So I guess I get to do my best
Larry King this morning, right? And yeah, you've seen him a few
times. The two of you have built a friendship
over many decades of ministry, co-laboring and fighting some
of the same battles, the battle for the Bible. And I believe
it was around the inerrancy struggles in the seventies, Dr. MacArthur,
that you first became aware of Dr. Sproul's ministry. Recount
for us just some of those early impressions of meeting Dr. Sproul. I think the first exposure
I had to R.C. was actually listening to the
series on the holiness of God, and that's probably true for
many, many people here. I had known of his name, but
that was my first real acquaintance. And that's really the entry point,
I think, for many people into the ministry of R.C. Sproul.
And then the Inerrancy Congress came along, and there were a
hundred people that were involved in that. And obviously he was
there. I don't remember having personal
contact at that point with him, but I knew he was a co-belligerent
on the issue of biblical authority and inerrancy, and that is the
watershed for absolutely everything. I began to listen more often
to him and follow his ministry, and then out of the absolute
blue, I received an invitation to come to a Ligonier conference.
And I was kind of an alien to the Reformed world, to be honest. I sort of found my way to the
right theology on my own. I wasn't raised in that environment. I was raised as kind of a devotional
Baptist. guy and just kind of a traditional,
typical middle-of-the-road church. So I struggled on my own to find
my way into Reformed literature, Puritan reading, and once I read…
I began to listen to Sproul, and I read Evangelism in the
Sovereignty of God by J.I. Packer, and this opened up kind
of a new world for me. But my first recollection of
really spending time with him was at a Ligonier conference,
and I don't even remember what year it was. Dr. Sproul? Hello. Do you remember inviting Dr. MacArthur to that conference,
and do you remember meeting him there? Yes. I'm guessing this is on the heels
of Gospel According to Jesus a few years after that? I mean,
look at that face. My favorite nickname for John
when I first met him was Boris. It was back at the time when
Boris Yeltsin got up on a tank. Remember that, John? Oh yeah,
yeah. Because that's the way I looked at John every time there
was a battle that needed to be fought. John was out front. He was the one you wanted in
your foxhole with you because he was so valiant for the truth
and for the kingdom of God. And that's been his signature
as long as I've known him. And yeah, I remember meeting
him at the Congress on the Bible in San Diego. Yes, you introduced
me, I think the first time I came to a Ligonier conference, as
Boris. Yeah. LARSON Both of you have
seen ebbs and flows within the American Christian church, and
even in the church as it expands around the world. And a question
comes from one of our attendees asking if you could comment on
what you see as the largest problem in the American church, so geographically
located here in America. What do you think is one of the
biggest problems facing us in the American church? I think it's clearly a lack of
biblical knowledge, a lack of biblical discernment. The church
basically suffers from spiritual AIDS. It could die of a thousand
heresies because its immune system is so totally deficient that
there's an inadequate understanding of the nature of God, an inadequate
understanding of the nature of Christ. You have, for example,
a classic illustration of that, one of the politicians standing
alongside the clerk in Kentucky and holding her up as a Christian,
and she's a denier, an overt denier of the Trinity. I think
starting with God, starting with Christ, starting with the authority
of Scripture, basically Christianity suffers, as I said, from the
lack of discernment, spiritual aids, and it can… it can die
from a thousand heretical diseases. the proclamation of the truth,
the clarity with which the truth is proclaimed, the precision
with which the truth is proclaimed and supported at every level. This has been the hallmark of
this man's ministry, to proclaim the truth and to support the
truth through Scripture and reason This is the greatest need of
the church, and you all who are sitting out here, most all of
you have come out of that sort of bland, vanilla kind of undefined
Christianity, and once you began to see the truth with precision,
you just locked onto it, and it is… it's the most precious
thing that you have. That is the great need in the
church today, that kind of precision, and it's not going to come to
the church until it comes to the leadership of the church.
