Basics Final Reflections

What a conference it was this year! Basics is always a great experience, but this year was really a treat. I've reflected on Monday's messages already, so I'll pick up with Tuesday. There were two morning sessions on Tuesday. In the first, Alistair Begg preached his first message on the importance of persuasive preaching, drawn from 2 Corinthians 5. Alistair gave a great challenge to a largely-reformed crowd to not let our belief in the sovereignty of God become an excuse for dispassionate, unpersuasive preaching. Following a coffee break, John Piper gave his second sermon, "Preaching Regeneration Undiminished," from John 3. It was a fantastic call to pastors to truly comprehend the weight and glory of the new birth, and to know and preach God's great salvific love for his people, a love that is "greater than the love of John 3:16."

After lunch (Chick-fil-A!!!), I attended a seminar by blogger-extraordinaire Tim Challies on "Training Your Church to think Biblically." Challies had some great practical advice, and his Q&A time was especially helpful. After an afternoon break and everybody's favorite dinner, barbeque night, John Lennox preached the evening session on "Using Scripture to Engage the Mind and Imagination." As I remarked before, it was perhaps the most powerful sermon I've ever heard. Take an hour this weekend and listen to it, and I promise you'll end the hour with a more magnificent view of God and his rule than you began it with. Afterwards, we had an informal Q&A with Alistair, a time that is always interesting and - thanks to his wit - very entertaining.

Wednesday morning began with a Q&A time with all the speakers and then concluded with Alistair's second sermon on persuasive preaching, this time from Acts 26. He broke down Paul's address to Agrippa wonderfully, and gave us a powerful charge to take a "foolish" gospel to a "wise" world with full confidence and expectation in its power. It was a great note to end the conference on.

It was a long drive home, complete with an Ohio monsoon and a nail in our tire, so it was certainly good to get back home to my wife and baby girl - who amazes me at how much she can grow up in three days. The conference was a time of tremendous spiritual refreshment and encouragement for me, and I would recommend a trip up next year to any pastor or church leader. Though the speakers have not been set yet, Alistair revealed a short list that includes Tim Keller, C.J. Mahaney, and Sinclair Ferguson. In short, I think we'll be OK.

Basics Quotables, Day 2

Some nuggets of pure gold from day two...

"From the first page of the Bible it is abundantly clear that God kicks the legs out from under the stools on which his servants seek to sit comfortably." - Alistair Begg

"Men are frightened that they may be involved in seeing the non-elect get saved. The benefit of the restoration of the reformation principles in the area of soteriology carries with it the danger that men who are unwilling to wrestle with the antinomies of the Bible will be silenced in their gospel proclamation. We dare not hide behind our inability or unwillingness to bow beneath the immensity of Scripture and thus fail to be persuasive in our preaching." - Alistair Begg

"Wherever there is faith the width of the strand of a spider's web, the fullness of redeeming grace is there." - John Murray

"How do you know you're going to wake up a Christian tomorrow morning? The only way you know [you won't fall away] is 'God won't let it happen.'" - John Piper

"Christ says, I'm sending you to open their eyes, to take out the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh, to raise the dead. But you say, 'But I can't open thier eyes, I can't make a new heart, I can't raise the dead.' You can't create electricity or make light, but it never stops you from flipping switches. You can't create internal combustion, but it never stops you from turning the key. You can't create cell tissue, but it never stops you from eating. When you speak, God raises the dead." - John Piper

"It seems that some people trumpet a childish faith as if it were the childlike faith that Jesus demands." - Tim Challies

"Through your preaching, you not only teach your congregation what to believe, you teach them how to believe." - Tim Challies

"If you're not careful, you'll end up studying Scripture to find sermons rather than to get to know God." - John Lennox

"Life is an illumination that points us to God. If you try to explain life without the throne of God, it ends up without significance." - John Lennox

"Imagine it - your last tear will be wiped away by the very governor of the universe." - John Lennox

Is Smoking Sinful?

Tim Challies takes up a thoughtful examination of that question. I think he hits on a lot of good points here, and examines things fairly. My conclusion is pretty similar to his - no, smoking is not necessarily sinful, though an addiction to it could be. The Bible has nothing to say about the subject whatsoever, so I would have major concerns with someone who would say that it unequivocally is sinful - that is the territory of legalism. Can good arguments be made against smoking? Sure - though Challies shows that these reasons aren't as airtight as they might seem when viewed with consistency across the spectrum of the Christian life. In any regard, it's a good article to get you thinking about how we define sin. Check it out, and if you've got thoughts on the issue, let me know in the comments.

Don't Let Your Cell Phone Rule You

"Technology is a great servant but an evil master. Technology is proof of the greatness and grace of God and something we ought to be thankful for. But why, then, have so many of us allowed it to rule and govern our lives?" - Tim Challies

Memorizing Scripture Together

Tim Challies is starting a great new effort for fellow members of the blogosphere to memorize Scripture together. Through regular emails sent out by Tim, everyone will join in seeking to slowly memorize longer chunks of Scripture (ex. whole Psalms, chapters, and possibly an entire book). Personally, I know how rewarding it was a couple years back when I attempted to memorize Philippians. I tailed off after chapter 1, but ever since I've had a desire (but sadly not the discipline) to try again. I think this will be a great accountability tool for me. Head over to Tim's blog to join up!