I think Dr. Ferguson wanted to
ask our first question of the afternoon. FERGUSON. I would
like to know what points three and four are. I don't really know what Steve's
eschatology is, but if he thinks he's going to be here again in
500 years for a Ligonier conference. THOMAS. And could we have an
exposition of the Great Tribulation? lamentations. Yeah, the third
and the fourth point are very important points in these really
built… FERGUSON. You've got three minutes. LAWSON.
Okay, thank you. The third point is, it is a revival of controversial
preaching, because when you preach sequentially, verse by verse,
through entire books in the Bible, you are forced to address the
hard issues of Scripture. You cannot avoid anything. You
can't skirt topics or issues. It guarantees that you address
the full counsel of God. Whether or not you rightly interpret
it is another issue, but it forces your hand as a preacher, and
there is…it becomes unavoidable that you become provocative in
your preaching. You're not just a devotional
preacher. There is a razor-sharp edge to
your preaching, and those topics are contained in every book in
the Bible. So the Reformers believed in not only sola Scriptura, but
tota Scriptura, not only Scripture alone, but all of Scripture. And so, by preaching through
entire books in the Bible, they were committed to preaching all
of Scripture. The fourth heading is a revival
of preaching the doctrines of grace. If you preach verse by
verse through entire books in the Bible, you have to be Reformed. It's unavoidable. By starting in chapter 1, verse
1, and by the way, in the New Testament epistles as well as
the gospel of John, the doctrines of grace are actually front-loaded,
chapter 1, verse 2, chapter 1, verse 3, chapter 1, verse 4. So, if you start at the beginning
of books and just preach through the entire books, you will be
addressing the doctrines of grace. And so, that's what happened
in the Reformation. And virtually to a man, they
were predestinarian, with a few exceptions. They were very strong,
and that put backbone into the church. It gave them strength
of convictions and courage of life. because they understood
the sovereignty of God over the entirety of life, but specifically
in their salvation. And so, they had such an enormously
high view of God, that salvation is of the Lord, that they understood
the original sin, the bondage of the will, total depravity,
unconditional election, the definiteness of atonement, the effectual grace
of God, the perseverance of grace. It's what was a significant part
of making it a strong church, and the higher your theology,
the higher your doxology. And so, that's why even the worship
service changed in the Reformation. Things became simplified, and
it was so focused on God. So, that's just a quick three-minute
summary, sir. Is there a difference between
regeneration and being born again? FERGUSON Yes and no. The New Testament uses the term
regeneration in connection with cosmic renewal. Jesus speaks
about the time when there will be the regeneration of all things. Being born again as an individual
in terms of whole New Testament theology is the individual's
participation. in the inauguration of that final
cosmic regeneration. So, if you're asking in terms
of, is the language used in different ways in the New Testament? Yes.
If you're asking the theological question, is regeneration the
same thing as being born again? Then the answer is yes, we're
talking about the same thing when it applies to the individual.
There are two different ways of saying the same thing, born,
generated, re, again. There are two different linguistic
traditional forms of the same idea. LARSON If Jesus is God,
and we'll just go ahead and correct the question and say, since Jesus
is God, how can He experience separation
from God on the cross? Well, it's true that Jesus is
God, but He is also man. He is two natures in one person. And on the cross, let's take
Calvin's interpretation of, my God, my God, why have you forsaken
me? that as the unmitigated wrath
of God is poured out upon him, he has in his human consciousness,
in his human mind, human affections, human will, he seemingly has
no consciousness of his native sonship and refers to his Father
as my God, my God. In His human nature, there is
no consciousness of His embrace and acceptance by His heavenly
Father, and He is in the place of the wicked damned. But there is no separation of
His divine nature from the divine nature of His heavenly
Father, because there is only one divine nature, and it cannot
experience separation. So, it has to be understood in
terms of the hypostatic union. Part of the problem, I think,
comes from how we misconstrue what death is, imagining that
death is a cessation of existence and that it entails an absolute
separation from God. But there is no such thing as
cessation of existence, and death does not mean an absolute separation
from God. It means to be under the judgment
of God, to be facing the wrath of God. It is not that you are
able, the wicked in Revelation 6, cry for the mountains and
the rocks to fall on us and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb.
