Questions & Answers with Ferguson, Godfrey, Lawson, Nichols, Parsons, and Thomas

A special Q&A with Ligonier's Teaching Fellows, today on Renewing Your Mind. In America, people get what they want, and when churches are weak, it's because the people want churches that way. People have sought out churches that way.

Mega-churches often, we might think, are weak theologically, but they're full of people. And so we have to begin by examining our own hearts. Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham. One of the highlights of Ligonier Ministries' National Conference is the Q&A sessions, where the attendees get to put their questions before our conference speakers. And today, you'll hear a Q&A session with all of Ligonier's Teaching Fellows.

These six men were handpicked by R.C. Sproul, and they help us remain true to our founding purpose. Today, they'll discuss the state of the church, finding a faithful local church, giving a defense of the faith with a Roman Catholic friend, and more. Moderated by Ligonier's President and CEO, Chris Lawson, here are the Teaching Fellows. What does the panel believe has weakened the local churches the most? And what advice can they give to our friends who've been unsuccessful in finding a faithful church in their local area? Did you hear that?

Did you hear that? Start with the oldest, and they all immediately look at me, because I am the oldest. Well, since I'm a church historian, I was about to say a humble church historian, but that's not exactly true. Since I'm a church historian here amongst theologians, I'll leave the theology to the theologians, but I remember some years back reading an article, a very insightful article I thought at the time, by some sociologists of religion. Normally I'm not big on sociologists, but these people said as a sort of conclusion to an article on what happened to the careful observance of the Lord's Day in American Protestant churches. Was it the seminaries that failed in their teaching? Was it the ministers who failed in their preaching, and they concluded in America people get what they want? And when churches are weak, it's because the people want churches that way. People have sought out churches that way. Mega churches often, we might think, are weak theologically, but they're full of people.

And so, we have to begin by examining our own hearts. Have we sought the kind of churches we ought to be seeking? Have we encouraged ministers who are trying to build churches faithfully according to the Word of God? And have we prayed as we ought to pray that our churches would become strong and would become faithful and would be in their worship and in their teaching conformed to what Paul has said we ought to do?

And to those of you who have prayed who are looking, I would just say keep looking. There are churches, and you have to sort of begin to think, what are my priorities as I look for a church? And at different stages of our families, we have to look for different things perhaps, but I sometimes hear people who have to have a church with a really good youth program. Well, the best youth program in any church is faithful preaching of the Word in Sabbath services. And secondly, faithful catechism classes. Maybe that's a good question. When you call a church, say, what catechism classes do you have for my children? And if you're greeted with utter silence, maybe that's a sign you should keep…have I gone too far? THOMAS?

That's not possible for you. I do think that we've noticed something over the last few years that when the church tries to make the gospel relevant to our current society and the introduction of woke-ish elements to the gospel, simply in the name of relevance, at some point the message then becomes irrelevant. And when…was it Tozer? Steve, what's the…the ship is in the ocean, but if the ocean is in the ship, what is that quote? Well, you want your boat in the water, but not the water in the boat. And I think that too much of the modern church has the water in the boat on a whole variety of issues. I can't believe that we're discussing some of the things that we're discussing when Scripture is very, very clear on some of these issues. And I think when you compromise the message, that's when the church begins to decline, and eventually in a generation it'll cease to be. I think the loss of the second service has had a monumental impact on the evangelical church for a number of reasons. One is, most of us aren't really spiritual enough to use that one day in the week well if the church isn't helping us too.

That's one point. Second point is that we have an extraordinary arrogance if we think we can live the quality of Christian life that Reformed Christians have lived in the past on the basis of a fraction of the diet of ministry that they have had. I mean, I see churches in our tradition kind of putting themselves forward as really being right churches because, for example, they may have the Lord's Supper every week and the question I always ask is, why do you not have a second service? If you think you've got back to Geneva, why is your minister not preaching when he's strong enough to do it every day of the week?

