The Gospel Coalition

Vern Poythress:

Many Western humanists expect the state to cure all ills. When they see a problem, such as suicide, drug addiction, oppression, war, poverty, sexual exploitation, racial hatred, or mere ignorance, they are greatly distressed. Their feelings of distress and indignation are in a sense proper, but because they do not admit that the root of these ills is found in human sin, they look for immediately engineered human solutions. After all, if human nature is basically good, the difficulty must not really be that intractable. It must be solvable, and solvable now. Any delay is reprehensible. The state has the maximum concentration of power and resources for the job. Hence the state must institute a program to solve the problem. If the problem cannot be solved merely by throwing money at it, then a state-run educational program can do the job.

Hence in the twentieth century we have seen the growth of huge state bureaucracies. Moreover, in many political arguments it is simply assumed that the state is the proper agent for the job. The debates tend to be confined to the question of expediency and quantity: whether the citizens are willing to foot the bill for still another program, and whether one program rather than another will be effective.

We must break out of this foolishness. The state is not god, nor is it the savior of humanity. It cannot remedy all ills. Moreover, contrary to humanist thinking, the state’s legitimate authority is limited by God. The state does not have the right simply to meddle in any affair that it chooses. Only God has universal, unbounded authority. The authority of the state consists only in what has been delegated to it by God. The state must confine itself to doing those things for which it has a God-given responsibility.

Hence, when we see some difficulty in the world, we must not immediately clamor for state action to eliminate the difficulty. It is not enough merely to demonstrate that there is a difficulty, and that the difficulty is serious. We must always ask what are the just means for dealing with the difficulty. We must not blindly assume that state action is appropriate or approved by God. Prayer, individual action, action by churches, action by voluntary organizations, and other forms of action are all alternatives. State action needs to be justified as part of the legitimate sphere of authority given to the state. Such action is appropriate not merely if we can show that it might “help” in some pragmatic sense, but only if we can show in addition that it is just when measured by the limited authority that God has given to the state.

—Vern S. Poythress, “False Worship in the Modern State,” The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1991), 291-2. For his positive take on what should be the case, see “Principles of Justice for the Modern State.”

Michael Horton:

In “Young, Restless, Reformed” circles, a new generation is discovering Jonathan Edwards and “masculine Christianity” in one fell swoop. Weaned on romantic—even sentimental—images of a deity who seems to exist to ensure our emotional and psychic equilibrium, many younger Christians (especially men) are drawn to a robust vision of a loving and sovereign, holy and gracious, merciful and just, powerful and tender King. . . .

I get the point about a “soft” ministry, especially worship, with its caressing muzak and the inoffensive drone of its always-affirming message. It’s predictably and tediously “safe.” Get the women there and they’ll bring their husbands and children. Not only has that not worked, it’s sure to bore any guy who doesn’t want to hear childrearing tips or yet another pep talk on how to have better relationships.

. . . [But] are we really ready to identify shallow sentimentalism with “feminization” of the church? Do godly women want this any more than men? . . .

The stereotypes can be as belittling to men as to women. Jesus’ disciples were, well, disciples. They followed Jesus and listened intently to his teaching. Not incidentally, there were women, too. Mary broke the stereotype by being catechized by Jesus when her sister Martha thought she should be making coffee for the next group. . . .

In the drive to make churches more guy-friendly, we risk confusing cultural (especially American) customs with biblical discipleship. One noted pastor has said that God gave Christianity a “masculine feel.” Another contrasted “latte-sipping Cabriolet drivers” with “real men.” Jesus and his buddies were “dudes: heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes.” Real Christian men like Jesus and Paul “are aggressive, assertive, and nonverbal.” Seriously?

The back story on all of this is the rise of the “masculine Christianity movement” in Victorian England, especially with Charles Kingsley’s fictional stories in Two Years Ago (1857). D. L. Moody popularized the movement in the United States and baseball-player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday preached it as he pretended to hit a home run against the devil. For those of us raised on testimonies from recently converted football players in youth group, Tim Tebow is hardly a new phenomenon. Reacting against the safe deity, John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart (2001) offered a God who is wild and unpredictable. Neither image is grounded adequately in Scripture. With good intentions, the Promise Keepers movement apparently did not have a significant lasting impact. Nor, I predict, will the call of New Calvinists to a Jesus with “callused hands and big biceps,” “the Ultimate Fighting Jesus.”

You can read the whole thing here.

Is Horton on to something? Is he missing anything in this discussion?

Kyle Smith has a helpful piece in the New York Post exploring various parallels between Aldous Huxley’s 1932 sci-fi dystopian novel Brave New World and the reality 80 years later. Here’s the opening:

If Orwell’s “1984″ is a cautionary tale about what we in the capitalist West largely avoided, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is largely about what we got — a consumerist, post-God happyland in which people readily stave off aging, jet away on exotic vacations and procreate via test tubes. They have access to “Feelies” similar to IMAX 3-D movies, no-strings-attached sex, anti-anxiety pills and abortion on demand. They also venerate a dead high-tech genius, saying “Ford help him” in honor of Henry Ford just as today we practically murmur “In Jobs We Trust.”

