If you've never been to a Ligonier
conference, and by the show of hands we saw yesterday, that
would be a fair majority of you. The Q&A time is one of the things
that we look forward to most, and a lot of our attendees say
it's what they look forward to most. I'm not sure the speakers
look forward to it the most, but here we are anyways, and
we're gonna jump right in. We've got a lot of questions
to try and work through, and we'll get through as many as
possible. The first one is for you, Dr.
MacArthur. There are many in my congregation that read, watch,
follow Joel Osteen and others of his ilk. I've brought the
issue up to my pastor, and he is unwilling to address the issue
because of the prominent positions they have. How else can I, as
a layperson, address this cancer in my local church? I think it needs to be addressed,
and if I were in that position, I think I would send a letter
to the pastor, a very amiable letter, a respectful letter,
and I would lay out specifically the concerns, and then I would
Send a copy of that letter to anybody in leadership, board
people, any level of leadership in the church, if it's an elder-led
church or whatever it is. I think they would need to know
that. I think if they won't openly discuss those kinds of things,
you need behind-the-scenes, not an open letter to the congregation,
not some kind of confrontation, but you need to kind of force
the leaders to sit down and talk about those kinds of things. This may lead to your leaving
the church eventually, but I think the Bible only knows one way
to deal with an issue. You go to the point where the issue
is most obvious, and you have to address it at that level.
And if it's an issue that is manifestly a leadership issue,
that's where you go. But I would do it in a gracious
and kind and respectful way, but I would make sure that you
force the discussion at that level. If one holds on to Jesus Christ
as Lord and Savior, however is gay, will he enter the kingdom
of heaven knowing that we are all sinners saved by grace? Well, I don't know if it's for
me, but no one is gay. If you mean by that, that that's some
hard wiring. No one is gay. People commit
adultery, they commit sins of homosexuality, they lie, they
steal, they That's like saying, you know,
I keep robbing banks, but I'm a robber. I'm a bank robber. What am I going to do? I'm a
bank robber. That is not an excuse for what you do. Are there certain kind of impulses
that lead people in that direction? Yes. But I think one of the really
deadly aspects of this is to let people define themselves
as gay. They are not gay any more than
an adulterer is hardwired to be forced by his own nature to
commit adultery. Those are all behavioral sins
that are condemned in Scripture. God didn't hardwire anybody in
such a way that they are not responsible for certain behaviors,
and so we need to cancel that out of the sin list and welcome
them into the kingdom of God because they can't do anything
else. So I think we do no service to people who are caught in the
vicious sins of homosexuality by letting them define themselves
by that sin. LARSON Is it truly sinful for a Christian
business person, for instance a cake baker, to produce a product
for a gay wedding? You're on a roll. No, it's not
sinful for a cake maker to make a cake for a gay wedding any
more than it's sinful for a guy who runs a restaurant to serve
dinner to somebody who's gay and sits in a booth and eats
the food or goes to the market and buys a loaf of bread and
you own the market. What the issue is, is not whether
that's sinful, it's whether the federal government can demand
that people do certain things, which goes against their Christian
conscience. The issue to me is more of a
political, governmental issue. I actually think that we need
to show love to everyone. And particularly, we need to
do good to all those that are outside the kingdom as well as
inside the kingdom as much as possible. So a gesture of kindness
toward some unregenerate person is in itself not a sin. But again, if it violates your
conscience in some way, then you don't want to train your
conscience, you don't want to train yourself to ignore your
conscience. So I think it's a personal issue. The issue becomes when
people are basically fined or imprisoned for doing things that
are religious conscience matters, and that speaks to the issue
of how much authority the government has to make you do that. There was an article in the Wall
Street Journal today on profiling of Russell Moore, who heads up
the Southern Baptist Convention's Religious and Ethics, Religious
Liberty Commission. And in light of that and just
the situation where Christians find themselves in culture, politically
even, the question comes, how does the church prepare God's
people to be influential in the culture without crossing the
line into taking political positions or advocacy? Well, I think you have to distinguish
what Christians do from what churches do. I think Christians
as citizens have every right to have political points of view
and seek to influence the culture from that political point of
view. The problem, of course, becomes that certain political
issues are not clearly defined and worked out in the Bible.