Why do you not have Wednesday given over to prayer? We are so undernourished in terms of the Christian character that we are producing, partly because we have assumed we can do it like an in-and-out burger in an hour on a Sunday. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the second service should be six o'clock, but our Reformed tradition that built real character was never without those helps to all of us to be garrisoned by a thorough ministry of the Word, fellowship with God's people, opportunity to linger with them, and the climax of worship being not the first service but the second service. I've had ministers telling me that they've had experts in who have told them the quality of their morning worship is outstanding, and I think I've probably lost the possibility of friendship with them because I've said I've got a litmus test for the quality of morning worship, and it's whether people want to be back again in the day. And when a church has lost that, the challenge to the eldership is often monumental, especially in a success church world because they know that launching a second service is ordinarily not going to be an immediate success, and for a minister it involves a tremendous investment.

And I think the tragedy of all that is that many Christians, their minds boggle at the idea of a second service being the climactic service, the great service, because they've never actually experienced it, and they assume that we can judge spiritual reality by the level of our own experience. So, I really believe that's one thing because we've lost a day that anchors the whole week. The Sabbath commandment, as we often say, is not about one day a week.

It's about all the days of the week, but the way we use all the days of the week is determined by the way we use that day of the week. And the second thing I think that has weakened our witness is because so often churches have thought when we're building a new sanctuary, which many churches have, what we need to do is to find a plot of land as near to the junction of as many highways and freeways as we can, and rarely to ask the question, where is the actual neighborhood in which we can embed ourselves as witnesses to the gospel where we interact with one another? So, as long as we build churches where people can drive from 30 miles, 50 miles away, our impact is going to be correspondingly minimized. So, in both counts, I think, in the first count, churches have failed because we have been so obsessed with the success mentality. And often in the last 50, 60 years, we've built in the wrong places because we've been so obsessed by the numbers mentality. Those are two characteristics that are very difficult to reverse. And I think the only way to reverse the first characteristic is for people actually to experience what it means to have been washed in the first service and to taste glory in the second service. And in most of our churches, that's been completely lost. And to me, it's tragic.

Chris Larson – Of course, I agree with everything that's been said here. I would just draw attention to the sufficiency of Scripture. And the lessening of that, we speak of the authority of Scripture, but sort of where the rubber meets the road on our view of inerrancy is the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. And if we're talking about a weakness in the American church, if we go back three, four, five generations of American culture, we see an increasing hostility towards Scripture and culture and a challenge to Scripture in American culture.

Turn of the 20th century and through the 20th century and then into our own moment. There was a time where the Bible was a good book in American culture. For many today, the Bible is a dangerous book because of what it teaches. And so, it's so outmoded and so not with the current scene.

So, that's happening in American culture. And so, sadly, as the culture goes, so oftentimes the church goes. And so, we wonder, is this ancient book sufficient for life in the 21st century? And so, we look elsewhere for guidance. We look elsewhere for wisdom. And pulpits are full of preaching that is not about the Word of God. It's commentary on what's happening.

It's movie clips. It's whatever it may be. God promises to bless none of that. He only promises that His Word will not return void. And so, it's kind of preaching people want. I think that's a good point. They get what they want, but to return to the idea that Scripture is sufficient and therefore Scripture is at the center of the church, and the pulpit is at the center of the church, and the sermon is at the center of church life, and all of a sudden we're no longer weak Christians, but now we're strong Christians because we're standing firm on God's Word. So, that's the first part. The second part, I think if Dr. Sproul were here, he would say, drive as far as you need to.

And if that doesn't work, move. Yeah, just to support what Stephen's saying, just one verse, Amos chapter 8. Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when there will be a famine in the land, not for drink or food, but for the hearing of the Word of the Lord. And it was the severest judgment that God could bring on the northern kingdom that they would be taken to a place, Assyria, where they would not hear the Word of God. Because when you heard the Word of God in the northern kingdom, you rejected the Word of God, so therefore my judgment is you will not hear the Word of God anymore. And it was God Himself who removed the prophets. It was God Himself who silenced the voices that the people would now really be given over to judgment. And I think we're seeing that in our own day, that however many years ago when there was some fidelity to the preaching of the Word, a deaf ear was turned to it, and there has been, you know, a leak in the tire, a slow decline until we've hit the point. I mean, I hear it as I travel around the country, and even overseas, people come up to me that there's just not someone preaching the Bible. In our town, where do I go?