In many ways the book, which was published 80 years ago this winter, has become sci-non-fi. It is still developing, taking on additional richness according to the times in which we read it.

You can read the rest here. One more excerpt:

Huxley also foresaw a disturbing partnership between the state and capitalism but didn’t anticipate how little need for government collusion sophisticated marketers would need to reorder society. In “Brave New World,” the state has suppressed all simple sports because they don’t require lots of expensive equipment to keep the economy humming. Instead, it relentlessly hypes complicated tech-y activities such as “electromagnetic golf.” A couple of generations ago, kids might have bought one baseball glove and one bat that would last for years. Today they instead spend hundreds of dollars on Xbox 360s and games that quickly become boring and demand to be replaced with upgraded versions.

Thanks to subliminal messages repeated thousands of times in nurseries while kids sleep, the “Brave New World” characters grow up conditioned to accept a disposable society in which everyone is always hungry for the latest thing and simply discards the old. Huxley would be surprised to see that no such indoctrination is necessary to make people throw away an iPhone that was state of the art three years ago and line up overnight to get a slightly improved version.

In his classic Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Neil Postman argued that Huxley’s dystopia was coming to fruition more than that of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949):

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing.

Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression.

But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.

Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us.

Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

. . . Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

If you haven’t kept up to speed on what’s going on at Vanderbilt University, see this summary from Albert Mohler’s longer article:

Vanderbilt’s administration decided to push secularism to the extreme — launching a virtual vendetta against religious organizations on campus. Officials of the university informed religious groups that had been recognized student organizations that they would have to comply with an absolute non-discrimination policy. This means that religious organizations (primarily Christian) must now allow any Vanderbilt student to be a candidate for a leadership office, regardless of religious beliefs or sexual orientation. In other words, a Christian student group would be forced to allow the candidacy of an atheist. A group of Christians who believe in the Bible’s standard of sexual morality would be required to allow the candidacy of a homosexual member. There can be absolutely no discrimination, the university insists, even if that means that Christian organizations are no longer actually Christian.

In reality, that is the aim. The university is embarrassed again — this time by the mere presence of Christian organizations on its campus. It will deal with that embarrassment by eliminating the right of Christian organizations to operate on Christian principles. It will impose its own Stalinist definition of tolerance and freedom and deny the right of Christian students to participate in recognized campus organizations that can remain authentically Christian.

The provost of the university recently defended the policy, stating that student organizations may elect their own leaders, but may not disqualify any candidate based on, among other things, religious beliefs or sexual orientation.

See also David French’s post at NationalReview.com, “Vanderbilt University Insults Our Intelligence.” An excerpt:

The reality, of course, is that Vanderbilt is trying to force the orthodox Christian viewpoint off campus. The “nondiscrimination” rhetoric is mere subterfuge. How can we know this? Because even as it works mightily to make sure that atheists can run Christian organizations, it is working just as mightily to protect the place and prerogatives of Vanderbilt’s powerful fraternities and sororities — organizations that explicitly discriminate, have never been open to “all comers,” and cause more real heartache each semester for rejected students than any religious organization has ever inflicted in its entire history on campus. Vanderbilt’s embattled religious organizations welcome all students with open arms; Vanderbilt’s fraternities and sororities routinely reject their fellow students based on little more than appearance, family heritage, or personality quirks.

This is an important week on campus, as the Board of Trustees gathers and the students have planned several events of prayer, awareness, and hospitality. They’ve also produced this helpful video:

You can hear the audio to this message here.

This message has two parts.

In the first part I will try to draw you into my amazement that I am still a Christian and still love the ministry of the word.

And in the second part I will try to draw you into an analysis of how that happened.

Our text is the book of Jude, and our focus will be mainly on verses 24 and 25.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

1. My Amazement that I Am Still a Christian

This year I complete:

• 60 years as a believer,
• 32 years pastoring Bethlehem Baptist Church,
• 44 years of marriage to Noël, and
• 40 years of being a father.

These are momentous days for me as we plan for my successor to assume responsibilities at Bethlehem. If there is a T4G in 2014, and if I am invited to come, I will not be speaking as the preaching pastor of Bethlehem. This is my last T4G as a pastor.

When I think about finishing these laps in my race, I am simply amazed that I have lasted:

• lasted as Christian,
• lasted as a pastor,
• lasted as a husband and father.

This excerpt from my journal of 1986 is the sort of emotional vulnerability that I have dealt all my life. There were reasons when it seemed like I simply could not last. I was 40 years old. I had been at the church for six years. My four sons were ages 14, 11, 7 and 3.