Because like people, like priests, as Hosea said, they're not going
to rise any higher than their leadership. The question was to both of you,
Dr. Sproul. Sproul, Jr. I don't see how I could add anything
significant to what John's already said. We live in the same environment,
and we face the same problems every day. Forty-some years ago,
somebody asked me what I thought was the biggest problem in the
church today, and I said, I think that the biggest problem in the
church today is that we don't know who God is. And that over
into every other dimension. When I used to teach systematic
theology in the seminary, and I would teach the doctrine of
God, I would always begin by saying to our students, That
if you look at the various denominations historically, even Rome has basically
a unanimous view of the nature and character of God. We all
affirm that He's immutable, eternal, and omnipotent, and omniscient,
and all of that. And there's very little difference,
anything, nothing particularly unique about the Reformation
and Reformed doctrine of God. And I said, and yet at the same
time, paradoxically, if you would say what is most distinctive
about Reformed theology, it's our doctrine of God. And they
said, well, how can that be when we say we agree with everybody
else? And I said, because when you
turn to page two of Systematic Theology, we haven't forgot what
we said on page one about the character and nature of God,
where most other denominations forget whatever they've affirmed
about the nature of God, and as soon as they go on to the
nature of man, the nature of Christ, and all the rest. It's
a Trinitarian gospel, and what we are defending is not simply
a niche of Reformed theology, but we're dealing with classical
Orthodox Christianity. That's what's at stake here.
LARSON. Question comes, why are there
so few Reformed and evangelical churches? for the same reason that there
are so few people who understand the truth. Look, Christianity
is divided into segments. There is a dominant segment of
evangelicalism. Let's just take evangelicalism
as defined. There is a dominant segment of
evangelicalism that is wrapped up in what we would call the
experiential charismatic kind of movement. They're completely
adrift in terms of theology, the hermeneutics that are necessary
to rightly interpret the Word of God. That movement starts
in 1900 in Topeka, Kansas, and it explodes into what we know
as the Charismatic Movement today. There's a parallel to that. There
is a sentimental movement, the largest The largest volume booksellers
in America are sentimentalistic preachers. There's a really interesting
dissertation, and it turned into a book called Homespun Gospel. You should read it. It's an Oxford
dissertation, and it's a study of the writings of Rick Warren,
Joel Osteen, and Max Lucado. which are the defining writers
in what is a sentimentalistic view. This is a fast-moving,
exploding kind of evangelicalism, if you can say that. They take
up most of the space in the bookstore. But at the same time, we have
to say we're seeing the greatest… I think the greatest explosion
of Reformed theology in the history of the world because of technology. It's spread over the globe. It's
everywhere on the planet. So I'm encouraged on the one
hand that this is getting out. It's everywhere. It's all over
the world thanks to ministries like Ligonier's and particularly
Ligonier's ministry and others. So these are great days for Reformed
theology. Look, when I was in seminary,
I knew one Reformed church in the whole region of Southern
California where I went to seminary, and it was a tiny little OPC
church with a bunch of Calvinists in black suits contemplating
their Calvinistic navel. They were just this sort of ingrown
little tiny group. This wouldn't have happened.
But that was in the 18th century when you were in seminary. No,
that was not the 18th century. It might have been better in
the 18th century, but I didn't… I didn't know anything about
that. So I think you're seeing, hopefully this is going to continue
to flourish globally. There's an explosion of this.
But at the same time, there are parallel universes in evangelicalism. that are troublesome. I mean,
there's obviously the liberals and… but the sentimentalists
and the charismatics have a massive impact, and consequently you
get a kind of evangelicalism that can be syncretistic and
mixes a little bit of everything. So you get some people who have
a little bit of Reformed theology and a little bit of experiential
theology and a little bit of sentimentalism kind of all mixed
together. To clear it all out is going to take a… It's going
to take the work of God to spread the truth through, I think, continuing
generations of faithful men like R.C. Sproul. Sproul, Jr. By the way, Chris, while we're
up here, we're being photographed for the media here, John. And
I just want you to know you're being photographed by the most
beautiful photographer I've ever seen in my life. She ought to
be on the other end of the picture. She's also my granddaughter.
