MacArthur and Sproul: Special Questions & Answers

So I guess I can do my best, Larry King this morning. You have seen it several times. You two have built a friendship over many decades of ministry, collecting and fighting some of the same battles: the battle for the Bible and for me. I think it was around the struggles for inerrancy in the 70s. MacArthur first met Dr. Sproles Ministry tells us about some of those first impressions of meeting doctors from... I think the first exposure I had was actually listening to the series on the holiness of God and that's probably true for a lot of people here.

I didn't have any. of his name, but that was my first real knowledge and I think that's really the entry point for a lot of people into the ministry of our cessation of Perl 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 time with him, but I knew that he was a co-belligerent on the issue of biblical authority and inerrancy and that is the turning point for absolutely everything. I started listening to it more often and following it. ministry of him and then suddenly I received an invitation to attend a Ligonier conference and, to be honest, I was a bit of an outsider to the Reformed world, I found my way to correct theology on my own.

I grew up in that environment, I was raised kind of a devout Baptist and kind of a typical middle-of-the-road Mainstream Church, so on my own I found my way into Reformed literature, Puritan reading, and once I read, I started listening. sprawl and I read Vandalism on the Sovereignty of God by J I Packer and this opened up a kind of new world for me, but my first memory of really spending time with him was at a Ligonier conference and I don't remember what year. he was a doctor oh hi do you remember inviting dr. MacArthur to that conference and do you remember meeting him there?

Yes, I suppose this comes immediately after the Gospel according to Jesus, years after that. I mean, look at that face. My favorite nickname for John when I first met him was Boris. The moment Boris Yeltsin got on a tank, yes, remember that John, oh yes, yes, because that's what happened, although he looked at John every time there was a battle that needed to be fought. John was in front, he was the one you wanted in. your trench with you because he was very brave for the truth and for the kingdom of God and that has been his signature for as long as I have known him and yes, I remember meeting him at the Bible Conference in San Diego, yes, you introduced him.

I think the first time I attended the Ligonier conference as Boris, yes, you've both seen weeds and flows within the American Christian Church and even the church as it expands around the world and one of our attendees makes me a question. asking if he could comment on what he sees as the biggest problem in the American church so geographically located here in the United States. What do you think is one of the biggest problems we face in the American church? Well, I think it is clearly a lack of biblical knowledge. lack of biblical discernment the church basically suffers from spiritual aids you could die from a thousand heresies because their immune system is so totally deficient that there is an inadequate understanding of the nature of God an inadequate understanding of the nature of Christ you have for example a classic Illustration of one of politicians standing next to the employee in Kentucky and considering her a Christian and she is a denier and/or denier of the Trinity.

I think starting with God, starting with Christ, starting with the authority of Scripture, basically Christianity suffers, like I said. from the lack of discernment spiritual help and in it one can die from a thousand heretical diseases that is why the proclamation of the truth the clarity with which the truth is proclaimed the precision with which the truth is proclaimed and supported at all levels this has been the hallmark of this man's ministry is to proclaim the truth and support the truth through Scripture and reason. This is the greatest need of the church and of all of you sitting here, most of you have come out of that kind of bland vanilla.

A kind of indefinite Christianity and once you start to see the truth accurately, you just look at it and it's the most precious thing you have, that's the great need in the church today, that kind of precision and it's not going to arrive. to the church until the leadership of the church arrives because people like priests like Hosea said they are not going to ascend higher than their leadership the question was for you two to jump from I don't see how he could have done anything significant regarding to what John already said: we live in the same environment and face the same problems every day.