Am I under attack by Satan to abandon my post at Bethlehem? Or is this the stirring of God to cause me to consider another ministry? Or is this God’s way of answering so many prayers recently that we must go a different way at BBC than building? I simply loathe the thought of leading the church through a building program. For two years I have met for hundreds of hours on committees. I have never written a poem about it. It is deadening to my soul. I am a thinker. A writer. A preacher. A poet and songwriter. At least these are the avenues of love and service where my heart flourishes. . . .

Can I be the pastor of a church moving through a building program? Yes, by dint of massive will power and some clear indications from God that this is the path of greatest joy in him long term. But now I feel very much without those indications. The last two years (the long range planning committee was started in August 1984) have left me feeling very empty.

The church is looking for a vision for the future—and I do not have it. The one vision that the staff zeroed in on during our retreat Monday and Tuesday of this week (namely, building a sanctuary) is so unattractive to me today that I do not see how I could provide the leadership and inspiration for it.

Does this mean that my time at BBC is over? Does it mean that there is a radical alternative unforeseen? Does it mean that I am simply in the pits today and unable to feel the beauty and power and joy and fruitfulness of an expanded facility and ministry?

O Lord, have mercy on me. I am so discouraged. I am so blank. I feel like there are opponents on every hand, even when I know that most of my people are for me. I am so blind to the future of the church. O Father, am I blind because it is not my future? Perhaps I shall not even live out the year, and you are sparing the church the added burden of a future I had made and could not complete?

I do not doubt for a moment your goodness or power or omnipotence in my life or in the life of the church. I confess that the problem is mine. The weakness is in me. The blindness is in my eyes. The sin—O reveal to me my hidden faults!—is mine and mine the blame. Have mercy, Father. Have mercy on me. I must preach on Sunday, and I can scarcely lift my head.

That was 26 years ago. Same church. We built that building—and another one and another one. I hated it every time.

There were worse days—way worse days. Days when the marriage was under attack. Days when the soul was so numb I feared for my faith.

So, looking back, I am amazed [laughs!] that I’m a Christian today and am about to finish my pastorate at Bethlehem.

If—

• my faith in Jesus, and
• my eagerness to know him and his word, and
• my thrill at preaching, and
• my love for the church, and
• my fitness for ministry, and
• my fitness for heaven, and
• my sexual continence, and
• my spiritual marriage commitment to Noël

—depended decisively on me, I would have

• ceased to be a Christian long ago
• ceased to care about the word of God or thrill at exposition
• given up on the church
• ceased to be fit for ministry or heaven
• given myself to sexual indulgence, and
• ceased to be married to Noël.

I have no doubt about this—at all.

If the decisive cause for my faithfulness to Christ in any of those expressions must come from me, it will not come, because it is not there.

Therefore, the older I get, the more I am amazed, and full of wonder and thankfulness, that I am still a Christian—that I still love the word of God—more precious than gold, even much fine fold, and sweeter than honey and drippings from the honey comb—and that I still love the ministry of the word and the church of Christ, and that I still have not unfit myself for the eldership, and have still not given myself over to pornography or adultery, and that after 43 years I love my wife with the love of Christ. These things are to me utterly amazing.

So that I feel some sense of the wonder that Jude seems to feel. Because that’s what it took to keep me a Christian for sixty years, and to keep me alive in the pastoral ministry at Bethlehem for 32 years, and to keep me obediently married for 43 years—glory and majesty and dominion and authority, working before the creation ever existed, and working every present moment of my life, and working into the future to keep me holy and happy for ever.

That’s what it took to keep me from falling—and what it will take to get me home before the presence of his glory, blameless and full of unbridled joy. And that’s what it will take to keep you believing, and ministering, and holy to the end of your days, and then get you home.

This is the way doxologies work.

They refer first to something that God has done or will do, and then they ascribe attributes to God that account for that action, or are expressed in the action.

So, for example, you might say, “Now to him who fashioned the intricacies of the human eye and every molecule and atom in it—to him belong infinite, inscrutable wisdom and skill.”

Or you might say, “Now to him who adopts dirty, abandoned, rebellious children into his family—to him belong compassion and boundless mercy.”

In other words, the attributes that you ascribe to God are the ones that account for the action you are praising, or that come to expression in the action you are praising. These attributes account for the actions you are celebrating.

What is Jude celebrating and worshiping?

• God keeps us from stumbling;
• he presents us before the glory of God blameless,
• and he presents us before the glory of God with great happiness.

What came to expression in these three acts of God?

God’s

• glory
• majesty
• power
• authority

That’s what it took to keep me a Christian for 60 years. Jude is amazed at what it takes to keep us Christian, to keep us saved.

Do we have any idea of the degree of divine glory and majesty and power and authority that it took

• to give us spiritual life when we were dead (Eph. 2:5), and
• to keep us spiritually alive moment by moment for 60 years, and
• to stir up that spiritual life in such ways that it resisted sins and loved holiness and pursued spiritual fruit in the life of the church?

Do we know the degree of glory and majesty and power and authority that took?

No. We don’t.

We have no terms of measuring such things. How do you quantify a Spirit-creating spirit? Or a Spirit acting on spirit to sustain the life of that spirit?

