Final Report from T4G

The final day of T4G was extra-ordinary. The first session was a talk on the presence of the Gospel in the theology of the early patristic church fathers. Ligon Duncan gave a historiography, "history of God's providence with our people," to show that neither should the early fathers be viewed as authoritative, nor should they be viewed has having lost the gospel so that it had to be completely recovered in the reformation. Duncan presented a third way to read the church fathers. He said they should be read, respectfully, carefully, and under the authority of Scripture." He asserted that is the way the magisterial reformers of the 16th century viewed the early fathers.
After a short break we heard from Matt Chandler. Matt shared about his experience with brain cancer and how it has impacted his life and ministry. The thing is that Matt had been preparing his people to suffer as a core value in their church since he became their pastor.
You read the AP Article about Matt's story to get more details and information on what he has been going through and the impact it is having. The extraordinary thing this week was that he was calling us to prepare our churches by pointing out the suffering in the narrative of Scripture. Matt closed by affirming from experience what we all know and had been talking about all week, "Jesus is better than Life." As Matt closed in prayer, I was broken as he prayed for his church, his wife and his children.
C.J. Mahaney followed Matt in order to encourage us to follow Matt's story and example by teaching our people to suffer. C.J. said that this should inform our teaching diet and that we should go after Job, Habakkuk, 1 Peter and other like texts that emphasise suffering well. He also gave a long list of resources he recommended in the practice and teaching of suffering. The list included "How Long Oh Lord" by D.A. Carson and "Beside Still Waters" by C.H. Spurgeon. More than anything he encouraged us to do this by being faithful to preach the Gospel to them, and to "be there at their side when they suffer." After this, the leaders of T4G laid hands on Matt and John Piper lead the entire conference in a prayer for Matt, his family, the church and for Matt's healing, while conference participants laid hands on other pastors in the crowd who are suffering with ongoing and terminal needs. It was powerful to say the least.
After this we had a long break, during which I finally got to the bookstore to buy the 2 books I wanted that they had not already given us. C.J. Mahaney closed the conference preaching from 2 Timothy 4:1-5 - Expository Faithfulness. The call was to preach the word, calling us out using D.A. Carson's biography of his father "Ordinary Pastor." In his unique way C.J. pointed out that the men we had heard this week were all extraordinary, extraordinarily gifted and extraordinary gifts tot he church and the rest of us . . . not so much. He said far too often ordinary pastors are discouraged pastors. He said that was the result of comparisons to other pastors and how we defined success in ministry. He called us to be faithful with our gifts 3 primary ways:
I. Be Faithful to the Message -
"Resolve to be unoriginal because we may not look like much, but there is power under the hood."
Be faithful in every season.
Be faithful to rebuke and reprove - you must be with your people to know what is appropriate.
Be faithful in complete patience - wait on God to move.
How?
1. Remember God's patience with you.
2. Remember sanctification is a process.
II. Be Faithful to your Ministry -
Be Sober Minded
Be Enduring Suffering
Be an Evangelist
III. Be Faithful to the Savior -
No rear-view mirror - look to the future reward.
Press into the Kingdom staying in the shadow of the cross.

Did Jesus Preach Paul's Gospel - T4G Day 2

The evening session of day 2 was amazing. I must say that it hit at my heart and made a mockery of my legalism and any self-righteousness.
The speaker was John Piper. I have included notes below but commend to you the manuscript to this message that can be found online.