So Christians may find themselves disagreeing on certain political
issues. And we have to be willing to
be understanding about that difference. I think what the question I think
implies is that the church has to remain the church and has
to preach the gospel, not become a political platform for one
opinion over against another. I think a minister ought to really
discipline himself not to say anything from the pulpit that
he cannot with confidence say, thus says the Lord. I'm not here…
I have strong political points of view, but they have no place
in the pulpit as far as I'm concerned because my job in the pulpit
is not to embrace a political agenda but to proclaim the Scriptures. So, here again, I think the Reformation
is helpful. The Reformation has a clear teaching
about calling. We're all called to serve God
in various areas of life. We're called to serve God in
the church. We're called to serve God in the family. We're called
to serve God in schools. We're called to serve God in
business and in politics, and our service there will be different
depending on the relationships in those various areas. So, I
think we ought to try to influence our culture politically for good,
but that's a fruit of the gospel rather than being the gospel
itself. I think that's pretty much supported by the life of
our Lord who knew everything that was wrong in the world,
not only morally, but even socially and addressed none of it. In
fact, He took the worst abuse, which would be slavery, and turned
it into the most clear picture of the relationship between the
believer and himself. We know He did that with marriage,
but He also did it with slavery. He is kurios, and we are doulos.
He is Lord, and we're His slaves. The apostle Paul would be the
same thing. Paul and the rest of the apostles
and writers of the New Testament basically say, submit yourselves
to the powers that be that are ordained of God. Pray for those
that are in authority over you. Submit to the King and all those
who have power over you. And that was in a world that
was far more abusive, certainly nowhere near a democracy, and
we are to live in such a way as the best citizens. So I think
what happens when we mix our politics is we turn the mission
field into the enemy. and then we begin to resent the
people on the other side of these issues, even some moral issues,
and they become the enemy. Because they're the political
enemy, they become our enemy. I remember having conversations
with some of the staff in the White House when George Bush
was there. And they had become so angry
over the people that they were contending with on a political
level that they had lost any opportunity to communicate the
gospel with them. And we talked about you can't
turn the mission field into the enemy. We expect those people
to behave the way they behave and believe what they believe.
We don't like the melu of politics and morality that they affirm,
but they are still the mission field, and we need to be the
best citizens possible, accept whatever government God has ordained.
He's in control of it. Would we all agree? He's in control
of it, nothing's out of control. Trump is there because for this
time that's the purposes of God being fulfilled, and we ought
to rejoice and not try to overthrow and overturn things. I kind of
fall on the… R.C. was talking about the American
Revolution. I kind of fall on the side that it would be pretty
hard to justify any revolution where you started killing people
from a biblical standpoint. But even any revolution against
authority that you resent steps across the line, I think, from
being a good citizen and being submissive. Larson, if Jesus
and Paul used harsh words against their opponents in Scripture,
can we take that as permission to do the same today? I think it depends on how you
define harsh, right? Clearly, Jesus and the apostles
are very serious, sober, about the problems that they encountered.
Clearly, the problem of sin. They called sin, sin, and spoke
about it very seriously and soberly. Now, if that's what you mean
by harsh, perhaps, to be realistic about the nature of sin and sin's
effects, I think as Jesus followers, we need to be able to speak that
way. But when I hear the word harsh,
I don't hear necessarily the winsomeness, the gentleness,
the humility that must also be part and parcel of what we say
and what we do. Jesus calls us to be salt and
light, to speak the truth in love. So I think it just depends
on what you mean by harsh. How was Jesus? Harsh. How was
Paul? Harsh. And then I think we can
answer that. Yeah, I think that's absolutely
true. I also would add this. His harsh words didn't come for
the deceived, they came for the deceivers. His harsh words weren't
toward the people. His words toward the people were
gentle and gracious. Come unto me all you who labor
and are heavy laden, I'll give you rest. They were laboring
under a false apostate form of Judaism that made trying to keep
the law a massive burden. To them, he demonstrated tenderness,
but when he confronted the purveyors of the system, there was a direct
conversation of divine judgment upon their deception. So his most fierce denunciation
ever is in Matthew 23, and he levels it at the leadership,
the false religious leadership. I think there's too little of
that kind of harshness today, and that's why this stuff gets
away with what it gets away with. The victims, again, that's a
whole different story, compassion, love, gentleness, speaking the
truth in love. But those who are the purveyors
of that kind of thing, the Lord reserved very strong denunciation
for. SPROUL JR.: : And I think one
of the earlier questions sort of implied this. One of the dangers
is that we begin to think any kind of negative speaking at
all. is inappropriate as a Christian.