They would like there to be an absolute separation, but that
is not possible. And so, what happens on the cross
is that Jesus of Nazareth bears that wrath of God in our place. And for us to understand that
clearly helps us understand what the nature of punishment for
sin is. It is bearing the wrath of God
and what Jesus is doing there on the cross. LARSON. Were the apostles converted before
the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost? referring to the eleven disciples?
FERGUSON Not Judas. That leaves eleven. And I think Jesus answers that
question in the conversation with Simon Peter in John 13.
You are clean, but not all of you, referring to Judas. You do not, to Peter, wash the
whole of me. You don't…he who has already
been cleansed doesn't need a bath, he needs his feet washed. And
that, I think, is an implicit reference back to the fulfillment
of the promise of the coming covenant in Christ that He would
wash clean His people. So, I think you can argue just
on the basis of that conversation in John 13 that the apostles,
minus Judas, are to be viewed as faithful. covenant respondents
to Jesus Christ, and that when Judas leaves the room, as he
does later on in John 13, Jesus goes on to speak about their
union with Him in John 15, I am the vine, you are the branches.
He doesn't say, so now get yourself into me. He says, now remain
in me. You're already branches in the
vine. So the whole tenor of that final
teaching conversation, I think, indicates that They are true, what we would
call true believers before the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.
And the reason for that is that although the Spirit came at Pentecost
and He came in a new epochal way, He was present. You know Him because He's with
you. He's ministering to you through My ministry. It's because
of His ministry that you've come to faith in Me. So, I think there's
a lot of evidence even just in the upper room discourse that
the apostles were viewed by Jesus as those who believed in Him,
in contradistinction from Judas. It's an interesting question. Somebody asked me recently, They
asked me how many elders we had at the church, and I said, I
wasn't sure, eighty, ninety elders. And the
question that immediately followed was, are they all Christians?
Which I was rather taken aback at, as if I had some supernatural
ability to answer that in any definitive way, and all I could
say was, Well, they all profess to be Christians, and they all
profess to be Orthodox, and they all subscribe the Westminster
Confession, but I have no means of giving you an answer to the
question definitively, are they all regenerate, which I think
was what he was asking. Because we've all known folk
who profess to be regenerate and whom we have regarded as
Christians who have sadly fallen away, and about whom we now have
considerable doubt as to whether they were converted in the first
place. So, the question is actually very interesting, and perhaps
behind it may lie the idea that A Christian can be known by a
very decided manner of conversion experience and a narrative that
can be defined very clearly. And, you know, Rosemary and I
have a very different narrative. Rosemary doesn't…I mean, she
was raised here in North Belfast somewhere, and she doesn't remember
a day when she didn't believe. But mine was sudden and dramatic,
and I can tell you it was 1130 on December the 28th in 1971.
I mean, I can't be that precise about it. So, the question is
an interesting question. It raises a whole lot of issues.
LARSON Do you agree that God hates sin
but loves the sinner? Why or why not? Well, certainly we know that
God hates sin because God is a perfectly holy God, and I believe
that there's biblical support that God also hates the sinner
as well. which only magnifies His love
for His elect, but even the elect are under the wrath of God before
they come to faith in Christ, though they were loved in Christ
from all eternity past. Psalm 5 very clearly says that
God is angry with the wicked every day. It's not that it won't
manifest itself in God until the last day or in eternity in
hell, then God becomes angry with the wicked. No, this very
moment, every person that is outside of Christ experientially
is under the wrath of God. Romans 1 verse 18 is abundantly
clear. The verb is in the present tense,
for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men. When you go to Psalm 7, it says,
it pictures God as a warrior whose arrows are already in the
bow, and they are aimed at the heart of the sinner. And as Spurgeon
says in Treasury of David, and God never misses the target.
And it pictures God as a warrior filled with vengeance. against
the ungodly. Psalm 7, Psalm 11 both say the
very same thing, and I think it's very significant that those
are front-loaded when the collectors of the Psalms put the Psalms
together in the order in which they're placed. They're not placed
in chronological order. They are placed in an order with
a rhyme and a reason. that these are front-loaded.
