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

Basics Reflections, Monday Night

What a day! Monday at Basics is always crazy - getting up at 6:30 to drive from Louisville to Cleveland, check into our hotel, and head straight over to the conference to walk in just in time for the first seminar. Loads of great preaching, some good food, a rekindling of old friendships, and here I sit at 10:40 ready to pass out before getting up tomorrow at 7:00 and starting another day. It's a blast!

Today, I attended a seminar by John Piper on ministry under the motif of 1 Corinthians 1:24 - working for the joy of our people in Christ. The topic and the message was a familiar one for anyone who's ever heard Piper, but his passion is always refreshing and his Q&A afterwards yielded some good information. John Lennox led the first session, and delivered a fantastic introduction to his topic this week - preaching as an engagement of the mind. After his sermon, I can't wait to hear him tomorrow - his perspective on the Gospel and reason as intrinsically connected was fascinating and a great encouragement to live a life that begs the question by our hope and engages the world with the truth of the gospel with intellectual confidence but ultimately a trust in God's power. Piper preached the evening session on "Preaching Justification Undiminished." The sermon, focused primarily on Philippians, reflected his pastor's heart on the topic of justification by faith - specifically, the imputed righteousness of Christ - an overview of his study and concerns and the recent debate between he and N.T. Wright. Peppered in between with hymns by the Gettys, familiar and new, it was a great day of worship that has me feeling refreshed and refocused on the greatness of our God.

I'm going to fall asleep at my keyboard if I keep going for much longer, so goodnight, God bless, and I'll try to post an update during our break tomorrow afternoon.

Basics Quotables, Day 1

"The saltiest thing the world will ever taste is Christians who don't lose their joy when they're being hammered." - John Piper

"Have you ever noticed that people who claim not to be learned in the Scriptures can tell you everything about the stock market, thought they are not stock brokers. They can tell you every detail about the Kansas City Chiefs, though they are not professional football players. Yet they cannot tell you anything about James or Romans." - John Lennox

"Paul everywhere used his reason and his intellect to his help, but he didn't trust it - he trusted God. Paul used every ability that God had given him, but he trusted God...it's not one or the other. Pitting reason against the Holy Spirit is a false dichotomy. We need to be very careful not to find a theological reason for being intellectually lazy." - John Lennox

"When you hear [liberal theologians] talk about being "global" and "loving," it sounds so right - because it is! But it's been gutted from the inside [by the removal of the Gospel]!" - John Piper

Here I Go Again!

Well, tomorrow morning I'll be headed off to Cleveland for the 2009 Basics Conference for Pastors. Alistair Begg's annual conference, which I've attended since 2006, starts tomorrow afternoon and will feature Alistair, John Piper, and Dr. John Lennox. Can't wait! I'll be taking my laptop along to post reflections throughout the week, but you can also head over to Tim Challies' blog for a liveblog of the event.

A Comprehensive Challenge

Though I've never been able to attend the Together For the Gospel conference, I listened to audio of all the messages from last year's edition and found them extremely challenging, convicting, and encouraging. I'd heard a couple of the messages from the 2006 conference, but not all of them, so I was excited recently to begin reading Preaching the Cross, a book written by the conference speakers that encapsulates the content of their messages. The book is not an exact transcript or reproduction of the sermons, but the content is very similar.

Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney, John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C Sproul each contribute a chapter, and all of them are quite helpful in their own right. The book is, as the title suggests, built around the centrality of Christ's atonement in preaching. Each writer's work is related to that theme, but each is very different in its focus - a fact that keeps the book fresh throughout and makes it a valuable tool in many different areas. My favorite chapters were likely Sproul's refelctions on the centrality of justification by faith, Duncan's insights on preaching Christ from the Old Testament, and Mahaney's hard-hitting call to a careful watch on one's own life. Content-wise, the book was excellent. My only complaint is that at times it reads like a book of sermons, with the unshakable feeling that to hear these messages preached would be far more engaging than simply reading them. I wouldn't call the writing flat, but the whole endeavor did at times betray itself as a book that is a byproduct of another medium. If you attended T4G 2006, you may want to take a pass on this one, since it will be largely summary and retread. However, if you're like me and did not attend, you'll find a lot of benefit in this book. The subject of the cross in preaching is covered from nearly every conceivable angle, a great help for the pastor who seeks to leave no stone unturned is his proclamation of Christ crucified - the only hope for our people and for us.

