Confident in the Word of God

Today on Renewing Your Mind... No one on planet earth will ever be saved apart from the Word of God. And no one will ever be sanctified apart from the Word of God.

And so there is the sufficiency of the Scripture. As we carry it to the nations, God will do His work. Welcome to a special edition of Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Lee Webb. Almost a full year into the global health crisis, we still see plenty of fear and uncertainty. It's produced economic, political, and cultural turmoil, but it's in times like this that we need to be confident in God's Word. With that in mind, I'd like for you to hear an online conversation that Ligonier president Chris Larson recently had with three of our teaching fellows, each from their home bases for ministry. Doctors Sinclair Ferguson, Stephen Lawson, and Stephen Nichols.

Let's join them now. Dr. Sproul would say, as he taught from Romans chapter 1, where he emphasized that the gospel is God's possession. God owns it. It's His message. It is good news about the proclamation of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And of course, and how that is applied and appropriated to us. And throughout the ages, God's people have continued to put their confidence in proclaiming the gospel. And you men have done such great work in celebrating the move of God's Spirit through the preaching and teaching of the Word of God and the testimony about who Jesus Christ is. And helping Christians today to really rediscover the strength that they could have to be able to stand with conviction like some of these men have done in the past. Even thinking just after those first few years, Dr. Nichols, when we think of Christians in the Roman Empire and you think of Polycarp's great stand there and his bold defense of the gospel. Maybe you all could just begin with a little bit of a framework of why the gospel? And Dr. Nichols, maybe take us back there to that first century situation in which Christians had to figure out how they were to proclaim the gospel in the midst of a very difficult situation politically and socio-culturally. You know, we see this before we even get out of the pages of the New Testament.

We see the hostility that was there culturally towards the gospel and towards the center of the gospel, towards Christ Himself and His followers, Christians. We see that in the pages of the New Testament. We certainly see that in the early centuries of the church. You mentioned Polycarp, who's just this towering figure in the early church, a bishop.

He wrote his own letters to the churches to encourage them full of biblical wisdom and the application of that biblical wisdom to that moment where they found themselves. This was a time of the power of the Roman government. And in one sense, it wasn't constant through those early centuries, but at various times it was as if the full weight of that power was brought to bear to stamp out Christianity. That was the intention of the persecution to remove Christianity from the empire.

And it had the absolute reverse effect. It put steel in the spine of Christians. It brought new converts to Christianity, and much of that was through the testimony of the faithful proclamation of the gospel in the lives of these early martyrs and then the faithful proclamation of hope in Jesus Christ in their death.

When Polycarp's martyrdom ends, of course, he records his own time in prison and the time leading up to his martyrdom, and then it's recorded by those that were there and witnessed it and then circulated among the early church. And at the end of that epistle of Polycarp's martyrdom, his martyrdom references the various proconsuls and the Caesar, and then it says, and when Jesus Christ was ruling as Lord of the universe. And that was the perspective the early church had, the proper perspective, that Rome's power was just an apparent power, that the true ruler of the universe was our triune God. And so they had faith in the gospel of God, and they also had faith in the God of the gospel.

And it was that perspective that enabled them to withstand those centuries of persecution, and they stand as great testimony to us today millennia later. Dr. Ferguson, and as the church continued to expand around the Mediterranean there, we think of another towering figure in Augustine. And tell us a little bit about how he approached his ministry as, in a sense, a pastor of a flock. Yeah, I think there's a great lesson in Augustine too in this sense that, at least as I understand his earlier life, influence and positions of influence were very important to him. In order that his influence might come to its full fruition. And there he listened to the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose, who was one of the great preachers of the ancient church. And when he soliloquizes on him in his confessions, he talks to him, as it were, although he's not there, he talks to him. And he says this amazing thing that he had gone to listen to Ambrose, not because of his teaching, because he didn't expect to find great teaching in the Catholic Church.

