We don't need to put the truth in opposition to compassion. There are hard sayings of the Bible, and there are hard truths of the gospel, but the truth of the gospel is freedom and forgiveness from sin, and that is compassion.
It's the opposite of compassion to say to someone, you're better off remaining bound in your sin. The truth of the gospel is full of compassion. We're often told that the Q&A times at our conferences are a highlight for the attendees as we address their biblical, theological, and practical questions. And today on Renewing Your Mind, you'll hear Ligonier's teaching fellows address questions like whether truth and compassion are in opposition and more. This is the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind as we close out a week featuring some of the sessions from this year's Ligonier Ministries National Conference. Don't forget that you can join us next year in April when you secure the Early Bird discount at ligonier.org slash 2025.
That way you'll also have an opportunity to submit your questions for next year's Q&A sessions. Throughout his ministry, R.C. Sproul made it a point to dedicate time to answering your questions. He really wanted to help people know who God is and to know His Word rightly. So today we're offering a resource from Dr. Sproul to help you understand the hard sayings of the Bible. When you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, we'll send you the hardcover edition of his book Hard Sayings and give you lifetime digital access to his four teaching series dedicated to the hard sayings of the Bible.
This offer ends at midnight. Moderated by Ligonier's President and CEO, Chris Larsen, here's our teaching fellows, Sinclair Ferguson, W. Robert Godfrey, Stephen Lawson, Stephen Nichols, Burke Parsons, and Derrick Thomas. What do you see as the greatest heresy or false teaching in America today?
Well, R.C. 's absolutely right that it keeps coming back to the holiness of God. Is God who He says He is or is He what we make Him to be? And I think one of the great ways the holiness of God needs to be considered in America today is relative to the church. Are we as Christians looking for churches that live their lives and do their teaching the way God has called us to be or are we looking for churches that make us feel good? And the feel-good, self-centered church is one of the greatest problems America faces today, I think. I'm not sure if it's the greatest, but one of the most significant problems in the church is a lack of understanding of the grace of God, which exhibits itself in both legalism and antinomianism. But I think the perhaps greater problem facing the church, at least here in the States and throughout most of the UK and Europe, is not so much any one particular false teaching, but rather a lack of regard for doctrine altogether.
That was one of the fundamental problems facing Machen at Princeton and really one of the fundamental problems of liberalism and progressivism throughout the ages, a lack of regard for doctrine itself. I think one of the big issues when you think about God, we go back to Calvin's Institutes, and he talks about, do we learn of ourselves by looking to God? We look to God.
We learn of ourselves. And of course, the first thing that Calvin takes us to is the image of God and that we are created in the image of God, which is also revealed in special revelation and is a biblical truth, but it's also just fundamental to nature. It is revealed in the natural law. And I keep circling back to this, especially for this next generation of identity issues and that fundamental challenge that we are not created in the image of God, that we as a church need, as you told us, we need to speak that truth, and we need to proclaim that truth. So, I think it's both the mirror image there of the doctrine of God and the concurrent anthropology where the challenge is. I would say everything goes back to the doctrine of Scripture and the inerrancy of Scripture, the infallibility of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the inspiration of Scripture, the sufficiency of Scripture, the immutability of Scripture, the invincibility of Scripture. Every one of those aspects of Scripture, what you believe about the Bible is really like the hub of the wheel, and every other issue is like spokes coming out from the central hub. And the issues that are being addressed, for example, the female pastors, female preachers, it is strictly forbidden in Scripture. Those who would hold to a non-lordship salvation, a non-repentance salvation, I mean, every issue in one way or another is traced back to the high ground, which is the authority of Scripture.
And one step away from, thus says the Lord, you're on the slippery slope, and you are drifting away. And we can go in 360 degrees with all these spokes, all moving away, but it really comes back to what do you believe about the Bible? And then do you preach the Bible, or do you just philosophize?