What do I do? I think it's the reality. It's kind of like Romans 1, that when you knew God, you were not grateful. And so, therefore, God gave them over.

And I think we're witnessing that in our day. The thought that you would have to move, which I would agree with, that you would have to move to go find a church that would preach the Word of God, I think it really is evidence that there is a famine in the land for the hearing of the Word of the Lord. And how rare it is for there to be a pulpit, as Martin Luther said, that it really is the throne by which God speaks to His people and is enthroned in the life of the church where there's an open Bible, and how rare that actually is. But I do love, as I meet pastors, my first question is always, what are you preaching through?

And I just love hearing that answer. I'm preaching through Acts. I'm preaching through Romans.

I'm preaching through Daniel. And you just need to find those churches, and you're probably going to have to drive past 20 churches to get to that one church. But the distance is worth the difference.

So, I would seek that out. And either you need to drive a long way, or you need to move, or you need to start your own church with some other people. And it's almost easier to start a new work and you've got a clean slate than to try to turn a battleship around. And it rarely starts at the grassroots level.

It has to start at the top. And if the top is not wanting, if the elders, if the leadership in the church are not fiercely committed to biblical preaching, then it just perpetuates a famine in the land. And I would also say pulpit committees can just be amateur hour. And they really in so many cases have no idea what they're doing or what they're looking for.

And so, they give the people the one who has the best personality, has the best pizazz. The problem is he may have good bedside manners, but he can't practice medicine. And he actually can't preach the Word of God. And so, it just continues to seal the tomb. It perpetuates a commitment to less than mediocrity. Why Johnny Can't Preach is a great book.

And that's really worth reading. And that's what we have. My Catholic roommate points to the fact that Protestantism has so many denominations of varying beliefs. She argues from this that sola scriptura cannot be true because so many individual interpretations result in a wide array of beliefs. She argues that this proves we need a higher authority to interpret for us. How would you answer this?

Thank you for your help. You know, I want to say one thing to that very quickly and let all the other men hop in. There is no difference in primary areas of doctrine. I mean, the gospel is the gospel. The Trinity is the Trinity.

Heaven and hell and a final judgment, we all agree on that. If not, then you're not even a Christian church. It's on second level issues that there begins to be diversity, but on primary issues, I mean, there is one faith, one hope, one baptism, one spirit. I mean, there is a unity in the true church. So, I think that the question actually falls on its own sword because it's not a true statement.

There is unity in essentials. And on the other hand, it's a romantic myth that there's doctrinal unity in the Roman church. But I have been amazed just recently at the reports that even make it to my phone that the German Roman Catholic bishops are defying the advice of the pope on whether to bless same-sex relationships or not, to the point where the pope has actually said to the German Roman Catholic bishops, we already have one Protestant church in Germany.

We don't need another. The pope is unable to bring unity of doctrine to the Roman Catholic church. And so, what does the Roman Catholic church teach? The first Vatican Council in the nineteenth century says, no one can be saved who is not in fellowship with the bishop of Rome. Is that what your Roman Catholic roommate believes? Is that what her priest believes? Is that what her bishop believes? At least there are huge numbers of Roman Catholics who don't believe that anymore.

The Council of Trent said all the traditions of the Roman Catholic church were taught by the apostles in the first century. No Roman Catholic theologian really believes that today. So, this myth that Rome is united really has to be addressed by us as Protestants. And when you hear a report from Rome by some activity going on in the Vatican and you hear some priest whispering, this has been going on for two thousand years, depending on what side of the bed you got up on, you may be inclined to say, that's just not true. So, we certainly want to make the point Steve is making, which is the more important point, that Bible-believing Christians are much more united than we appear to be. But we also need to make the point that Rome is nowhere near as united as it claims to be.

Steve was very worried about my visit from a cardinal the other night at three in the morning, and I had to explain to him it was actually a dream and not a reality. And I think he's worried about my interest in the Roman Catholic Church, in which I've had a very considerable interest, actually an increasing interest, and I try and keep tabs on what is happening. And I think I would say you need to be able to back up this statement and understand what it means.

