What are you thinking about when you’re not thinking about anything?
Ferguson addresses ‘Losing my
religion’ at the Ligonier conference
By Carmen Fowler LaBerge, The Layman, March 21, 2012
Anyone who has ever interviewed with an organization or church with which Dr. Sinclair Ferguson is engaged can count on “The Ferguson Question” being asked.
That question is, “What do you think about when you have nothing else to think about?”
Ferguson told the audience at the Ligonier Conference on The Christian Mind in Orlando: “What fills your mind when there’s nothing filling your mind will tell you a lot about yourself.”
He noted that people allow their minds to drift, wander and worry about things and that ultimately tells them just “how carnal sometimes our minds can be.” He encouraged the audience, “We need more and more to be filled with the Word of God so that there’s something worthy in our minds to think about when we have nothing else to think about.”
Ferguson then confessed that he used to think “it’s not possible to think about nothing;” and then admitted, “now I find myself doing it. This is a battle to the end.”
Ferguson acknowledged that in cultural slang today, “Losing your religion means losing your cool” and that it is “also the title of a song recorded by REM in 1991 that sold 10 million copies,” but that “here we are interested and concerned in these words more literally understood.”
Sinclair then addressed the reality that many Christians today have lost the Biblical Christian faith by failing to really know God through the study of His revealed Word.
Ferguson gently but firmly addressed the Reformed evangelical crowd with the truth that “we are specialists at blaming others and we are poor at taking to ourselves the summons of the Word of God to take the Gospel of Christ with intense seriousness.”
He said listening to a half-hour sermon on Sunday morning does not make a person Reformed and then asked if the preachers present were following the pattern of Calvin, who preached every day, gave Wednesday fully to prayer and, if the lay people present were “gathering every Wednesday when the people of God give themselves to pleading with God for the advance of the Gospel?”
Ferguson was not advocating a formula, but a return to a seriousness of the pursuit of God where lives are placed under the power of God and intercession is made for the glory of God.
He expounded on the high Christology of Hebrews 5 noting that although some things in the Bible are “hard to explain … we need to put our thinking caps on.”
Echoing the Biblical concern that some Christians do not mature in the faith but stubbornly remain infantile in the approach to the things of the faith, the speaker acknowledged that “this is not a contemporary problem. This is perennial problem for God’s people.”
He then quickly moved through several passages of Scripture as he addressed the question, “What is the characteristic of mature thinking?” The answer, Ferguson said, is “a passion for the knowledge of God.”
Amplifying his point, Ferguson said, “That is the heart of the Bible’s teaching — not what we do or who we are, but that we know (God) and are known by Him.”
Calling upon the image of the Lord walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day with Adam, Ferguson noted God’s hope for “fellowship and communion between the Creator of the macrocosm and steward of the microcosm.”
The restoration of that lost fellowship and communion is what “lies at the epicenter of the new covenant,” expressed as a genuine and personal “knowledge of the Lord,” Ferguson contended. Punctuating his point, Ferguson pointed out that “Jesus said in John 17, ‘This is eternal life; that they might know you and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
Reasons to pursue a deeper knowledge of God
Ferguson said that “pursuing a deeper knowledge of God is the reason for which God regenerated us.” Juxtaposing the characterization of humanity without Christ from Romans 1:18 and following with the regenerated person in Christ, Ferguson described the “before and after” pictures.
“Before regeneration, the mind is darkened and unsubmissive, diseased and disabled. After it is cleansed, regenerated, and reveals a reconciliation with God’s mind.”
He illustrated his point using Romans 8:5-8 and then turned to Romans 6 noting that those who were “formerly slaves to sin have now become obedient from the heart to the form of doctrine to which you were delivered.”
Ferguson said, “That is picture language … the Holy Spirit shaping our minds to the revealed truth as we give ourselves to the word of God.”
The second reason Ferguson gave for pursuing a deeper knowledge of God is “the specific teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.” When Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” Ferguson said that “Jesus points the lawyer back to the Scriptures and the great confession of Israel. But Jesus does not directly quote the Shema – he expounds the Scriptures, showing the fullness of the Scriptures.”
“Jesus says you will not just love the Lord your God with only your heart, but also with all your mind and all your soul and all your strength. Jesus tells believers that we are to love the Lord with our minds. As Christians we believe that there is no root to the affections without passing through the mind.”
He then turned to Psalm 11, saying, “We love the Word that we understand with our minds. We believe on the basis of authority, but we love on the basis of beauty and whatever is desirable.” The question left unarticulated was “what then do you truly desire?” The Psalmist desired God and pursued knowledge of God by a deep devotion to God’s Word.
Quoting Colossians 3:1, Ferguson called the crowd to “set your affections on the things that are above and settle your mind there.” And then he offered three strategies that enable believers to do just that.
First, Ferguson challenged, “Place our lives under a living ministry of the Word of God.” He said this means being actively engaged in the life of a living, faithful, Bible preaching church — no disconnected, individualized “me and Jesus” walk.
He said that Christians must “sit together under the ministry of the word of God.” That means letting the “the Word of God do its own work,” he said. Illustrating his point, Ferguson called on Acts 6:7 where it is “Word of God that continued to increase;” I Thessalonians 2:13 where one can witness “the word of God at work in the believers.”
Ferguson pressed the point saying, “People don’t believe because they’ve never experienced it. John Calvin preached every single day of the week because he wanted to pour the Word of God into the people of God. Isn’t that what gospel ministers are for?” He quoted John Stott who commented on the half hour of preaching that most Americans get as “Sermonettes which produce Christianettes.”
Second, Ferguson called Christians who desire to be mature to “dig deeply into the Word of God for ourselves.” He challenged his listeners to think about spending time in the Scriptures as a wrestling with God and themselves. “Remember Jacob, ‘I will not let you go until you bless me!’ that’s what we need to do, beloved. We need to dig into it ourselves!”
Finally, Ferguson said, Christians need to “learn together with all the saints.” That means reading and studying the greatest Christians thinkers of all times. “Never be ashamed not to know the latest Christian books if you
know the greatest Christian books,” Ferguson said.
His recommendations include, “Read Calvin’s Institutes. They are very readable, but practical and very pastoral. They taught me how to think Trinitarianially;” and “Read John Owens’s On Communion with God from the 17th century. It taught me how to live Trinitarianally: The Father planning, the Son coming and the Spirit applying – all in communion and fellowship. We are drawn into that fellowship.”
Beyond the Tweets and Facebook posts and fleeting ideas of this generation, Ferguson reminded conferees that “at the end of the day, the only thing that will matter in my life for all eternity is that I will be able to say ‘I knew Him and I know Him.’ For, to know Him is to love Him and to love Him is to obey and serve Him. That life of obedient service begins with a mature Christian mind.”
Dr. Sinclair Ferguson is a pastor, professor of systematic theology, and Ligonier Ministries Teaching Fellow. He is also a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals ,and a prolific author whose books include By Grace Alone.