No, I have a face for radio. What's the missing ingredient
in preaching today? substance, and I'm really one
who's very excited about the renewal and revival of expositional
preaching. And John has been a model of
that for decades, of course. where we go to the Word of God,
and we want to hear what the Bible says. My own professor
at the Free University who was honored by scholars in the 20th
century And the title of the Festschrift was Ex Auditu Verbi,
From the Hearing of the Word. And what people miss in the churches
today is sound, biblical exposition. And until we really begin to
hear God's Word and the truth of God, we're just… just treading
water and being involved in entertainment, but the strategy that God ordained
initially. It's God's gospel. and it's the
power of the gospel is the Word of God. And Luther in his last
sermon before he died said that it seems as if God is the poorest
teacher that ever was, because everybody seems to want to improve
upon His message and improve upon His way of salvation. But He has invested the power
of His gospel into His Word. And as John spoke last night
about being ambassadors for Christ, that's the minister's task is
to set forth the Word of God in clarity and in boldness and
in urgency. And that's the other thing I'm
excited about, John, is to see a renewal of expository preaching. Dr. MacArthur, you had the Inerrancy
Summit earlier this spring, and we were happy to come alongside
of you to be able to support your emphasis on that with Dr. Sproul's contributions with the
Chicago Statement over the years, ICBI, and its continuing need
to reaffirm that for the next generation. In like measure,
Ligonier is pivoting to a nemesis on Christology in 2016. And,
Dr. Sproul, maybe you could just
outline why you've identified Christology as one of the pressing
needs for the church to understand today about the personal work
of Christ. Why is it relevant for the twenty-first
century to emphasize Christology? Sproul, Jr. Well, when somebody
asked me earlier what I thought was the… the most significant
present heresy that the church faces in our time. It is the person and work of
Christ. And in church history, historically, there were four
centuries where there were major crises about the person and work
of Christ. The fourth century, the fifth
century, the fourth century gave us Nicaea, 5th century Chalcedon,
and then of course the 19th and 20th centuries with the rise
of liberalism and neoliberalism, which denied the deity of Christ
and so on. And that's carried over now into
our day. And unfortunately, if you watch
Christian television, You won't have to watch for more than two
hours to see virtually every historic Christological heresy
being repeated on the screen in our day. There is an uncanny
ignorance of Christology, and what that means is that there's
an uncanny ignorance of the gospel. I remember several years ago,
some folks did a survey at the Christian Booksellers Convention,
6,000 people there, mostly mom-and-pop bookstore owners and also Christian
publishers, people who have a greater than average interest in education. And they were surveyed and asked
the question, what is the gospel? And of those who were examining
the outcome of that survey, they came to the conclusion that 1%
of people gave an adequate answer to the gospel. And when I used
to teach doctor of ministry programs with our clergy and would be
teaching the gospel, I would start my classes by asking the
question, gentlemen, let's write on the board your summary of
what the gospel is. You were ordained to the gospel
ministry. You called yourself a gospel preacher and all that
kind of stuff. I said, what is the gospel? And the answer I
would get would be, The gospel is the good news that we can
live a purpose-driven life, or the good news is that we can
have our sins forgiven. Those are good news. That is
good news. The good news is that we can have meaningful existences,
and that's good news. But none of those things are
the gospel. I said the gospel is basically, objectively, the
person and work of Jesus Christ. Subjectively, it's how the benefits
of the person and work of Christ are appropriated by the believer
by faith alone. If you want to know what the
gospel is, you listened last night to the message that we
heard from John on what the gospel is. It's Christ, what He has
done, who He is. And again, as I said earlier,
people want to improve upon that gospel or say, let me simplify
the gospel and tell you this is what it is. And until we understand
what the gospel really is, we're not going to make much of an
impact on the culture. That's the thing that in the
book of Acts When you see the Spirit working in power, there
was the Kerygma. And if you read the sermons and
messages of the apostolic community in the book of Acts, you will
see that outline that's there. He was born according to the
Scriptures and by the… from the seed of David and so on. He lived
a sinless life. He died an atoning death, raised
for our justification, ascended into heaven and so on. You have
the central core elements of who Jesus is and what Jesus did. That's the good news. And you
can't… The church has never improved on that. That's what was lost
in the Middle Ages. That was recovered in the 16th
century Reformation. That's what was recovered in
the 18th century Great Awakening in New England, and that's what
has to be recovered today. I would just add to that, I was
talking to Dr. Nichols yesterday a little bit
about this, that when I came out of seminary, I think I was
equipped to deal with the issue of biblical inspiration. I think
we had been exposed to liberalism and what it was doing to attack
the Scripture and attack the deity of Christ. And so I knew
there would be some battles to fight, but I was naive on one
epic reality that literally I have confronted my entire life. And
that is that the church doesn't understand the gospel. I came
out of seminary never thinking I'd spend all the energy that
I've spent in my life trying to help people who profess Christ
to understand the gospel, trying to help pastors understand the
gospel. It sort of reached an apex. By the time I became pastor
of Grace Community Church, when I walked in the door as a 20-something-year-old
at Grace Community Church, my first church, I was so exercised
in my soul by the time I got to that church over this issue
that the opening message I gave on February 9, 1969 at Grace
Church was how to play church, and I preached on Matthew 7,
21 and 22. Many will say unto me, Lord,
Lord, that is not exactly how you start your ministry. But I… this was a serious issue,
and it was an eruption on that opening Sunday that really has
kind of defined our ministry. Years later, the gospel according
to Jesus, and then I came back, the gospel according to the apostles.