But you could ask your friend, have you never watched YouTube? Because if you watch Roman Catholicism on YouTube, you will find the sociological mirror of what you find in Protestantism exactly, absolutely exactly, from extreme fundamentalism on the one hand, cursing the present Pope and all his minions, to such liberalism on the other hand, that they're trying to pull the Pope off the planet. And the idea that there is unity, the only justification for saying that there is unity is that Roman Catholics have Popes and Protestants don't, but there are very serious questions about whether every Pope is actually a Roman Catholic. So, for example, I knew somebody who taught at the Catholic University in D.C. Is it in D.C., Bob? And I asked him about discussions about the Council of Trent and the great formulations, so totally ignored.

Nobody ever mentions them. So, the drift from the foundations to the present reality is mind-bogglingly phenomenal, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to realize that where the present Pope stands and where Pope Benedict Joseph Ratzinger stood theologically are as diverse as you're going to find anywhere in the, at least in the Western world, in churches. So, as Bob is saying, it is a total miasma, a myth that has been created. And the truth of the matter is actually most Roman Catholics do not have a good grasp on what Roman Catholicism actually is traditionally, or what it is actually phenomenologically and existentially today. So, I think what I'm saying at great length is that we mustn't, no believer should be intimidated by those very, though that was an accusation that arose at the time of the Reformation, and we have many more reasons today not to be intimidated by it. Did I hear an amen? Amen.

Amen. One of the things that always makes it difficult, I shouldn't say always, often makes it difficult for Protestants to communicate with Roman Catholics is many, many Roman Catholics, whether they know the terminology or not, really believe in implicit faith, and the church encourages what is known as implicit faith, which is to say the Roman Catholic is only obligated to say, I believe what the church believes even if I don't know what the church believes. I have such confidence in the priests and the bishops and the popes that I just know whatever it is they believe is right, and I agree with them. And so, when you say, well, what about this doctrine or that doctrine, they often just sort of shrug and say, I don't know anything about that, but I know the priest knows, the bishops know, the pope knows.

And that's difficult to break through, and if you get as agitated as I do, you probably never will break through. But the ideal would be to open the Bible and say, well, I know that Roman Catholics believe the Bible. Let's look at what the Bible says. What does the Bible say about some of these things? And, you know, if you read your Bible, you may discover it's not so hard.

It's not so difficult. Let me just add here, because I don't think this is the question, but I think it's important to mention this because sadly there are evangelicals who are taken by those romantic myths of Catholicism, whether it's the historicity or the catholicity. And I think it's very helpful for us to let our young people know what is true historically of the Roman Catholic Church, what is true phenomenologically of the Roman Catholic Church. And if you really want to swim the Tiber, as they say, which we've all seen it.

I wouldn't even want to put a toe in that water, let alone swim across the Tiber. Let's give them a clear-eyed picture of what Roman Catholicism is, not these romanticized visions of it that entice them away from being a Protestant and committed to the solas of the Reformation. I do think part of what is attractive to some Protestants in Rome is a fatigue with personal responsibility. As Protestants, we have a personal responsibility to study the Scripture, to know the Christ, to grow in grace, and it can get exhausting. And there can be a kind of attraction to say, I don't have to think about these things anymore.

I don't have to think through them anymore. I can just rest in Rome. I could just let the bishops and the priests have the responsibility. But you won't find that attitude, I believe, anywhere in the Scripture. It's not what Peter taught in 1 Peter. There's hardly a better apologetic book against Rome in the New Testament than 1 Peter, where I think Peter preaches the gospel clearly, and he talks about being an elder, a fellow elder with all the elder elders.

There's no princely character of Peter in 1 Peter, and I'm rambling now. But anyway, read 1 Peter to your Roman Catholic friends. Is there anything wrong with saying, hate the sin, love the sinner? Well, it depends on who's saying it, because we are called to love sinners. We are called to love our enemies.

I find it fascinating that when people want to narrow the definition of who our neighbor is, when the Bible calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves, they find it difficult to narrow that definition of who our neighbor is when they run to the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus says, you're to pray for your enemies and love those who persecute you. Now, there are different types of love. We understand that. Different degrees of love.