You should just always be positive. You should never be critical.
You should only talk about the positive. And that's just not
a biblical approach to truth. The Bible over and over and over
again talks about what's true and what's false, what's good
and what's evil. And I absolutely agree that Jesus'
sharpest words are always for not only deceivers, but those
who are hardened in their deceit and have come to hate Him. Too
often we read the Gospels as if the Pharisees are inviting
a kind of open dialogue about questions. They're coming with
trick questions. They're coming with hostile questions,
and Jesus isn't having any of it. And we have to be willing
to tell hard truths, which includes labeling certain things false
and wicked. Briefly explain repentance and
the importance of it in the Christian walk or the Christian life. You know, this is the subject
of Luther's first of his 95 Theses. And one of the things that Luther
saw in there that I think is very instructive for us is that
this is where…and he was in development, I think, at that point of the
95 Theses. I don't think he had fully been…he
hasn't fully at that point come around to the gospel. I think
it's still a little bit yet off the horizon for him, but he's
knocking on the door. And he is understanding that
there is a radical misunderstanding of repentance and that that is
at the root of the problem of the church of his day and therefore
at the root of the spiritual darkness that he was against.
And so, as he looks at repentance, he's trying to get away from
what is this false understanding and towards the biblical understanding
of repentance. in terms of what Christ calls us to. So if we're
looking at repentance in terms of our conversion, we are looking
at this turning from sin. We see this even as Paul remembers
at the church at Thessalonica, how they turned to God from idols. So there is this turning to God
in faith and turning from sin or from that false religious
system of repentance. But Luther reminds us in that
first thesis, that repentance is something that is with us
for our entire Christian life. It's not just as we come into
conversion that we have this act of repentance, but that we
who are at once sinners and justified need the daily discipline of
repentance and to seek repentance. I can follow up on that, Dr.
Nichols. I think it's also important that
repentance is not penance. A lot of people think that repentance
is something you just do with your will, but from scripture
it's clear that faith and repentance involves the whole man. The cognitive
aspect, also the emotive aspect, but also the turning away physically
even, necessarily the will. So the whole, the head, if I
can call it the head, the heart, and the hands are involved with
turning away from sin and turning to Christ. And I think it's important
to remember that as well. How are the people of the Old
Testament saved? Am I an altar call? Next question. They at least had an altar. I
mean, they were one step up. It wasn't just a bench, right,
the anxious bench. I think, I mean, we know what
it says in Romans 4, Abraham believed God and it was accounted
to him for righteousness. There's only been one way of
salvation in all of God's redemptive history, and that is faith alone.
People in the Old Testament were not saved by works. They were
not saved by offering sacrifices. They were not saved by feeling
badly about their sins. They were saved, and maybe the
best illustration of this is the publican in Luke 18, by pounding
on their chest, looking at the ground, realizing they had nothing
in themselves but judgment coming and saying, God, be merciful
to me, a sinner. That is the kind of repentance
that marked an Old Testament true believer, and a cry for
God to save him, simply because he believed and
trusted in God. That faith, that penitent kind
of faith was counted as righteousness, and righteousness was imputed
to Him based upon a sacrifice that was to come in the person
of Christ which reached back all the way to the beginning
of redemptive history as it reaches forward all the way to the end
of redemptive history. Only one way of salvation throughout all
of redemptive history, and that is by faith. And that is the
whole point that Paul is trying to make both to the Galatians
and the Romans. It is faith alone, faith alone. And the Judaizers
came along and said, look, faith is not enough. You've got to
circumcise the Gentiles, and they've got to adhere to all
the traditions and all the ceremonies of Moses. And he makes the simple
point, was Abraham justified before he was circumcised or
after he was circumcised? before he was circumcised. That
had nothing to do with his justification. No work ever does. No work ever
does. He was justified by faith. It's
always been faith, and it's a faith that recognizes the sinner's
sinfulness and recognizes nothing good in the sinner that he can
do to gain God's forgiveness and God's favor. He throws himself
at the mercy of God. And another wonderful chapter
that describes exactly what Dr. MacArthur said is Hebrews chapter
11. And in this wonderful chapter, you have all these testimonies
of these Old Testament saints and to the faith they had and
the promise to come. And God reckoned to them righteousness.