God creates spiritual life when we are dead. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).

We had no spiritual life.

Then the Spirit acted in us.

And now we are spiritually alive.

We are spirit. This is not spirit like the demons are spirit. This is holy spirit (little “s”). This is eternal, spiritual, God-created, and God-sustained spiritual life.

This spiritual life that we Christians have is not ours intrinsically. There is no autonomous life in me.

We have this life to the degree that we have the Holy Spirit in us, and to the degree that we are united to Christ—which are interwoven terms and realities. It is not the kind of spiritual life that we would have if the Spirit left us or we were not united to Christ. We would not be alive if we were not united to Christ by the Spirit. Our life is Christ’s life. The Spirit’s life.

The giving of this life, and the moment by moment sustaining of this life, and the stirring up of this life so that it treasures holiness and ministry is a work of God. This is why I said at the beginning:

If the decisive cause of my faithfulness to Christ must come from me, it will not come, because it is not there.

Christ created it by coming.

I bring nothing decisive to my creation. And I bring nothing decisive to the existence of this divine spiritual life in me. I exist as a Christian by it. I did not create it, and I don’t keep it in being. Not any more than the universe came into existence by its own power or is upheld by its own power (Heb. 1:3). It is upheld by Christ.

Jude is clearly amazed at what it takes to sustain spiritual life—to keep it from collapsing and to bring it to glory blameless and happy. He must sense that what it takes to keep us believing—to keep us alive—is very great.

So how do we measure that so that we can join him in the amazement?

How Do We Measure What It Took God to Preserve Our Spiritual Life?

I can only think of two ways that we can measure what it takes to accomplish the preservation of our spiritual life.

One is to think about the fact that this is something we cannot do at all, and God does. And the difference between nothing and anything is infinite.

If God says to you: Create a being with divine spiritual life, you will say, “I can’t.” And you will be right. You absolutely can’t.

Then he does it with a word.

The difference between your absolute inability and his absolute ability is immeasurably great. The measurement is the distance between us and God.

And the second way we know the measurement of what it took for God to sustain our spiritual life blameless and joyful before the glory of God is that he reveals it to us in verse 25: it took glory and majesty and power and authority. That is, it takes just about anything he’s got to do this.

Your creation and your preservation takes divine glory and majesty and power and authority. And any amount of divine glory and majesty and power and authority is infinitely greater than what you bring to your creation and preservation.

(2) How This Happened

How does God keep us

• when Paul’s strategies of not losing heart seem remote (2 Cor 4),
• when the language to articulate the gospel with words one more time won’t come,
• when I’m not depressed that your church false converts, but I fear that I may be one,
• when I can remember countless times when I have given no evidence of trusting the power of the gospel to convert a neighbor, let alone a terrorist,
• when Spirit-empowered, gospel-driven, faith-fueled effort feels as likely as flying by flapping your arms,
• when the fuel tank of death-defying devotion to world missions seems empty,
• when he holds out a treasure to me that I want almost as much as anything but says I can’t have it
• when the crown jewel of Jerusalem is cut in slivers by a propeller or by the prophetess Jezebel?

How does God keep us? Keep us believing, keep us serving, keep us married, keep us fathering?

Notice that Jude’s letter begins (v. 1) and ends (vv. 24-25) with the assurance that God is decisively our keeper.

Verse 24: “Now unto him who is able to keep you . . .”

Verse 1: “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James,  To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.”

We are

• called
• loved
• kept for/by Jesus Christ.

The love of God moves him to call his elect to himself out of death and unbelief—and those whom he calls he keeps.

None is lost.

1 Corinthians 1:8-9, “He will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called.”

The called are sustained guiltless in the last day.

Romans 8:30, “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

The called are kept. No drop-outs.

That’s the framework of the book—being kept by divine, omnipotent, faithful power.

Sandwiched in there he warns against the false teachers who “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (v. 4) and who presume that they are saved but are “destroyed because they don’t believe (v. 5).

So these professing Christians are not called and they are not kept. And the evidence that they are not called and not kept is that don’t crave Christ, they crave physical sensations. They don’t prize they God of grace; they prostitute the grace of God.

Then after those many warnings, Jude tells us what we must do—not only for ourselves to be kept (vv. 20-21) but also what we must do for others who must be kept  (vv. 22-23).  I’m only going to deal with the first part (what we do for ourselves) because this brings out the paradox of the Christian life most clearly. I want to underline Kevin DeYoung’s message—because it’s here (and everywhere).

Verses 20-21:

But you, beloved,

building yourselves up in your most holy faith and

praying in the Holy Spirit,

keep yourselves in the love of God,

waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

So now Kevin DeYoung’s message starts to come into focus again—as it does all over the Bible.

1 Corinthians 15:10: “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

Philippians 2:12-13, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Jude “Keep yourselves in the love of God, for God is the one who keeps you in his love.”

