It’s the fuzzy stuff around the edges that gets us. When we are aware we are facing a text from God’s Word, we tend to tread carefully. We move slowly, break out our exegetical tools, and get to work. The trouble comes when we’re dealing in broad generalities. We take a vague notion grounded in… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Written 2010 I mentioned in a recent note dealing with the blessing and pain of my imminent return to Orlando that within a few feet of me as I type there hangs a banner. It is roughly four feet wide and six feet tall. The font of the letters, and the color scheme, manifest the… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.The purported value of ethical relativism, the idea that there are no transcendent, binding rules for right and wrong that all humans are morally required to submit to, is that it allows us to live in peace. That is, if you have your ethics, and I have my ethics, well then there is no real… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Written 2008 It was a good idea my dear wife had. She is eager to exercise. I am eager to exercise. We live in rural southwest Virginia, on a rather flat road that follows the contours of the river that flows beside it. So what we have been doing of late is walking together early… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.I’m cleaning up my desk. Not the one my computer sits on, but the one that sits inside my computer. I’m filing old Kingdom Notes, sermon notes, personal notes. And in so doing I came across the below. In coaching my dear friend who recently lost his wife I told him to save what wisdom… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.There is wisdom in the playground adage that every time we point a finger at others we have three more pointing back at ourselves. It’s also true for adults who are given to hurling accusations against those who are just like us. Christian A complains to Christian B about what a horrible gossip Christian C… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.When a great man dies, it is our habit to stop and chronicle his achievements. In obituaries and homilies we retell success stories and tally victories. While this is utterly fitting, it can be misleading. Were our eyes more attuned to looking at and for the things of God we would confess that what makes… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.There is I suspect a difference between being grateful and being a fan boy. God has blessed the church with all manner of godly men who preach and teach faithful to the Word. My own desire is to cultivate deeper gratitude while avoiding the awkwardness of being a fan boy. But I suppose part of… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.We don’t understand God. What is it about Him that so often leads Him to mute His power, to hide behind the weak and lame? It’s not as though He doesn’t understand His own power. His Word created the whole of the universe. His Spirit gave life to us when we were dead. That Word… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.We want to be like Jesus. What I tend to want, however, for those whom I love, is that they would be happy and healthy. I want the good stuff for me, something less for others. When my wife was first diagnosed with leukemia I was worried for her, but happy for me. This, I… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.The Westminster Confession, when dealing with how Christians ought to understand the place of the Old Covenant civil law (that is, the laws God gaveIsrael’s government at the founding of the nation), argues that we are bound by the “general equity” of these laws. That is, I believe, that we are called to apply that… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.In a plane, on my way to address a large crowd, many of whom may well be hostile, fear is heavy on my mind, and truth be told, even on my heart. There are many who have a deep seated fear of flying. I am not one of them. For all the hassles, and all… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Empathy is a tricky thing. Great thing to have, not so great thing to prematurely claim. We are called, as much as we are able, out of love to enter into the sufferings of our neighbor. That’s a good thing. But one can’t do it mildly, or vicariously. “I know how you feel” is a… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.We serve an exponential God. He who made everything out of nothing does not increase through addition, but through multiplication. We move from faith to faith, from grace to grace, from blessing to blessing. The more we grow in grace the more blessed we are. The more blessed we are, the more we grow in… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Sorrow over the loss of a loved one, at least for those of us who trust in God’s loving, sovereign care for us, is pretty simple to understand. We don’t, when our wife passes, have to wonder what God is thinking. We don’t, when our little girl joins her, have to listen to the accusations… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Written 2011 Watching The King’s Speech reminded me of the purpose of kings who reign but don’t rule. They serve an important function for a given culture, one that in turn touches on the whole nobility. Kings serve as “public persons,” personifications of the morals and manners of the nations. This concept, rightly understood is… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.It is because we love the world so profoundly that we think we’re already being persecuted. That is, we see ourselves as bold prophets confronting the sin of the world because we vote for candidates approved by the National Right to Life. We watch pundits on CNN mock us. We might even face a moment… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.I don’t much care for physics. Never did. That, of course, doesn’t keep me from being grateful