The Christian Mind conference
Sproul Jr. asks ‘Are we willing to trust our
heavenly Father; to believe what He tells us?’
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman, March 19, 2012
Using I Corinthians 1:18-31 as his text, R.C. Sproul Jr. said that his challenge at the 2012 National Conference of Ligonier Ministries is to “speak to you about the true scandal of the evangelical mind.” Having read the text, he said, “The grass withers. The flowers fade. The wisdom of man is nothing, but the Word of our God endures.”
Held March 15-17 in Orlando, Fla., and streamed live on the Internet, “The Christian Mind” conference was designed to help attendees “learn how better to think like Christians in order that we might live like Christians.” Topics included the importance of building a Christian worldview, the role of education in the Christian life, science and God’s natural revelation and defending the faith.
Sproul gave a brief summary of the Christian faith: God took on flesh in Christ Jesus. He lived a life of absolute perfect obedience. He died. He died as the victim of his political and theological enemies and three days later He walked out of His tomb alive. Forty days after that He ascended to His throne and was seated at the right hand of God Almighty. From there, He will come to judge the quick and the dead. He will come and complete history and in that judgment those who trust in His provision will enjoy eternal bliss. Those left on their own will suffer eternal anguish.
“Any questions? Everyone clear on this? This is our story. This is that which unites us. We are from different states, countries, different sizes,” he said. “We are all different. What binds us together, what makes us one … is that we not only believe this story, but we cling to it.”
“We are one people,” he continued, but to those outside of the room – the Greek, the Gentile – the story is a scandal. It is foolishness. It is a stumbling block.
Sproul said that his fear was that Christians spend so much time thinking about what non-believers are in light of this story that “we don’t think of what we are to them in light of this story.
Paul wasn’t just saying they don’t get it. “Paul says, ‘they don’t get you,’” he said. “They think you are foolish … They won’t take you seriously.”
Sproul said that those in the evangelical church perceive this distaste and displeasure. “What scandalizes me is that this truth scandalizes us … that we, who embrace this Gospel that is an offense to the world, are offended that they are offended by us.”
He said that evangelicals grouse and complain. They go on television to complain about how they are presented on television. “We want to insist that Paul is wrong – and not just Paul, of course. This is the wisdom of the Holy Spirit here … The text says ‘this is how the world will see you.’”
Sproul said that evangelicals not only fight back and argue against it, “We insist on our rights and worse of all we begin to adapt. We begin to reshape ourselves and our story. We diminish the stumbling block and, to establish our credibility, we begin to rewrite the story.”
“If we are emergent,” Sproul said, “We say it is just our story. You have your narrative. We have our narrative. All God’s children have their narrative … You don’t need to be scandalized. I just have a different story, and I’m not sure about my story. Will you let me into your cool club?”
“If we are seeker-sensitive, then we take the story and remove the sharp edges of talking about sin and judgment and wrath because people don’t want to hear about that.”
“When we remember the Gospel – when we remember our own salvation – we remember the necessity of resting in His provision,” Sproul said. “In our sanctification, we are called to have our heart, mind and soul rest in His wisdom.”
Sproul said that the great Gospel question or the great evangelical question is, “Are we willing to trust our heavenly Father; to believe what He tells us?”
He spoke of his late wife, who passed away in December, 2011. He said that when his wife was first diagnosed with cancer on Dec. 31, 2003, he said to her, “Now is the time for us to believe what we have always believed.”
He explained that if they had been asked one day before the diagnosis if they believed that God was sovereign over all things – that He was with them and would never forsake them – the answer would have been, “Yes, how can we not believe it.”
They had a nice house, children, jobs and their health. He continued that if anyone had asked “is your belief dependent on your circumstances,” the answer would have been no. “God decided to see if that was so,” he said.
“The scandal of the evangelical mind is not that we aren’t smart enough,” he said. The scandal is that “we aren’t good enough. Our problem is that God speaks to us and we say no. The scandal of the evangelical mind is we look at our circumstance and use our minds to change what God has said to make what God said fit our experience. … We open the text of Scripture and we begin to read it and we get poked by it. Our minds go into high alert and we realize we need to beat this text into submission. We know that the text can’t be telling me to change because both God and me love me the way I am.”
Sproul asked how does one know when they are beginning to shift their mind to God? “You begin to put your pride to death when you are willing to accept these accusations from the world – when you no longer to panic when someone thinks you are stupid.”
“I think we have the truth and I think the truth destroy the world’s foolishness,” Sproul said. “The reality is that they are stupid. They are foolish. The Bible says ‘the fool says there is no God,’ but how foolish are we? Instead of realizing that we are saved from this by God, we think ‘We are smart. We know how to rescue ourselves from this.’ No, friends. We are supposed to rest in His provision – be willing to be thought of as fools. We are supposed to realize all of our sophisticated arguments are intellectual filthy rags. The thought that ‘we are right and they are wrong,’ doesn’t make us better, because we were once them. We were rescued out of this and, fools that we are, because we were rescued we pat ourselves on the back.”
“It is not upon us to improve our reputation among unbelievers in world – Paul says this is what it is going to be. This is what our lives are going to be like.” Sproul said. “Are you willing to be thought a fool for Christ’s sake? We don’t need to improve our reputation because when we are honest with ourselves, when we want to improve our reputation, it not for the sake of the kingdom but for our own reputation. The greatest truth is that we don’t believe the truth – that we always lie to our selves.”
He said that the scandal among evangelicals is that “we are not repentant about our minds. So what do we do? The first thing we need to do is get out of the way. Our text tells us that there is power in the Word.”
Sproul said that in the past year, he had the privilege to preach at the local abortion mill. Since his experience, his oldest son and daughter have made it a weekly habit, along with some friends, to do the same.
“They aren’t going down there – to the very gates of hell – and explaining to these women in crisis about Thomas Aquinas and his view of external stimuli and substances, and they are not going
down there and explaining the order of God’s decrees. … They are going down there and preaching this book,” he said holding up his Bible. “They are calling men and women to repent and what they are seeing is lives being changed. People are being brought into the kingdom because there is power in the Word.”
“We don’t make manifest the glory of the reign of our King by strutting our mind around. Instead, we cast our crowns at His feet. We are silent before Him except to say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’ Instead, we preach Christ and Him crucified; His provision, our need; His wisdom and our folly. We come to understand the plain Biblical truth: Wisdom begins with the fear of God. Would that He teach us and give us the grace to fear Him, rather than the Greeks, so that the Greeks might learn to fear Him through the power of His Word.”
Sproul ended his talk by repeating his beginning: God took on flesh in Christ Jesus. He lived a life of absolute perfect obedience. He died. He died as the victim of his political and theological enemies and three days later he walked out of His tomb alive. Forty days after that He ascended to His throne having received all glory in heaven and earth. He was lifted up and seated at the right hand of God Almighty and from there He will come to judge the quick and the dead. He will come and complete history and in that judgment those who trust in His provision will enjoy eternal bliss. Those left on their own will suffer eternal anguish.
“God said it. That settles it,” Sproul said.
R.C. Sproul Jr. is founder, director and a teacher for Highlands Ministries in Mendota, Va., associate professor of apologetics and philosophy at Reformation Bible College, and a teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries. He travels extensively as a conference speaker and has written several books.