That is the church he essentially had come to despise Christianity as intellectual low life. And then what to me has always been an amazing thing. He says, at the end of the day, actually, it wasn't just your teaching that touched me.

It was that you were kind to me. And I think this is one of the things that really stood out in the early Christians, that really in every dimension of life, personal life, family life, married life, social life, relationships that they had in business, whether they were at the top end or the bottom end, their lives had been transformed by the power of the Word. And at the end of the day, they realized that it was the Word of God that would be the sword of the Spirit to deflect all opposition. And so if you think of the influence that Augustine has had in the world, I mean, it's just extraordinary. He is one of maybe five major influences in the Western world.

And yet what was he doing? He was reading the Word, he was preaching the Word, he was pastoring the flock, and he was writing about the gospel. And so I think he's another great illustration of the principle that it's the Word of God itself in the power of the Spirit by its proclamation that does the work.

And I think that's something that he bequeathed to the whole Augustinian tradition. And you see it right through the Reformation and into the Reformed tradition, the central emphasis that it's not just that the Word is preached and we do the work. It's that the Word is preached in the power of the Spirit and the Word does the work. And when the Word does the work, people's thinking is transformed and courage is put into them.

It's not that they work it up, it's that it's brought down into them. And I think you can see that again and again in the history of the church. And it's a tremendously, it's an encouraging thing to see, isn't it, for us today.

It really is. Dr. Lawson, as the Word does its work, the Word has content. It seems like we hear the word gospel attached as an appendage to so many different initiatives and even right concerns. Yet the gospel has a very defined and specific content. Even going to Peter's message there at Pentecost, you know, from the earliest days of that early church, there was an animating purpose to be able to proclaim a particular message. Take us into that moment and into the very content of the gospel. I think in many ways Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost serves really as the greatest example of apostolic preaching from the first century. And so on the day of Pentecost, Peter just unleashed the power of the Word of God as it was accompanied by the Spirit of God. And it was the preaching of the person and work and terms of Christ. Peter preached the person of Christ, that he was attested by God by miracles and signs and wonders.

He preached the death of Christ, that they put him to death according to the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. And Peter preached the resurrection of Christ, but God raised him from the dead. And then he supported that with Scripture, Psalm 16 verses 8 through 11. Then he went to Psalm 132 verse 11. Then he came back to Psalm 16 verse 10. Then he goes to Psalm 110 verse 1. And it's just Scripture after Scripture after Scripture. And Peter lifting up his voice and proclaiming the person and work of Jesus Christ. And then it says they were cut to the heart.

It's a Greek word, katanuso, that means it's almost like a butcher knife that would slay the sacrificial animal. They were cut to the bone. They said, brethren, what shall we do? They actually interrupted the sermon. Peter wasn't even finished preaching. And they were under such deep conviction of sin as they had been charged with the first degree murder of the second person of the Godhead.

What must we do? And Peter said, repent. And that's what he had heard Jesus preach for those three plus years of accompanying him in his public ministry.

He preached exactly like Jesus preached. And the Scripture says that there were three thousand souls that were converted that day. And I think it points back to the power of the Word of God and the power of the Spirit of God to accompany the Word when it is preached and to cut deeply into the hearts of men and women. So I think we need to recapture our confidence in the power of the Word of God and recapture our trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to do his work, to convict, to call, and to regenerate as the Word is preached. Dr. Lawson, that's a really helpful example about the power of preaching and the convicting effect that it has. Dr. Nichols, you've been working in Dr. Sproul's life and ministry as you've been producing a new biography. And you really got into seeing some of those pivotal moments where Dr. Sproul was being awakened himself to this sense of God's holiness. And help us to understand that theological emphasis and its relationship to awakening that which we long to see in many different lands.

I'd be glad to, Chris. And you know, so many of us know about these moments already in Dr. Sproul's life because they always came out in his teaching. And those that are familiar with the very first of the Holiness of God teaching series, he so well tells that story of what he calls his second conversion. He had his first conversion as a college student to the gospel.

