Reaching the Nations

At various places and at various times, God has been pleased to bring about awakenings. And in all of those movements in history, at the very center was an awakening to the power and truthfulness of the Scripture itself.

Welcome to a special edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb, and what we just heard there was Dr. R.C. Sproul back in 2015 as Ligonier Ministries released the latest edition of the Reformation Study Bible. He was excited about that project because it underscored what this ministry is all about. And before we let you know about a significant new ministry outreach that God has provided, let's hear more of what R.C.

had to say. When Jesus prayed in the upper room for His disciples, He prayed for their sanctification. Father, sanctify them by Thy truth. Thy word is truth. Where the Scripture is studied deeply and ingested into the bloodstream of people, that's the power that God uses to awaken the church and move beyond revival to Reformation. We call this book the Reformation Study Bible.

What we want to see happen is a Bible study Reformation. I'm pleased to be joined by the president and CEO of Ligonier Ministries, Chris Larson, along with our colleague Matt McGee, who oversees our Spanish and Portuguese outreach here. And Chris, let me begin by asking you, what did you hear R.C.

saying there? Well, I heard him saying that we have a mission. We have a mission to make God's Word the priority in everything that we do, because he understood that the desire for reformation is a desire for new forms and structures of society to be present, but only through the creative power of the Word of God. It's our confidence that is centered in the Word of God that animates everything that we do as a ministry. And really, all that Christians are called to believe is contained in the Scriptures and what we learn about who God is and how he is related to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and then how he wants us to live in this world. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ as it went forth from preachers, from fathers and mothers to their children, generation to generation, that has built the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus is building his church today, and he does it through the Word of God.

And R.C. just fixed our focus like a laser beam on making sure that the only thing we have to say must be based on the Word of God and helping people to understand God's Word. And with that in mind, would you tell our listeners what that is in front of you here in our studio?

For our Renewing Your Mind listeners, this is a milestone broadcast, because I am holding a milestone resource right here. This is the Spanish edition of the Reformation Study Bible. The Reformation Study Bible has been really a keystone resource for us at Ligonier for several decades. Dr. Sproul desired to see the Reformation Study Bible translated into many different languages. And Spanish is so important in its place in the world.

It's one of the most popular languages spoken. And the vision for this particular edition, the Spanish edition, I have to go back about a dozen years now. Dr. Burke Parsons had been in Colombia speaking to some pastors down there. And he came back and he had a meeting with Dr. Sproul and myself, and he was explaining that he saw some pastors passing around one copy of a study Bible. It wasn't the Reformation Study Bibles, another edition. And what he observed was four pastors shared one copy, and they would share it for a week. And they had to then prepare a month's worth of their sermons, because they did not have a theological library. And so they relied on this study Bible as almost their entire commentary set. And so they would rely on this and then share it and pass it around. And it was worn and torn. And Dr. Parsons came back and explained this to R.C. and to me. And at that point, we knew that, first of all, we needed to embark upon an update for the Reformation Study Bible, which we did.

And that launched in 2015. And then that allowed us to take those new notes and then commit them to a massive translation effort in many different languages. And to get to this moment right now, this is a milestone ministry moment that I would hope that our listeners would just praise God for. And I'm so thankful for Matt and his team. Matt has really helped us to understand the need in the Latin American church.

And I'm so thankful for his stewardship. Yeah, Matt, you are fluent in Spanish and labored for a number of years in the Dominican Republic. And would you expand on that need throughout the Spanish-speaking world? Sure. I think it's interesting that Dr. Parsons' experience was in 2008, because it seems like that timeframe, 2008 to 2010, is when this dawn of a Reformation began to occur. The sun was just peaking over the horizon. And we can start to even see it even more so now. But at that time, we saw this desire in the church for good, solid, biblical doctrine and teaching. A friend of our ministry here at Ligonier has indicated that the church in Latin America, in terms of its theological depth, is about a mile wide, but an inch deep.

It looks healthy on the surface, but it's not. But we see the Reformation truths being proliferated throughout the region, whether it's from the north of Mexico all the way down to the southern cone of South America. We see this awakening occurring.

And I think it's interesting that Dr. Sproul says this, even in the intro to our program here. I can remember when I first heard him say that back in 2015, he said, where the Scripture is studied deeply and ingested into the bloodstream of people. That's the power that God uses to awaken the truth and move beyond revival to Reformation. Now, Matt, you have told us that in your observance and talking with other church leaders throughout the Spanish-speaking world, that the Reformation never arrived there.