Verse 1: the love of God called you; the love of God will keep you; therefore keep yourselves in the love of God.

Keep yourself in God’s commitment to keep you.

“Keep yourselves in the love of God” is the main verb—the only imperative verb in verses 20-21, and the other three verbs are supporting participles—they define how Jude understands keeping ourselves in the love of God. Verse 20:

1. “building yourselves up in your most holy faith” (v. 20)
2. “praying in the Holy Spirit” (v. 20)
3. “waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (v. 21)

So keep yourselves in the love of God—keep yourselves in the omnipotent commitment of God’s love to keep you—

• by trusting that omnipotent commitment,
• by praying for its daily application to the specifics of your life, and
• by waiting patiently for God to finish his merciful work.

As I have prayed on my little prayer bench I built in 1975, I have probably prayed a thousand times “help me,” “keep me from temptation.” And what’s happening there? God is keeping me. The means of God’s keeping you is being provided by God.

The psalm I pray the most: “Preserve me O God, for in you I take refuge!”

You pray for God to keep you (“Preserve me O God!”). You trust the promise that he will (“for in you I take refuge”). And you wait for his mercy.

Even your praying is his doing—it is by the Spirit that you pray (v. 20). And your faith is his doing, not your own, “it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).

My praying for his keeping and my trusting in his keeping is his keeping!

The glory and the majesty of his keeping consists very much in the power and the authority that he has keep you through the means of your keeping yourself in the love of God.

You are not a robot. And you are not autonomous. You a new creation, a new race. Your coming into being and your being sustained is unlike anything the world can ever experience. It is a mystery. A daily miracle. You are those who by prayer and trust keep yourselves in the commitment of God’s love to keep you praying and trusting.

God’s act to keep you praying and trusting, so that you remain in his love and are kept blameless and joyful for the glory of God, is the fulfillment of the New Covenant.

“I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me” (Jer. 32:40).

The New Covenant promise is that God will act so decisively for his elect that they will not turn from him. God will see to it that they will pray and they will trust and they will keep themselves in the love of God.

The New Covenant was bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. “This cup is the new covenant in/by my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25). When Jesus died for us, all the promises of God became Yes in him (2 Cor. 1:20). I will see to it that my own will not turn from me (Jer. 32:40). I will keep them from falling.

And that is the ultimate reason why Jude 25 says,

“To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority.”

The glory and majesty and power and authority that it takes to keep you and me alive in Christ—to keep us praying and trusting, to keep us in the love of God—was unleashed for us sinners, when Christ died for us. Therefore the glory and majesty and dominion and authority that keeps us from falling and presents us blameless and joyful to God is through the blood of Jesus Christ—the blood of the New Covenant.

Therefore when we ascribe glory and majesty and dominion and authority to God we do it through Jesus Christ.

So do not underestimate the power of the blood of Christ to keep you from falling. It’s power was at work “before all time” (Rev. 13:8), it is at work “now,” and it will be at work “forever.” Your keeping began before creation, it is happening now, and it will never end.

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. ⁴ Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. ⁵ The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. ⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. ⁷ The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. ⁸ The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. (Ps. 121:3-8).

He sealed that promise—he bought it—with the blood of his Son. Therefore, keep yourself in the love of God.

Audio available here.

Two years ago I stood at this conference and had recently finished six weeks of radiation and had just begun what would be 18 months of high-dose chemotherapy.  The doctors hadn’t given us much hope in the early days of that fight for a long life—or even past a couple of years. But God had plans to blow past the statistics and accomplish a few more things. To be here today and to be here today to preach from Revelation 21-22 is not only an honor but also one of the many mercies of God on my life.

I want to talk with you about hope today.

Some of you come here today with your resignation letter half-written, ready to throw in the towel.

But if you listen to these talks, from beginning to end, God has been saying, “I’m for you. I have no abandoned you. You are not alone.” God has been talking to me, too.

Don’t be such the “shepherd’s shepherd” that you can’t be shepherded.

Hope is necessary for all who cling to Christ. But hope is especially necessary for the pastor.

Without it he finds himself tossed about in a world that can be beautiful and spectacular (weddings, reconciliations, wayward children saved, healthy births after years of praying) but also cruel.

Earlier this year, in roughly a one-month period around Christmas time, we had an 8-year-old special-needs boy who went in to the dentist and had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia and died. And we had to walk into that room and cry and cover our mouths.

We just about had that family settled into care, but we pastor a young church. And then another call came. We had a 3-year-old girl who had a heart transplant but then rejected the heart a year later. It was heavy when you have a 3-year-old at home and you’re doing a funeral for a toddler.

I finished preaching on the victory of Christ. We had a beautiful young woman talk after the service, then that night got discombobulated and walked into a propeller plane and lose her hand, eye, and clavicle.

All this on top of church discipline cases, writing sermons, trying to love my wife like Jesus loves the church, and gather kindling around the hearts of my children that the Holy Spirit might one day ignite for his glory.