Now I'm in the process of the third in that trilogy. a book
that will come out in maybe a year, The Gospel According to Paul,
then throw in A Shame to the Gospel, The Truth War, you know,
The Jesus You Can't Ignore. And I'm not writing to this guy
on the street. I'm trying to help people who
profess to be Christians to understand the gospel, which obviously embraces
the nature of God and the true nature of Christ and His work.
This, to me, is just the playing out of Matthew 13, of all that
Jesus said about the kingdom being wheat and tares, being
a great big dragnet with all kinds of debris as well as fish
in it. This is… this is the reality
of of the kingdom that our Lord laid out, that I think we… I
think our Lord addressed it. I mean, you go to the gospel
of John, you see false faith in chapter 2, He doesn't commit
Himself to them. You see false faith in chapter
6, many of His disciples walk no more with Him. You see false
faith in chapter 8, you know, if you continue in My Word, you're
My real disciple. You see false faith in chapter
12 when many of the rulers or leaders believed on Him, and
He didn't commit Himself to them. You see false faith in chapter
15, a branch that doesn't abide, and Judas is a prototype of that.
getting down to the core of the gospel is always going to be
the issue. And that means we're always defining
the realities of the gospel, the nature of God, the nature
of Christ, the nature of salvation, and making that clear. And of
course, the Word of God yields that up relentlessly. And if
you're an expositor, it just rises all the time throughout
your preaching ministry because it's so… it's so widely embedded
in the glories of Scripture. Amen. Is faith a gift or a response? If it is a gift, why are we responsible
for exercising it? Yes. It is a response that we have
to make a necessary condition for our justification. And yet
we are told in the New Testament that the response that we make
is because that it's a gift that has been given to us sovereignly
by the Holy Spirit, who when we were dead in sin and trespasses,
quickened us together with Christ. The defining doctrinal statement
about Reformed theology that separates us from all other schools
of thought is this. Regeneration precedes faith. that in order to exercise faith,
in order to respond according to the way we were called to
respond in order to be saved, we have to first be born again
of the Holy Spirit. The vast majority of professing
evangelicals reverse the order of that, and they believe that
if you want to be justified, and if you want to be saved,
and you first have to have faith, and then you're born again. But
spiritually dead people can't exercise faith. Jesus tells us
that in John 6, you know, that we're not able, we're not capable
in our fallenness, in our death, spiritual death, to quicken ourselves. It's only after the Spirit of
God changes the disposition of our souls and our hearts that
we hear and respond to Christ. So the necessary condition for
faith is rebirth, not the other way around. And of course, the sinner is
held responsible for his unbelief and is condemned on the basis
of that unbelief, and it's just because that unbelief has produced
sin against holy God. You know, this question comes
up always, no matter how long you've been in Reformed theology,
putting those two together. And I'm so very content with
the mystery of it, the part that I can't understand, with the
secret things belonging to the Lord, with knowing that God has
a mind that is infinite. I have a mind that is finite,
and it's hard to harmonize. And I often think about it this
way. If I ask somebody, who wrote Romans? Who wrote Romans you
ask a person, who wrote Romans? And if it's a Christian person,
there's a sort of hesitation because you don't really know
that you can just say Paul because you're afraid there's a comeback
to that, or if you say the Holy Spirit, there's another comeback.
It's all of Paul, and it's all of the Holy Spirit. If I ask
you who lives your Christian life, you're not eager to say, it's
me. It's me. I'm the one who's doing it. No, it's not me. It's the Holy Spirit, but I don't
want to blame the Holy Spirit for my life. So, I mean, we're
caught in that vast realization. It was John Murray who said,
in every major doctrine in the Bible, there is a divine paradox,
and trying to unscramble that is unnecessary. To believe those
realities is necessary. A lot of the praise music sung
in our churches now asks the Holy Spirit to come. Our pastor
sometimes asks Him to fall on us. Is this biblical? No. The Holy Spirit takes up
residence in the life of the believer by divine purpose and
sovereign work at the time of salvation. Every believer… Romans
8 and 9, you know, every believer possesses the fullness of the
Holy Spirit. Not part of the Holy Spirit, but the fullness
of the Holy Spirit. We are called in Scripture to
walk in the Spirit. Again, that's just part of sort
of traditional sentimental kind of theology, but we would not
believe if it were not for the Holy Spirit who regenerates us.