Tell us a little bit about that. Well, it never really did. The Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition, was a very powerful movement that kept the Catholic Church essentially in this total power. And it never really allowed the theology that we would enjoy, the worldview that we would enjoy here in the north.

It never really arrived to the global south. So we never really saw the worldview benefits and the ecclesiastical benefits that we're seeing in the north, but we're starting to see that now in the south. So in terms of the need and in terms of the hunger, we have the resource here in the Reformation study Bible with all of its study aids and all of its notes, a seminary between two covers. We have that available to aid the laity, to aid the pastor, to aid the professor, to aid the academician in his or her study of the Word of God from a historical Reformed perspective. I've benefited in my own life from using the Reformation study Bible. And I think as a lay person, what I've enjoyed is the fact that it gives me confidence to know that there's this team of scholars that Dr. Sproul assembled to really give me confidence in what I'm reading and to be able to go behind the text. If I have a question, I can look down into the notes. I can use cross-references. I could use the chapter outlines at the beginning of the books to really understand the flow of the thought in Scripture.

And to really handle God's Word accurately helps Christian growth and it will help the church to flourish. One of the many people who has worked on this project is Pepe Mendoza. He is from Peru, and if you've ever listened to the Spanish-language version of this program, Renewing Your Mind or Renovando to Mente, you have heard his voice.

Pepe, would you tell us your role in the program? Well, I have the privilege of being RCS Sproul's voice in Spanish, you know, dubbing all the programs, working with translation and contextualization of all the programs with a huge team of people that helped me to do Renovando to Mente in Spanish. So you actually watch Dr. Sproul's lectures and you're translating it into Spanish?

Yes. And first we work with the transcription of the Renewing Your Mind in English. Then we try to put it in Spanish words and in Spanish sentences. Then we watch Dr. Sproul's lectures and we work on that sensitivity and that delivery of Dr. Sproul's. In other words, you want to deliver it just as he did.

Just as he is. Not only the words, but also the feeling. It's a long work, but we are really happy to do it. Okay, that's for Renovando to Mente, the Spanish-language version of Renewing Your Mind. How are you utilizing Pepe's expertise as it relates to the Reformation Study Bible?

I see it as a demonstration of God's providence and grace. We had between eighteen months and two years to really refine what we were doing with Renovando to Mente in the teaching series dubs and then apply that to our philosophy of translation. So we use Pepe and all of that expertise that we've gained by working as a team, we've used that in the translation of the notes to be able to communicate Dr. Sproul's ability as an editor of a great team of contributors and sound just like Dr. Sproul does in English and bring that experience to the reader in Spanish. And those of you who are listening to the program who have a Reformation Study Bible know that there are many notes that Dr. Sproul has in this Bible. And I can echo that because both Pepe and I have read every single word of every single note.

There are about 1.2 million words of content in the Reformation Study Bible, and it was an honor and privilege for both Pepe and me to be part of this project to translate each word into Spanish. Pepe, I think it's interesting to note that long before you got involved with us here at Ligonier Ministries in this Spanish-language outreach, Dr. Sproul had had a profound influence on your life, right? Yes, he had a profound influence on me, but I thought that he was contemporary of Spurgeon or someone like that. But then I discovered that he was really alive, and not only alive, but I discovered his words in the Renewing Your Mind program, and I discovered a different kind of Dr. Sproul, and it has a double impact on me. You know, Lee, that influence and impact of Dr. Sproul is not just particular to Pepe. I know that Dr. Sproul had a tremendous and profound impact on me and many of the other editors and translators and contributors to this entire project. So it's an honor for us to be able to take this and produce this and make this available for our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters all around the world. Yes, Pepe, would you tell us—you're a native of Peru—would you let us know why this outreach is so important?

Let me give you a small example of that. Last year, I was visiting a small city in the Andes Mountains. I was invited for a church to preach there, and I discovered a group of pastors, young pastors, not even in their 30s, that they know all about Dr. Sproul. Every book in Spanish, waiting for the Reformation Study Bible, is speaking to me like they know Dr. Sproul in person.