I point at all these things knowing I have a great staff and none of these things were done simply by me. And what gives me such an appreciation for so many of you is that you live this and don’t have a team of guys that you love and trust.

Brothers, we are in many ways first responders on the front lines of a cosmos in rebellion. Sometimes we are there before the paramedics because the damage is on the inside. When the sorrows and loss of a sinful world land, they land in the lives of people we love and have been called to serve.

The First Fruits of Hope

The promises are real (Gen 3, 12, 17, 49.  Numbers 24, Deut. 17, 18, 2 Samuel 7, Isaiah 7, 9, 53). Jesus fulfilled them. Hecame, He lived, He died, and He rose from the grave. He imputed to me his righteousness and He called me.

I wasn’t looking for Him. God says whom he predestines He calls—and think back on His ruthless and aggressive pursuit and protection of met. It brings me a staggering amount of hope.

The guy in the locker next to be aggressively evangelized me. God did that. He didn’t ask me; he didn’t wait for all my questions to be answered. God opened my heart. My posture changed. He came and got me. He rescued me from the muck and the mire—and he didn’t do it to hurt you. We laugh at the Israelites who grumble right after the rescue. But we do this too.

Acts 8:29: God calls Philip into ministry
Acts 10:19: God calls Peter to Cornelius’ house

I felt this call to The Village Church.  I kicked and argued and tried to walk. The last place in the world I wanted to stay was Dallas, the center of evangelicalism. I said everything in my job interview that shouldn’t have gotten me a job. (What would you change? “I wouldn’t know where to start.”) But God wasn’t having it.

When I feel loss of hope, I remember that the Spirit does not lead where he does not empower. Usually I am trying to carry something I wasn’t meant to carry.

Graeme Goldsworthy, “Hope without a time of fulfillment is a delusion.”

We are not a delusional people—even if outsiders think we are absurd.  Our hopes are not bankrupt. We are not gambling.

In my remaining time I want to talk about the finish line.

The Fulfillment of Hope

The World Renewed: Revelation 21:1-8

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

We know this isn’t just a spiritual ethereal existence.  This is real and it’s physical.

What we know from the promises of the prophets is that it’s a different kind of world than the world you and I walk on now.  It’s one remade.
Isaiah 35:1 tells us that the deserts shall blossom as the rose. So when we think of the desert, we think of dead wasteland, but the Bible says that in the new earth, the deserts are going to bloom like roses.

Amos 9:13 says that the plowman shall overtake the reaper and that the mountains shall drop sweet wine. The mountains this side of consummation are spectacular and they provoke awe, but we Look forward to the new earth’s mountain ranges, where fruitless rocks and frigid snow will put forth abundance, produce sweet wine.

Isaiah 65, we learn that there will be no more sounds of weeping heard on the earth, that the days of God’s people shall be like the days of the tree, that on the earth the wolf and the lamb shall feed together.  So all this violence is gone.

We see in Isaiah 11 that no one will hurt or destroy anything in all of God’s holy mountain. And this is true because evil will be vanquished to the lake of fire

Habakkuk 2:14 says the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as waters cover the sea.

1 Corinthians 15 says our body will be a resurrected body. This is a text the Lord used to minister to me during brain cancer.

There is coming a day where we aren’t looking forward to this day. That glorious day won’t be future. On that day, we will be here!

A deer panting for water is not a cute text for a coffee mug. One thing I ask is to behold his beauty. Someday it will be now, not future.

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle:

The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read:  which goes on for ever:  in which every chapter is better than the one before.

Revelation 21:9, “Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.’” We will get to see the fruit of God’s work and see the Bride. This is surely more spectacular than when the door swings open and we see our earthly bride. We get to see her!

And it’s here! It’s no longer a future hope. The kingdom has come in its fullness!

    And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed—on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

(Revelation 21:10-21 ESV)

The first time we see the church in Revelation (chs. 2-3), it doesn’t look like this.

At Ephesus they had great doctrine but forgot their first love. Good doctrine without love is not good doctrine.

At Smyrna they faced tribulation and poverty.

In Pergamum they put up with teachings that went against the grain and hope of the Gospel.

At Thyatira they loved the sensuality of Jezebel and sexual immorality.

In Sardis they were dead.

In Philadelphia they had little power but were clinging tightly to Jesus.

And in Laodicea they were lukewarm and indifferent towards the things of God.  They considered themselves rich and prosperous but were pitiful, blind, poor and naked.

I think many of us can relate to these churches.  There are groups within the church I pastor that lean in these directions.  And my understanding is that to be a faithful shepherd I’m on the fringes, warning those who are idle, encouraging the timid, and being patient with the weak.  That can be exhausting.  This is the fire where our hope burns the brightest, and our confidence in God’s power to save must hold us steadfast.  The good news for each of us today regardless of what lay waiting for us at home is that it won’t end this way.

Where is everyone of these in the vision of Revelation 21?