It doesn't say that specifically, but I think it's really the argument,
not only of chapter 11 of Hebrews, but the whole book of 11. I mean,
the whole book of Hebrews is Jesus is better. Jesus is better
than the angels. Jesus is better than the priesthood,
etc. And so I think that's exactly
right. Well, I think I absolutely agree with what's been said.
I think in this Reformation year when we're going to hear faith
alone a lot, we ought to remember that faith alone is in a sense
an abbreviation. And maybe because of the misunderstanding
of faith in our time, it would be better to try to avoid the
abbreviation sometimes and say we're saved by faith in Christ
alone. Because, if we just say, by faith,
that may mean we're looking at ourselves and what we're doing.
And that's not what the Reformation meant by faith. Faith is always
looking away from yourself, is always looking to Christ and
resting in Christ. So, all of the Old Testament
saints were saved by faith in the Christ who was to come, just
as we're saved by the Christ who has come. Since mankind fell
once, how are we assured from the Bible that mankind will not
fall again in the new earth and is not going to enter into an
endless cycle of fall and redemption? SPROUL JR.: : That's what Origen
thought. Do we have Origenists here who
think we may fall again into sin? I just, you know, want to
try to call it out, label the problem for what it is. Well,
again, questions like that are simply postulating hypotheticals
when you have the clear testimony of Scripture that the new heavens
and the new earth are created by God for the purpose of everlasting
righteousness. I mean, to raise hypotheticals
is really pointless. We won't fall again because the
Bible is very clear that we don't need to fall again now. And once
the universe is basically implodes and the elements melt with fervent
heat and it goes out of existence and a new heaven and a new earth
come in, it's everlasting righteousness, everlasting righteousness. So
there's no possibility of that by God's own declaration. I'm
always intrigued that in Revelation 21, the first sin that is excluded
from the new heaven and the new earth is the sin of cowardice,
because the book of the Revelation is really all about whether you're
a conqueror or a coward, whether you overcome with Christ or you're
overcome by the world. And I think that reality, that
Christ is the overcomer and we overcome in Him, guarantees that
His victory will never be undone. You know, there's another piece
to this in terms of the fourfold state of man. This goes back
to Augustine. Thomas Boston has this great
book on it. So the idea of this question would be that not only
do we have Adam and then the fall, it would say that at redemption
in the eternal state, we're back on par with Adam. When what we
find is sort of a check mark, you know, we're Adam, there's
the fall, then we are restored, but then there is our glorification.
where then we are unable to sin. And that's the true glorification,
the consummation of our salvation that we're looking forward to,
and that's what's promised to us in Scripture as to who we
will be in that eternal state. So, a better way to say that
would be, Adam, fall, Christ. The new Adam. Yeah, the new Adam.
And we're in Christ, and Christ can't fall. And even the idea
that we can potentially fall again ultimately cheapens what
Christ has already accomplished. Last time I checked, he did it
once for all. Does Jesus need to come back
again to redo something? Was it a mulligan? To use a golf
analogy here. Does Jesus get a mulligan here
because of our fault for teeing it too high or teeing it too
low? Whatever it may be. You know? So, you know, again, it's
just, what are we saying here? We shall see Him as He is. And
in our regeneration and our union with Christ, we are united to
Christ. And nothing can ever change that.