Do you just do you just entertain? Do you just make vague general statements about the spiritual life? Or do you actually get down into the Scripture and embrace what it says? And what Burke was just saying, sound doctrine that is taught in the Scripture. I mean, there's just a shallowness today, a general shallowness, which is why I think there's been a recent call for going back to the creeds and confessions to try to help us find our way back to sound doctrine and theology. But I think it all goes back to a closed Bible, not an open Bible in the pulpit.
And then that really affects the elders. It affects the teachers in the church, the whole church. So, the high ground has always been the Scripture. And what Burke was just saying about Machen in the fall of Princeton in the 1920s, I mean, that's just all about a departure from the Scripture, liberalism.
And if the Bible would just be anchored, that will address all of these other issues. The Beatitudes tell us it is blessed to be meek. What does it look like for a Christian to be meek in our culture? Well, that word meek is praos in the Greek, which can be translated gentle or meek. But the idea is that there would be from that first century, there would be a wild stallion that just ran wild and had all of its fury until the time the wild stallion would be lassoed and finally submit to a writer. And all that fury to be brought under the control of the authority of its master. That's really the idea of meek.
It doesn't mean to be milk toast. It does not mean to be a doormat. It means that you are one who has come under the authority of the lordship of Christ, and it's the third Beatitude.
And there is an intentional sequence from verse 3 to verse 4 to verse 5 in Matthew 5. I mean, first you're poor in spirit. You declare spiritual bankruptcy. And then you mourn. You mourn over your own sin. And then the third Beatitude, the third stair step is that you're meek.
Well, the idea is really a self-humiliation. It is a submission and surrender of your life to the lordship of Christ. That's what it means. And then the fourth Beatitude, blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness. You now desire a righteousness that you do not possess and do not have that must be given to you. And then, of course, all this characterizes the Christian life as well. And so, even once you have surrendered to the lordship of Christ at the moment of conversion, you continue as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, Colossians 2.6. And so, you continue down this same path of your life being a living and holy sacrifice, yielded to God, and continuing to pursue now a practical righteousness in day-to-day life. But that Beatitude, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, it has to be seen in its sequence, in its whole.
They're not randomly placed there. FERGUSON If I can just add to what Steve has said, I think the Beatitudes are one of those passages in Scripture in the New Testament best read through the lenses of the Lord Jesus. I think that would include 1 Corinthians 13.
It would include Galatians 5 and Paul's description of the fruit of the Spirit. And especially in connection with blessed are the meek, he himself drew attention to the fact that he was meek. And I think by doing that, he gives us a clue to interpreting all of the Beatitudes. If you want to see what this looks like, keep your nose down in the Gospels again and again and again and again and again, and observe how Jesus manifests each of these Beatitudes because he is the Blessed One. And especially in connection with meekness, the way he responds whenever he is crossed, whenever he is crossed by difficult people or crossed by difficult circumstances and the way in which he reacts.
So, the Old Testament tells us Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth. That may be the King James Version. What it doesn't say is until now, until Christ appears as the meekest man on the face of the earth. And I think especially when we think about the we think of these terms in the Beatitudes as a whole series of categories, it's possible for us to somewhat depersonalize them as though they were commodities that we can add into our lives. When in fact, individually and taken together, they are just saying when the kingdom of God comes, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you begin to be transformed into the likeness and into obedience to the King.
And this is what the King is like. And therefore, in being blessed, you will be like him. So, I think it's really very helpful to look at the Beatitudes, not as the be happy attitudes, as I remember somebody wrote a book under that title, but as pictures of Christ that are reproduced in us. This is a very important matter and I am grateful that we're discussing it because I think that meekness and the subject of humility in general, because meekness does relate to humility, I think it's actually one of the most overlooked characteristics in the church. It's not something that we talk about as much as we ought to. And I also think it's one of the most misunderstood characteristics, particularly in our culture today. It's misunderstood in that we associate meekness, as Steve was saying, meekness with weakness, and being a pushover, being a doormat, just being a nice guy who gets along and just goes along with anything. And it's also why I think we're raising not a generation of men, but a generation of guys, a generation of dudes, a generation of bras, bra, I don't even, brother, is that what that stands for? We're not raising a generation of men. And that's apparent everywhere we go.
