Just got back from T4G, and it was a blast. I suppose the best part was the fact that 7,000 people could all gather to celebrate the gospel. The singing was almost as good as the preaching, although I think some of us wished Bob Kauflin had more than just a piano to work with. Thank you, Bob, for leading the music! The other amazing thing was the teaching, of course. This year's theme was "The (Unadjusted Gospel)". Mark Dever opened the conference with the message "The Church is the Gospel Made Visible." His theme was basically that a church behaving in the Biblical model is a picture of the gospel. Vice versa contradicts the gospel. R.C. Sproul's talk had a really long title, but was basically an expose on dialectical theology, and how dangerous it has been in the history of the church. This dovetailed right into Al Mohler's talk, "How Does it Happen? 
Trajectories toward an Adjusted Gospel." In this session, Mohler pointed out how concern with things other than the gospel has led toward adjusting the gospel. Some examples would be modernism, post-modernism, and pragmatism. Both Sproul's and Mohler's teaching included a healthy dose of history of philosophy and theology. Wednesday began with Thabiti's talk, "Fine Sounding Arguments - How Wrongly "Engaging the Culture" Adjusts the Gospel." This session was based in Col. 1:24-3:4, and outlined Paul's pastoral purpose, and how we can appropriate it. There were some really deep ideas here that I wished Biti-Baw could have developed further, but I list some of the highlights: All human culture is fundamentally
apostate, therefore only the church can be the social gospel. We "engage the culture" by preaching the gospel. We are not judged by the sensibilities of others, but by the gospel. God gives the church a culture. This is why the Jews who comprised the early church changed. It was not the gospel that adjusted to their Judaism, but vice versa. John MacArthur's talk was entitled "The Theology of Sleep", which is a bit misleading. The point was that we sow the seed of the gospel, but can do nothing to make it grow. The sleep metaphor comes from the idea that a farmer plants a seed, goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, something has grown. MacArthur said some very, very powerful things. It is easy to see how he has grown such a following, in spite of his humble nature. Favorite quote: "We are sowing synthetic seed and growing mutations." Also, he said something to the effect of "After every miracle Jesus told his followers not to tell anyone. After every miracle except one: His resurrection. Then he told them to tell everybody." The point being that the purpose of Christ's mission was not to heal, or feed, or raise from the dead, but to redeem a people for himself. I thought that was very powerful.
The breakout sessions were sheer torture. Not because they were terrible, but because I could only go to one! I struggled mightily in the spirit between DeYoung and Platt, but finally chose DeYoung because I liked the title better. He did not disappoint, but I heard that Platt was also awesome. Kevin DeYoung (of "Why We Are Not Emergent" fame) had another long, Puritan-esque title, but was basically talking about the much abused doctrine of God's impassibility. This traditional doctrine states that God is incapable of being acted upon apart from His own will, which prevents God from suffering in the sense that you and I do. It sounds like an esoteric topic, but this concept has been under fire for some time from nonsense like "the Shack" and Brian McLaren in the popular realm, to nonsense like open theism and process theology in the academic realm. De Young basically gave five reasons for impassibility, and five reasons why impassibility is good news.1. The weight of church history supports impassibility.
2. The Bible teaches that God does not change.
3. God's emotional life is not identical to ours (VanHoozer: "God's emotions are concern-based construals with value."
4. What is said about Christ cannot necessarily be said about God.
5. Without impassibility, the necessity of the incarnation is lost (Hebrews 2:10).
Five reasons why this is good news:
1. We have an unchanging God who is not in the same mess we are in.
2. This unchanging God who is ontologically outside our mess is nevertheless involved in our mess by His own choice, making it all the more special.
3. God's love is freely given, not driven by inner emotional need. God always acts out of overflow, not need.
4. The incarnation is not God relieving His own suffering, but voluntarily suffering with us.
5. Only an impassible God become man to experience our suffering can really help us.
Wednesday evening wrapped up with John Piper preaching on "Did Jesus Preach the Gospel of Evangelicalism?" First, I was unaware that Piper was so small. I thought he was 8 feet tall and ate large mammals for breakfast. Second, Piper has an electrifying stage presence. The impetus for Piper's talk was the old argument that the kingdom teaching of Jesus aborted, and gave way to the gospel teaching of Paul. Piper is presuming that the gospel of evangelicalism is the gospel of Paul. Piper took the time to outline his methodology, in which he established that he would not separate the gospels from the "historical" Jesus, as modern historical Jesus scholars do. Then, he went to the passage in Luke with the publican and pharisee. His analysis demonstrated that the Pharisee's righteousness was moral, religious, and from God. But the Publican looked away from himself. He knew there was nothing good in himself. From this, Piper drew seven implications. 1. Jesus taught justification by faith through imputation.