Paul says:

1 Corinthians 3:11-13. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

There are days that I feel like I’m building with wood, hay, and straw.  There are people who have been deeply embedded in our community of faith and get outed in their sins. People agree with my rebuke as though I was talking to someone else.

But look at the bride! God is faithfully cleansing his bride.

The Church will cease to be the suffering servant church and be the church triumphant.

We are one day closer. New mercy every morning till everything is fulfilled.

God’s Dwelling and the Trophies of the Nations (Rev. 21:22-27)

    And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
(Revelation 21:22-27 ESV)

We’ll no longer need a tabernacle. The dwelling place for God is with man! There will be no more shadows. This is the sum of the entire bible!  Every aspect of hope and redemption is wrapped up in this one phrase.

By it’s light the Nations walk. Think about how hard unity and diversity can be here. But it will be fulfilled.

All that is truly good and beautiful in this world will reappear there and be renewed there, purified and enhanced in the perfect setting.

Conclusion

You have to get over you. I don’t know how else to say it. Don’t hedge your bets.  Don’t keep one foot in this world “just in case.” Straddling two world is a miserable way to live life. Sell out.  Don’t put your hope in you!  You won’t be strong enough.

This is why Paul can call his troubles “light and momentary.” This is why anything here isn’t worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed.

Paul says we need to be “all in.”

Some of you might be in the pastorate becomes it seems like a sweet gig.

Some of you don’t really believe this, and you need to repent.

But for those of us who believe, let’s hope and believe. We’re a couple of days closer! It’s gonna happen. We’re going to get there. We’re going to see the city—we’re going to be the city!

Hope is essential for those who shepherd the bride of Christ. There is a finish line, a day when all will be made new.

I was unable to take notes for this one—a good conversation between Mark Dever and Al Mohler on gay marriage.

But one of the best talks I’ve heard on homosexuality, the church, and the gospel was delivered by Mohler at the 2004 Desiring God National Conference. You can listen to it here. A chapter-length version was then published in Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, which you can read online for free.

It might be helpful to reprint a few excerpts.

On living in light of a limp:

An analogy might be useful at this point. Consider a man who has sinned by driving under the influence of alcohol. One night, sinfully drunk and recklessly irresponsible, this man gets into his car and drives it right into a wall at high speed. His body is broken, but his life is saved as he is taken to the hospital and receives emergency treatment. He recovers from the accident, but he will forever walk with a limp. Throughout his life, he will drag an injured leg, which can heal to a point, but will never be fully restored.

Let us follow this man as he comes to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He becomes a wonderful trophy of God’s grace, as the grace of God transforms him, reordering his affections right down to the fact that he gains victory over alcoholism. Regeneration has produced a new man, even as sanctification is demonstrated in his growth in grace. Old things have passed away and behold all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17)—but he still walks with a limp.

The work of the Holy Spirit in his life is evident, even as his limp continues as a part of his experience. He will limp all the way to the grave. He has become what only God could make him as a demonstration of God’s glory in the salvation of a sinner. But until the day of his glorification, this man will limp.

That limp does not become a disqualification for this man’s ability to display the glory of God. As a matter of fact, he may begin to see his limp as a way of explaining to people, “I want to tell you who I was in order to tell you who I now am by the grace of God. You see, this limp is a part of my story. I do not exult in this limp, but this limp is an important part of telling my story about how I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ and how he changed my life.”

In reality, every one of us limps. Throughout our lives until the day of our glorification, every one of us will limp. We must look to the moment of our glorification as the moment of our release from every limp. On that day, every tear will be wiped away, every injury will be fully restored, everything will be made right, and everything will be made whole. Everything and every redeemed person will then perfectly display the glory of God. We are the people with the theology adequate to explain this, and thus, we can offer the only genuine means of personal transformation.

On change:

We know better than to say that people cannot change. We also know better than to believe that people can change themselves. As Jonathan Edwards made clear, we sin in our affections, and we do not even understand ourselves in terms of why we love the things we love and desire the things we desire. This is why we are so dependent upon the work of Christ in our lives and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in reordering our affections. This is no easy process, but it is real and it is enduring.

Is our purpose to make homosexuals into heterosexuals? The answer to that question must be both yes and no. We must urgently urge all sinners to repent and abandon their sin, but convincing homosexuals to think of themselves as heterosexuals is not tantamount to salvation. We must be honest about the sinfulness of homosexuality in order that we can show homosexuals their need for salvation and the transforming power of Jesus Christ in their lives. We can promise that this power of transformation will, by the grace of God, lead to a reordering of their lives and require a turning away from the sins of their past. As Christians, coming for whatever our individual background in sin may be—we come under mutual accountability to the Word of God and his command in all things—including our sexuality.

