Q and A with R.C. Sproul, part 1

[Okay, I'd love to say that I (Mike) called up Dr. Sproul and asked him some questions for our blog, but let's be honest...he as better things and more eternal matters to take care of than talk to me.  However, I was recently reading The Trust of the Cross by R. C. Sproul and at the end of the book, he has some common questions that people ask him.  I thought they were helpful and I thought they might interest my church family at Crossway.  I hope you enjoy!]

WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD IN THE ATONEMENT?

 The idea that there’s some intrinsic or inherent power in the blood of Jesus is a popular concept in the Christian world. It even crops up from time to time in various hymns and praise songs. This idea reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of the blood as it relates to atonement from a biblical perspective. I once heard my dear friend John Guest, who is an Anglican evangelist, preach on the cross and the blood of Christ. He asked the question: “Had Jesus some to this earth and scratched His finger on a nail so that a drop or two of blood was spilled, would that have been sufficient to redeem us? That would have constituted the shedding of blood. If we’re saved by the blood of Christ, wouldn’t that have been enough?” Obviously the point John is trying to make is that it’s not the blood of Christ as such that saves us.

 The significance of the blood in the sacrificial system is that it represents life. The Old Testament repeatedly makes the point that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11). Therefore, when the blood is poured out, the life is poured out. That’s significant, because under the covenant of works in the Garden of Eden, the penalty that was laid down for disobedience was death. God required that penalty for sin. That is why Jesus had to die to accomplish the atonement. When the blood is shed and the life is poured out, the penalty is paid. Nothing short of that penalty will do.

WORDS FROM THE FIRE: HEARING THE VOICE OF GOD IN THE 10 COMMANDMENTS

I (Nick) read a book recently that opened my eyes afresh to the holy standard God calls me to as a believer. As I read this book I realized that often in the midst of trying to ‘discern my heart’ and ‘look for the root of my sin’ I was actually hiding my sin behind all of the language about sin. My sin isn’t that complicated. The roots of it are not that complicated either.

As I read Words from the Fire: Hearing the Voice of God in the 10 Commandments by Al Mohler I was refreshingly convicted of my sin in a very basic way. I was reminded that God has set out in the 10 commandments the framework for Christian living. In these simple commands I saw the basic framework for the Christian life, and it wasn’t that complicated. God has redeemed me and now calls me to obey Him as my LORD.

Exodus 20:1-3

1 And God spoke all these words, saying,

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

God has already redeemed me by bringing me out of my slavery to sin. Through Christ, I have been set free from the bondage of sin and am now a slave of righteousness. I do not obey to redeem myself; I obey because I have already been redeemed. The LORD’S righteous requirements of us are always preceded by and place in the context of God’s redeeming love for us.

I found this refreshing because it moved me out of my often laborious and tortured introspection and toward the grand realities of the gospel and my call to obey the LORD who has saved me. And the commands given were not complicated. You shall have no other gods before me, you shall not commit idolatry, you shall not murder, you shall not covet…So often I make the process of sanctification all about the hunt for my sin, when in reality my sin is often simple, I simply need to repent of it, turn to God in humility, and receive the forgiveness offered to me through Jesus Christ…and then get on with it.

The image I have had in my head for the last month as I have meditated on the 10 Commandments has been that of a parent and a child. All day long I am instructing my 2 year old saying, “you may do this and you shall not do this.” I tell her over and over that my instruction to her is given in the Lord’s stead and that by obeying me she is learning to obey the Lord. To me her life and my instruction are very simple.

Yet, when it comes to the LORD’S commands in my life and my own obedience to them, I often try and make these simple commands much more complicated. And yet his instruction to me is as simple as my instruction to my two year old. ‘You may do this and you shall not do this’. When I am tempted to lust. I hear my Father’s voice in my head saying, “you shall not commit adultery, find your delight in me and in the wife of your youth.” When I am tempted to ‘shade the truth’ on something so I don’t have to deal with a difficult conversation, I hear my Father’s voice in my head saying, “you shall not lie.” These are the words of my Father. They are non-negotiable. They are not complicated, and I am called to obey them ‘immediately, cheerfully, and completely.’

Returning to this simple message of obedience to my Father who has redeemed me through Christ has been so refreshing. It isn’t legalism. I am not doing this to earn my Father’s favor. I already have the unchanging favor of my Father through Jesus Christ. I obey because I have been redeemed and I owe my allegiance and obedience to my LORD and King.

