and I saw you turn water into wine I've seen many things of mercy and grace that you have done I tell you I don't know where he come from depart from me all you workers of evil and then he describes the nature of that place where they're going and the human response of being in hell do you ever wonder what people are doing who are in hell Jesus doesn't describe every activity that takes place there but he does describe two responses of humans who have been consigned there where he says in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth some people when they wake up in Hell will be devastated and they won't find enough water in their eyes to satisfy their need to weep they'll be solving Oh No not here Oh God please have mercy upon me be the greatest disappointment they could possibly experience to wake up in hell but then the other group will be there won't be weeping a bit they'll be gnashing their teeth which is a biblical metaphor for human fury how dare you God put me here the angry or the anger of the Damned will know no bounds now as I said I sure don't want to end up in hell but one thing I know for sure that if I do if I've deceived myself all these years and if I'm one who says well Lord Lord didn't I do this and didn't I do that and he looks at me said please leave I don't know you and he sends me to hell one thing I can promise you that I'll be a weeper not an Asscher because I know anything about theology I know that if he sent me to health a night I could make no just complaint against him I've been guilty of treason cosmic treason every time I have sinned I've asserted my will over the will of my creation creator I have declared that I am sovereign not the Lord God I've worked against his kingdom not for it I've sinned I guess the holy and infinitely righteous being who owes me nothing and if I wake up in hell I will realize I've only received what my life has merited not cruelty not injustice but perfect justice I understand that so I don't want to go there I don't want any way else to go there even though I love the majesty of God as a fallen human being I have so much more in common with my comrades in the flesh and so I have so much sympathy to think of anybody in Hell in fact I don't think I would believe in Hell if it were not taught so clearly by Jesus himself did you know that Jesus taught more about Hell than he did about heaven but I don't want to end on a hell of a note I want to go just a couple of verses before this we're in verse 18 Jesus said what is the kingdom of God like and to what shall I compare it it's like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden it grew and became a tree and the birds of the air made nests in its branches Jesus every time we listen to you're talking about the kingdom of God we don't even know what you're talking about what's it like and he says what's like that almost infinitesimally small seed that you plant and you water and then it pokes its little head through the earth a little sprig that begins to grow and expand not just to a bush but to a tree of ten or fifteen feet high with a vast outreach of branches so thick that birds of all kinds of different varieties can come and nest in its branches not just lander for a few seconds but build a nest in there the kingdom of God is something that begins so tiny that it's imperceptible but blossoms and blooms and grows and expands to the whole world we are mustard seeds in a dying world not just a neo-pagan culture a barbarian culture but we are sons and daughters of the kingdom we are sons and daughters of the king who takes every see that we plant every leaven that we put into the meal so that it grows and expands and fills the world so in the final analysis if we want to overcome the world we don't have to worry how strong the world is we don't have to worry how many pagans there are out there all we need to know is who the king is because he's the one that will determine the destiny of this nation this world and this people may you find yourself in agony because that's the word Jesus used when he says strive to enter in the narrow gate the word igon which means use a Herculean effort work out your salvation with fear and trembling your works will never get you into the kingdom but once in there you're to work with all of your might and like pilgrim and pilgrims progress don't turn to the laughter to the right no matter how many obstacles how many enemies how much opposition there's a door you know Christians were first called the people of the way it was the narrow way that leads to life tonight as you put your head on the pillow I plead with you to ask yourself am i numbered among the few or the many god grant that your answer will be among the few let's pray whether we thank you for the truth of your word for the comfort that you were determined to save your people that you have given to your son that no one can snatch out of his hands we thank you that Christ has already overcome the word amen

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

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Keywords: ligonier, ligonier ministries, ligonier conference, another gospel, post christian, liberalism, christian liberalism, christianity and liberalism, sproul, rc sproul

Id: qG_ZUWiM_50

Length: 46min 18sec (2778 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2016