And I was thinking about what you were saying, Dr. Ferguson, in terms of that horizontal focus. And the temptation is for the church to go along with culture and just keep the people in the pews eyes on the horizontal and never see the vertical. And this was Dr. Sproul. He grew up in church. He was in church every week. He was in the choir with Vesta, of course, and he never heard the gospel.

His eyes were never taken off the horizontal and shown the vertical. But he goes to college, and he's converted, and that's a great story in and of itself, of reading a very unlikely conversion text from the book of Ecclesiastes. But then he talks about that midnight walk, and he talks about how he's in his dorm room, and he felt compelled to get up and walk across campus.

And he so vividly portrays that moment, and he talks about his feet crunching on the snow underneath, and that crisp ice that had formed across the freshly fallen snow. And arriving there at the chapel on the campus of Westminster College and being led right down the nave and right to the front of the church and recognizing the holiness of God and being in the grip of the holiness of God. He talks about the first time as a young Christian just devouring the Bible and reading through the Old Testament. And as he goes through that experience, he said this so many times, he came to the realization that this is a God who plays for keeps. And so here he is as a college student, fresh conversion to Christianity, and yet here is this really central idea that he preached for the next five decades and is at the center of Ligonier Ministries and even what we do here at Reformation Bible College. But there it is as a college student being confronted with the holiness of God, and we all read about it in the book, but it really marks and becomes the hallmark of that ministry.

And it is ultimately that solution, that vertical solution, and that is that fundamental relationship of our relationship to God. And what that did for him was that drove him all the more to the gospel to recognize that if God is holy and I am a sinner, then I recognize my utter need for my substitute of Christ as my Savior. And that, of course, is the message that must be preached, and that is what leads to awakening. You know, one of his favorite figures from church history, of course, is Jonathan Edwards, and one of his favorite Edwards sermons was God glorified in man's dependence, and that realization that as a sinner there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it, that I am absolutely dependent upon what Christ has done for me. And that is the triumph of grace.

That is the triumph of grace in our lives, and we only see it when we see ourselves as sinners and we see God as holy. And that you can easily see at the center of Dr. Sproul's ministry, and it animated his preaching and his writing for the decades to come. Dr. Lawson, we long for revival, and we long for reformation here in these United States, but in every land among every people. And we have to look back, and even as we see the primary means of communicating, the message of salvation is through the gospel. Does God always bless faithful preaching with awakening? Well, I don't know that we can say always with revival in what we normally would think of a widespread movement of the Spirit of God that extends deep as well as far and wide.

However, we don't always see as God sees, and God will honor the man, the church, the ministry that honors his Word. And when his Word goes forth, God's Spirit accompanies the ministry of the Word of God, and God is so often pleased to bring about what we would call a corporate revival that would even have national consequences and cultural consequences. And perhaps the greatest example of that is the Great Awakening of the 1730s and the 1740s that took place not only here in the colonies before America was formed as a nation, but also on the other side of the Atlantic in what is known as the Evangelical Awakening.

So at the same time in history, there was a significant awakening that shook both continents at the same time. And what was the unifying factor was the preaching of the Word of God by men who stressed everything that we've just heard. But to take it even a step further, there was the relentless preaching of the new birth, that you must be born again.

And leading that was the strong voice of the greatest evangelist of that era, maybe of any era, George Whitefield. So it would be a glorious thing in this day for us to hear again in our ears the powerful preaching that you must be born again. So, you know, Chris, may the Lord bring to us another spirit-infused awakening in our day.

And no matter how dark the day may seem as we look around, God is yet greater and the light extinguishes the darkness. For those of you who perhaps even need some encouragement or guidance in knowing how to pray for awakening, Ligonier Ministries produced a prayer guide. And it's a prayer guide for each week of the year.