Copies of Words from the Fire are available in the bookstore. I would recommend you give this book a look through and consider purchasing and reading it. It is a quick read of 195 pages. It is devotional in quality and would be and engaging read for High School students on up.

PS – I (Nick) am going to be highlighting books in the bookstore from time to time. I am also the person responsible for CrossWay’s bookstore. I am making an effort to slowly bring our inventory up to date and also introduce new books that are concise and engaging yet not void of theological rigor. If you have any thoughts or suggestions for the bookstore or for titles to be considered, please email me at nick.swan@crosswaync.org

Mission 28 Update

Hello CrossWay Community Church,

 This is Tyler LeVan and I wanted to give you an update on what is going on with Mission 28 right now.  We are now half way through a semester that has seen a lot of change.  The main change is that we have switched from bi-monthly meetings at CrossWay to weekly meetings on campus.  With meeting more often it has felt like the new people have become apart of things a lot more quickly.  This has been cool as the Lord continues to bring many new faces around.

 Also as reports come in, there have been many students, most of whom are unbelieving, attending our Open Discussions.  For those of you who don’t know, “Open Discussions” is a context in the dorms every week where students come together to discuss God, politics, life, morality, etc.  It is an awesome time to build friendships and love people who would most likely not step foot inside of a church building.  It is amazing how God is continuing to use these meetings to draw people for every avenue of life.  Please join us in praying that Lord would use this context to lift up the goodness and saving power of Jesus.  How cool would it be to see our church in 10 years with several people loving the Lord who first got started in OD’s?!  God can do it.

 Well famliy, be encouraged that the Lord is working.  I will leave you with just one brief story.  I sat down with a guy recently and was so encouraged.  I knew the Lord was working in his heart but didn’t have much clarity on all the particulars.  As we sat and talked he expressed how he was sick of the hollowness of the “party” lifestyle.  Next, I began to ask him more questions about Jesus.  He then began to explain how at a recent Sunday service at CrossWay he gave his life to the Lord.  He couldn’t stop telling me how everything was different now.  I assured him that I understood and we rejoiced together.  We are now going to start doing some discipleship and he is already inquiring on how he can join the church.  Thank you Jesus.  You are so glorious.

 Be blessed.  Thank you for your prayers.

 Tyler

NASCAR Pastors

Our wonderful Care Group Leaders gave the Pastors gift cards to “Richard Petty’s Driving Experience” last Christmas and we finally coordinated at time to do it.  Thank you for this wonderful gift.  It was a blast!

Quote from Family Meeting

As promised, here is the quote that Mickey gave at the Family Meeting last night when refering to Revelation 2:1-4.

D.A. CARSON (Love In Hard Places, 184) – “Perhaps the best guess is that these Christians have succumbed to numbing, resolute faithfulness.  When they were first converted, their love for God and their love for each other lay at the heart of all their service, and this love transformed work into pleasure and faithfulness into covenantal joy.  Now they maintain the work and the faithfulness and the discernment, but they are no longer driven by transparent and effusive love for God and love for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ…No longer intoxicated with God’s love, no longer returning that love to him as they had at first, now they are content with the more mundane delights of diligent routine.”

Rescuing Ambition

If you haven’t heard the messages from the SGM Men’s Conference on Rescuing Ambition, we highly encourage you to take the time to hear them.  Dave Harvey does an excellent job showing that there are differences between godly ambition and selfish ambition and that “ambition” is not always a bad thing.

QUOTES FROM INTRODUCTION TO ADOPTION

Some of you have asked for the quotes that Mickey used from Sunday, so here they are.

Text:  1 John 3:1  SEE what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.  

 WILLIAM PERKINS (Heirs With Christ, Beeke, 15) – “At earthly preferments (blessings) men will stand amazed; but seldom shall you find a man that is ravished with joy in this, that he is the child of God.”

 Regarding adoption being a grace gift…

 THOMAS WATSON (A Body of Divinity) – “We have enough in us to move God to correct us, but nothing to move him to adopt us, therefore exalt free grace, begin the work of angels here; bless him with your praises who hath blessed you in making you his sons and daughters.”

 Regarding our identity being as children of God…

 J. I. PACKER (Knowing God, 181) – “What is a Christian?  The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father…Father is the Christian name for God.” 