In fact, Psalm 2 shows God laughing and scoffing
at the wicked who would say that they would not be tied down with
God's fetters and God's cords. He who sits in the heavens laughs
and mocks at them and talks about the anger of the sun towards
them. if they will not kiss the Son
this moment?" So, the correct theological answer is that God
is angry this moment with every unconverted soul, which only
magnifies the grace of God and the love of God that God would
show mercy to those to whom He's angry. who are avowed enemies. Not only is every unconverted
person an enemy of God, but far worse, God is an enemy of every
unconverted person. But this causes us to understand
the free offer of the gospel is in and of itself an expression
of love by God to extend terms of peace. When you read Luke
14 and verses 31 and 32, it talks about a king with ten thousand
troops, and there is another king with twenty thousand troops
who's coming against the king with ten thousand troops. that
he must assess the possibility of escaping this king, and he
realizes that he cannot. Well, this king with 20,000 troops
is coming to destroy the king with 10,000 troops, and so he
must send out an envoy and accept terms of peace. Well, if you
have to accept terms of peace, the very opposite was true. And
so, like in Romans 8 verse 1, there is now therefore no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. Well, for those who are not in
Christ Jesus, there is, instead of no condemnation, there is
already condemnation and wrath, and God is an infinitely, perfectly
holy God. and must react against all that
is contrary to His nature. So, I think it strengthens even
gospel preaching to know that you are in a very precarious
place. You're not in a neutral zone.
There's more to the story than, smile, God loves you and has
a wonderful plan for your life, that God in His grace is extending
terms of peace but you must accept these terms of peace because
you are under His wrath." There is this very moment, and you
have provoked His wrath with your unbelief and your sin. So, that's kind of the short
version of that answer. I do believe Jonathan Edwards
got it right. Sinner is in the hands of an
angry God, and God is full of indignation. It says in Psalm
5, every day against the wicked, and that being the case makes
it a profound statement about the identity of believers, because
believers do sin, but our ultimate identity is not defined by our
sin, it's defined by Christ. And that is wonderful good news,
the exact flip side of everything you're arguing for there so rightly. in coming to Christ, the One
who has been my Judge adopts me so that He becomes my Father,
so that He hates my sin still that remains in me, but He now
looks at that from a fatherly perspective, and He will seek
as a loving Father to discipline me in love that that sin might
be purified from me. But my entire relationship with
Him has changed. I do sin, but I'm defined by
being in Christ now. What is the difference between
expiation and propitiation? Expiation is the atonement as
it figures on us, on the human being, and propitiation is the
same atonement as it affects and implicates God Himself. So, if the context is manward
and humanward, In translations in the past,
the RSV, for example, would have used expiation, and if the context
is focusing on the God word side of it, it would have used propitiation. For the same Greek word, hilasterion,
but the ESV has decided to use the same word, propitiation,
throughout. Dr. Ferguson, his question is,
I have a Muslim friend who absolutely loves the parable of the prodigal
son, but he sees in it the basis for the unconditional forgiveness
found in the character of the father. How can we better turn
that into a gospel conversation? Can you ask that again? LARSON
Sure. A Muslim friend who loves the parable of the prodigal son,
but he sees in it the basis for the unconditional forgiveness
found in the character of the father. So how can we better
turn that into a gospel conversation? FERGUSON Well, I think there
are several ways, and although the question is addressed to
me, I'm sure the others could pitch in. I think one way to
do it is if you look at that parable carefully, the father
is actually Jesus. And that gets you immediately.
I am not arguing that there is the propitiation of sin in the
killing of the fatted calf. You're looking alarmed. But if
you read that triptych of parables, the lost sheep, the lost…one
out of a hundred, the lost coin, one out of ten, the lost son,
what's the context? The context is the accusation
of the Pharisees against Jesus. So as you read through that,
so who is the shepherd? The shepherd is Jesus. Who is
the Father? And this is difficult for us
to get our heads around because we think of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, but the Father in the parable represents Jesus. And I think that might be a way
of drawing somebody who was a Muslim to focus attention, not on the
question of whether Allah is merciful. but on the role of
Jesus Christ in relationship to the prodigal son's finding
forgiveness. Because it's precisely at that
point that somebody who is a right-thinking Muslim, that sounds oxymoronic,
but somebody who really is a Muslim. That's where they'll have the
difficulty. They may have vague concepts of Allah being merciful,
but they will not have a gospel concept of how it is that God
forgives sins exclusively through Jesus Christ. They cannot if
they are, quotes, orthodox Muslims. Now, I think another element
in all that is we need to recognize that just as every Presbyterian
in Northern Ireland is not fully conversant with the Westminster
Confession of Faith, but may have very vague ideas of what
the Christian gospel actually is, the same is true of many
Muslims. So, in a way, you need to kind
of find out, what kind of Muslim am I dealing with here? Am I
dealing with a confused Muslim or somebody who is a clear-thinking
Muslim? But I think in either case, the
parable gets you to Christ, and Christ is the great issue here
in terms of Christianity and Islam. And I think it also helps
you bypass some of the things that Muslims tend to make fundamental
in their controversy with Christianity that are actually incidental
to the real issues. I am not an expert in Islamic
evangelism, but that's my answer in terms of the question of the
parable of the prodigal son. Don't be misled by the fact.