Because it's what Christ has done. So even the talk of it
cheapens Christ and His work. So I'm not going to answer anymore. How much is sanctification dependent
on our effort? You know, theologians disagree
on this. I do think that salvation, our
conversion, our justification, we'll use this expression, is
monergistic. It is the work of one. And so
it is God's work in us. When we get to sanctification,
I do believe it is synergistic, that it is a cooperative work. And synergism is the Greek, co-opera
is the Latin, that it is a work. And we are now a regenerated
person. As you expressed with repentance, Dr. Kim, it's the
whole person who has been oriented towards sin. It's the whole person
now who is oriented towards God. And so we are regenerated. We
have a new heart, a new will, a new mind. And so, we are in
a cooperative effort in our sanctification. But there are disagreements on
this, but that's the typical Reformed approach. Monergistic
conversion, salvation, a synergism at sanctification. R.C. Sproul,
Jr. And the point you're making is
so important. There can't be synergism with a dead person
and a living person at salvation. But with a living person and
a living believer and a living Christ, there can be synergism.
So you have verses like, work out your salvation with fear
and trembling, which is really describing this synergistic relationship
between you and Christ. Now Christ indwells you and is
renewing you day by day as you repent and believe and grow in
more Christ-likeness. I think it's hard to go beyond
that because I always think of Galatians 2.20, I am crucified
with Christ, nevertheless I live. yet not I, but Christ lives in
me." I don't think Paul understood the actual dynamics of that.
I think he's saying, it's me, it's not me, it's him, it's me. You have to leave it at that
point. To try to cut it up into, you know, compartments I think
goes beyond what we're capable of. A simple way to understand
it is if anything goes wrong, you did it. If anything goes
right, he did it. Works. LARSON Two questions, let's take
them together. They're somewhat related here.
What do you do when the churches in your area are not preaching
the truth and God is not opening doors to move where there is
a church? And then another question related
to the importance of church membership. Why is church membership important
or is it? So what do you do when churches
are not preaching the truth and God has not opened the doors
to move where there is a church? And related to that is, is church
membership important? Maybe I'll take the first half.
The easy answer is absolutely. Church membership is, I believe,
a requirement for various passages of Scripture that describe the
nature of the believer and his relationship, for example, to
the leaders of the church, how the leaders hold people accountable,
how they discipline them in various ways. If you're not a member,
that type of activity wouldn't be occurring. So I think the
New Testament authors just presuppose that members of the church, or
that if you become a Christian, you're going to become a member
of Christ's body. which is the church, the only
institution that Christ gave to humans to be a part of. What
if they're not perfect? It's like, well, I'm not going
to get married because there's no perfect woman. I found one. Good one. That's a good one.
I'm going to be happy when I go home. I was speaking hypothetically.
I'm married, happily married. I'm happily married for 24 years.
I'm just speaking hypothetically. But I'm happily married for 49
years, and you better shape up or you may not make it. Dr. McArthur? Yeah. I've got you all beat. You know,
we went flying by our 50th a long time ago. So clearly church membership
is a requirement, but then what do you do when you don't have
a good church nearby? First, there's no such thing
as a perfect church, but clearly there are some standards by which
you need to measure where you place yourself for your own growth
and training. And it just seems odd, I guess,
I suppose it's possible that you might live in an area where
going to a church is maybe physically difficult. But nonetheless, I
still believe, I'll just start, the first part of the question
is, must you become a member of church? Absolutely. Because
one, that's where the word of God is primarily preached. That's
where the sacraments are given, the two primary ways in which
God gives grace to his people. Reformers, for example, called
it means of grace or instruments of grace. And so for the primary
ways, not the only way, but the ordinary ways in which Christians
grow in their faith is through grace, the means of grace, which
is the faithful preaching of God's word and the administration
of the sacraments. And then included with that is
then discipline. And the only way to do that is through the
church. And the church is not perfect. Sometimes wives are
not. Clearly yours is, and I know yours is. But we still get married,
and we work with what we have. So I'll just take that first
part, and then as for the latter part, I think it's a matter of
wisdom. What do you mean that the church,
I'm trying to think of the words that you used there for the question
that, are they not preaching the gospel? Are they not preaching
truth? Yeah, then you can't go there
because they're preaching falsehood. Then I would say they're not
a church, right? I wouldn't call them a church
if they're preaching falsehood. So you have to find a church
that's preaching the truth, which is preaching the Word. And maybe
in extremis you have to look into starting a church. I mean,
if you're really in a place and you can't go to another place,
I think one of the tragedies of the brokenness of conservative
Protestants today is sometimes we don't have the resources to
help people start churches where they need to be started. But
it's certainly something to think about that starting a good Bible
church, there are various denominations that have whole mission activities
that would be eager to help in one way or another. Just one
other biblical thing to add to this discussion is the letters
to the seven churches in the book of Revelation. Two of those
churches, you would say, were faithful churches. Five were
not. If you happened to live in Ephesus,
you didn't have any choice. That was the only church. And
if you read those letters, you find that behind the condemnation
comes a commendation to those who hadn't soiled their garments.