Forty years ago someone asked me what I thought was the biggest problem in the church today and I said I think the biggest problem in the church today is that we don't know who God is and that extends to all the other dimensions. When I used to teach systematic theology in seminary and teach the doctrine of God, I always began by telling 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 is a mutable eternal, omnipotent and omniscient and all that, and there is very little difference, nothing particularly unique to the Reformation. and Reformed doctrine of God and I said, but at the same time, paradoxically, if you said that what is most distinctive about Reformed theology is our doctrine of God and they said well, how can that be when we say we agree with all the others and I said because When you turn the page of systematic theology, we have not forgotten what we said on page one about the character and nature of God, where most other denominations forget everything they have affirmed about the nature of God As soon as they pass on to the nature of man a nature of Christ and everything else is a Trinitarian gospel and what we are defending is not simply a niche of Reformed theology but we are dealing with classical orthodox Christianity, that is what is at play here, the question arises as to why there are 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 take evangelicalism as it is defined there is a dominant segment of evangelicalism that is involved in what we would call the type of experiential charismatic movement, they are completely adrift in terms of theology, the hermeneutics that is necessary to correctly interpret the Word of God, that movement begins in 1900 in Topeka Kansas and explodes into what we know is the charismatic movement today there is a Parallel to that there is a sentimental movement the largest the largest volume booksellers in America are sentimental preachers it is a really interesting dissertation and it became a book called home gospel you should read it is an Oxford dissertation and it is a study of the writings of rick warren joel osteen and Max Lucado, who are the redefining writers who define what a sentimental vision is, this is a type of evangelicalism that moves quickly and explodes, if you can say that they occupy most of the space in bookstores , but at the same time we have to say that we are seeing the largest, I think, the largest explosion of Reformed theology in the history of the world because the technology has spread throughout the world, it is everywhere on the planet, so On the one hand, I'm encouraged that this is coming to light, it's everywhere, all over the world, thanks to ministries like Lea Nears and particularly the Gunner's Ministry and others, so these are great days for Reformed theology.

See, when I was in seminary, I met one. The Reformed Church in the entire Southern California region was where I went to seminary and it was a small OPC Church with a bunch of Calvinists in black suits contemplating their Calvinist navel, they were just kind of a small embodied group that this didn't happen, but that was in the 18th century when you were around, so no, that wasn't the 18th century, it might have been better than the 18th century, but I didn't know anything about that, so I think you're looking at it hopefully. this is going to continue to flourish globally, there is an explosion of this, but at the same time there are parallel universes in evangelicalism that are problematic, so obviously there are the liberals, but the sentimentalists and the charismatics have a massive impact and consequently , you get a type of evangelicalism that can be synchronic and mixes a little bit of everything so that you have some people who have a little bit of Reformed theology and a little bit of experiential theology and a little bit of sentimentality all mixed together.

To clarify everything, it will take God's work to spread the truth. I think in the next generation faithful men like RC were expanded by the way Chris wobblers up here were being photographed for the media here and John and I just want you to know that you are being photographed by the most beautiful photographer I have ever seen in my life, right, she should be at the other end of the picture, she's also my granddaughter, oh, okay, no, I have a face for the radio, what's up? The missing ingredient in preaching today is substance and I'm really someone who is very enthusiastic about the renewal and revival of expository 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 listen.

What the Bible says wants my own professor at the Free University who was honored by scholars in the 20th century by Festschrift and the title of the meat riff was X should have two letters B when hearing the word and what people miss in the churches. today is solid Bible exposition and until we really begin to hear the Word of God and the truth of God, we will just be treading water and being involved in entertainment, but the strategy that God initially ordained is the gospel of God and it is the power of the gospel. Luther's words in his last sermon before he died said that it seems that God is the poorest teacher who ever existed because everyone seems to want to improve his message and improve his way of salvation, but he has reversed the can. of his gospel in his word and as John spoke last night about being ambassadors for Christ, the task of the minister is to expound the Word of God clearly and boldly in an urgency and that is the other thing that excites me about John.

It is to see a renewal of the expository preacher dr. MacArthur, you had the summit on inerrancy earlier this spring and we're happy to join him so we can support his emphasis on that with dr. Sproles' contributions to the Chicago declaration over the years I CBI and his continued need to reaffirm that for the next generation in equal measure Ligonier is pivoting toward manifestation in 2016 and dr. Crowell, perhaps you could simply describe why you have identified Christology as one of the pressing needs that the church must understand today, but the personal work of Christ, why is it relevant for the 21st century to emphasize Christology well?

When someone asked me before what I thought. was the most significant present heresy facing the church in our time is the person and work of Christ and in the history of the church historically there were four centuries where there were important crises regarding the person and work of Christ the 4th century the 5th century IV The The 5th century gave us Nicaea, the 5th century, Chalcedon and then, of course, the 19th and 20th centuries with the rise of realism and neoliberalism that denied the deity of Christ, etc., and that has carried over to the present day and, Unfortunately, if you watch Christian television, you won.

I don't have to watch for more than two hours to see practically all the historical Christological heresies that are repeated on the screen in our day. There is a staggering ignorance of Christology and what that means is there is a staggering ignorance of the gospel. I remember several years. A few people ago they did a survey at the Christian booksellers convention or 6,000 people, mostly family bookstore owners and also Christian publishers, people who have a greater than average interest in education and they were surveyed and asked: what is the gospel? and from those who were examining the result of that survey they came to the conclusion that one percent of the people gave an adequate response to the gospel and when he used to teach dr. ministry programs we are with our clergy and we would be teaching the gospel.

