A Conversation with Mark Driscoll

Mark Driscoll is one of those pastors that reformed folks don't know whether to claim or shun. After hearing this interview, I'll do more than claim him - I'll learn from him.

Justin N.

What Our People Need Most

Allen W. and myself had a wonderful time at the Theology-Driven conference at Southeastern Seminary this past Monday and Tuesday. For those of you that couldn't make it, let me highlight some of things we learned:

1. That preaching is about helping our people connect the awesome reality of the glory of God with the gritty reality of their sin-stained lives. Paul Tripp spent most of his sessions helping us to come to grips with the truth that the biggest problem in our lives is us - our own indwelling sin. He reminded us that we are to live not just in the reality of our past justification, nor just looking ahead to our future glorification, but by faith in present grace as God continues His work of santification. The local church - the particular community of believers of which we are a part - is a hugh part of that work of grace. God works through people in need of change to help others in need of change. We are "Instruments in the Redeemers' Hands" - means of grace in the lives of our brothers and sisters. Note: Dr. Tripp was a very dynamic speaker - moving around, full of passion, seldom looking at his notes. He's definitely worth listening to on his site - www.paultripp.org Also, if you listen to nothing else by him, go to the SEBTS website and listen to his first session - it was excellent.

2. That what our people need most is our own personal holiness. This truth (articulated well by Robert Murray McCheyne) was particularly fleshed out for us by Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. He was completely different from Dr. Tripp - not a very dynamic speaker, stationary behind the pulipt, seldom raising his voice (though quite humorous at times). But Dr. Ferguson is one of those rare pastors whose very presence smacks of piety. AS he preached, it was clear that he not only knows the importance of holiness, but has been actively pursuing it for decades. I learned a lot from Dr. Tripp, but hearing Dr. Ferguson was truly a real treat. His points: 1. Pastors must be growing in holiness in such a way that it is evident to their congregations. 2. Growing in holiness is about recognizing who you are in Christ - a new man. 3. Growing in holiness is accomplished through the mortification of sin and the vivification of graces. (killing sin, pursuing the fruits of the Spirit). 4. In order to help our people in sanctification, we need to help them understand what santification is. 5. In order to help out people in sanctification, we need to understand how temptation works - its inevitable cycle of attraction and deception - and teach this to our people. 6. And, what really struck me, was his reminder that we as pastors are be ambassadors for Christ to our congregation - representing Jesus to them in our attitudes, words, actions, etc. What a huge responsibility! Who is sufficient for these things? Thank God for grace.

I attended a breakout session with Dr. Jones on church discipline. It was decent but basically Peacemaker rehashed. I also attended a session with Dr. Wade where he used John 10 (Jesus as the Good Shepherd) as a model for pastors (under-shepherds). It was good, and something that I will want to bring before my church sometime in the months ahead.

All of the audio from the plenary sessions is online here - feel free to check it out.

Justin N.

Wow. Piper at His Best

Like many of you, I am thankful for the life and ministry of John Piper. Because of his influence on my life, I have often found myself being tempted to think more highly of him than I ought - as if he is not also a sinner saved by grace. That was true until a little over a year ago, when more and more of his weaknesses started to become more evident to me. I am still very thankful for him (and always will be), but I do now recognize that he is a person with faults and foibles like the rest of us.

That said, this recent post by Piper on the new DG blog was one of the best things I've read anywhere in a while. I'm posting it here in its entirety, but I'd encourage you to check out the blog at desiringgod.org.

The Morning I Heard the Voice of God
By John Piper March 21, 2007

Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I was at Shalom House in northern Minnesota on a staff couples’ retreat. It was about five thirty in the morning. I lay there wondering if I should get up or wait till I got sleepy again. In his mercy, God moved me out of bed. It was mostly dark, but I managed to find my clothing, got dressed, grabbed my briefcase, and slipped out of the room without waking up Noël. In the main room below, it was totally quiet. No one else seemed to be up. So I sat down on a couch in the corner to pray.

As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, “Come and see what I have done.” There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down.