2. No matter how righteous one is (and even if that righteousness is from God), do not trust in that righteousness.
3. Take heart if you suffer from indwelling sin - your standing is not based in self, but in Another.
4. All moral transformation is the fruit of our salvation, and not the root.
5. In the judgment, our works will never show our righteousness, but only evidence our justification.
6. The gospel is universally needed and should be proclaimed to all peoples.
7. We are not told in vain to confess our sins daily.
Ligon Duncan began Thursday's worship with a talk entitled "Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?" It was fascinating enough to keep me awake in spite of one hour of sleep the night before (God was dealing strongly with me, but we also stayed up late playing a card game called "scum", and discussing the day's theology). Lig offered two helpful resources on patristics: Patristics for busy pastors, an online resource; and "Augustine of Hippo" by Peter Brown. Ligon then went on to quote C.S. Lewis' introduction to Athanasius' "De Incarnation De Verbi Dei", in which he pointed out that use of the patristics and historical theology act as a balance to the modern era. Ligon set his talk over against two wrong understandings of historical theology, the first being that the fathers contradict the Reformation teaching of salvation by grace, and the second being that the gospel was lost in between Paul and the Reformation. He demonstrated that the fathers do write of salvation by grace through faith via imputation. He also concludes that the fathers are helpful to our theology, but are neither complete, nor authoritative.The next session was Matt Chandler who gave a testimony of his suffering (he recently had a brain tumor removed, and I have to say that the scar is AWESOME). His basic point was that God does not deliver us from suffering, but through suffering. While the modern prosperity gospel has done much to deny the suffering of Christians, it will happen, and we pastors must teach our congregations to prepare for suffering. It ended with a time of prayer for Matt and for others who were suffering.
The last session was a sort of "application" message by C.J. Mehanney entitled "Expository Faithfulness" and based in 2 Tim. 4:1-5. He began by reminding us that we are all often tempted to compare ourselves with others. He exhorted everyone to be not jealous, but faithful. We must be faithful to the message, faithful to our own ministry, and faithful to our savior. He also said two things that stuck with me: "Resolve to be un-original" and "Yesterday's grace is never enough." Overall, the conference was great reminder of how the gospel gets adjusted, and how to avoid adjusting it ourselves. I also got to meet some cool people and be hugely encouraged. By the way, if you are ever in Louisville for T4G or otherwise, make sure you visit Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and take the campus tour. It is at least a chance to seem some beautiful old architecture (designed by some of the greatest architects in the world), as well as some cool stuff in the library, including a real mummy.
I would like to thank all the people who made T4G a reality for me. Thank you, David Hamilton for driving us around! I would like to extend special thanks and love to pastor Travis and the eldership at Baptist Church of the Redeemer for enabling this life-changing experience. Travis, you serve us well. Last of all, I would like to thank my beautiful and precious wife for holding down the fort so I could experience this. Baby, you're the greatest!
As usual, I am amazed at how relevant Baxter's work is. So much of what he writes about has immediate correlation in our modern context! This chapter deals with some of the pitfalls common to preachers. First, Baxter deals with pride and humiliation. He points out an important aspect of reformed living - repentance always follows sorrow. But this logic only works one way. If we are truly repentant, we will have a deep, Godly sorrow for our sin. But being sorry for sin does not necessarily lead to repentance - there has to be an actual change in behavior! This seems to parallel the words of the Apostle. There is a worldly sorrow, which leads only to death, and there is a Godly sorrow which leads to repentance. By examining these we can judge our own hearts. If we come to the Lord continuously, agonizing over the same sin, we may not be truly repentant. Sometimes, we want our sin and forgiveness. We want to continue stroking our lusts while receiving God's forgiveness and acceptance. Baxter doesn't work out his theology very well here - in light of modern "once saved, always saved", Baxter probably sounds like an Arminian. I won't dissect his soteriology here, but would only point out that his observations are correct. Namely, how can we as pastors decry sin and urge repentance when we haven't repented ourselves? If we do not see a benefit sufficient to change our lives, why urge it on others?
New Testament reading? Old Testament reading? Public Scripture reading? Some good advice, 