that the gracious figure in the parable of the prodigal son is
a father, because in this case the father, as the context shows,
is actually the son. They're criticizing Jesus for
His reception of sinners. So, who is it in the parable
who receives sinners? It's the father. The father figure
in the parable represents Jesus. The parable of the prodigal son
is not an exposition of the three Persons of the Trinity, but an
exposition of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's clear
to me, but it's maybe not yet clear by the looks on Chris'
face. Just thinking about the next
question. As Christians, do we have free will? It depends what
you mean by free will. When people hear, for example,
about Martin Luther writing on the bondage of the will, They
will very quickly think, well, that cannot be true because I
do what I want. I act according to what I want
to do. Therefore, obviously, I have
free will. And in that sense, if that is
what you mean by free will, Luther would say, absolutely, you do
what you want. But his point in the bondage
of the will was to say, yes, but you do not choose what to
want. So you go through life acting
according to your desires, but your problem is you have your
desires bent in a particular direction, and you do not naturally
love God. So we walk according to the desires
of the flesh, Ephesians 2. And we find the desires, James
1, 14, 15, that desire naturally gives birth to sin. And so, therefore,
while sinners go through the world, go through lives, happily
saying, I'm doing whatever I want to do, that's true, but they
only want to pursue the flesh. They never want God. And so the
point of Luther's argument on the bondage of the will is to
say you cannot simply tell these people to behave better because
the grain of their heart is oriented towards the flesh and sin and
not towards loving God. And the only thing that can change
that is the preaching of God's Word, is the gospel being preached,
because as a preacher, I can harangue people and tell people
to behave better, and I can actually achieve that, potentially. What
I cannot achieve, and what only the gospel can achieve, is heart
change. When the gospel of Christ is
proclaimed, then hearts turn For the very first time, this
is weaving together everything you've been saying this morning,
hearts change from a love for sin to, for the very first time,
a miraculous Spirit-born love for God. And that's why, as the
Reformation, I've happily always stood with Luther in talking
about the bondage of the will. Because it means that in pastoring,
I need to recognize that people can't simply improve their behavior. I need to preach the gospel to
them. And I'm going to be a cruel pastor to them if I think they
have free will in the sense of they can always choose to act
in a holy way on the basis of their own abilities. They don't. They need to have the gospel
so that their hearts are changed. And it's a belief in the bondage
of the will that can sound like bad news, but it is the key to
compassionate pastoring. Because only when I see that
people are naturally floundering, helpless in their sin, then do
I find my compassion leaping forward, and I see what they
need is not me telling them to do better. What they need is
the gospel. They need Christ as Savior. Do you agree with the assessment
that the church is in need of another Reformation today? Yes. Yes. Yes. I'll answer for Steve as well,
yes. Moving right along. Yeah, you know, I think we mustn't
lose sight of the fact when we speak about the Reformation that
it really was also a revival. It was a God-given, it wasn't
a man-made Reformation, but a God-given awakening, and that the two things
went together. So, it's not just a matter of,
you know, how can we change church? It's a supernatural work that
we need. And that story that the Reformation
was really just a reaction to moral corruptions, moral problems
500 years ago, completely misunderstands everything Luther from the very
beginning is saying the Reformation is about, which is not about
moral self-improvement, but the fact that we can't do that, and
therefore we need a savior, not merely an example to tell us
to do better. And so, the problem we have in
the church is not simply that we have leaders falling from
grace, and we have lacks living, and so on. The problem is the
preaching of the gospel. This is what we so desperately
need. That's going to be the engine for the purification and
growth of the church. And that's what we mean by saying
we need another Reformation today. LARSON So how do you lovingly
press the Reformation distinctives in a land troubled by sectarian
strife? FERGUSON Well, you're looking
at me. You know, in areas of that kind
of…when people are kind of sociologically programmed against biblical Christianity,
which sometimes goes under the name of the Reformed faith, which
sometimes…a.k.a. the doctrines of grace, I often
say to them, well, let's look at what Jesus believed. And I
think it is a great pastoral tool to have in your personal
engagement box with people who profess to be Christians, and
therefore have almost by definition some kind of loyalty to Jesus,
to say, well, let's listen to what Jesus said. And perhaps
because We are very Pauline Christians
in the Reformed community. It's a tool that we don't all
have in our toolbox to work our way through the teaching of Jesus.
