Practical Effects of ‘Big God’ Theology

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0:00:00 – (Matt Smethurst): Just because you have a high and soaring view of God’s sovereignty, if you don’t have a corresponding high and soaring view of his kindness and compassion, then according to the Bible, you don’t yet have a high view of God. Welcome back, friends, to another episode of the Everyday Pastor, a podcast on the nuts and bolts of ministry from the Gospel Coalition. I’m Matt Smethurst, a pastor in Richmond, Virginia.

0:00:28 – (Ligon Duncan): And I’m Ligg Duncan, chancellor of Reformed

0:00:32 – (Matt Smethurst): Theological Seminary and former pastor for many years. And we want to think today, lig, just about big God theology. So doctrines of grace, some contested terrain in Christian circles, but we want to think about the practical effects of having a really high view of God’s sovereignty. You and I share, among many convictions we share is that this kind of big God theology is not just something for seminary, it’s just not something for Internet debates.

0:01:06 – (Matt Smethurst): It can make a practical difference in the everyday life of believers. And so talk a little bit about your own journey with coming to understand and cherish the doctrines of grace, and then we’ll turn toward local church ministry.

0:01:21 – (Ligon Duncan): Well, I was blessed to sit under a preaching ministry that was committed to a high view of the sovereignty of God. And that’s part of what we mean when we say big God theology. It may have been John Piper that sort of coined that term to sort of capture the idea of the sovereignty of God in grace and salvation and providence, that God rules over everything in creation and in history and in salvation.

0:01:53 – (Ligon Duncan): And so my boyhood pastor, Gordon Reed, beautifully preached from that standpoint. Not in a heavy handed way way, but always consistent with that teaching. My teenage pastor, Paul Settle, excellent expositor, also preached from that perspective. And so as a young person who actually wrestled with assurance of salvation, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God was key to my being able to have a sense of assurance that God had forgiven me, that God had accepted me, that God had justified me and that God would not let me go because I understood that if those things were based on me, I could lose them.

0:02:49 – (Ligon Duncan): And I had friends that were wrestling in more negative ways. They were Christians, but they were wrestling with more negative ways, with the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. But for me, it was always a comfort. And it was not like one morning I woke up and said, oh, I understand all of that now. I understand how God’s sovereignty and human respond. It was that I woke up and I realized one this is all over the Bible. This isn’t some sort of obscure portion in the margins. It’s everywhere that you look from Genesis to Revelation.

0:03:27 – (Ligon Duncan): And so even if I didn’t understand the teaching fully, I need, okay, it’s biblical, it’s there. And then the way my pastors and my youth ministers and others applied it, I realized this is actually the basis on which I know that I’m right with God, that I’m not going to lose my salvation, that God is not going to stop loving me. And so for me, from the very beginning, it was a comfort. Now I also knew that I had friends that really wrestled with is it fair?

0:04:05 – (Ligon Duncan): Is it just? How can it be that God would decide these things? What about people that don’t? There are all sorts of questions that friends of mine had and I wanted to be sensitive to that. But for me personally, it was always a comfort. And so as I’ve been able to preach the gospel over the years, I’ve wanted to preach it in such a way that people would see that the sovereignty of God is a pillar upon which the believer can rest his head.

0:04:39 – (Ligon Duncan): And I mean, it literally enables me to go to sleep at night in this crazy world that we live in where so many things are wrong and so many horrible things are done. To know that ultimately God will have the last word, that he’s working for my good, even in circumstances that aren’t good themselves, that he will prevail, that all of this is part of a plan that he has had from before, before the foundations of the world.

0:05:11 – (Ligon Duncan): All of that blesses my soul to

0:05:14 – (Matt Smethurst): know we are in God’s plan, a right.

0:05:19 – (Ligon Duncan): So for me, it has always been a joy. And though I have, throughout every stage of my ministry had dear, dear friends that really, really struggled with, enabled me to sort of sympathetically and patiently work with them through the struggles that they had. How about you, Matt? Is this something that was a part of your testimony from the very beginning of your Christian experience or is this something that you discovered later on?

0:05:51 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah, one of the things we’re talking about is what’s sometimes referred to as Calvinism. I didn’t have an anti Calvinistic upbringing, but it wasn’t particularly a theologically minded environment, even though it was devoutly and sincerely Christian. It was when I was in youth group actually at a PCA church that the youth minister taught on the five points of Calvinism. And I remember my first response being I was a bit insulted by the thought.