Did Jesus Preach the Gospel of Evangelicalism?
The aim of my title is not to criticize the gospel of evangelicalism but to assume that it is biblical and true, and then to ask whether Jesus preached it.
Did Paul Get Jesus Right?
So the problem I am wrestling with is not whether evangelicalism gets Paul’s gospel right, but whether Paul got Jesus’ gospel right. Because I have a sense that among the reasons that some are losing a grip on the gospel today is not only the suspicion that we are forcing it into traditional doctrinal categories rather than biblical ones, but also that in our default to Pauline categories we are selling Jesus short. In other words, for some—perhaps many—there is the suspicion (or even conviction) that justification by faith alone is part of Paul’s gospel, but not part of Jesus’ gospel. And in feeling that way, our commitment to the doctrine is weakened, and we are thus less passionate to preach it and defend it as essential to the gospel. And we may even think that Jesus’ call to sacrificial kingdom obedience is more radical and more transforming than the gospel of justification by faith alone.
So I am starting where R. C. Sproul left off in his message to us yesterday. And I consider this message as an exegetical extension and defense of what he said: “If you don’t have imputation, you don’t have sola fide (faith alone), and if you don’t have sola fide, you don’t have the gospel.” And my goal is to argue that Jesus preached the gospel of justification by faith alone apart from works of the law, understood as the imputation of his righteousness through faith alone.

Piper then gave and important word about method saying, "One of my goals in this message is to fire you up for serious lifelong meditation on the four Gospels as they stand. I want you to feel the truth and depth and wonder that awaits your lifelong labor of love in pondering the inexhaustible portraits of Jesus given us by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."

"If you interpret faithfully the deeds and the words of Jesus as he is portrayed in the four Gospels, your portrait of Jesus will be historically and theologically more in accord with who he really was and what he really did than all the varied portraits of all the critical scholars who attempt to reconstruct a Jesus of history behind the Gospels."

Luke 18:9-14 -
I. The Big Picture in Luke’s Gospel
Every verse of all four Gospels is meant by the authors to be read in the shadow of the cross. When we start reading one of the Gospels, we already know how it ends—the death and resurrection of Jesus as a substitute for our sins (Mark 10:45; Matthew 26:28)—and we should have that ending in mind with every verse that we read. And this is exactly what each of the Gospels intends.
A. Jesus’ Most Explicit Reference to Isaiah 53
Jesus makes his most explicit claim to be the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. And, amazingly, he does it in a way that calls attention to Jesus’ work of justification through a righteous one, not only to the forgiveness of sins. In the garden the night before he died, Jesus said, “I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment’” (Luke 22:37).
Those words, “he was numbered with the transgressors,” are a quotation of Isaiah 53:12. The verse immediately preceding in Isaiah 53 (verse 11) speaks of many being counted righteous (justified) by the righteous one. “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11). So in the Gospel of Luke, the way Jesus saves is by shedding his blood and for the forgiveness of sins and by being a righteous one and counting many righteous.
B. Jesus speaks explicitly of justification: Luke 18:9-14.
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

II. 3 Aspects of the Pharisee’s Righteousness
There are three things we need to see about these people in verse 9 who “trusted in themselves that they are righteous.” They are represented by the Pharisee in the parable. First, his righteousness is moral. Second, his righteousness is religious or ceremonial. Third, he believes his righteousness is the gift of God.
A. Moral
First, his righteousness is moral. Verses 10-11:
B. Religious
Second, this Pharisee’s righteousness was religious or ceremonial.
C. A Gift from God
Third, he believed that this righteousness was the gift of God.
Not an Overt Legalist
Confirmation in Luke 17:10
4 Terrifying Words: “Rather Than the Other”

III. What Justified the Tax Collector?
He looked away from himself to God. He trusted in nothing in himself. He trusted in God’s mercy. And Jesus said, “God declared him righteous and acceptable.” That’s what “justified” means (see Luke 7:29).
A Clue in the Context
Luke 18:18-21.
Only One Thing Missing
One Thing or Three?
Jesus: God’s Righteous One

IV. Concluding implications and applications.

Implication #1: Jesus’ Gospel Is Also Paul’s

Implication #2: Nothing We Do Is Basis for God’s Acceptance

Implication #3: Our Standing with God Is Based on Jesus, Not Us

Implication #4: Transformation Is the Fruit, Not Root, of Justification

Implication #5: All Our Goodness Is Evidence and Confirmation, Not Grounds

Implication #6: The Gospel Is for Every Person and Every People

Implication #7: Jesus Gets the Full Glory
Don’t rob the Lord of half his glory in bringing you to God. Christ is our pardon. Christ is our perfection. Therefore, knowing that Jesus and Paul preached the same gospel, let’s join Paul from the heart in saying
I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.
In the end, we sing:
Hallelujah! All I have is Christ.
Hallelujah! Jesus is my life.