You know, Matthew 11, 25 to 30 has, in my little toolbox, has
been a great Hammer wouldn't be the right
word, screwdriver might be the right word. This free offer of
the gospel, all you who labor and are heavy laden, now give
you rest. But one of the lessons we learn,
isn't it, dear brother, that we never rip texts out of contexts. So, what is the context here? Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
I thank You that You have hidden these things from the wise and
understanding and revealed them to babes, which sounds suspiciously
like Jesus believed in a sovereign, divine discrimination, which
goes under the name of election. And it was on that basis that
he had confidence that his invitation to people to come to him would
not be a fruitless invitation, but had a solid foundation. And
you know, when Steve was speaking earlier on, it kind of becomes
clear that in people's minds, when you can knock away one of
their false foundations, Their whole building collapses, and
when you begin to put one element in, then a lot of the other elements
just begin to cohere together. For example, once somebody recognizes
that regeneration is not something God condescendingly gives to
me, once I have believed, you believe in Jesus and God will
give you the new birth. but that, as is clear in John
3, unless you are born again, you can neither see nor enter
the kingdom of God. Once an understanding of regeneration
is in place, you know, all the other building blocks fit together. So, there are all kinds of access
routes into helping to bringing people from their sociological,
which may be religious, may even be evangelical, programming against
the Reformed faith, graciously into the Reformed faith without
pulling the hammer out of the toolbox and saying, boom. And
I think the teaching of Jesus is a great help to us in that
respect. Well, I mean, the question again
is an interesting question, particularly being asked here in Belfast and
Northern Ireland, you know, the word sectarian. So, the answer to the question,
how do we preach the doctrines of grace in a sectarian society,
is not to abandon distinctives and truth and adopt a sort of
view that all roads lead to heaven and abandon altogether the notion
of discriminating truth. So, that's not the answer. So
the answer has to be we have to proclaim the doctrines of
grace because, as Steve has just said in the point that we didn't
get, the Reformation is about a recovery
of the preaching of the doctrines of grace. And we believe them,
and we believe them passionately. We are addressing a concept of
truth in a world that is, to some degree, to varying degrees,
late modern or postmodern, whatever label you want to put on it.
But I think that, in part, the answer to the question perhaps
here is that we preach them winsomely. and we preach them in a Christ-centered
and gospel-centered manner, and that we ensure that it is the
doctrines of grace that we are insisting upon and not certain
other issues that can get in the way of the gospel. And maybe
in a sectarian society, and this is controversial, there are there
are certain things that are important and that we believe in, but that
we have to put second to the gospel and make sure that the
gospel comes first, even if we have to deny ourselves our rights
and privileges in other areas of life. I might add two more things.
The first would be, particularly in this sort of society, we are
not holding to these truths for the sake of merely defending
a culture we were brought up with or a tradition we were born
into. I was not born into this theological
tradition. I have been persuaded by Scripture
of these glorious truths. And I'm letting Scripture, and
I have let Scripture, shatter my natural assumptions, what
I was brought up with. I'm not defending my natural
tradition. And what Dr. Parsons said last
night I think is also very key here, that Reformational theology
must drive us to a concern for the name of Christ among all
the nations. And if a sectarian society can
see the graciousness of this gospel and our love for the lost,
they can see we're not excluding in that sense. We're preaching
gloriously exclusive truths which are for the blessing of the world.