 Regarding the Spirit of Adoption…

 CHARLES SPURGEON – “And what is “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father?” I cannot tell you; but if you have felt it you will know it. It is a sweet compound of faith that knows God to be my Father, love that loves him as my Father, joy that rejoices in him as my Father, fear that trembles to disobey him because he is my Father and a confident affection and trustfulness that relies upon him, and casts itself wholly upon him, because it knows by the infallible witness of the Holy Spirit, that Jehovah, the God of earth and heaven, is the Father of my heart. Oh! have you ever felt the spirit of adoption?”

Halloween Outreach Ideas

As I (Mike) mentioned in last week’s post about Halloween, I was really convicted a couple years ago when I read what Tim Challies had to say when speaking about Halloween.  The idea that for 364 days a year I desire to get to know my neighbors and get into their homes to share the love of Jesus, but the one day (Halloween) when they come knocking on my door, I turn the lights off.  Ouch!  That was my thought the first time I read that.  Ever since, my family and I have sought to see how we can be a light for the gospel in our neighborhood.  Here are some ideas that we have come up with and that I have heard others do.  I hope these spark your own ideas. 

1.  Hot Chocolate:  Last year, I stood out in our driveway and had candy for the kids and hot chocolate for the adults.  This allowed me to interact with the parents as well as bless them with a warm drink on a cold night.  I didn’t give the kids hot chocolate because I did not want them to spill the hot drink on themselves and I get sued or something.  The parents really seemed appreciative.  I also had some tracts that I could give out.  The “Before You Die” tract (and Christian Rap CD comes with it) is an excellent one to have for older elementary kids as well as those teenagers that come (though they should have given up “trick or treating” long ago).

2.  Games:  Some people actually have games that neighborhood families can play.  You could have a cake walk in your driveway or a bean bag toss.  One of the easiest games is to make the children do something funny or crazy before you give them candy.  This is especially fun when the teenagers come.  I like to have the teens sing a song or do push ups.  They seem to really love the interaction.

3.  Hot Dogs–I know some people in Nashville that have a grill and make hot dogs and show a movie in their yard.  After everyone in their neighborhood finishes “trick or treating” they all go eat hot dogs and watch a movie.  Often times the movie is a Veggie Tales or something Christian that speaks of the Christian faith.  The parents all talk over food and the kids watch the cartoon movie. 

4.  Smores–this could get tricky, but if you have a fire pit or an outdoor fireplace at your home, this could be fun.  It may be one of those kind of events that you just invite some of the neighbors whom you already know over to eat and talk.

Now, not every family is going to feel that this is wise for them, but if you do plan to keep your light on this year, I pray that you will be intentional in seeking to get to know your neighbors.  The desire is not to just give out candy, it is to give candy for the sake of getting to know families who need to know the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If you are going to give away candy this year, here are a few thoughts.

1.  Don’t just give cheap candy–I remember as a kids those neighbors who gave cheap candy and/or popcorn balls.  This painted a picture of those neighbors to us the rest of the year.

2.  Be generous–give more than just one piece of candy to the kids.  It’s great to be known as the house that give a lot of good candy.  The kids and parents will flock to your house and you can winsomely build relationships.  Besides, who should be more generous than a Christian?

3.  Be joyful–enjoy talking to neighbors and don’t be fearful.  They are just people like you, who are sinners like you, who have struggles like you, who long for a listening ear…just like you.  Be a joyful person who is willing to talk and listen.

4. Pray–prior to Halloween night, have your family start praying for this outreach that your family is doing.  Pray for the kids who come to your door and for good conversations.  Pray for relationships to be built between you and your neighbors.  God is already at work in the lives of your neighbors, so join him in it.

Gospel Translations: Update

[The following is from Josh Harris' blog.  Gospel Translations is a ministry that Crossway supports through Sovereign Grace Ministries]

Those doing or connected to work in international missions may be helped in their work by the volunteer-driven initiative Gospel Translations, which now distributes biblical resources in about 40 languages. Below is a sampling from their library.

Spanish

• David Powlison’s “X-ray Questions: Drawing Out the Whys and Wherefores of Human Behavior“
• Paul Tripp’s “Speaking Redemptively“
• John Piper’s “The Pleasures of God in Bruising the Son“
• R.C. Sproul’s “The Dark Night of the Soul“
• Jerry Bridges’ “Measuring Up“
• Mark Dever’s Nine Marks of a Healthy Church

More authors and topics at Libros y Sermones Bíblicos.