© Desiring God

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

T4G Day 2 Morning Session

What a wonderful morning we had at T4G! 7,000 strong for worship at 8:00 am and then a message from Thabiti Anyabwile of FBC Of Grand Cayman. He talked about how wrongly engaging the culture adjusts the Gospel. He started by showing the difficulty in even defining what culture is. Then he asked at what level we should be engaging culture; at the pop culture level, ethnic culture level, political level, or the high (structure ideas) level. Then the big question. When we engage culture, how do we define success? Can we know when we have effected it, and more can we ever know the results of the effect? Beyond that, do we know how much it has effected us int he process?
He said that when we set out to engage culture, we may find the Gospel adjusted in the process. He gave Four P's to avoid an adjusted gospel:
I. Paul's Pastoral Purpose - Col. 1:24-2:5; To make the word fully know and to present each one mature in Christ.
Is this our burden and purpose?
II. Evangelistic Philosophy Drives Purpose - Col. 2:6-7; Having received the Gospel, walk in its wisdom and knowledge.
How do we help people walk in the wisdom and knowledge of the Gospel?
III. Evangelistic Practice flows from Purpose - Col. 2:16-23; Judge according to the Gospel Purpose not according to culture.
Was not the first Jew a Gentile?
The church is by definition multi-ethnic, but it is not multi-cultural. We are being pushed up into Christ and being made a distinct new culture (third race). every human culture is fundamentally apostate. We are saved from it into a new life, made by adoption God's people. God gives us a distinct culture as His people and citizens of His kingdom.
IV. Evangelistic Perspective - Col. 3:1-4; Set your minds on things above, on Christ, and have the mind of God, the perspective of glory.
The results are found in Col. 3:5-11; "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all."
After a long and much needed break (Thank You Mark Dever) We heard from another master, John MacArthur. He talked about the Theology of Sleep. That's right theology of sleep. He was responding to an attack against him by one in the emergent movement who accused him of being responsible, at least in part, for the 10's of thousands of people going to hell.
His response to that "neo-Finney Pelagian" attack was that he sleeps well. "I enjoy rest and refreshment because my trust is in God." He gave Mark 4:26-29 as the Magna-Carta on Evangelism. Jesus had large crowds but few real believers and this disturbed the disciples who understood the prophecy about the liberation of Israel and the international consequences of the reign of Messiah. Jesus' response was not to change his strategy (which is the response of the flesh) but to preach the Gospel (which is the response of the Spirit).
What was Jesus' evangelistic response? "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."
He talked about John 3 where Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born again to enter the kingdom and Nicodemus knew he could not be born himself but asked how he must climb back into the womb. He talked about The second thief on the cross next to Jesus who was converted without any visible human means while the first thief perished.
He then drew our attention to the idea in the Greek text that when the soil produces by itself the word is "automatically." This is the same Divine automatically used in Acts 12:10 when the jail doors open by itself.
The conclusion is that we are the farmer, responsible for casting out the seed of the Gospel, and it is the soil that makes the difference. That soil is the hearts of people , as we learned in Mark 4:1-9 where we see the six types of soil. Jesus connects the two pictures for us in His explanation of the parables in verses 10-25. There is no description of the sower. We are just casting seed. We are the means, now the power. The power is in the seed (Romans 10). I can sow the seed, but I CAN NOT CHANGE HEARTS.
So, there are four results:
1. We sow in Humility - (4:3) It is not us, but the soil that makes the difference 30, 60, 100 fold!
2. We sow in Obedience - (21-23) Because we do possess light, we do not cover it up. We are not the power, but we are the means.
3. We sow in Diligence - (24-25) We will be measured by the same standard as our casting. Our usefulness is measured by our seed sown, and our reward will be measured likewise.
4. We sow in Confidence - (30-34) In faith, our small seed produces exponential results, so that the nations (birds) may rest in it.
The session closed with a great panel discussion including those great men, Dever, Mohler and Mahaney.
Praise God it is time for me to go back for more. I will post the results tonight - Lord Willling!
Grace and Peace!