You can download it for free at PrayForAwakening.com. And it's something that can be used for private devotion in your family, within your church, people to share it with neighbors. One last question, Dr. Nichols, and then certainly open to others jumping in here. In what way should Christians today strive to have confidence in God's Word in their daily lives? I think that's such an important question for us to come back to and recognize that we have this eternal, abiding, true Word of God. You know, for us, we live in an age where we're just surrounded by Bibles.

I think on my shelf over here, I'm probably about 15. And we're just so surrounded by the Bible, but it's also easy for us to neglect it. Or it's easy for us not to devote the time and attention to it that we should. And you go back, whether you go back to Augustine, you go back to Luther, you go back to Edwards. Edwards would talk about a miser finding gold when he's talking about the Word of God, a whole treasure chest of gold. And you think of the impact that just being in the Bible had on Luther. So from 1510, 1215, he's in the Psalms, he's in Galatians, he's in Romans.

He's reading these for himself, and he's teaching these to his students. And what comes of that? I mean, what comes of that is the most significant moment in Western history in the 16th century, not just church history, but for all of the Western world. And it all comes back to that commitment to reading God's Word and to allowing God's Word to become part of our thinking. And it's so easy for us. We are bombarded with so many voices in our moment. We have so many opinions coming at us. I mean, it's even difficult in this moment to find out what true news is. We just feel overwhelmed with things.

We're not sure what to make of things and how to navigate these waters that we find ourselves in. Well, we have a sure Word. We have the firm and certain and sure Word, and it's the Word of God. And it's the only thing that God promises to bless, this Word in our lives. And the truth is that God's Word never returns void.

I loved what Steve said when he was talking about the awakenings and saying, well, from God's perspective, right? And that's true of the Word of God. We need to recognize that as we pour ourselves into God's Word and as we know God's Word and as we study God's Word and as we seek to obey God's Word, then God will bring about the promises of that Word in our lives, and He will be faithful to us. And so we just need to commit ourselves to that, and we need to commit ourselves to that as the people of God and as the church of God. And as that Bible becomes part of who we are and as we proclaim it and live it, that is the best thing we can do for our neighbors and for the culture and for this moment that we find ourselves in.

I would love to piggyback on what Dr. Nichols has just said. No one on planet earth will ever be saved apart from the Word of God, and no one will ever be sanctified apart from the Word of God. And so there is the sufficiency of the Scripture as we carry it to the nations. God will do His work. Isaiah 40, verse 8, The grass withers, the flower fades away, but the word of our God abides forever.

Cultural trends, political movements, ideologies, they will all pass away. There is only one thing that will endure both in this life and in the life to come that will come out of this world, and that is the written Word of God. So let us pour ourselves into the ministry of the Word in every way that we can, spread it far and wide, and watch God do His work.

That's Ligonier teaching fellow Dr. Stephen Lawson as he joins Sinclair Ferguson and Stephen Nichols in a conversation with Ligonier president Chris Larson. Thank you for joining us today for this special edition of Renewing Your Mind. I also want to thank you for your faithful gifts in support of this program. As you continue to think about how we're to live faithfully in this fallen world, let me commend three helpful resources to you.

The first is Dr. R.C. Sproul's book that addresses the very question we're talking about today, How Should I Live in This World? The other resource is Dr. Stephen Nichols' DVD series A Time for Confidence, also Dr. Derek Thomas' paperback book titled Strength for the Weary. We'd like for you to have all three of these resources. For your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we'll be glad to send them your way.

You can make your request and give your gift by calling us at 800-435-4343, or if you prefer, you can donate online at renewingyourmind.org. By the way, if you'd like to view or listen to the conversation we just heard in its entirety, it is available on Ligonier's YouTube channel, and it's titled Confident in the Word of God. I do hope you're taking advantage of all of the resources we've made available online. You can always visit our archive of past Renewing Your Mind programs and listen for free. An easy way to do that is with our free Ligonier app. You'll find audio and video clips, articles, daily devotionals, and much more. Just search for Ligonier in your app store. And I do hope you'll make plans to join us again tomorrow for Renewing Your Mind, a listener-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Thank you.