We've made men to feel badly for being men and we've feminized them. And that's what our kids are seeing today. And it stems, I believe, from a wrong understanding of meekness because what we have done, even in the church, is that we have made meekness the enemy of boldness. Christ was meek when he cleansed the temple. Christ was meek when he castigated the Pharisees and Sadducees. And so we need to understand how we need to be able to stand firm and remain steadfast and remain humble and gentle and bold and unwavering.
How do we share the truth in a compassionate way when what we share is viewed as anything but compassionate? Well, I mean, there is the offense of the cross, Galatians 6, so there's no way around it. The cross is a message of the love of God, but it's also a message of the wrath of God. It's a message of the judgment of God as well as the mercy of God. To answer the question, I mean, we can't neuter the message.
I mean, we cannot spray perfume on the message and make it something other than what it is. It is a call to repent. It is a call to deny yourself.
It's a call to take up a cross and to follow Christ. So, the way that we would do, we're supposed to speak the truth in love, Ephesians 4. So, it's not what we say, it's how we say it. We can't change the gospel itself.
I mean, we can't change what we say. It is a call to come to the end of yourself. It's a call to die to self. It's a call to now step out of the crowd and out of darkness and to follow Christ. It's how we say it that must have the tone of love and compassion with it. But there are times when we speak stronger, and you can just read the gospels. Sinclair was talking about reading the gospels, the gospels, the gospels, gospels, the gospels.
I mean, there are times when Jesus was so gracious and patient with the everyday sinner, but there are other times when He would drop the hammer. And so, you have to know the setting and to whom you're speaking and what has previously been said. And so, that's why we need to have the ministry of the Holy Spirit directing us and guiding us as we share the gospel. And there are times we give a soft word, and there are other times we give a stronger word.
There's not a one-size-fits-all. So, I think we have to be mindful of that, but we can't make the message something other than what it is. I certainly agree with that. I think in the interest of trying to be wise of serpents and the serpents and gentlest doves, if we can, sometimes we can try to help people see angles on reality they maybe are not considering. And I think one of those is sort of what came up in John is Jesus came out of an interest for eternal life, not just the life of this world. And increasingly, people are being guided in our culture by a conviction, stated or unstated, that we only live in this life, so you have to grab all the gusto.
How old, I'd add, is that? You have to grab all the life you can because you're only going around once. And we as Christians, I think, have to challenge that fundamental attitude. No, there's an eternal life to think about and an eternal death to think about, and we have to contemplate that. And a lot of people may well react and say, well, I just don't believe that. And then, you know, I think reality really does occasionally impinge irresistibly, and an awful lot of people don't believe in eternal life until they lose a loved one. And then suddenly there's an attitude that this life must go on, and there's a lot of confusion about that.
Suddenly we all become angels, apparently. I don't know where this angelology comes from. Do you know where it comes from? Does it come from Scotland? FERGUSON. Scotland, yeah. GODFREY. This is the fruit of Scottish second sight. FERGUSON.
They've at last got visas to enter the United States. GODFREY. But this sense that God leaves in our souls that those we've loved can't be just gone, that we're not just animals, that there is the image of God deeply implanted in each individual and that cries out to us that life goes on beyond the grave. And I think we have to try to speak to people out of that challenge to their perspectives that maybe they don't examine very often. You know, I think this is really important, and I think we can spend a little moment here, because we don't need to put the truth in opposition to compassion. There are hard sayings of the Bible, and there are hard truths of the gospel, as you say, the wrath of God. But the truth of the gospel is freedom and forgiveness from sin, and that is compassion. It's the opposite of compassion to say to someone, you're better off remaining bound in your sin, remaining not what God created you to be, to remain bound to your idolatry and not free to worship the true God. The truth of the gospel is full of compassion, and we need to remember that as we preach that. Two things. One is picking up on what has been said. It is impossible for the image of God to live consistently in God's world as a sinner.