So the Lord does recognize that there are faithful believers
in churches that are manifestly unfaithful at some level. And
that is not a new phenomenon to him. That happened in the
apostolic era, the first century. Churches were going down the
wrong paths. I think you have actual churches
in the book of Revelation, actual churches on the postal route
in Asia Minor, and things were not going well. weren't a lot
of choices. So you may be in a situation
where all you've got is that kind of church and the Lord will
honor your faithfulness to Him even in that situation. In some
ways, if there's enough of the realities that make a true church,
just if it's a minor part but it's there and it's all you've
got, you grip that and you become part of the best that that church
has to offer, that's the only option. We live in a time where the church
has all but forgotten how to keep the Lord's Day. This has
never been a practice in my Christian walk. What recommendations would
you give me so I can learn to keep the Lord's Day? Well, one thing you can do is
buy a good book on the Lord's Day. I think of Joseph Piper's
book, The Lord's Day, which is a very thoughtful, engaging,
accessible, biblical reflection on the Lord's Day as a Christian
Sabbath, and I think it would be well worth reading a book
like that. You may or may not agree with it all, but I think
it would be very stimulating and very helpful to see what
the issues are and to think through the issues. The great issue,
I think, before every Christian is, was the Sabbath and the fourth
commandment a mosaic institution that then one might argue passes
away with the economy of Israel for the church, or is the Sabbath
day a creation institution established by God from the beginning for
all of mankind? And the traditional Reform point
of view has been it was a creation institution, not a Mosaic institution,
and therefore it continues even though with the resurrection
of Christ it has changed in certain ways. But finding a good book
is always a good place to begin to explore an issue you're not
familiar with. I'll just make two observations here. When I
was putting together trying to choose what text for the holiness
session last night, I just did the old holy search and just
plopped it into a concordance and looked. It really was impressed
upon me how many of the references in Scripture with the word holy
are to the holy Sabbath or to keep the Sabbath holy. I would
say at least a third of the references. So that's just something I think
for especially American evangelicalism and Americans to think about.
What is the biblical teaching of this? The second thing is
we live in this culture of nonstop and this 24 seven idea. which
is really not a biblical concept. We're not, it's not even a humane
concept. We're not robots or machines.
And there's a sense in which we can push back to some of these
cultural errors by keeping this day, by recognizing that we're
not 24 seven, at least say 24 six. But there is that apologetic
just by honoring and recognizing the Lord's Day and the moment
in which we live. JOHN HATHAWAY Just from a textual
standpoint, I would say that even if you don't adhere to a
Christian Sabbath notion, in the early church, church was
long enough on the Lord's Day for people to die, get buried. and have the wife finally show
up, die, get buried, still going on, or it was long enough for
somebody sitting in a window to fall out and be killed, die,
pick the body up, bring Him back, raise Him from the dead, and
keep church going. I really don't think it was an
hour service. I doubt very much. What we've always tried to do
at Grace is take that day and make Sunday morning and Sunday
evening equally compelling opportunities for worship and fellowship and
the proclamation of the truth. And the Sunday night service
at Grace Church has been the defining thing that makes a day,
a full day of worship to the Lord possible. I think you can
talk about a Sabbath and what that might mean and how far do
you walk or do you go out in the backyard and play games.