for physicists, and for engineers. This message has reached you through the labors of men who do care about such things. But usually when physicists start talking about wormholes, or engineers start talking about heat transfer rates, my… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Pastors, when they get together, are given to grumbling when with our sheep we feel the need to present ourselves as self-confident leaders. We can’t let our flock see us as we are. With each other we tend to be more honest. Trouble is, too often we grumble about all the wrong things. In order… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.I have been blessed, over the past ten days or so, to spend rather a lot of time with my father. I understand that the time I normally have makes more than a few of you jealous. I, however, am grateful to have heard my father preach at Ligonier’s national conference, to address several thousand… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.We are a worldly people and we know it. Trouble is, we don’t know it well enough. As the broader western culture sinks more deeply into the moral abyss, as even our anemic and apologetic Christianity is vilified and judged it becomes all too easy to awaken to the dangers of worldliness. And of course… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.“Theological liberalism no longer announces itself with old men in big steeples but disguises itself in young men in skinny jeans and glasses.” I tweeted the above this morning. From all appearances, based on the responses I have received, theological liberals were not offended. Old men were not offended. Big steeples were not offended. Young… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.It was a tree I had climbed dozens of times. It was base when we played hide and seek, our meeting place for planning the day’s play. It was, one could argue, the epicenter of my childhood. And it nearly killed me. I nimbly started up its limbs, hopping from one to the next. I… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.It is my conviction that too often those of us who think ourselves prophetic are actually cowards. One can easily enough, in the evangelical church, earn a reputation for boldness by railing against the sins of either an unlistening world, or the church down the street. We stand in the streets of Jerusalem pronouncing God’s… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.It is rather fashionable, in certain Reformed circles, to bemoan the church’s historical ignorance. We don’t know our Bibles, nor our creeds, nor our fathers. In slightly smaller Reformed circles we likewise bemoan our anemic understanding of the church. We live in the age of the para-church, the house church, the self-authenticating, social network framed… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Among those lies hatched by the devil’s Research and Development lab that have found the most favor among modern American evangelicals is this- the path to personal prosperity is acquiring specialized educational credentials in a field in great demand. This, we believe, is what we must give our sons, or if we are slightly more… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Education is the sacrament of the Enlightenment. That is, when people caught up in enlightenment thinking, whether inside or outside the church, see a problem, their means of grace of choice is ever and always more education. The priests of the secular realm are, after all, educators. Consider all the public service announcements we are… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.My life, I am persuaded, would fall apart in a heap in a moment were I not a servant of the Lord. Though it is true that Jesus is the very font of my happiness, that is not why I follow Him, nor how I would encourage you to follow Him. Rather I trust in… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.It has long been my contention that the Reformed church never quite got over the Enlightenment. While we rightly reject this premise and that conclusion at the heart of the Enlightenment experiment, we still drink deep of its spirit. We deny that this world is all there is, but we live as though this world… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.A pastor friend of mine is dealing with a difficult challenge among his flock. He sent out an email to his congregation, and was gracious enough to send me a copy. Therein he explained the situation in calm, careful language. Then, he wisely asked for prayer. Last, he did something rather unusual- he asked that… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.The Bible is faithful to tell us what has come to pass. It, in turn, rightly also tells us what will come to pass. Our faith can faithfully be summarized with these three affirmations, two historical, one future- Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. What the Bible doesn’t tell us is… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Dear friend of Highlands Ministries and the Gospel, Your hard drive crashes. Traffic is backed up for miles. A thunderstorm has knocked out the cable. These we call “first world problems.” But they aren’t the real problem. The great first world problem is that we are ungrateful. A brief interruption in our constant shower of… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.I’ve never been a huge fan of resolutions, though I have long been a fan of sanctification. Somehow moving from recognizing a weakness to formalizing a commitment to fight it seems mildly artificial. Not so artificial, however, that I am not about to get dangerously close to making resolutions in the following. These are areas… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.The only thing worse than falling into a spiritual valley is the conviction that one must always be on a spiritual mountaintop. Though the Bible is the very history of