We acknowledge that. There's a different love that we have for our spouses, our children, than we have for our friends. Different love we have for our neighbor and a different love that we have for our enemies. But there are different degrees of that love, and we are called to love the sinner and hate the sin. God, however, hates the sin and hates all those who are at enmity with him and hates all those who are not among his elect. Now, I realize that's difficult for some people to hear, but the Bible is very clear about this. The distinction that Paul makes as he rests on the Old Testament is that God both hates the sin and hates the reprobate sinner whom he has not elected unto everlasting life, whom he has both passed over, and whom he has destined to everlasting damnation.

Now, it's hard to say. It's hard for some to hear, but I believe that that is what the Bible clearly teaches. If I don't believe that, then it's going to be very difficult for me to believe in the grace of God for wretched sinners such as we. It has been said in this conference that Satan is bound, and it has been said that Satan is attacking. Is Satan bound? In eschatological terms, who is ruling this world right now, Christ or Satan? Well, Satan has been bound in the sense that under the old covenant, the gospel was more or less confined to the Jews.

There were occasional proselytes, but they were occasional. But in the ministry of Christ and the ministry of the Seventy, when they come back from that mission of theirs, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. So, an aspect of Satan's control over the world was affected by the ministry of Christ and by the death and resurrection of Christ, and the day of Pentecost would suggest that now the gospel is to be preached in all the world. But he is still referred to as the prince and power of the air. He still has power, maybe not as much power as he did under the old covenant, but he still has power, he's still to be reckoned with. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world. I mean, C. S. Lewis said somewhere in his screw-tape letters possibly that you can make too much of the devil, but you can also make too little of him. He hasn't yet been cast into the bottomless pit that the book of Revelation speaks of in chapter 20. So, he is very much to be reckoned with even in the new covenant. But I think we have to be, I certainly agree, but we have to be very clear. Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords now. And I think Lewis is exactly right.

We can't make too much or too little on the too much side. Sometimes we talk about Satan almost as if he were a minor god. He's a finite creature, which I think means, now I'm only a church historian, a humble church historian, but I think that means he can't be everywhere at once. He can't be the Holy Spirit. And so, he has all these minions who serve him, but we almost talk sometimes as if there's the holy God and then there's the evil God, Satan. Satan is not God. He's a finite creature. He's limited by his finitude as well as by God's sovereignty. And so, he is a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, but he's chump change compared to the sovereign God. He has been defeated and he will be destroyed, and our calling is not to let him destroy us before he's destroyed.

We all try and put things in answers to questions, saying the same thing in different ways. And I think two things I've found helpful in this context are one, what Bob has alluded to, Matthew 28, 18 to 20. What Jesus is saying in Matthew 28, 18 to 20 is that as the second man and the last Adam, he has won back the dominion on earth that Adam lost. Adam lost his dominion.

He fell to the tempter. Christ has overcome the tempter so that he now says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Now, we instinctively think, well, he's the Son of God, all authority in heaven and earth is his. But he is speaking in a particular context here of saying that now the dominion that Satan won in the Garden of Eden has been overthrown and that authority is now his.

And the second thing is to pick up what Derek said, so that he would no longer deceive the nations. So, it's not just a general statement, Satan is bound, but that Satan is bound in this particular respect that until the resurrection of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, the coming of the last days, Satan was deceiving all of the nations except the one nation that God was undeceiving in his mercy. And that what is actually happening on the Day of Pentecost in the crowd that gathers that is analogous to the crowd that gathered in order to build the Tower of Babel and to pull God down and God judged the nations, committed them to the deception of Satan is that now from the Day of Pentecost onwards, symbolized in the gatherings of the people and now experienced for 2,000 years is that the nations are being undeceived by the preaching of the gospel. And I mean, that's just another way of saying, you know, we always need to look at the context in which phrases are used so that we don't just see a phrase and then make up ourselves what it means when the Scriptures are in very specific ways helping us to see these statements within a particular grid and context so that when the Scriptures say that He is the God of this age, we realize that those who are not Christians are living in this age, whereas we, the end of the ages has dawned on us and what the preaching of the gospel does is continues to invade this age to bring people into the new age and that this will continue until the Lord comes.