0:06:25 – (Matt Smethurst): It just didn’t seem like good news. So I would say my trajectory has been viewing this high, soaring view of God’s sovereignty over all things, including suffering, including salvation, viewing it as bad news, and then coming to view it as true news, meaning as I grappled with it further, particularly in my college years, I came to see, okay, this is biblical. I may not like it, but here it is, it’s unavoidable.

0:06:51 – (Matt Smethurst): But going from viewing it as bad news to true news to ultimately good news. And like you said, it’s not fundamentally a tool for feeling superior. It’s not a weapon for fighting. It’s a pillow that we can lay our heads on and rest under his sovereign smile if we’re in Christ. What would you commend now, as we think about pastoring, for someone listening to this who’s nervous to quote, unquote, go there. And to be clear, we’re not saying you have to use all of the buzzwords or anything like that. I don’t use them in my sermons.

0:07:26 – (Matt Smethurst): But for a pastor who’s hesitant to hold up a big sovereign God and to teach. Because here’s the thing, Lig, in the New Testament, this stuff seems like it’s not optional and it’s not advanced. Now, there’s a depth of mystery, right? Mystery is the essence of theology. And yet it’s not like Paul and Peter and the other biblical writers wait until their recipients have reached some later stage of Christian growth before they’re going to apply the doctrine of God’s sovereignty to everyday circumstances.

0:08:03 – (Matt Smethurst): So, knowing the assumption that these doctrines are meant to steady God’s people, not confuse them, and that avoiding this stuff actually creates more pastoral problems in the long run, what would you commend to pastors who maybe haven’t been sounding this note much in their ministry yet?

0:08:24 – (Ligon Duncan): That’s good. And let me acknowledge what you’ve already tacitly pointed to. There is a reality that in some places there is such a resistance to this teaching that the use of certain technical terms or buzzwords can create a controversy. And so there is a place for pastoral wisdom here. I’ll tell you a story from the history of rts. When Reformed Theological Seminary was formed and admitted our first students in 1966, most of our students then were going to Southern Presbyterian churches, the old PCUs, before the PCUs and the PCUSA joined together again, the Northern and Southern Presbyterian churches in 1983, and many of those students were hearing Big God theology. They were hearing Reformed theology or Calvinism in their classes, and they were excited about it because they had not heard it clearly taught in their churches growing up. I mean, today we can assume a knowledge of Calvinism much more broadly than you could have in the 1960s, you know, R.C. sproul wasn’t yet on the scene, John Piper wasn’t yet on the scene. The people that have.

0:09:46 – (Ligon Duncan): John MacArthur had been pastoring his church for a decade or more, but I’m not sure people would have known the perspective that he was coming from. And so these students would get into classes at RTS and hear the doctrines of grace taught in the doctrine of Salvation course, and they would just be on fire. And they would assume that since they were going to a Presbyterian church, that the people were going to have that same view.

0:10:11 – (Ligon Duncan): And they were often sadly mistaken because Presbyterian churches, because they had been impacted by liberalism and by neo orthodoxy and just by the sort of generic, not big God, evangelical theology of the day, there was a lot of resistance to it. And so a lot of young guys went out of RTS in the 1960s and early 70s and it led to church controversies when they taught the doctrines of grace and God’s sovereignty and predestination and election and things like that. So there is definitely a place for pastoral wisdom. And I know, again, I have so many friends that minister in Baptist churches in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. There are places where this is very, very controversial.

0:10:59 – (Ligon Duncan): And so you look at a person like Clint Presley, who went to Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, which was not necessarily seen as a center of Calvinism in the sbc, and as

0:11:12 – (Matt Smethurst): of this recording, president of the Southern

0:11:14 – (Ligon Duncan): Baptist Convention, and Clint just faithfully preached the text of God’s Word and was able to proclaim a big God theology without getting into the buzzwords and such. I think he’s a model picture of how to go to a place and minister the Word faithfully, not cutting corners, not being afraid to address the hard things, but doing it in a sensitive pastoral way. And again, my view is if we can explain to people why this is so good for them, why it’s good news that God is sovereign, that goes a long way to pulling down some of the defenses that are there. And one thing that we’ve got in common is all of us in the Baptist tradition, the Presbyterian tradition that flow out of the Reformed tradition that believe in the perseverance of the saints.