I would begin my classes by asking the question, gentlemen, which is right on the board, your summary of what the gospel is, you were ordained to the ministry of the gospel, you call yourself a preacher of the gospel and all that kind of stuff I said what is it? the gospel and the answer you would get would be that the gospel is the good news that we can live a life of purpose or the good news is that we can receive forgiveness of our sins. Those are good and that is goodness one good news is that we can have meaningful existences and that is good news and also but none of those things about the gospel I said that the gospel is basically objectively the person and work ofJesus Christ subjectively is how the pen of the The person and work of Christ are appropriated by the believer by faith alone.

If you want to know what the gospel is, you would listen last night to the message that we heard from John about what the gospel is, is Christ, what he has done, who he is. and again, like I said before, people want to improve 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 is what in the book of Acts, when you see the Spirit working with power and there was the kuruma, if you read the sermons and messages of the apostolic community in the book of Acts, you will see that scheme that was born there according to the Scriptures and because of this from the throne of David and because of this he lived a sinless life died an atoning death was resurrected for our justification was sent to heaven and so on you have the central elements of who Jesus is and what Jesus did that is the good news and you can't in the church it never gets better that's what was lost in the Middle Ages that was R it was recovered in the 16th century Reformation that's what was recovered in the Great Awakening of the 18th century in new england and that's what needs to be recovered today.

I would simply add that I was speaking with dr. Niccole talked a little bit about this yesterday that when I came out of seminary, I even think I was prepared to deal with the issue of biblical inspiration, I think we had been exposed to liberalism and what it was doing to attack the scriptures and I attacked the deity of Christ and so I knew there would be some battles to fight, but I was naïve to an epic reality that I have literally faced my entire life and that is that the church does not understand the gospel that I came out of. seminary I never thought I would spend all the energy I have spent in my life trying to help people who profess Christ understand the gospel, trying to help pastors understand the gospel, it somehow peaked when I became pastor of Grace Community Church when I walked through the door when I was in my twenties at Grace Community Church, my first church, when I came to that church on this subject, my soul was so exercised that the opening message I gave on February 9, 1969 at Grace Church it was how to play Church and I preached on Matthew 7:21 and 22.

Many will tell me Lord Lord, that's not exactly how you start your ministry, but me, this would be a serious problem and it was a rash on that opening Sunday that really defined our ministry years later the Gospel according to Jesus and then I returned to the Gospel according to the Apostles now I am in the process of the third of that trilogy a book that will come out maybe a year the gospel according to Paul then throws away the gospel in shame the truth wars it If you know Jesus you can't ignore him 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 encompasses the nature of God and the true nature of Christ in his work and that to me this is just Matthew 13's interpretation of everything Jesus said about the kingdom being wheat and the tares being a big drag net with all kinds of debris and fish in it, this is the reality of the kingdom that our Lord established, I think our Lord addressed him, I mean, go to the Gospel of John, you see. false faith in chapter 2 he does not commit to them you see falling into false faith in chapter 6 many of his disciples no longer walked with him you see false faith in chapter 8 you know if you continue in my word you my true disciple you see false faith in chapter 12 and many of the rulers or leaders believed in him and he did not commit to them you see false faith in chapter 15 a branch that does not remain and Judas is a prototype of that, I think getting The theme will always be getting to the core of the gospel and that means we are 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. yield that relentlessly and if you are an expository cz all the time throughout your preaching ministry because then it is so widely rooted in the glories of the Scriptures.

Amen, it is faith, a gift or an answer. 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 we give is because it is a gift that has been sovereignly given to us by the Holy Spirit that when we were dead in sin and transgressions made us alive together with Christ, the doctrinal statement that defines Reformed theology and that separates us from all other schools of thought is that this regeneration precedes faith, that to exercise faith we must respond accordingly. to the way we were.

Called to respond to be saved, we must first be born again of the Holy Spirit. The vast majority of professing evangelicals reverse the order of that and believe that if you want to be justified and if you want to be saved, first you have to have faith and then you are born again but spiritually dead people cannot exercise faith Jesus tells us that in John 6 you know that we are not able in our fall in our death as spiritual death to revive us it is only after the Spirit of God changes the disposition of our souls and our hearts that we listen and respond to Christ, so the necessary condition for faith is rebirth, not the other way around and of course the sinner is responsible for his disbelief and is condemned on the basis of that disbelief and it is only because that disbelief has produced sin against the holy God, you know, this question always arises, no matter how long you've been in Reformed theology putting those two together.