And the impact of him on them was marvelous. And it happened not in the Andes Mountains, but in every place where I go. And the people know that I work with Renovando Tumente. They talk to me a lot about Dr. Sproul's influence right now. You know, Lee, when we look at the statistics, they bear that out. Renovando Tumente is listened to by over 100,000 downloads each month.

And that's on YouTube and Facebook and iTunes and Spotify, all the digital platforms, but also the radio reach, the terrestrial radio reach as well. So it is encouraging to us to be able to look at a spreadsheet of data, but also hear testimonies like this, because we know that by God's grace, the message of hope and Reformation is reaching into the Spanish-speaking world. That's why you're anticipating that this Spanish-language version of the Reformation Study Bible will have such an impact, right? Both that and whenever I travel, I wish I could count how many individuals approach me and say, when is the Bible coming out? Can you tell me?

The anticipation is great, and we're humbled by that. So the Reformation Study Bible in Spanish, along with Renovando Tumente. Matt, these are just two of the resources that Ligonier is providing in Spanish. Is that correct?

That is correct. One of the things that greatly excites me about being a part of the Ligonier team is that we have a publishing wing here at Ligonier called Reformation Trust. And over the last few years, we've been able to publish more than 20 Reformation Trust titles in the Spanish language.

Included among those titles are the Crucial Questions booklets, for example, seven of which are currently in print, the Long Line of Godly Men series. We dub all of our teaching series into Spanish and make those available on DVD for our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters around the world. We have a thriving social media ministry, a thriving digital platform ministry, where we make teaching series available on YouTube, teaching series completely dubbed into Spanish. It's wonderful to actually see Dr. Sproul teach the holiness of God in Spanish, along with our blog, which is online at es.ligonier.org, where we make available a number of different table talk articles for our Spanish-speaking audience. And this is where I want the listeners to just know of our appreciation for their support for this ministry. I hope you hear the excitement that we have to see truth getting out to more people in more languages, and that is only possible through your faithful support for this ministry. We are hearing from pastors the difference that your support is making.

One of those pastors is Dr. Victor Cruz, who has pastored for more than two decades in Mexico City, and I'd like for you to hear from him. The most powerful thing for a person like me that grew up with all the traditions of the Roman Catholic religion, when we come to understand the Gospel, but the concept of grace, that it is not what we do to please God, that it is not our good works that put us in the right position before God, but that is everything that has been done for us through Jesus Christ, that he lived the life that we cannot live, that he died the death that we deserve for our sins, and that he was risen from the dead. When, ex-Roman Catholics, we hear that, those are really good news. But it's like, no, you're not talking about the Roman Catholic. You have a different Bible, because this is not what is in the Roman Catholic Bible. So there is this shock for so many people like me that grew up in the traditions of the Roman Catholic religion, and coming to find in the scripture the truth of the Gospel. It's shocking.

It's like, no, this cannot be. This is not the same religion. This is not what is in my Bible. So as a pastor, as a church planter, because I have been planting churches since 1997, and one of my strategies when we invited non-believers or even Catholic people to a Bible study, we encourage them to bring their own Bibles so that they can read in their Bibles, in the Roman Catholic Bibles, the same truths that we have in the Protestant Bible.

And that was very powerful. That was a shock, because people would say, like I said, why I was never told this, because like me and my siblings, we attended Catholic schools. The question that a lot of people asked and that I asked was why we were never told this beautiful message of the Gospel. So it's a very powerful way the Holy Spirit prepares a person, a person's heart to receive the Gospel.

But when someone gets to understand the grace that he suffered to us in the Gospel, it's just very powerful. It's very shocking. There's a tremendous urgency to get the truth out to the nations.

It's something that we talked about with R.C. before he went home to be with the Lord, and it just excited him to no end, Lee, to hear that Ligonier was no longer an English-only ministry, that we were prioritizing getting the Word of God out to the nations, to have faithful teaching from the Word of God. And you're hearing here from Pastor Cruz the reality that this kind of teaching has never been in their cultures before. What we want to do at Ligonier Ministries is come alongside this young church that is growing throughout Latin America and provide the resources, the discipleship tools that they need to help Christians know what they believe and why they believe it and how to live it as well as how to share it. Well, just to give you some specifics about the Reformation Study Bible in Spanish, like the English edition, it will have more than 1.1 million words of verse-by-verse commentary and topical explanations, award-winning maps and visual aids, just like the English version, trusted contributions from 75 distinguished scholars, theological summaries from Dr. Sproul, and nearly 2,000 years of creeds, confessions, and catechisms.