It is utterly impossible. So, one of the things that I think we are trying to do, and this is picking up on what Bob said is, the way I would put it is we're looking for the loose threads and people's sweaters, because they are there. They cannot live consistently in God's world denying God's presence and denying that they need Him.
And so, over the peace, it's a matter of, and this differs from society to society, individual to individual, spotting where the loose thread is and beginning to pull on it to point out graciously, sometimes firmly, but always thinking biblically that you're actually inconsistent with your own presuppositions and you're inconsistent with the world in which you are living. So, that's one thing. The second thing is if you're a man and you have to go to the surgeon and he starts pressing around in your body, he doesn't usually press around where he knows the problem is, at least as far as I can see. He'll press around in the places where, is that sore? No, that's not sore. And you're becoming increasingly relieved that you know there's something wrong, but you're trying to hide it from him in case there is bad news. And then eventually he touches the place and says, is that sore?
And you're jumping off the seat. The compassionate surgeon who is a good diagnostician and has done his homework is going to say, sir, you need major surgery. You're in a life-threatening condition. You wish he said something else to you, but if he does not say that to you, he's shirking his responsibility as a surgeon. And as witnesses to Christ using the Word of God to correct, as Paul says in 2 Timothy, which is a medical term in the Hellenistic world, we have a responsibility to tell the truth as Bob was saying. But we also have a responsibility to tell the truth in love, and we tell the truth in love by reassuring people that there is a remedy for their sickness.
There is surgery by which they may be healed, and that is found in Jesus Christ. And as we grow as Christians, it seems to me we ought to also be able to grow in doing that with greater patience and grace than we might have done when we were 19 or 20, or Bob Godfrey might have done when he was 19 or 20. You know, my family disowns me if I ever use any of them as an illustration, but one of my sons is a surgeon, and I said to him a couple of years ago, I suppose you must get through your list much more quickly now than you used to. And he told me, and I found this very moving.
He said, yes, I can get through it very quickly, but actually I take more time now because I want to do my very best for each child on which I do the surgery. And I thought that is, it was a challenge to me as a preacher, as a pastor, to have a consciousness of the differences in individuals and to learn to be patient. And you remember how Paul says to Timothy, Timothy, your task is careful teaching with great patience. And I do think, you know, I often quote Calvin's words, you can lose what you seek to gain by the way you seek to gain it.
And one of the ways we do that sometimes in Christian witness is we destroy relationships by our impatience instead of waiting for the loose threads to appear. Let's continue on in this vein with this question, what is a pastor's main responsibility and purpose? I think when I first became a minister, first and foremost, I was a preacher, an expounder of the Word of God. But I think as you grow in ministry and you get older, you also realize that there's a lot of pastoral work that can be done and should be done in preaching. So, preaching to the affections of people, preaching to the needs of people, enabling them to see how this Scripture is meant to help them, help them grow, help them become what God wants them to become. I think that comes, for me, it comes with age and experience. So, that's where I would begin.
Three people like that answer. Oh, you're improving. Well, Paul says, 1 Timothy chapter 1, the aim of our charge is love. And I think all I want to add to what Derek has said is there are probably numbers of pastors here, but most of us who are here are not pastors. And you probably have very little idea how much you mean to your pastor. Because if he is really called to be a pastor, he loves you.
If he has not developed love for you, he should be doing something else. It is the absolute sine qua non of being in pastoral ministry that in preaching and teaching, you do that not because you love to preach and teach, but because you love the people that you want to feed by preaching and teaching. And for that reason, for that reason, I could not persuade you and Derek could not persuade you how much you mean to people like us and how much our ministry of the Word of God depends so much on you. So, when we talk about what a pastor is for, in a way the answer is he is for you. And I think if you understand that, no matter how average a preacher he may be, whatever that means, you will gain a great deal more from his ministry by the simple fact that he has become a spiritual father to you. And like most of our very average fathers, he loves us. And for that reason, we are able to take more from him than we are able to take from any other minister we know. When I hear people say my favorite preacher is, and he is not their pastor, I want to screw their neck because he is the person who is giving… I can give you a list of names.