0:12:12 – (Ligon Duncan): That’s a Calvinistic doctrine, that’s a distinctively Reformed doctrine, and that can be the doorway into helping people understand the other of the so called five points of Calvinism. Because that perseverance of the saints is built on some prior theological commitments. And the reason we’re able to say that once Christ has you in his hand, he will never Lose you is because of our commitment to God’s sovereignty in seeking us when we were lost and wandering sheep, and in drawing us to himself through Christ.

0:12:52 – (Ligon Duncan): The Gospel of John is all over this, by the way. That’s another great point, isn’t it, John? That’s often a gospel given to the youngest of Christians or even to non Christians. Read through the Gospel of John. It’s filled with this kind of big God theology. No one comes to me unless the Father draws him. That sort of language. It’s all over.

0:13:16 – (Matt Smethurst): Over.

0:13:16 – (Ligon Duncan): The Gospel of John, the very first chapter, you know that we’re not born of the will of the flesh. We’re not born of a husband’s desire. We are born of God. You know, this emphasis on God’s the one who makes us alive. It’s there in John 3, in the great John 3:16 passage. That’s the whole conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. So it’s there. And if we can root that perseverance of the saints back in those prior truths of God’s word, that sometimes a window, a door into the heart of people that might otherwise be afraid of

0:13:56 – (Matt Smethurst): it, and another door would be just the idea of prayer. J.I. packer once said, everyone’s a Calvinist on their knees. And I know that a comment like that could sound glib and dismissive, but he meant that in a provocative manner, because what are we asking God to do when we pray for that lost loved one, for that prodigal? We are not saying, lord, thanks for hearing my prayer. Please work your influence, but only go so far. Please don’t override their will.

0:14:33 – (Matt Smethurst): No, we’re saying, lord, break down the door, go in, reclaim them.

0:14:39 – (Ligon Duncan): And if I can give a personal testimony on that front, Matt, I saw that in my grandmother. My grandmother was a faithful member of a Southern Baptist congregation in Mims, Florida, and she really resisted the doctrines of grace. If you had said Calvinism to her, she would have bristled. But the way she prayed was gloriously trusting in the sovereignty of God to save sinners, to address circumstances that were beyond her control, to do things that were beyond her power.

0:15:10 – (Ligon Duncan): She was a model to me of how a Christian ought to pray. And even though at a theological level my grandmother and I would have disagreed about some things, when she got on her knees to pray, she was a perfect model of how a Christian ought to pray. And there are a lot of folks

0:15:26 – (Matt Smethurst): like that with whom we’ll spend eternity. And many times their prayer lives put us to shame. And it’s also worth noting Even just because you have a high and soaring view of God’s sovereignty, if you don’t have a corresponding high and soaring view of his kindness and compassion, then according to the Bible, you don’t yet have a high view of God. And so I think, as we want to encourage pastors to boldly but carefully, sensitively preach on these things and, and not just from the pulpit, but throughout the week. How can ministers more effectively apply the doctrines of grace big God theology to the ordinary struggles of a Christian’s life? What would be some advice you’d give?

0:16:14 – (Ligon Duncan): Well, I mean, one is if you preach through Bible books, you’re going to get to this sooner or later and the books themselves will help you in terms of the application. So you think you’re gonna preach a sermon series on Ephesians? Well, you’re not gonna get five verses into Ephesians before you’re confronted with this big God theology, predestination election, being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

0:16:42 – (Matt Smethurst): These are Bible words.

0:16:43 – (Ligon Duncan): Bibles are there. Yeah, yeah. Calvin didn’t sneak them into the text. They’re there. And so you have to. Why is Paul saying this to the Ephesians? And look at how he himself applies this, especially in the first two chapters, to their situation and making them realize, here’s this predominantly gentile congregation and he’s saying, God has set his heart on you from before the foundation of the world, long before you existed, long before the world existed, God had already set his heart on you in love.

0:17:21 – (Ligon Duncan): And what a beautiful way to open your heart to lemon. Surely that was a mind blowing thing for those Ephesians to hear, just like it is mind blowing for us to hear and conceive. And what a glorious way to get you into a realization of God’s sovereignty. It reminds me of the famous conversation that Gerhardus Vos, the father of the modern biblical theology movement, was talking with a young man who said, Professor Vos, how do I know that God is not going to stop loving me?