I am very happy with the mystery of this the part that I cannot understand with the secret things that belong to the Lord with knowing that God has and is infinite I have a mind that is finite it is difficult to harmonize and I often think about it like this In the same way , if I ask someone who wrote Romans, who wrote Romans, you ask a person who wrote Romans and if they're a Christian person, there's kind of a hesitation why, because you don't really know that you can just say Paul because you. Are you afraid to return to that or if you say that the Holy Spirit there is another return, it is all from Paul and it is all from the Holy Spirit.

If I ask you who lives your Christian life, you are not eager to say it's me, it's me. It's me 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 up in that great realization, it was John Murray who said in every important doctrine . In the Bible there is a divine paradox and trying to decipher that is unnecessary to believe those realities it is necessary much of the praise music that is sung in our churches now asks the Holy Spirit to come our pastors sometimes ask him to fall on us it is Not this biblical, the Holy Spirit resides in the life of the believer by divine purpose and sovereign work at the moment of salvation.

Every believer Romans 8:9 you know that 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 the Scriptures to walk in the spirit again, that's just part of a kind of traditional sentimental theology, but we wouldn't believe it if it weren't for the Holy Spirit regenerating us, we wouldn't obey. If it weren't for the Holy Spirit who empowers us we wouldn't understand if it weren't for the Holy Spirit who instructs us there is no possible way we can fulfill any of those responsibilities as believers apart from the Holy Spirit that's how people sometimes Okay, so , what happens when a person from the Old Testament says don't take your spirit from me?

There were in the Old Testament, I believe the Holy Spirit there were believers in the Old Testament who were regenerated 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 upon individuals for royal service or for prophetic ministry of things like that in the Old Testament and In In that kind of situation, you may have the coming and moving, coming and going of the Holy Spirit for those particular ministries or uses, but in the New Testament it is the privilege of believers to become the temple of the Spirit of God and that It is a permanent reality that there is no more and no less of him, he is all available to take up residence in the Trinity.

I think he would have gone beyond that, if you go through all that, I don't mean. If you read the Cenacle 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 It never changes so it is no longer of God or more of the Holy Spirit what we need is to submit and be obedient to the will of the Spirit as revealed in the Scriptures questioning the fear of the Lord who is told over and over again to fear the Lord in the Old Testament, e

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ly in the psalms, but in the New Testament he is almost never mentioned in Luke 174.

Zechariah predicts that we will serve him without fear. If I fear the Lord now in the light of all mercy. has shown that Luther made the distinction when answering the same question centuries ago, that when the Bible speaks of the fear of the Lord, it is not talking about the fear that a prisoner is being tortured by his torturer or what Luther called a servo fear, but rather Rather, it speaks of a filial fear, the fear we have of not honoring and glorifying God, which is not such a terrible concept, but rather it is the sense of reverence and wonder that we must have, which is the beginning of wisdom and that does not change. . from the Old Testament to the New Testament, every fear of God is that, although it is not without trembling and the New Testament does tell us that as we grow, we grow in fear and trembling as we work out our salvation so that there will always be that feeling of awe and trembling at the Magnificent glory and majesty of God and the fear of dishonoring Him and failing to respect and worship Him, which is at the heart of the spiritual pilgrimage of every true believer, yet Paul says that knowing the fear of the Lord We persuade men who fear God that in that sense we fear on the one hand his wrath on unbelievers we fear on the other hand his holy expectation of our faithfulness in the dispersion of the gospel I don't know John Did you realize that you were coming to look for the sign that was next to his church that he had placed in a prominent place that says God is not angry?

Have you seen that not only in Orlando can you have that huge sign that this church has? putting called grace your God is not really useful, yes, really, I said, except for those who put signs like this along the road, yes, imagine, and what kind of gospel do you teach people to make them say that is there no wrath left in God? What have we been saved from? Of course we are safe from the wrath that is to come. God is angry with the wicked every day. Exact. I tried that sign in front of your church.