First Day at T4G

I was a great first day at T4G. There is just something about 7,ooo people (mostly men) singing our hymns of praise at the top of their voices that gets you ready to be fed by the word. Mark Dever did not fail to bring that word in a powerful and thoughtful way. He talked abut how the church makes the gospel visible by its life and right loving obedience to the gospel.
That was followed by a message from R.C. Sproul where he outlined the antitheses of the gospel that he has seen and confronted in 50 years of ministry and the dangers of synthesis with those various antitheses. Obviously, the panel discussion that followed was GREAT!
After dinner at the Hard Rock Louisville, we were led in more rousing worship that brought us into a message by Dr. Mohler in which he outlined and defined 8 Trajectories Toward and Adjusted Gospel: Modern Trajectory, Post-Modern Trajectory, Moral Trajectory, Therapeutic Trajectory, Aesthetic Trajectory, Materialistic Trajectory, Pragmatic Trajectory, and Emotional Trajectory. It was very helpful for being able to talk about the dangers we all face as pastors and the dangers that our people confront on a daily basis in moving toward the theological tragedy of an adjusted gospel.
A panel discussion that included Dever, Mahaney, Mohler and John MacArthur concluded the night. With that, I find myself here, Mountain Dew in hand, reviewing my thoughts from the day for our mutual reflection.
Grace and Peace.

Getting Ready for T4G

Together for the Gospel: T4G 2010 Conference from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

Tuesday, April 13

9:00a – 12noon Registration

1:00p – 3:00p Session 1: Mark Dever — The Church is the Gospel Made Visible

3:00p – 3:30p Panel #1

3:30p – 5:00p Session 2: R C Sproul — The Defense and Confirmation of the Gospel — What I Have Learned in 50 years

5:00p – 7:30p Dinner

7:30p – 9:00p Session 3: Al Mohler — How Does it Happen? Trajectories Toward an Adjusted Gospel

9:00p – 9:45p Panel #2

Wednesday, April 14

8.00a – 9.30a Session 4: Thabiti Anyabwile — ‘Fine-Sounding Arguments’ — How Wrongly ‘Engaging the Culture’ Adjusts the Gospel

9:30a – 10:15a Break

10:15a – 11.30a Session 5: John MacArthur — The Theology of Sleep! (Mark 4)

11:30a – 12:15p Panel #3

12:15p – 3:00p Lunch

3:00p Wednesday Breakout Sessions
Eric Bancroft — Convincing Christianity: The Implications of a Robust Gospel in Marriage
Tony Carter — Proclaiming the Comfort of the Gospel
Kevin DeYoung — ‘Tis Mystery All, The Immortal Dies: Why the Gospel of Christ’s Suffering Is More Glorious Because God Does Not Suffer
Greg Gilbert — What Is the Gospel?
Brian Habig — Fears of the Minister
Joshua Harris — Dug Down Deep: Helping Others Build Their Lives on Christ-Centered Doctrine Michael McKinley — Unity, not Uniformity: Diversity in the Body of Christ
David Platt — An Unadjusted Gospel in an Unreached World: Connecting Gospel Theology with Urgent Missiology

4:00p – 7:00p Dinner

7:00p – 8.30p Session 6: John Piper — Did Jesus Preach the Gospel of Evangelicalism?

8:30p – 9:15p Panel #4

Thursday, April 15

8.00a – 9.15a Session 7: Ligon Duncan — Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?

9.15a – 9.30a Break

9:30a – 10:40a CJ Mahaney with Matt Chandler

10:40a – 11.10a Break

11:10a – 12:15p Session 8: CJ Mahaney — Expository Faithfulness (II Timothy 4:1-5)