As R.C. said, the light of the Reformation was the light of the Bible, and the same is true today. Before we bring this to a close, Chris, this is just one portion of our international outreach. The Reformation Study Bible has been translated into other languages too, correct? It's a milestone resource now in Spanish, but we've already published it in Korean, in German. We have an edition in Portuguese that's underway. We have the outlines of the project to move forward in French as well as in Arabic. And so just imagine a resource like this throughout the Arabic-speaking world. We are moving this into more languages along with all the other resources as well. And the other thing about the Reformation Study Bible in English is many of our listeners may not know that we are distributing thousands of these in Africa through distribution partners and churches there in English.

And so you're talking about a resource that really would be unattainable for most people in the developing world. And so this vision for reaching the global South makes up a lot of what we spend our time thinking about and working on here at Ligonier Ministries. As the listeners to Renewing Your Mind treasure truth, we know that you want to see that truth get to more people. And it is part of our mission to reach as many people as possible.

And there's seven billion souls on this planet. And so we've got a lot of work to do. Well, Chris, you also mentioned earlier the urgency of this work and why we need the financial contributions of our listeners.

I'd like for you to hear what Dr. Cruz had to say about that urgency. I think that we are on the verge in the next years if the Reformed faith keeps growing. I think that this we are on the verge of a revival that comes from a deep understanding of the gospel that we have never seen in Latin America. So I think that there are things going on in our countries, church planting being done by people that are very close to the Reformed faith. I think the influence of our role with different leaders around and throughout Latin America have spread that word of the Reformed faith. And many of the materials produced by Ligonier are making that information available, that theology available, that perspective of the Christian faith available to many, many people. And I think we are seeing the beginning of a revival. I've seen it with my own eyes and I've seen it throughout the entire region.

So everything he says there is completely true. Matt, I so appreciate you and the team that you've helped to oversee in working with Spanish pastors, church leaders throughout Latin America, as well as helping us today to better understand the need. And so I would just ask our listeners to pray for this project because getting it printed is one thing. We are now in the process of getting it distributed and we don't want to just get it out in the hundreds. We want to get it out in the tens of thousands throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

So that's here in North America, it's Latin America, it's in Europe, anywhere the Spanish language is spoken. And we want to do that as affordably as possible. And so your prayerful support is what we desire, that the Lord would take and use this resource to continue to build His church. And we know He is building His church and He uses you, He uses me, He uses Matt, and this is the body of Christ. And it's beautiful to see this project come to fruition. And I can only imagine how exuberant Dr. Sproul would be to see this edition of the Spanish Reformation Study Bible. Well, as you mentioned, Chris, these are just a few of the many international outreach projects underway here at Ligetier Ministries. And as we ask you, our listeners, to join us in prayer, would you also consider supporting our efforts financially? Your generosity helps us translate, print, and distribute trustworthy resources, providing countless opportunities to reach people with the truth of God's Word. My colleagues are standing by now to take your call at 800-435-4343.

You can also give your gift online when you go to renewingyourmind.org. Lee, I don't know if there's been a more exciting time to be alive as a Christian. And right now really does count forever. And so we are just, I think, on the cusp of a flourishing of the Reformed faith throughout the world. This has been a dramatic year in the life of our nation and around the world because of the coronavirus pandemic. But we have seen a great thirst for God's Word, and what better way to reach the Spanish-speaking world than through this outreach. So again, we invite you to come along prayerfully to offer your financial contributions to this outreach. Our number again is 800-435-4343. Our web address is renewingyourmind.org. Matt, would you let our listeners know where they could learn more information about the Spanish edition of the Reformation Study Bible?

Sure. Our English-speaking listeners can visit reformationstudybible.com, and our Spanish-speaking listeners can visit biblia.com, where they will be able to see an explanation of what the Bible is. They will be able to see samples of the book of Ephesians, for example, and samples of all the study aids. Thank you, Matt. And my thanks to you, Chris, along with Pepe Mendoza and Victor Cruz, and to all of you for joining us today. Please make plans to be with us next week as we explore the simple phrase which encapsulates the glorious benefits and blessings of the Christian life. It's a phrase which the Apostle Paul used quite often, in Christ. Dr. Sinclair Ferguson will be our teacher, and we'll see you beginning Monday here on Renewing Your Mind. God bless!