I wondered what he meant by “come and see.” Would he take me somewhere, like he did Paul into heaven to see what can’t be spoken? Did “see” mean that I would have a vision of some great deed of God that no one has seen? I am not sure how much time elapsed between God’s initial word, “Come and see what I have done,” and his next words. It doesn’t matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me.

Then he said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, “I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man.” My heart leaped up, “Yes, Lord! You are awesome in your deeds. Yes, to all men whether they see it or not. Yes! Now what will you show me?”

The words came again. Just as clear as before, but increasingly specific: “I turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There they rejoiced in me—who rules by my might forever.” Suddenly I realized God was taking me back several thousand years to the time when he dried up the Red Sea and the Jordan River. I was being transported by his word back into history to those great deeds. This is what he meant by “come and see.” He was transporting me back by his words to those two glorious deeds before the children of men. These were the “awesome deeds” he referred to. God himself was narrating the mighty works of God. He was doing it for me. He was doing it with words that were resounding in my own mind.

There settled over me a wonderful reverence. A palpable peace came down. This was a holy moment and a holy corner of the world in northern Minnesota. God Almighty had come down and was giving me the stillness and the openness and the willingness to hear his very voice. As I marveled at his power to dry the sea and the river, he spoke again. “I keep watch over the nations—let not the rebellious exalt themselves.”

This was breathtaking. It was very serious. It was almost a rebuke. At least a warning. He may as well have taken me by the collar of my shirt, lifted me off the ground with one hand, and said, with an incomparable mixture of fierceness and love, “Never, never, never exalt yourself. Never rebel against me.”

I sat staring at nothing. My mind was full of the global glory of God. “I keep watch over the nations.” He had said this to me. It was not just that he had said it. Yes, that is glorious. But he had said this to me. The very words of God were in my head. They were there in my head just as much as the words that I am writing at this moment are in my head. They were heard as clearly as if at this moment I recalled that my wife said, “Come down for supper whenever you are ready.” I know those are the words of my wife. And I know these are the words of God.
Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe of this. The God who keeps watch over the nations, like some people keep watch over cattle or stock markets or construction sites—this God still speaks in the twenty-first century. I heard his very words. He spoke personally to me.

What effect did this have on me? It filled me with a fresh sense of God’s reality. It assured me more deeply that he acts in history and in our time. It strengthened my faith that he is for me and cares about me and will use his global power to watch over me. Why else would he come and tell me these things?

It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day. The very God of the universe speaks on every page into my mind—and your mind. We hear his very words. God himself has multiplied his wondrous deeds and thoughts toward us; none can compare with him! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told (Psalm 40:5).

And best of all, they are available to all. If you would like to hear the very same words I heard on the couch in northern Minnesota, read Psalm 66:5-7. That is where I heard them. O how precious is the Bible. It is the very word of God. In it God speaks in the twenty-first century. This is the very voice of God. By this voice, he speaks with absolute truth and personal force. By this voice, he reveals his all-surpassing beauty. By this voice, he reveals the deepest secrets of our hearts. No voice anywhere anytime can reach as deep or lift as high or carry as far as the voice of God that we hear in the Bible.

It is a great wonder that God still speaks today through the Bible with greater force and greater glory and greater assurance and greater sweetness and greater hope and greater guidance and greater transforming power and greater Christ-exalting truth than can be heard through any voice in any human soul on the planet from outside the Bible.

This is why I found the article in this month’s Christianity Today, “My Conversation with God,” so sad. Written by an anonymous professor at a “well-known Christian University,” it tells of his experience of hearing God. What God said was that he must give all his royalties from a new book toward the tuition of a needy student. What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn’t true or didn’t happen. What’s sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely-glorious communication of the living God which personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence.

I am sure this professor of theology did not mean it this way, but what he actually said was, “For years I’ve taught that God still speaks, but I couldn’t testify to it personally. I can only do so now anonymously, for reasons I hope will be clear” (emphasis added). Surely he does not mean what he seems to imply—that only when one hears an extra-biblical voice like, “The money is not yours,” can you testify personally that God still speaks. Surely he does not mean to belittle the voice of God in the Bible which speaks this very day with power and truth and wisdom and glory and joy and hope and wonder and helpfulness ten thousand times more decisively than anything we can hear outside the Bible.