Portuguese

• John Piper’s For Your Joy evangelism booklet
• Alfred Poirier’s “The Cross and Criticism” (CCEF/JBC)
• Mark Dever’s “Raising Up Pastors Is the Church’s Work“
• R.C. Sproul’s “The New Birth“

More authors and topics at Livros e Sermões Bíblicos.

Chinese (Simplified)

• R.C. Sproul’s “The Book of Job: Why Do the Righteous Suffer?“
• John Piper’s “The Suffering of Christ and the Sovereignty of God”
• Mark Dever’s “Expositional Preaching“
• Mike Bullmore’s “Gospel Implications“

More authors and topics at 圣经的书和布道.

Other sites

• Italian: Libri e Sermoni Biblici
• French: Livres et Prédications Bibliques
• German: Biblische Bücher und Predigten
• Russian: Библейские книги и проповеди
• Dutch: Bijbelse Boeken en Preken
• Arabic
• Hungarian
• Malaysian
• Tagalog
• Swedish
• Indonesian
• Romanian

See all 40 at the Gospel Translations homepage.

Halloween: Lights On or Lights Off?

I (Mike) know this is an issue for every family to think through, pray through, and ultimately to carry out in some way.  This blog post by Tim Challies (and then posted by Justin Taylor) was very helpful to me a couple years ago to engage my mind and heart in how I need to view Halloween.  I know everyone will not agree with Challies, but I think all of us should at least consider what he says. 

I am guessing my neighbourhood is all-too-typical in that people typically arrive home from work and immediately drive their cars into the garage. More often than not they do not emerge again until the next morning when they leave for work once more. We are private, reclusive people who delight in our privacy. We rarely see our neighbors and rarely communicate with them. It would be a terrible breach of Canadian social etiquette for me to knock on a person’s door and ask them for a small gift or even just to say “hello” to them. In the six years we have been living in this area, we have never once had a neighbor come to the door to ask for anything (except for this time). Yet on Halloween these barriers all come down. I have the opportunity to greet every person in the neighbourhood. I have the opportunity to introduce myself to the family who moved in just down the row a few weeks ago and to greet some other people I have not seen for weeks or months. At the same time, those people’s children will come knocking on my door. We have two possible responses. We can turn the lights out and sit inside, seeking to shelter ourselves from the pagan influence of the little Harry Potters, Batmans and ballerinas, or we can greet them, gush over them, and make them feel welcome. We can prove ourselves to be the family who genuinely cares about our neighbours, or we can be the family who shows that we want to interact with them only on our terms. Most of our neighbors know of our faith and of our supposed concern for them. This is a chance to prove our love for them.

 

The same contributor to the email list concluded his defense of participating in Halloween with these words: “One night does not a neighbor make (and one night does not a pagan make), but Halloween is the one night of the year where the good neighborliness that flows from being in Christ is communicated and reinforced. We are citizens of another Kingdom where The Light is always on.”

The truth is that I have several convictions regarding Halloween. I despise the pagan aspects of it. I am convicted that my children should not dress as little devils or ghosts or monsters. But I am also convicted that there could be no worse witness to the neighbours than having a dark house, especially in a neighbourhood like ours which is small and where every person and every home is highly-visible. We know that, if we choose not to participate, the neighbors will notice and will smile knowingly, supposing that we feel too good to participate. We have nothing to fear from our neighbours or from their children. So my children will dress up (my son as a police officer and my daughter as a princess) and we will visit each of our neighbours, knocking on their doors and accepting their fistfuls of candy. Either my wife or I will remain at home, greeting people at our door with a smile and a handful of something tasty. If the kids are deemed too old to trick-or-treat, they’ll be forced to sing a song to merit any handouts. Our door will be open and the light will be on. And we trust that the Light will shine brightly.

My encouragement to you today is to think and pray about this issue. I do not see Halloween as a great evangelistic occasion. I do not foresee it as a time when the people coming to your door are likely to be saved. But I do think it is a time that you can prove to your neighbors that you care about them, that you care about their children, and that you are glad to be in this world and this culture, even if you are not of this world or this culture. Halloween may serve as a bridge to the hearts of those who live around you who so desperately need a Savior.