0:17:57 – (Ligon Duncan): And based on that chosen from before the foundation of the world passage, Professor Vos said, because he never started meaning that before there was time, before there was creation, God already loved you before you existed. So that love is from eternity. It didn’t have a beginning, and that’s why it doesn’t have an end. When people start grasping that, then I think it enables them to live where you were talking about. I love that little. You know, initially you thought it was bad news, then you realized it was true news. And then you realize it was really good news.

0:18:34 – (Ligon Duncan): It gets people into that place of saying, okay, this is a mystery to me. I don’t fully understand how all this. But I have this inkling that this is really good news, and I want to understand why. And if you can just get to the place where you’re going to let the text of Scripture decide the issue, you have gone a long way down the road. Because what I find happens a lot is people are afraid of what the consequences of the view might be.

0:19:03 – (Ligon Duncan): And therefore they don’t want to read the text of Scripture in the way that it’s set out because they’re afraid. Oh, no, that would mean this, that I’m afraid of, or that is bad. And so I’ve got to import a different meaning into the text to make sure that the text doesn’t lead to this bad consequence that I’m afraid of. And what I try to get folks that are struggling is just say, just tell me what that text said. Just tell me what it said.

0:19:32 – (Ligon Duncan): Don’t try and explain. Okay, now these are the problems with that. And this might. Just tell me what the text said, then we’ll work out all the consequences and the ramifications and such, but just let the Bible speak for itself on this. And again, it’s not an isolated thing. You can’t get out of the story of Joseph without Joseph saying, these horrible things that you did to me, brothers, God meant those for good.

0:20:01 – (Ligon Duncan): And you hear me say, what do you mean God meant those for good? How can that be? That they did things that were deeply sinful and horrible to Joseph? What do you mean God meant those for good? And Joseph doesn’t pause and give you an explanation there. He just bloop. It’s just right out there. And from Genesis 50, 20 all the way to Acts, chapter two, Peter does the same kind of thing. Jesus was predestined by God, foreordained by God to be crucified on the cross at the hands of sinful men.

0:20:38 – (Ligon Duncan): And he just goes right on. And I think if I were in the crowd, I would have had my hand up. Excuse me, Peter, could you just pause right there and just work that out for me? But it’s just there. And if I can get people just to see it in the text and then, no, okay, I think there’s something good behind this. I don’t understand all of this yet, but I do see it in the Bible. You’re halfway there. How about you? As you talked about that movement for you from true to good news, how did that work for you? And then how do you do that when you’re talking to folks or preaching?

0:21:13 – (Matt Smethurst): Well, I found that the more I reflect on this theology, the more of a humbling effect it has in my heart. Now, I’m gonna be clear. I don’t consider myself a humble person, but I pray that by God’s grace, I’m growing in humility. And often the way the Lord humbles me afresh is by reminding me that he is God and I am not. And I also think it gives me more of a patience for unbelievers in my life whom I love, that haven’t yet responded to Christ.

0:21:51 – (Matt Smethurst): And for the Christians under my care in my church that aren’t being sanctified as quickly as I would like. A, because it causes me to look in the mirror and say, well, nor am I, but B, because it reminds me that God is writing a unique story in everyone’s life. And again, everyone is in God’s plan A, for their life. I mean, yes, we can make foolish decisions, yes, we can do things that are outside of the revealed will of God, but we can’t do anything that is outside of the ultimate will of God, his will of decree.

0:22:32 – (Matt Smethurst): And there is something there that I think really can help Christians. I mean, just think about. I recently preached Acts Chapter one. And the first bit of Acts is an incredible passage. I mean, we Got the Acts 1:8 right. Your mission to the ends of the earth. We have the Ascension and talking about the. And by the way, we should do a whole episode sometime on the practical effects of the doctrine of the Ascension, because I think it’s one of the most underrated, underutilized doctrines in the Christian life. So I loved preaching that passage.

0:23:07 – (Matt Smethurst): But then the second half of Acts Chapter one isn’t exactly the kind of text that you would choose to preach. If you’re going to be a, you know, guest preacher somewhere, it’s just, okay, we have Judas defection and casting lots. So as I studied it, I thought, why is Judas getting so much airtime in Acts 1? It makes sense. At the end of the Gospels, it’s recounting his treachery and his demise. Why here, especially on the heels of such marching orders, to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth?

0:23:43 – (Matt Smethurst): And as I reflected, I realized, well, it’s because those early believers, those 120 believers gathered in the upper room, this wound was fresh. They were still rattled. They were still reeling from what happened to Judas, probably feeling like, well, if Judas defected, am I next? Of course, that’s reminiscent of the Last Supper. Is it I, Lord, is it I? They’re not all looking at Judas.