LAWSON Yeah, the only thing I would add as I think about the question,
and it's hard to know exactly the context, but it really does
always come back to the authority of Scripture. And, you know,
if I was pastoring, let's say here, and I was up against, you
know, secular thinking, culture, I mean, I would do a series on
how we got the Bible, what are the distinctives of the Bible,
what is the power of the Bible, the truthfulness, the veracity
of Scripture. I would be… teaching the inspiration,
the authority, the inerrancy, the infallibility, the invincibility,
the immutability. THOMAS. That's 318 sermons. the perspicuity of Scripture,
I really would, such that I would bind the conscience of the listeners. The only people who can hear
me are the people who are sitting under my preaching or that I'm
allowed to meet, but I would want to be equipping my congregation
with an extraordinary overconfidence in the Word of God and its power
to work. and such that whenever we open
the Bible and whenever we teach the Bible, that's the first word,
that's the final word, that's every word. It's the mind of
God. So, you know, the culture is
wrong. Society is wrong. Romans 3 says,
let God be found true. Let every man be found a liar.
So, I would want to have that as concrete in the foundation
of my ministry in my church, but for those who are under my
preaching, for them to have such a high regard for Scripture that
whenever the Scripture speaks, Every mouth is closed, and so
therefore we are able to speak to people that we meet and raise
our families and witness the gospel based upon the authority
of Scripture. You know, Spurgeon said, I would
rather preach one word out of the Scripture than 50,000 words
of the philosophers. He said, if we want more conversions,
we need to put more Scripture into our preaching. He said,
if we want to see more revivals, then we must revive our confidence
in the Scripture. So, you know, it's like they
asked Luther, how do you defend the Bible? And he said, the same
way you defend a lion, just turn it loose. Let it out of the cage. Turn it loose. And we leave the
results to God. So, I would just have such a
high view of Scripture. that that would win the day.
I mean, it is, you know, Ephesians 6, 17. It's the sword of the
Spirit, which is the Word of God. It's an invincible weapon
when accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit. So, anyway,
I just would add that as the very cornerstone and foundation
of everything that we have to say and everything that we believe.
So, that's an Englishman, a Scotsman, a Welshman, and a Texan answer
to Irish sectarianism. LARSON So, we have a lot more
questions here. Let's see if we can enter into
a bit of a lightning round. We've tried this before, but
sometimes y'all are just not very good at the lightning round
part of the lightning. None of us is light. LARSON OK. Dr. Reeves, this morning you
spoke of justification as a legal term. Quite a number of ministers
in this country use the writings of N.T. Wright. Would you disagree
with his view of Justification is not a legal term. Of course,
N.T. Wright would have disagreed with
your position of that. Yes. Tom Wright has made one
of the most devastating analogies against what I said. He said
that righteousness is not a substance or a gas that can be passed across
the courtroom from one person to another. And he's absolutely
right. But what the Reformers always
spoke about was not righteousness as a thing in itself which is
transferred from one person to another, but that the believer
is united, incorporated, engrafted into the person of Christ, and
in Christ. Calvin said, we do not see him
from afar. It is because he deigns to bring
us into the body of Christ that we are clothed in his righteousness. So I think with Tom Wright, there
is a lack of historical and systematic understanding of what the Reformers
were really teaching. leading to pastoral problems,
he's not able to offer the sort of assurance that Luther and
Calvin were able to offer because of systematic and historical
lacks in what a brilliantly presented material. What advice would you give to
someone who has an unbelieving spouse who thinks he is saved,
a case of one with superficial view of sin? We constantly fight
because of our different stance on moral issues. lightning round. We're thinking
slowly. I don't think that's the kind
of question we can answer in a forum like this. There are
many different ways in which husbands and wives engage with
one another. But I think, you know, the basic
principle is the Peter principle. that in those family relationships
in which there is a spiritual dysfunction, the Christian's
responsibility is to excel in what they are called to be. So,
for example, in 1 Peter, since it's a wife who has an unbelieving
husband, she lives as such a wife to him that without a word, Whatever
that means, I think it at least means without without nagging
him into Christ, the husband may be won by the character of
the woman. And there is no guarantee given
that that will be the case, but that is my responsibility. When
I was converted, I came from a family where we didn't go to
church. The night I was counseled, I was given advice, go home and