We would not obey if it were not for the Holy Spirit who enables
us. We would not understand if it were not for the Holy Spirit
who instructs us. There is no possible way that
we could could fulfill any of those responsibilities as believers
apart from the Holy Spirit. So people sometimes will say,
well, what about when… when an Old Testament person says, take
not your spirit from me? There… there was in the Old Testament,
I think the Holy Spirit… there was… there were believers in
the Old Testament who were regenerate in the Old Testament, who were
people of faith in the Old Testament. That was all the work of the
Holy Spirit, all the work of the Holy Spirit. But there were
also unique anointings of the Holy Spirit that came on individuals
for for royal service or for prophetic ministry or things
like that in the Old Testament. And in that kind of situation,
you might have the coming and… the moving and coming and going
of the Holy Spirit for those particular ministries or usages. But in the New Testament, it
is the… it is the believer's privilege to become the temple
of the Spirit of God. And that's a permanent reality.
There's no more of Him or less of Him. He's… There's all of
Him available, taking up residence in the Trinity. I think even
going beyond that, if you go through the Olivet… I don't mean
that. Go through the Upper Room Discourse, you will find that
our Lord Himself says that the Father takes up residence in
you. I take up residence in you. The Spirit takes up residence
in you. For a believer, the triune God dwells in that believer all
the time. all the time. That never changes. So it isn't any more of God or
more of the Holy Spirit we need. It is to submit to and be obedient
to the will of the Spirit as revealed in Scripture. Question about the fear of the
Lord. We are told again and again to fear the Lord in the Old Testament,
especially in the Psalms, but in the New Testament it is hardly
ever mentioned. In Luke 174, Zechariah predicts
we will serve Him without fear. Should I fear the Lord now in
light of all the mercy He has shown? Luther made the distinction
in answering that same question centuries ago, that when the
Bible speaks of the fear of the Lord, it speaks not of the fear
that a prisoner has who's being tortured by his tormentor, or
what Luther called a servile fear, but rather he speaks of
a filial fear. The fear we have of failing to
honor and glorify God, that it's not that dreadful concept, but
rather it's the sense of reverence and awe that you have to have,
which is the beginning of wisdom. And that doesn't change from
the Old Testament to the New Testament. The fear of God is…
although it's not without trembling. And the New Testament does tell
us that as we grow, we grow in fear and trembling as we're working
out our salvation, so that there's always that sense of awe and
trembling before the magnificent glory and majesty of God, and
of a fear of dishonoring Him and failing to respect and adoring
Him, which is at the heart of the spiritual pilgrimage of every
true believer. Yeah, Paul says, knowing the
fear of the Lord, we persuade men. That's fearing God in that
sense. We fear on the one hand His wrath
on the unbeliever. We fear in the other sense His
holy expectation of our faithfulness in the dispersion of the gospel.
I don't know, John, did you notice coming up I-4 the sign that was
by this church that is put up prominently that says, God is
not angry? Have you seen that? Only in Orlando
can you have that, you know. I mean, this huge big sign that
this church has put up called Grace Church. God is not angry. That's really helpful. Yeah,
really. I said, except for those who put up signs like this along
the road. Imagine, what kind of a gospel
do you teach the people to say, there's no anger left in God?
What are we saved from? We're saved from the wrath that
is to come. R.C. Sproul, Jr. God is angry with the wicked
every day. Try that sign in front of your church. How do you evangelize someone
who thinks they are saved but does not show any of the outward
marks of salvation? Further complicating it, what
if they are family? SPROUL JR.: : I think one of
the biggest needs we have in the church today is the confusion
between profession of faith and the possession of it. I preach
about this almost every Sunday to add nauseam that our people
get tired of it, because in order to become a Christian a member
of the church, at least in our church, you have to make a profession
of faith. And this is what… John started his ministry there in
1969 when he preached on Matthew 7. These were the very people
that came there saying, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this? Didn't
we do that? And he said, please leave. I never knew you. And again, no one has ever been
justified simply by a profession of faith. We're all called to
make professions of faith. but Jesus warned that the people
can honor Him with their lips, but their hearts are far from
Him. And so what we have to do is with those that we love and
with those that care about, even though they've made a profession
of faith, and they make this idea that they show no evidence
from it whatsoever. This is what James is writing
about there, that these people claim to be having faith and
claim to be justified, but it was empty. It was deadly. There was no evidence whatsoever,
no manifestation of godly obedience, and that's what you have to deal
with with people, particularly if you love them. And one of
the things that's dangerous is in our great zeal to win people
to Christ. We have a tendency to want to
help them along to prime the pump and do everything we can
to persuade men. We have our techniques and our
methods. We have altar calls, or we tell
them just read this prayer, say the sinner's prayer, and all
of that kind of stuff. But it's easy to get somebody
to make a profession of faith. And the danger is to present
a false security by using those techniques rather than trusting
the power of the Word of God, that it alone can bring true
faith and saving faith when the Holy Spirit takes it to the heart
of that believer. I'm not opposed to preaching
for decision and preaching for response. Don't get me wrong.