0:24:12 – (Ligon Duncan): Yeah.

0:24:12 – (Matt Smethurst): And I realized that what’s going on there is pastoral. When Peter stands up to address everyone, which is, I think, beautiful in and of itself because he’s just been recommissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ to what? Feed my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my sheep. And here’s the first time he’s doing it. He rises and he says, okay, let’s talk Judas. And I think the larger point he’s making is no act of wickedness can derail the Lord’s plan.

0:24:43 – (Matt Smethurst): So before we get out there and take the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria, to the ends of the earth, let’s remember who’s in charge of this whole story. Let’s remember that. And now you may think, and maybe some of those early believers thought, well, okay, but that’s Judas. What about me? Well, it’s an argument from the greater to the lesser. If even Judas treachery couldn’t throw off the Lord’s sovereign, wise, good plan, do you think anything you’re going to do is going to throw him off either?

0:25:17 – (Matt Smethurst): And so that’s just one little example of, in preaching, how you can take a doctrine like the sovereignty of God and apply it to people’s hearts in a way that consoles them and helps them to remember that, yeah, job 42, two, no one can thwart the purposes of God.

0:25:37 – (Ligon Duncan): Yeah, that’s a major theme in the Scriptures. You see it in Genesis. You of course see it in Exodus. The sovereignty of God in the whole Exodus story in relation to Pharaoh is highlight highlighted by Moses, especially in the passages about the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. And it’s interesting how they’re told from three perspectives. Pharaoh hardening his heart, Pharaoh’s heart being hardened. God hardening Pharaoh’s heart.

0:26:08 – (Ligon Duncan): And so it hits the dynamics of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. But it is very clear the context is between who’s sovereign here? Is Pharaoh sovereign or is God sovereign? And so God’s sovereignty is a major, major theme in the book of Exodus, not just Genesis, not just the story of Joseph, but continuing in the story of Israel. And you see it in the story of Job, especially highlighted in Job one and two.

0:26:40 – (Ligon Duncan): But you also see it in the story of David, David numbering the people, which is recorded both in Kings and Chronicles. So Satan was against the people. And so he moved David to do the census. God moved David to take the census. So which is it? And so the dynamic of God’s sovereign involvement you also see at the end of Is it the end of 1 Kings with the story of Micaiah where again God is sovereign in the story of Ahab, yeah, it’s the end of 1 Kings, it’s 1 Kings 22, which is again one of these stories where God’s sovereignty and human responsibility interface with one another. It’s not that God’s sovereignty means that we’re puppets.

0:27:37 – (Ligon Duncan): It’s not that God’s sovereignty means that we don’t make choices. It’s not that we God sovereign. So it doesn’t matter what we do or think or believe. It’s God’s sovereign and we’re responsible. And so you get that throughout the Bible. You get it in Romans, you get it in Ephesians, you get it in the Gospel of John. And we want our people not to be utterly befuddled by that. When they’re reading their Bibles, we want to help them know how to read those things with one another, not against one another. You know, the temptation is often to take one idea in the Bible and play it over against another idea in the Bible. And that’s never a good way to read the Bible.

0:28:31 – (Ligon Duncan): How do those things go together? How does God telling Micaiah Ahab is going to go up to Ramoth Gilead and he’s going to be killed in a battle, go along with Micaiah actually imploring Ahab not to do that. It’s a beautiful picture of God’s already told him how it’s going to shake out. But Micaiah is still trying to keep him from making a choice that’s going to lead to his own destruction. It’s a little bit like Jesus in John 13.

0:29:02 – (Ligon Duncan): You were just talking about Judas. There’s this beautiful passage in Calvin’s commentary on John 13 where he says Jesus is washing the disciples feet and he comes around and who’s there? Judas is there. And Jesus washes Judas feet And Calvin pauses and he makes the comment that even though he had already indicated, and you can see it in John 13, that the son of perdition was going to do what he had been appointed to do, that he was going to be betrayed.

0:29:36 – (Ligon Duncan): He said he yet again opened to Judas the gate of repentance, but he would not walk through. And so here’s Jesus opening the gate of repentance to someone who he knows is a reprobate, and yet he’s opening the gate of. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful picture of that interface between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in the Bible. We want our people not to be surprised by that, disturbed by that, befuddled by that, that we want them to know. Okay, this is yet another example in the Bible about how God’s sovereignty relates to human choices and human desires.