Yeah. Sinclair, was it Robert Murray McShane who said that a congregation will take almost anything from you so long as they realize that you love them? Is that a McShane statement? Well, if he didn't say it, he probably should have.
But John Newton did say it. He said, I believe my people will take anything from me because they know I love them. And for someone to say that, I think it's a wonderful thing, but all of us who are pastors. You know, I've just retired from First Place where you and I had the privilege of serving. And what I miss the most are the people. I miss interacting with them. I miss shaking their hands at the door. I miss that moment when you're preaching and you look up at the balcony and you look at someone into their very eyes and all kinds of things in a flash, in a moment, because you've known these people for a decade or more. You've interacted with their families, and it all flashes before you just as you look.
And I think that's what I miss the most in retirement. You know, Chris, just to add one thought, the word pastor means shepherd. And so, a pastor is one who shepherds the flock. He's an under shepherd, under the great shepherd. And a shepherd basically leads and feeds, and he is to lead them into green pastures and restore their soul. He is to feed them the Word of God.
And so, those two images of leading and feeding. Also, a pastor is to be tied in with being an elder and an overseer, to be a presbuteros and an episkopos. And so, a pastor must have the maturity of an elder, of an elder, and he must have the ability to oversee the work of God like an overseer, an episkopos. And so, you can't really separate being a pastor from being an elder and an overseer.
It's all together. But to just look at the pastor part, a shepherd would lead the flock. He would protect the flock from thieves and wolves, and he would guide them and direct them as he feeds them the Word of God. And as an elder, he is to model the message that he preaches, and it's a part of discipleship, follow me as I follow Christ. And he has to have the capacity to oversee the different facets of the life of the church and the work of the church. So, just to give a short answer on that, that component part, just even what the word pastor means is, I think, very important.
And we're not ranchers driving a herd. We are a shepherd who's out ahead leading with our voice, a gentle voice that the sheep recognize. Related, what can congregations do to encourage, equip, and strengthen our pastors, our pastors, these pastors who are faithfully preaching God's truth in this much more anti-Christian culture? Well, I think one thing that congregations really need to do is to evaluate very seriously what they're expecting of their minister. Are they expecting him to be a hundred percent an evangelist and a hundred percent a visitor to the sick and a hundred percent a visitor in the homes and a hundred percent catechist and a hundred percent preacher?
He won't be able to do that. So, we have to decide what it is we want our ministers to do for us. And I would say the number one thing a congregation has to be careful about, as I've looked at things through the years, is to be sure that the minister has time in the study to prepare the Word of God. And there are some ministers… I got a bigger hand than you did, Darren. Did we ever talk about John Chrysostom saying you should not applaud? We should talk about that.
But, yeah, that's what happened to Chrysostom. He got applauded for saying don't applaud. But seriously, to prepare a good sermon takes time. Some ministers like to be in the study and maybe need to occasionally be forced out. Other ministers don't like to be in the study. They like people.
They like to be with people, and they need to be forced in. And churches need good leadership to help the minister to have the time to do what the congregation most needs. And what I think the congregation most needs is a minister in the pulpit who is well prepared to open the Word and to speak that Word to the heart of his people. One of the main reasons that pastors leave ministry is because of people having expectations, just as you're talking about, Bob, that are not rooted in scripture. Pastors are not the administrators.
They are not fundamentally your counselor. They are not fundamentally the social organizer of the church or of the community. Pastors are not your mother, your father, or your best friend. Pastors are not deacons. Much of the work that we expect our pastors to do is the work of the diaconate. So many of the things that we expect of our pastors are not the primary work of the pastor. And so to answer the question, Chris, what can people do? They can pray for their pastors, love their pastors, pay them well, take care of their families, allow them to be properly cared for so that they are truly free from having to take care of their families, pay them well, compensate them well, love them, encourage them, and quit causing trouble. That was more applause than you got, Bob. There was the ring of truth and experience in that appeal.