tell your parents that you've become a Christian. The moment
I told them I'd become a Christian, I knew I'd insulted them. because
the only paradigm they had was they were bringing me up as a
Christian. After all, they sent me to Sunday school. And it took,
I think, a long time for that error on my part. that insult
on my part, because they had no framework of reference to
understand what I thought I was saying to them. It took a long
time to repair that, and then before they would start coming
to church. And I think I would have been better counseled to
say, Sinclair, go home and love your mom and dad to death. And
as you do so, the question will begin to percolate in their minds,
what has happened to our little boy that he has so changed? And that doesn't sound like fervent
evangelism. But we ought not to accuse Peter
of lacking fervency and evangelism by saying to wives who have unbelieving
husbands, live as a godly woman. Don't stuff evangelistic tracts
in with these cornflakes in the morning. Serve them better cornflakes. Larson Last question, what advice
would you give to a young person considering the ministry? Lightning round, the same advice
that I heard in the sermon earlier, you know, put yourself under
the ministry of a godly expounder of God's Word for a season and
learn as much as you can about what ministry looks like. LAWSON
Yeah, I would agree with that, and I would also, I would agree
with myself. I'm never so wise as when I quote
myself. Could you give us page number
as well, so we can check up your quoting yourself accurately?
Let me give chapter and verse to myself. And then also, I think
it's critically important, you know, what he's reading, and
everyone comes from a different perspective, so no one's in the
same place. Whether you've grown up in church, didn't grow up
in church, good theology, bad theology, it's going to be different
for each person. But there would be some critical
reading that would be an incredibly helpful thing to him. And then
I would also say you need to begin to develop your gift. I wouldn't want to go to seminary
and I've never even preached. In fact, Spurgeon would not allow
anyone into his pastor's college who was not already preaching
and who had not already won souls to Christ. So, I would want to
know early on in this pursuit, am I gifted by God to preach? And I would want others to observe
and for there to be some confirmation. And…but there would have to be
the exercise of the gift in some way, and I realize not everyone
can just go start preaching, but you could teach Sunday school,
you could teach a small group Bible study, you could go to
a rest home, a retirement home, you could go to a college campus,
you could start your own Bible study, you could go to camp,
whatever. You need to begin to exercise
that gift in some way. I don't think you could truly
know that you've been called until there's some fruit, until
there's some confirmation. And, you know, the elders in
the church, the pastor, other godly people would need to have
some voice into my life during that period. And I was reading
Spurgeon's autobiography recently, and even as a young man, he started
preaching at like age sixteen, started pastoring at age seventeen,
But he could not believe that he was called by God until the
final confirmation of a soul converted under his preaching. And there was an older woman
in the church who was converted on a Sunday morning, and he called
on her that night. And I think that's very important. So, I mean, I'm a professor in
seminary, and Derek is, and Michael is, and Sinclair is. I mean,
there's a lot of guys there just interested in knowledge. And
that's not bad, but we need guys who are already in the game,
I mean, who are suited up and are playing. And this isn't just
for notebooks. This isn't just to win arguments.
This is, I'm being equipped for a lifetime of ministry, and I've
already tasted the game. And I know what it is to, in
some initial way, to minister the Word of God. And I know that
was true in my life even before I went to seminary. So, I know
God works in different ways, and there's not a one-size-fits-all
answer to a question like that, just like the question about
the woman who has an unbelieving husband. I mean, I'd have to
know thirty more minutes of information before I could even give an answer
because there's ten answers that could be given because there's
different homes and different, etc. And so, it is with young
men in different situations and settings, But they need to get
as close to the fire as they can with someone else who's preaching
the Word of God with precision and power, and then they need
to begin to wade out into the water themselves. I wouldn't want to give four
years to go to seminary and then find out I'm not called to preach.
I mean, what was that about? unless God had another plan,
like for Chris to head up the Ligonier ministry. You went to
seminary, and so there's not a one-size-fits-all answer on
this, but there are some young guys who are there just because
they're super interested in the Bible. I need more going on than
just that. I need to do something with this
information. LARSON Would you thank our panelists
this afternoon?