0:30:19 – (Ligon Duncan): And it’s important for me to be able to read the Bible in such a way that both of those things are true. Both of those things go together, they don’t contradict one another. And in fact, as you said, they actually bring me confidence in this world because I can’t do something that is going to thwart the decretal will of God.

0:30:42 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah, absolutely. And as we teach on these things to our people, we don’t have to use high falutin jargon. I think we can just talk about the fact that God choreographs. God can choreograph what he doesn’t approve of. Everyone in our church needs to understand that basic fact. It’s difficult to reconcile, it’s difficult to understand. But I think part of Christian maturity is seeing what the Bible teaches and emphasizes and learning to hold those things in tension, to live within the tension, to embrace the tension rather than explain it away.

0:31:22 – (Matt Smethurst): In fact, most heresies are not the result of trying to complicate what’s simple, but rather trying to simplify what’s complicated.

0:31:31 – (Ligon Duncan): Right.

0:31:31 – (Matt Smethurst): And so as we try to show our people that this is true from Scripture, we can say, hey, it’s something you even understand from the dynamic of literature. You don’t read the Chronicles of Narnia and see the white witch turning Mr. Tumnus to stone and think, Geez, C.S. lewis is a jerk. No, you understand that there is the ultimate author over the story, and there are real actions within the story that have moral agency, moral culpability. Joni Eareckson Tada A hero of ours.

0:32:08 – (Matt Smethurst): Her episode when she joined us for the Everyday Pastor, it still may be my favorite one we’ve done. But she’s been a quadriplegic for over 60 years, and she once said God sometimes permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves. And it’s that kind of teaching that is actually going to stabilize our people and prepare our people for when the sky goes black. So, Lig, talk a little bit about how a high view of God’s sovereignty can help our people in particular situations in the hospital, dealing with crippling anxiety like, things like that.

0:32:51 – (Ligon Duncan): Well, to know that we are in the hands of not just a sovereign, but a good and a loving God. And I think that for me, Matt, that was key. I knew that I was a sinner. I knew that I deserved judgment. I knew that I deserved condemnation. I knew that salvation was a gift of God’s mercy. You didn’t have to convince me of that. I was there with you when you then teach me that God is sovereign from the Bible.

0:33:21 – (Ligon Duncan): I don’t think of God as an arbitrary despot. He’s still the good and loving God who saved me from my sin. So the sovereign God is the good and loving and gracious Father. And is there anybody in the world that I would rather everything be in the hands of? No. Is there any human being, however good and benighted? No. I would want it in his hands. And so many hymns that we sing celebrate this truth Whate’ er my God ordains is right that old beautiful hymn is Be still my soul the Lord is on your side there’s so many God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform he plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm how firm a foundation, how firm a.

0:34:13 – (Ligon Duncan): We just go on and on about the hymn that we sing that is celebrating this reality. What does that say to a person in the hospital? Just this last week, one of my colleagues son is back in the hospital in ER in Hattiesburg, Mississippi for the second time in three weeks. He has gone through years of struggling with leukemia and it terrified us when he was back in the hospital. Oh no. Has the leukemia come back? Praise God, no it hasn’t. But his system has been weakened by all those years of treatment for the leukemia. So he’s susceptible to everything, all the way down to stomach viruses. But that family’s comfort in knowing God’s sovereign rule over his life, over his body, over everything, is incalculable.

0:35:05 – (Ligon Duncan): They will testify. Would they have chosen for their child to have this struggle with leukemia? No. Do they not care when they see their son suffering under not only the malady but the treatment and then the consequences of the treatment and all the stuff that comes along with it? No. Their hearts are for him. But does it comfort them that God is in control? Absolutely it does. And I do see occasionally some Christians, I think they’re really trying to protect God.

0:35:37 – (Ligon Duncan): They’ll try and push God away from circumstances like that. God didn’t have anything to do with this. And what I tell them is that situation of suffering that you’re talking about may be a life defining situation for you or for your family. You don’t want God in the middle of that. You want to push God away from that. You want God involved in that? That may be one of the most significant things about your life. I want God right down in the middle of that. And praise God. My Bible tells me that he is all the way down to the hairs on my head, and he’s looking out for sparrows, and he’s minutely involved in everything.