I mean, I grew up, there's a tiny little kid in Philadelphia where
we couldn't do anything, anything on Sunday but eat, and in order
for us to eat to a sort of a relatively gluttonous level. Some women
had to violate the Sabbath for hours and hours and hours of
preparation and cleanup. So I never really quite understood
why I had to sit in my little Lord Fauntleroy suit with my
bow tie on all day long because I was fulfilling some kind of
thing. If you have a Sunday night service that's dynamic and your
congregation is fully invested in that, it's amazing how that
takes that day, and you can provide fellowship opportunities even
in the middle. Can I just say as a historian, I think if the
Lord tarries, we'll look back on the last 20 or 30 years of
American Protestantism and say one of the most determinative
decisions made was the decision of many conservative Protestant
churches to do away with the evening service on Sunday. You
can't keep the day holy if you don't have morning and evening
worship. But even if you're not interested in keeping the day
holy, you're going to be learning half as much as you would have
learned. You're going to be worshiping
half as much as you would have learned. You're going to be praying
half as much as you would have. It can't help. but reduce the
church in its maturity by half or more. Exactly right. Steve,
tell us, what was an average Sunday for Luther? I'm sorry to say, though, Luther
was an hour service guy. How many were there? So the first
one was at 5 a.m. He wanted a 4 a.m. service, but
he compromised, and they were really held all day. Right, and
he would preach many Sundays, three times, maybe four times? It isn't just the idea that you
try to figure out something for the day. You fill the day with
worship. You fill the day with instruction
from Scripture. You fill the day with fellowship.
It's not about what you don't do, it's about what you do do.
In addition to the Bible, what book or books have influenced
you? I'll start off. Jonathan Edwards'
history of the work of redemption was very influential for me,
and it came along at an important time in my thinking. David Wells'
book, No Place for Truth, was also a very significant book
for me as I was sort of wrapping up my undergraduate education. So those are two. I think for
me, I think my freshman year in college, kind of as a confused
Chalminian, I can say that, I was introduced to an author by the
name of J.I. Packer and his book, Knowing God. It was so compelling
when I picked it up after school. I had to read it for a class.
I couldn't put it down. He introduced me to ideas that
I think I knew but I didn't really know. And he allowed me to plumb
the depths of the majesty of God. in such a way that it just
profoundly changed me at that moment. And so I actually stayed
up the whole night finishing the book, reflecting on it, and
then reading it again, because it was so profound. So for me,
just the idea of knowing God by Jayaprak was very helpful.
And then later in seminary, for me it was really the Christian
Institutes by John Calvin. It's a long book, but it's surprising
how eminently devotional it is. It's a systematic book where
he covers a lot of theology and idea and philosophy and history.
But interspersed with all that is a man gripped by the grace
of God. And so throughout it, it's just
a wonderful reflection upon God and us, but also in a way that's
very pastoral and heartwarming. And so I would just commend both
Knowing God by J.F. Packer and Calvin's Institutes. Yeah, I think I read Calvin's
Institutes in high school. And it made a huge impact on
me. I mean, it's just exactly the profundity of thinking, but
also the piety there. The other thing I read early
on, if I dare say this at a Ligonier conference, was Cornelius Van
Til, who helped me greatly in going off to a secular college
to say, you don't have to believe everything they tell you. You
don't have to have an answer for every doubt they raise. Have
confidence in the Scriptures. And I know R.C. would like that
part of Van Til. I remember listening to Van Til
for a week and I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about,
none. It was just, when is this going
to be over? His terminology, if you didn't
know his terminology, you couldn't...there were words I didn't know. But then I was a football player
in college, so that was my first week in seminary, a lecture,
a week of lectures by Van Til. Brutal. I think probably the book that
stunned me the most was Charnock's Existence and Attributes of God
because I just had never imagined that somebody could think about
God so extensively. I thought I knew what there was
to know about God, and that book was really a stunning exposure
of my own simplicity. And the other book
that became really critical to me was Warfield on the authority
of Scripture. Basically, I'm driven by my view
of Scripture. Everything in my life is driven
by my view of Scripture. And, you know, I got some of
that from my dad who had a strong view of Scripture. But I think
Warfield for me laid it out in ways that took it to another
level and affirmed the things that in my heart I knew were
true. So, those are the books that I think had They also introduced
me for the first time in my entire life to a world of Puritan and
Reformed literature, which before I hadn't really known about.
Would you join me in thanking our panelists this afternoon?