Yes, how do you evangelize someone who believes he is saved but does not prove it? any of the external marks of salvation complicate it further. What if they are family? I believe that one of the greatest needs we have in the church today is the confusion between the profession of faith and the possession of it. I preach about this almost every Sunday ad nauseum. that our people get tired because to be a Christian a member of the church at least in our church you have to make a profession of faith this is what John began his ministry there in 1969 when he preached on Matthew 7 these are the same people who came there saying Lord Lord, didn't we do this?, did we do that?, and he said, please go away.

I never met you and, again, no one has been justified simply by a profession of faith. We are all called to make professions. of faith but Jesus warned that the people can honor him with their lips but the heart is far from them and that is why what we have to do is with those we love and those we care about even though they have made a profession of faith. and they make this idea that they don't show any evidence of it. This is what James is writing about there, that these people claim to have faith and claim to be justified, but they do, it was empty, it was mortal, there was no evidence at all. manifestation of godly obedience and that's what you have to deal with with people, e

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ly if you love them.

One of the things that is dangerous is our great zeal to win people to Christ. We have a tendency to want to help them prime the bomb. and we do our best to persuade men, we have our techniques and our methods, we have altar calls or we tell them to publish, just read this prayer, say the sinner's prayer and all that kind of thing, but it is easy to get them someone makes a profession of faith and the danger is presenting false security by using those techniques instead of trusting in the power of the Word of God which is the only one that can bring true faith and saving faith when the Holy Spirit takes it to the heart of that believer.

As opposed to preaching to make decisions and preaching to respond, don't get me wrong about the fact that on MondayThe morning I saw one of our parishioners here at St. He and Andrews came to me and said, I think that's the closest you'll ever get to making an altar call. Three times you asked the question as salvation, come home. He says he was just waiting for his bank to make the call right. In fact, you may have been surprised to learn that I've made all of our calls in the past, but I'm not opposed to that, but it's dangerous to present a false sense of security where people say hey, you know, I raised my hand and I was.

Later I saw that I was presented for sinners' prayer, wasn't it? 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 will manifest itself yes pretty simple the only legitimate evidence of real salvation is a transformed life it is the only evidence if it is not there, then there is no salvation and, looking at it from the bottom up, one would expect an unbelieving, unredeemed, unregenerate sinner to behave that way. True, you would expect him to behave that way and that is because it is consistent with his nature, but if you have a new nature, if you have been begotten by the Spirit of God, you are a new creation, that is manifestly evidenced by your new creation and transformation is the only proof of true salvation evidence is not perfect sometimes I say it is not perfection but it is direction it is the way your life goes towards obedience I mean that is what Jesus said in John 8 the one continue in my word is my true disciple my Mott, you know I like the real ones if you continue in my word, continue in it, live it, believing it and applying it, that's the evidence, if it's not there, then whatever moment you had , any prayer you prayed, any event you attended, is meaningless in terms of salvation ultimate question each of you, by the grace of God, has had a long and fruitful ministry and continues to grow and be fruit for the people of God if they turned back the clock and with the wisdom that the Lord has given them. your years of ministry and talk to your younger selves who are just starting out and pastoral ministry just in one sentence, an idea of ​​what you would have said to yourself and, as an encouragement to the next generation of preachers who are come today, don't do it.

Don't worry so long, that's what I would have told myself, then I would waste more time and ten people and there is no substitute for diving into the word and preaching the Word of God and instead of getting cold, listening to Steve Lawson 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 over every person I met and I grew more mature, but I also wasn't that zealous and I said keep pouring gas. In that fire, that's what I would tell myself.

I think we all look back and say we wasted our time, but some of those times we think we wasted them because we weren't intensely studying something we invested in. in people's lives for good in the long term, I think if I did something different, I would try to be more patient, I mean, that's the instruction, preach the word on time, out of season, instruct with all patience, I think that a young pastor knowing what he knew believing what he believed, I mean literally bursting into a church with Matthew chapter 7 on the first Sunday, yeah, there was this passion that needed patience and developing that patience with people to allow the work of God to happen.

It will be carried out. in their lives what would have been more what would have been more effective and endearing for me in those first years of so much zeal, be patient, it is the work of the Lord that is going to be done in hearts and it will be done for a long time. It is surprising how long I have been at Grace Church for over 45 years and I can look back and realize now that it is almost imperceptible to see the transitions and transformations as people grow and develop over a period of time. I have to spend a lot of years to see that really happen, so I think patients would probably be something I could have really used a lot in the early years like you.

I have been impressed by these men that the Lord has raised up to serve his church. In our days we could give glory and express our gratitude to these gentlemen for being so used over the years