0:36:18 – (Ligon Duncan): That’s a tremendous comfort to me. That’s not something that oppresses me. That’s something that sets me free to breathe and say, I can’t control this situation that I’m in. But I do know that my Father, who loves me, is in charge, and he’s got perfect purposes in this that he may or may not ever disclose to me. But I know that he’s got a good reason for what he’s doing.

0:36:42 – (Matt Smethurst): And as you mentioned earlier, the promise in Romans 8:28 is he’ll work all things together for our good, not that the situations themselves are good.

0:36:51 – (Ligon Duncan): That’s right.

0:36:51 – (Matt Smethurst): Being in the hospital as a kid with leukemia is not good. And nor do Christians have to act like it is. I think sometimes we can fall into a kind of stoicism which says, my circumstances don’t affect me. I’m not going to let my circumstances affect me. No, Christianity, that’s stoicism. Christianity says my circumstances won’t define me, they won’t control me. And also, I’m not going to survive if God’s not in the middle of it.

0:37:23 – (Matt Smethurst): I need a big God and a sovereign God and a wise God and a good God. And that’s why it’s so important to teach our people who this God is, so that whatever my God ordains is right is not just a slogan, but they know who the God is that we’re talking about.

0:37:40 – (Ligon Duncan): You know, Joni, when we talked with Joni, that’s what came out so clearly with her. And she had that. She wrestled with that, too. I mean, she told us that she was mad and frustrated and she had to work through that. This is bad news. This is true news. This is good news. Sort of arc that you talked about. And now it is woven into every fiber of her being. She can’t say a word where that doesn’t come out and it comes out experientially. So I guess as a pastor, I’m thinking of that person.

0:38:19 – (Ligon Duncan): Matt. I’m not just up there trying to win a theological argument.

0:38:22 – (Matt Smethurst): That’s right.

0:38:23 – (Ligon Duncan): I’m thinking of that person. How am I gonna help them see just how big the God of the Bible is? Because in the Bible, so often seasons of personal revival begin with a fresh sight of God. And you think of how that happens with Abraham in Genesis 17. You know, Abraham is a. Genesis 16 is not one of Abraham’s high points. I mean, it’s a bad, bad. He has given up on God’s plan. He’s gone along with Sarah on this plan to have a child through Hagar. It’s born blown up in his face and her face and in everybody’s face. And then he just kind of washes his hands of it and sends Hagar and Ishmael out to the wilderness. You were thinking, you know, Abraham, what are you thinking, man? It’s a bad, bad scene.

0:39:10 – (Ligon Duncan): Well, Genesis 17:1, you know, somewhere 12, 13 years later, God shows up for a conversation with Abraham. And he starts off just by saying, abraham, I’m God Almighty. And it’s like, abraham, you’ve forgotten who I am. You’ve forgotten that I am God the all powerful, and I want to reintroduce myself to you. And that begins a season of revival for him. Same thing with Job. You know, Job at the end of the book says, you know, I had heard of you, but now I’ve seen you.

0:39:44 – (Ligon Duncan): And that happens so often. Think of Moses, you know, not only the burning bush story, but even Exodus 34 after the sin of the golden calf. And Moses says, show me your glory in Exodus 33, and then in God showing him his glory in Exodus 34 is, I am God, gracious and compassionate, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. And let me just introduce myself to you again. So part of what I want to do when I teach the sovereignty of God is, let me introduce you to your God again. He’s a lot bigger than you think he is.

0:40:20 – (Ligon Duncan): And cause all of us are tempted, even those of us who believe in God’s sovereignty, to think too small. Thoughts of God. And so we need to be. Our eyes need to be lifted up again to just how big he is. Because that puts into proportion whatever it is that we’re going through. Because normally the way it is, the things that we’re going through are overwhelming us. They seem bigger than anything in the world.

0:40:47 – (Ligon Duncan): And there’s nothing that gives perspective than showing God is a lot bigger than this thing that you’re going through.

0:40:53 – (Matt Smethurst): At the beginning, you mentioned hearing about Reformed theology, some of your students coming into contact with it in the 90s, and I think into the 2000s, especially post 9 11, we started to see what came to be called the Reformed resurgence or the Young, restless, Reformed. And there’s, of course, a lot in those years with various leaders and things that happened a lot to lament. But some people, I think, are too quick to dismiss the fruit that did come about as a result of that awakening in the church. And I think one indisputable fruit of the Reformed resurgence is the tens of thousands of pastors, not to mention ordinary Christians, who just assume these things now in their churches.