In fact, last Sunday morning, on Monday, I saw one of our parishioners
here at St. Andrews, and he came to me and
he said, I think that's the closest you will ever come yesterday
to giving an altar call. He says, Three times you ask
the question, has salvation come to your house? He says, I was
just waiting for you to make the call. Well, actually, he
may have been surprised to know that I have given all our calls
in the past, and I'm not opposed to that. But it's dangerous where
you present a false sense of security where people say, hey,
you know, I raised my hand. I went forward. I said the sinner's
prayer. Isn't that all I need to do?
I said, no. What you need to do is possess
the faith that you profess. If you have that faith, it's
going to manifest itself. Yeah, it's pretty simple. The
only legitimate evidence of real salvation is a transformed life. That's it. It's the only evidence. If it's not there, then there's
no salvation. To look at it on the backside, you
would expect an unregenerate, unredeemed, unbelieving sinner
to behave that way, right? You'd expect him to behave that
way, and that's because it's consistent with his nature. But
if you have a new nature, if you've been begotten by the Spirit
of God, you are a new creation. That is manifestly evidenced
because of your new creation. And transformation is the only
test of true salvation, evidence. It's not perfect. I sometimes
say it's not perfection, but it is direction. It's the way
your life goes toward obedience. I mean, that's what Jesus said
in John 8. Whoever continues in My Word is My true disciple,
my mathetes alethos, the real thing. If you continue in My
Word, continue in it and living it and believing it and applying
it, that's the evidence. If that's not there, then whatever
moment you had, whatever prayer you prayed, whatever event you
went to is meaningless in terms of salvation. Last question,
each of you by God's grace has had a long and fruitful ministry,
and it continues to grow, and it's fruit for God's people.
If you were to wind the clock back and with the wisdom that
the Lord has given you over your years of ministry and speak to
your younger selves who are just getting started in pastoral ministry
Just in one sentence, one idea, what would you have said to yourself
and by way of encouragement to the next generation of preachers
who are coming up today? SPROUL JR.: : Don't waste so
much time. That's what I would have said
to myself, that I'm wasting more time than ten people. There's no substitute for immersing
yourself in the Word and preaching the Word of God instead of growing cold. I listened
to Steve Lost the other day about Jesus speaking to the Ephesians,
and I think about the first year I was a Christian, I was on fire. I wanted to win every person
I met. And I grew more mature, but I
also wasn't as zealous. And I would say, keep pouring
the gasoline on that fire. That's what I would say to myself. I think we all look back and
say we wasted time. But some of those times that
we may have thought we wasted because we weren't intensely
studying something were invested in the lives of people. for good
in the long term. I think for me, if I were to
maybe do differently, I would try to be more patient. I mean,
that's the instruction, preach the Word in season, out of season,
instruct with all patience. I think as a pastor young, knowing
what I knew, believing what I believe, I mean, literally to erupt into
a church with Matthew chapter 7 on the first Sunday. Yeah, there was just this passion
that needed patience, and developing that patience with people to
allow the work of God to go on in their lives would have been
more… would have been more effective and endearing for me in those
early years of so much zeal. Be patient. It's the work of
the Lord that's going to be done in the hearts, and it's done
over a long period of time. It's amazing how long… I've been
at Grace Church over 45 years, and I can look back and realize
now how it's almost imperceptible to see the transitions and the
transformations as people grow and develop over a period of
time. You have to… you have to see many years to really see
that happen. So I think patience would be
probably something I really could have used a lot of in the early Like you, I've been impacted
by these men that the Lord has raised up to serve His church
in our day. Could we give Him the glory and
express our thanks to these gentlemen for being so used over the years?