And then comes the end, whatever your eschatology, then comes the end. In my sin, I feel that I have seared my conscience. How do I make my conscience tender again to the will of God and the cost of sin?

I'm grateful that this person asked the question because I think it's a question that a lot of Christians have and if it's a question that they're not asking, it's a question they should be asking because at some level, every Christian at some point in his or her life struggles with that temptation. Our consciences are easily seared by our sins and the rationalization of our sins, but the answer is really very simple. You have to pray. You have to pray and you have to continue praying fervently, asking God to make you sensitive to your sin, to convict you of your sin. That is a daily prayer of mine. It's a weekly prayer of mine with a friend of mine that I've been praying with for many years every week. We pray that for each other, something he requests regularly, that we would hate our sins as much as God hates our sins. That we would see our sins and so it's a constant prayer and it's a hard prayer because it's a scary prayer to ask the Lord to search our hearts and to know us and to see if there's any wicked way in us. That's a scary prayer because often God shows us those sins, not in the delicate ways we would like him to.

It usually means hurting someone we love when we see the realities of the hurt of our sin. And it doesn't matter how old we are, doesn't matter how young we are, we have to keep praying this. I've seen so many Christians who think they've arrived. They think because they've gotten to a certain age and they've just sort of settled into their ways. They've even got their wives conditioned to say, well, that's just the way he is. They got their children thinking, well, that's just the way he is. And I think we should live our lives in such a way where we never presume upon the grace of our loved ones, never presume upon the grace of God and always be constantly striving to mortify every sin.

Not just the big ones, but the little ones. That we as Christians would be the most repentant people that unbelievers know and that we would live our lives with daily repentance. As Luther said in his first thesis that when our Lord master Jesus Christ called us to repent, he willed that the entire life of the Christian be one of repentance. We have to be looking for opportunities every hour of every day to repent to the Lord, to our friends, to our children, to our spouses.

It ought not be an infrequent thing in our lives. Repentance and restoration and forgiveness and reconciliation ought to be an hourly daily thing that takes place in our lives. LARSON How can I be saved if I have sin in my life that I hate, but keep committing? I'm discouraged by my sin, and I've gotten to the point where I'm scared that I can't be saved.

What can I do? LAWSON Well, we need more information than just, you know, one sentence. So, it's just a broad general response to a broad general question. There is a sense in which it's a healthy sign that you're concerned about your sin. Paul was concerned about his sin in Romans chapter 7. It's the unbeliever who is dead and trespasses in sin and is not as worked up about his sin or deeply concerned about his sin. His conscience has become seared as with a hot iron. And so, the fact that you are concerned and troubled about your sin is actually a good thing, is a healthy sign, because previously you were just living in sin and sinful flesh, and then you were regenerated, and you are now a new man in Christ and you have new sensibilities and new sensitivities towards sin. Obviously, we need far more information than what we have in the question, but just to give an initial pastoral response, I would not immediately say, well, then you're obviously not saved.

Actually it may be that you are saved because you have such a deep troubled spirit and heart over this sin. So, I'll leave it at that. That was Ligonier's Teaching Fellows, Sinclair Ferguson, W. Robert Godfrey, Stephen Lawson, Stephen Nichols, Burke Parsons, and Derek Thomas, answering questions from our guests at Ligonier's 2023 National Conference. Since our founding in 1971, R.C. Sproul designed Ligonier Ministries to be a place where Christians could go to get answers to life's most important questions, which is why for more than five decades we have produced clear, biblically faithful resources to help growing Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it. One such resource is R.C. Sproul's popular book, Everyone's a Theologian, and we'll send it to you for your donation of any amount. When you give your gift at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800-435-4343, we'll send you Everyone's a Theologian and give you digital access to the e-book edition. So give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org. Core to the ministry of Ligonier is Reformed theology. But what does it mean to be Reformed? That's what we'll consider all next week here on Renewing Your Mind.