Quit causing trouble! I'm going to give just a slightly different perspective because I grew up in a pastor's home and very grateful for it and just very grateful from, you know, time I can remember just being in the church all the time. It's not necessarily grandiose, big things. I think just little things people can do to encourage their pastors and also also remember the pastor's family. They're not called to be the pastor of the church. The pastor is called to be the pastor.
The wife is not called to be the assistant pastor. The kids are not called to be perfect. So remember that, but it needs to be nothing grandiose. I think just little encouragements mean a lot. They're there because they love people, and I love that answer. Pastors are there because they love people, and just little encouragements from you. It's all they need.
So let me pick up on that applause. So over the years, and I'm going back at least 40 years ago, I had in my desk drawer, I inherited this oak desk that the university were throwing out because they were bringing in modern furniture, and I said, I want that desk. And I had a blue file. It was literally blue, and it was a file for days when I was feeling blue. So over the years, I've had probably hundreds of little notes or letters or cards. These days, it's email and text, which are more difficult to print out. But I've kept them all, and they're still in that blue file. And there are hundreds of them in there. And every now and then, when I'm feeling a little blue, I'll take one out, and I'll think, oh, you know, I've had my share of anonymous letters, which I don't read. I just throw them in the trash. But those little notes, they've taken time.
They've taken 10, 15 minutes to write it on a card. And I've been ministering in the South, I've been ministering in the South, so everything has to be done decently and in order. And those have meant the world to me on days.
And I'm a Celt, so I get a lot of blue days. But that little blue file has meant the world to me. FERGUSON.
We hope you're going to publish the blue file. THOMAS. No, some of them say, you know, we like Sinclair better, but we just want you to know that we like you too. FERGUSON. The people in our congregation would never, never have the insensitivity to say that. THOMAS.
Never. You know, people have said to me, I pray for you every day, and that just blows my mind away. And I've often thought over the years, somehow or another, my survivability has been rooted in the prayers of the saints. And, you know, if you do one thing for your minister, pray for him. If there's one thing you shouldn't do is say to your minister's wife when a visitor has preached, that was a wonderful sermon, unless you have frequently said that to her about her husband's preaching. You know, when you're the preacher, almost no matter what happens, you do have your happy space and place a couple of times a week.
And no matter who is trying to fire exocet missiles at you, you have the Word of God that you can imply. But when you're the minister's wife, all you can do is watch and pray. And I don't mean all in a demeaning sense, but we need to be sensitive to the wife of our pastor, and we need to pray for her too, especially if there are difficult situations in the church. Because most of us, even those of us who are elders, if things get difficult in the church, you know, we've always got the business, and we've always got the home. But for the pastor, the church goes right into his soul. And although there'll be many things that he will seek to keep out of the house, there's no way he can avoid going back into that house and the family sharing and in the trials as well as in the joys. So do, if you pray for your pastor, do remember to pray for his wife as well, not only because of her role, but because she's got to live with him.
And we're not the easiest people in the world. That was the Ligonier Ministries Teaching Fellows answering questions at this year's national conference in Orlando, Florida. Thanks for joining us for the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind.
I do hope I get to see you at next year's national conference, so be sure to register and secure the early bird discount at ligonier.org slash 2025. One popular resource from R.C. Sproul is his hard sayings book and his teaching series on those passages of scripture that are either hard to understand or hard to accept. With his theological precision and pastoral heart, he considers many of them from the Old and New Testament. You can request the hardcover edition of Hard Sayings when you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800 435 4343. And in addition to the book, we'll give you lifetime access to his four hard sayings teaching series as well. So until midnight, request yours at renewingyourmind.org or by clicking the link in the podcast show notes. Christians are to be a thinking people. And next week, R.C. Sproul will help us think like a Christian. That's beginning Monday here on Renewing Your Mind.