0:41:40 – (Ligon Duncan): Right.

0:41:41 – (Matt Smethurst): And it’s not as foreign of a concept as it used to be, to your point.

0:41:45 – (Ligon Duncan): Not at all.

0:41:45 – (Matt Smethurst): And that’s a glorious thing.

0:41:46 – (Ligon Duncan): And I see it all over the world. Matt. What I love is it doesn’t come from one stream. It’s not the product of one particular author or influencer. It’s coming from. There are a lot of voices testifying to it. And I think it actually goes all the way back to the sort of the battle for the Bible period in the 1970s. So many of the people that were defending a high view of Scripture were people with the kind of view of God that we’re talking about. You think of Francis Schaeffer, you think of John Stott, you think of R.C. sproul, Jeffer, you think of J.I. packer. You can go down the list of these guys that were defending the Bible.

0:42:33 – (Ligon Duncan): They had a high view of God. And I actually think you have to have a high view of God to have a high view of Scripture. When you have the confidence in the sovereignty of God, you can have confidence in the word that he’s given us. And what happened, I think, in the 1970s is people who weren’t familiar with themes like election or predestination or the sovereignty of God necessarily in those terms, heard those teachers expounding scripture with a reverence for scripture and with the desire to see people come to faith in Christ, but also with an exceedingly high view of God’s sovereignty and salvation. And they started thinking, I’m thinking of Jim Boyce is another name that you could throw in there. They started thinking, okay, this sounds right. It sounds biblical.

0:43:24 – (Ligon Duncan): They’re arguing this from the text of scripture. Maybe this is something I should consider. And I meet it around the world today. I can’t go anywhere where I don’t find churches, church plants, missionary works, young people in churches, whether it’s South Africa or South America or the Pacific Rim, the Mideast, Europe. Everywhere I go where there are young people that are attracted to this truth. So it was. I think you’re right. It wasn’t just a phase that we went through in the 2000s.

0:44:00 – (Ligon Duncan): It’s something that has been bubbling for more than 50 years, maybe in our world. And it’s still out there. Despite all the stuff we’ve gone through in the last 15 or 20 years, it is still out there. And you’re right. I mean, when I was a teenager, none of my Baptist friends in Greenville, South Carolina would have had the inkling of what Calvinism was. And if they did, they thought it was bad. That is not the case anymore.

0:44:31 – (Ligon Duncan): There’s an ability to at least have a conversation about those things where there wouldn’t have been 50 years ago. And that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

0:44:41 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah, absolutely. And just to bring things full circle, Charles Hodge once said that the doctrines of grace humble a man without degrading him and exalt a man without inflating him. And I think if we’re going to lead our churches well, then we ourselves need to be humbled over and over again by God’s word, because otherwise we’re going to get the theology right, but get the culture wrong. And we don’t want right doctrine without a culture that flows out of it.

0:45:13 – (Ligon Duncan): And let me say, for me, that has been key, what you just said, even when we were talking the other day about evangelism. And I thought, you know, one of the things I loved about Rod Storz and David Sinclair and Max Stiles and Mark Dever, and we could go down a list of these guys that I got to see share the gospel. They cared about doctrine, they cared about their Bibles, they cared about theology. They had a high view of God, but they also had a very evident love for people.

0:45:43 – (Ligon Duncan): And that is a powerful combination when you love truth and you love people. And it’ll show in how you teach and talk about this doctrine. Because you’re not there just to. I’m not there. My goal in life is not to be right. You know I’m right, you’re wrong. I want to serve your heart. I want you to glorify and enjoy God forever. I want you to love Jesus more. I want you to have bigger views of God. I want you to be more rooted in the word of God. And so the way I talk to you about these things, things, it’s going to show. So you’re right.

0:46:20 – (Ligon Duncan): Who is it that says an arrogant Calvinist is a contradiction in terms, but sadly, those exist. Right. And so we need to mortify that. If that’s us, you’re right. Humility is something that this ought to be humility cultivating it should be. And if it’s not, the truth is going bad on us, right?

0:46:40 – (Matt Smethurst): Absolutely. Well, we hope this episode has been helpful as we think about the fact that theology and doctrine actually make life simpler. It’s not doctrine that complicates life, it’s the ignorance of doctrine, and so we want to hold up a high view of a good and gracious God. If you think this conversation would be helpful to a friend, please share it with them so we can continue helping pastors find fresh joy in the work of ministry.