I grieve at what is being communicated here. The great need of our time is for people to experience the living reality of God by hearing his word personally and transformingly in Scripture. Something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture are more powerful and more affecting to us than the inspired word of God. Let us cry with the psalmist, “Incline my heart to your word” (Psalm 119:36). “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Grant that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened to know our hope and our inheritance and the love of Christ that passes knowledge and be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 1:18; 3:19). O God, don’t let us be so deaf to your word and so unaffected with its ineffable, evidential excellency that we celebrate lesser things as more thrilling, and even consider this misplacement of amazement worthy of printing in a national magazine.

Still hearing his voice in the Bible,

Pastor John


(Justin N.)

The 9-Marks Blog

There are now way too many blogs! Any person that tries to keep up with what is happening in the blogosphere - even just the evangelical blogosphere - might as well quit his job and become an internet hermit. That's why I've chosen only 5 blogs to look at regularly (weekly):

1. Justin Taylor's Between Two Worlds
2. The T4G Blog
3. Tim Challies
4. Desiring God
5. The Pyromaniacs

(And, of course, I keep an eye on Justin C. and Jim U.'s and Randy A.'s blogs!)

(By the way, check out Challies' post on Lawson's new book: The Expository Genius of John Calvin, of which Justin C. got a taste of at the Shepherd's Conference.)

All that said, I'm going to have to add one more blog to my "absolutely must read regularly list":

Mark Dever and the team at 9marks are now beginning their own blog at 9marks.org. Here is the update about it on the T4G blog:

"CJ is wonderfully loving the ministers he is committed to caring for. Lig is building his congregation and blogging over at Ref21. Al is educating us on all manner of things in the public press today, and also blogging at AlbertMohler.com. We're going to keep blogging here, and we're discussing how we might do that more helpfully. In the meantime, look for a new 9marks blog soon, over at 9marks.org. There I and some others will be taking on issues a bit more narrowly that have to do with components of a healthy church. Remember the CT cover story last year on young, restless and reformed? To get us kicked off over at the 9marks blog, I'm going to begin with a 10-part series on where I think all these folks came from! So it should be a fun discussion."

Justin N.

Flash: Baptists Aren't Reformed

Have any of you guys seen this? On his blog, Kim Riddlebarger wrote a post titled, Why John MacArthur is Not Reformed (I think it is safe to assume this post had something to do with Johnny Mac's recent comments at the Shepherd's Conf). It's a very long post and primarily made up of an article written by Richard Muller, "How Many Points?"

Muller's (and Riddlebarger's) main argument is that a person is not "reformed" unless he holds to all of the doctrines of the old reformed confessions (including paedo-baptism).

Here's a short quote from a very long post:

The Reformed faith includes reference to total inability, unconditional election, limited efficiency of Christ's satisfaction, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints, not as the sum total of the church's confession but as elements that can only be understood in the context of a larger body of teaching including the baptism of infants, justification by grace alone through faith, the necessity of a thankful obedience consequent upon our faith and justification, the identification of sacraments as means of grace, the so-called amillennial view of the end of the world.

Whatcha think about that?

Any Experts in Student Ministry?

Lately I've been wrestling with what to do about our student ministries. I really want to get our young folks to the point where they can explain and defend the Christian faith against attacks from their unbelieving friends, the media, and false teachings.

The problem is, I can't seem to find any good resources from people who train their students well. I'm sure our ym and I could write something on our own, but I'd like some input from other places, also.

Do y'all know of any biblically sound resources for student ministry? What is your philosophy of youth ministry? What role should the church have in equipping our young people?