Consider Me Counting Down

One of my favorite times of every year is my annual trip with good friends in the ministry to Cleveland, Ohio for Alistair Begg's Basics Conference for Pastors. This past week, the brochure for this year's edition, held May 11-13, was released, and the lineup looks as good as ever. Alistair, my favorite preacher, will be speaking as always, and this year he will be joined by Dr. John Piper and Dr. John Lennox, professor of mathematics at Oxford (and father of songwriter Kristyn Getty) under the theme, "Minds Stirred, Wills Urged, and Affections Renewed." This will be my fifth year attending the conference, and if you've never been, I can't urge you strongly enough to go. It's an incredibly refreshing and challenging experience, and the people of Parkside are among the most hospitable you'll ever meet. You can now register online. See you in Cleveland!

Fifteen Pro-Life Truths

From John Piper...

1. Existing fetal homicide laws make a man guilty of manslaughter if he kills the baby in a mother's womb (except in the case of abortion).

2. Fetal surgery is performed on babies in the womb to save them while another child the same age is being legally destroyed.

3. Babies can sometimes survive on their own at 23 or 24 weeks, but abortion is legal beyond this limit.

4. Living on its own is not the criterion of human personhood, as we know from the use of respirators and dialysis.

5. Size is irrelevant to human personhood, as we know from the difference between a one-week-old and a six-year-old.

6. Developed reasoning powers are not the criterion of personhood, as we know from the capacities of three-month-old babies.

7. Infants in the womb are human beings scientifically by virtue of their genetic make up.

8. Ultrasound has given a stunning window on the womb that shows the unborn at eight weeks sucking his thumb, recoiling from pricking, responding to sound. All the organs are present, the brain is functioning, the heart is pumping, the liver is making blood cells, the kidneys are cleaning fluids, and there is a fingerprint. Virtually all abortions happen later than this date.

9. Justice dictates that when two legitimate rights conflict, the limitation of rights that does the least harm is the most just. Bearing a child for adoption does less harm than killing him.

10. Justice dictates that when either of two people must be inconvenienced or hurt to alleviate their united predicament, the one who bore the greater responsibility for the predicament should bear more of the inconvenience or hurt to alleviate it.

11. Justice dictates that a person may not coerce harm on another person by threatening voluntary harm on themselves.

12. The outcast and the disadvantaged and exploited are to be cared for in a special way, especially those with no voice of their own.

13. What is happening in the womb is the unique person-nurturing work of God, who alone has the right to give and take life.

14. There are countless clinics that offer life and hope to both mother and child (and father and parents), with care of every kind lovingly provided by people who will meet every need they can.

15.Jesus Christ can forgive all sins, and will give all who trusts him the help they need to do everything that life requires.

HT: Vitamin Z

Being Pro-Life Christians Under A Pro-Choice President

John Piper has re-posted an excerpt from a sermon he preached in 1993 as President Clinton took office. I think it is relevant and helpful to those who still believe in the right to life of the unborn. As our nation celebrates the inauguration of a new President today, may we seek to humbly live out our convictions, no matter the political climate.

HT: Denny Burk

Christmas Eve Reflections

As you enjoy this evening with family and friends, I leave you with "A Big God For Little People - Seven Christmas Eve Meditations." It was written by John Piper in 1980, and I found it a great tool for focusing my thoughts on the significance of Christ's birth. Give it a read, and may God's grace dwell in you richly this Christmas.

The Supremacy of Christ

I found this very powerful...



HT: Vitamin Z

Further Proof That...

...John Piper is bad.

HT: Joshua Harris