On this Saturday night we end the week with a modest tribute to noted Reformed minister of the Word, theologian, teacher, and apologist, Robert Charles Sproul, (“R.C.”), who passed away this past Thursday, December 14 at the age of 78.
You may know that I count him one of the most significant and influential Reformed teachers and preachers of the past century, and I have personally benefited from his ministry, Ligonier, including his many books and Tabletalk magazine. Though not always in agreement with Sproul’s teachings, I nevertheless always knew what he taught and found him always expounding God’s truth on the basis of Scripture, the creeds, and the sound tradition of the church fathers. Few churchmen have the breadth of knowledge Sproul had and few communicate it as plainly and popularly (for the people) as he did.
You will find many tributes to “R.C.” on the web at present. I would start with Ligonier’s itself, if you are interested (and you ought to be).
If you want to listen to a fine speech Sproul gave some eleven years ago, I encourage you to watch the video below. It is vintage Sproul – powerful, passionate, and full of sound biblical teaching.
Having quoted Sproul many times since I started my blog, I did a quick search and found this gem from his classic work on God’s holiness. May it lead you and me to find our deepest joy and pleasure in worshiping the God whom “R.C.” now worships in perfection.
If people find worship boring and irrelevant, it can only mean they have no sense of the presence of God in it. When we study the action of worship in Scripture and the testimony of church history, we discover a variety of human responses to the sense of the presence of God. Some people tremble in terror, falling with their face to the ground; others weep in mourning; some are exuberant in joy; still others are reduced to a pensive silence. However the reactions may differ among human beings to the holiness of God, one thing I never ever find in scripture is someone who is bored in the presence of God, or someone who walks away from an encounter with the living God and says “that was irrelevant”.
There is no encounter a human being could ever have that is more relevant to daily life than meeting up with the living God. … You were not created to be bored by the glory of God, you have to be spiritually dead to be bored by the glory of God.
– R. C. Sproul “The Holiness of God”
*Nota Bene: Crossway Publishers is also offering for a limited time a free copy of Sproul’s book Justified by Faith Alone. Check that out here.
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