Wrestling With Sabbatarianism

I have spent this past week engrossed in one of the most difficult theological questions I've yet encountered: What role does the Old Testament Sabbath play in the life of New Testament Christians? I had thought lightly about this before, but never like these last few days. Besides my Bible, I have relied heavily on two books (among others): Walter Chantry's "Calling the Sabbath a Delight" (Sabbatarian), and D. A. Carson's "From Sabbath to Lord's Day" (Non-Sabbatarian). I've listened to a message by Jim Savastio (Sabbatarian), and a message by Al Mohler (Non-Sabbatarian). I've had conversations with three dear friends, two Sabbatarian, the other Non-Sabbatarian. I've spent many hours wrestling with texts, particularly Genesis 2, Exodus 20, Matthew 12, Mark 2, and Hebrews 3-4. In the end, I feel like I need a Sabbath from studying the Sabbath!

After all of this, I have seen that there are strong arguments for both positions. Here are the conclusions that I've recently come to (I'd love your opinions / critiques):

1. There is a connection between the Lord's Day and the Sabbath. Both days follow a one day in seven principle, both are concerned with the worship of God, and (primarily, I think), both days serve as identification markers of God's people. In the O.T., the Sabbath was a sign of God's covenant with Israel and identified the Israelites with Yahweh, who Himself worked six days and rested on the seventh. In a similar way, observing the Lord's Day is a key mark of someone who belongs to Christ (i.e., 1 John 2:19, etc.) Because of these observations, I can feel comfortable calling Sunday "the Christian Sabbath".

2. That said, I cannot say that I am a Sabbatarian (nor do I think they'd claim me!) I concede that there is a universal, moral aspect to the 4th commandment - namely, that it convicts all people everywhere of a failure to set aside time for the worship of God. However, I think the Bible as a whole places the Sabbath command squarely in line with the other cultic, ceremonial commands of Israel. Obviously one could argue this from Colossians 2, but I also see it in Matthew 12, and somewhat alluded to in Hebrews 4. And like the other ceremonial laws (and indeed all of the law), I see the fulfillment of the Sabbath in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is for us our Sabbath rest. Thus, I do not believe that the Lord's Day is simply the Old Testament Sabbath transferred as is to a new day. Rather, I see the Sabbath pointing towards and ultimately fulfilled in Christ. Nevertheless, the one-day-in-seven principle is carried on via the Lord's Day.

3. All of this said, I do not think that we are obligated to observe the Lord's Day in exactly the same way as the O.T. Sabbath. In fact, I think the N.T. teaches us that the primary way we observe the Lord's Day is not through physical rest, but by gathering together with other believers to encourage and admonish one another further into the rest of Christ (which is both present and future - i.e., Hebrews 4.)

I don't even know if all that makes sense, but its a snapshot of where my thinking is at the moment. Comments?

Justin N.

(State 85, Duke 80 - Go Wolfpack!)

Anyone up for a trip to D.C.?

I'm considering going to this conference in late October. Anyone interested?

By the way, an entire list of good conferences taking place this year can be found here.

Justin N.

Baptism - Forbid Them Not?

Here's another perspective on the baptism issue which I ran across at Justin Taylor's blog. The post is entitled, Forbid Them Not, and Taylor recommends the booklet written by Ted Christman, Forbid Them Not: Rethinking the Baptism and Church Membership of Children and Young People.

Here's a quote from the booklet:

In short, [disallowing the baptism of children] regrettably "forbids the children" who are truly converted to obey the Great Commission. It forbids them membership in the church. It forbids them the Lord's Table. It forbids them the pastoral oversight that rightfully belongs to all members of the church. It forbids them the sense of belonging to the family of God, even though they do in fact belong to God.

Your thoughts?

Divorce and Remarriage - A Difficult Subject

I just added the manuscript of a message I preached several months ago to our church on the subject of divorce and remarriage here. I hold to the view held by James Boice's church, Piper, and others that the marital bond is permanent and cannot be broken except by death. No local judge has the authority to break a bond that God has created. One implication of this view is that remarriage in any situation (except the death of your spouse) is adultery. For many this is a painful message to receive; for others its very controversial. I'd be interested in hearing your comments, criticisms, etc. of this view of marriage, but also your thoughts on how to preach painful and controversial truths in a loving way.

Justin N.

Also - anyone interested in having dinner with Dr. Lawrence Saturday night at Golden Corral (6pm) is welcome to come - we've reserved the back room.