the ups and downs of God’s people, God’s people go on thinking themselves immune, and that something is terribly wrong if their passion and joy… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Once again the American people, Christian and non-Christian alike find themselves rightly mourning a terrible tragedy while asking “How could this happen?” The left is at best hinting and at worst demanding further or complete gun control. The right is at best arguing to arm teachers and at worst insisting on better government tracking of… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.The Bible teaches, from Genesis 3 onward, the antithesis. Antithesis is a rather fancy theological term that simply affirms that the people of God live their lives in the context of the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. While we are called to love our enemies, we are… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.There are any number of dangers of a steady pop culture diet. To catch our attention Hollywood must increase the tension. The struggle must get more and more dramatic, the stakes must increase. We don’t merely hope the good guys catch the bank robber. Now they are chasing down a serial killer. It is no… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Some suggest that the engine for the too frequent train wrecks in the lives of pastors’ kids is the fishbowl they must live in. In their local churches they, more than their peers, are watched, judged, measured. It is an unwelcome, indeed unwholesome attention. When your father is a widely known and deeply respected theologian… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.The interwebs has democratized our discourse. Time was when to reach an audience one had to go through a series of gatekeepers. You had to have a publisher of your books. You had to have an editor who would publish your article. You had to raise mountains of money from others in order to buy… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Written in 2008 Our hearts are deceptively wicked. Which means, of course, that they are not only wicked, but deceptively so. We do not know ourselves as we ought, not because we are stupid, but because we are devious. We hide ourselves from ourselves before we foolishly judge ourselves by ourselves. The Bible, however, has… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.We are adepts not at fighting our sins but hiding them. We gather each Lord’s Day dressed in our smiles, share our praise reports and our health concerns, pat ourselves on our backs, and return home to our gross and heinous sins. We miss this in part because we are preternaturally positive about ourselves. We… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.It was always my contention, living with a special needs daughter who could be called home at any time, that it was not her health issues that determined when should go, but my spiritual health issues. When each seizure forced me to face her fragility, when each morning I checked first to see if she… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.It has been, from time to time, rather lonely for me, holding with passion a number of convictions that are positively wing-batty not just to the world but to the broad evangelical church. I believe children are a blessing from God’s hand. I believe a man cannot rightly raise his children in the nurture and… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.It is a sure sign that we are sinners that we tend to be more concerned about what we do than what we are. That is, our guilt or peace oftentimes is the fruit of our own judgment of how often we commit a known sin, less often grounded in what we think and how… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.The church, after President Obama’s re-election, finds itself in serious trouble. Part of the good news is that at least she is beginning to recognize the trouble she is in. One wonders how many Christians would have been dancing in the aisles had the election turned out differently, and if we would have actually been… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Christianity Today magazine recently published, as its cover story, a list of fifty women to watch. There were names I would have put there, women like Elizabeth Elliot who have for decades faithfully taught young women to love their husbands and their children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.God bless the Westminster Shorter Catechism. I cut my own theological teeth going through G.I. Williamson’s find study guide on the catechism. I have helped my children to memorize it. I have taught through the catechism at least three times in the last fifteen years. I believe it, confess it, and learn from it. But,… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.Written 2008 When I travelled to Myanmar last month, I was asked what prompted my decision to go. I told my questioner, “I get to see God’s grace at work in some surprising places.” One of the most surprising is my own heart. That is, it takes God’s grace to teach fools like me that… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.In January we will face a most grim anniversary. Within a matter of months we will have lived through a full generation of legalized abortion across our nation. Forty years and over fifty million tiny little babies intentionally murdered by paid assassins, at the request of their mothers. Few would challenge that Francis Schaeffer was… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.We serve an exponential God. He who made everything out of nothing does not increase through addition, but through multiplication. We move from faith to faith, from grace to grace, from blessing to blessing. The more we grow in grace the more blessed we are. The more blessed we are, the more we grow in… Read more »
Posted by Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.