To those struggling with homosexuality:

I want to speak honestly to those who are struggling with homosexual affection. You must know that this is sin, and you must recognize that your affections are corrupted by sin. Even in your own heart, you can probably never even separate your desires and impulses in terms of inner motivation and affection. Like all of us, you are a sinner in the midst of a sinful world, but don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t change. Becoming heterosexual is not salvation, but the miracle of regeneration and sanctification will produce, by God’s grace, the right affections in your heart and desire. Knowing what God has declared to be objectively right and objectively wrong, we must direct ourselves—whether our sinful sexual profile be heterosexual or homosexual—toward the objective glory of God as revealed in his Word. We must claim the promises of God and seek God’s glory in every dimension of our being.

Do we want homosexuals to find heterosexuality?

Yes, as much as we want liars to become tellers of the truth and adulterers to be faithful; as much as we want the disobedient to become obedient to parents and the proud to be humble. God’s glory is in seeing that God’s command is accompanied by God’s provision so that we, by his grace, can be transformed so that we will even desire what he wills for us to desire.

This is what the church is all about. We are the people who gather together to exalt in the grace of God and to proclaim the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ as the answer to human sinfulness. We come together to hold each other accountable to the Word of God and to rejoice in what God is doing in us until the very day that we die. We come together in the assurance of the resurrection that is to come and the glorification that will be God’s gift. Like the apostle Paul, we are convinced that “he who began a good work in [us] will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).

To the church:

We must be the people who love homosexuals more than homosexuals love homosexuality. This is a tough challenge. We have to be the people who, because we are possessed by a passion to see God’s glory in his creation, love homosexuals more than they love their sin. This means that our love has to be a tenacious love. This will also require that we come to know and establish relationships with those struggling with homosexuality. Armed with an awareness of both the problem and God’s provision, we have no right to consider that homosexuals are beyond the grace of God or that any individual is beyond the hope of redemption and transformation. Compassionate truth-telling is deeply rooted in Christian love, and this means that we must love homosexuals more than homosexuals love homosexuality.

Every sinner loves his sin, but the church must love sinners more than sinners love their sinfulness. This is precisely how Christ has loved us, and we must love other sinners even as Christ has loved us.

We cannot allow a homosexual to reduce his identity to being a homosexual. This is a tough message, but we live in an age of identity politics when people say, “What I do in my sex life is who I am—period!” We are the people who know that this is nonsense. Sex is a part of who we are—a vitally important and powerful part—but it is only a part of the total human being. Our sexual desires and sexual practices are genuine pointers to our inner reality and our relationship to God, but sexuality is not the end of the story.

Christians must be the people who refuse to put the period at the end of the sexual sentence. We cannot allow homosexuals to be isolated as a class of persons who are beyond the grace of God and exist in some special category of human sinfulness. We must be the people who say to homosexuals, “I am going to love you even more than you love your sin, because in this same way I was loved until I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Someone loved me more than I loved my sin, and this is how I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.”

Our doctrine of salvation must be accompanied by a strong doctrine of the church. The ecclesia—the purchased people of God—are a covenanted community gathered in mutual accountability to the Word of God. In the bonds of Christ, we are to love each other even more than we love ourselves. Even in the process of church discipline, our purpose is not only to protect the integrity of the people of God, but to love persons into obedience and conformity with the Word of God. The common life of the church is really all about this mutual accountability, mutual encouragement, and exhorting each other to faithfulness unto the authority of the Word of God. The church sins when we deal with these issues wrongly, unscripturally, and superficially.

On fatigue about this issue:

It is easy to detect a sense of fatigue setting in among Christians in America who are tired of arguing, debating, and speaking the truth about homosexuality in the midst of a fallen and rebellious culture. This fatigue is evidence of sin, even as it is an understandable response to the difficulty of our task. We are now coming to a point of cultural crisis, and the church is called to faithfulness as we must declare God’s truth with a boldness never summoned before. The church must demonstrate even more candor, more courage, and more truth-telling. We must demonstrate more genuine compassion, even as we reach out to a civilization that is literally falling from within. Even as civilization falls, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ must stand as the People of God, determined to keep its wits even as it shows the love of God and seeks the glory of Jesus Christ, in season and out of season.

Audio of this session here.

Kevin’s next book will be The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway, August 2012). [Not sure how long this will last, but Amazon has it on pre-sale for 53% off.]

I could be wrong, but in general, I believe that for all the good that we see in the Young, Restless, Reformed movement (or the New Calvinism, or the Reformed Resurgence, or whatever you want to call it)—for all the good that I see (and there is much), I believe that there are critical elements of Christian discipleship that we are not yet known for.

We are, I believe, known for

• our commitment to the Scriptures,
• our commitment to expositional preaching,
• our commitment to the doctrines of grace,
• our commitment to biblical manhood and womanhood,
• our commitment to the uniqueness of Christ,
• our commitment to penal substitutionary atonement,
• our commitment to justification by faith alone, and above all
• our commitment to the centrality of the gospel.

All of this is to be celebrated and commended.

But there are two critical areas in which I think we need to grow: (1) a commitment to global missions and (2) a commitment to personal holiness. David Platt will speak on the former; I want to take this time to talk to you about the latter.

Hebrews 12:14 tells us to “strive for . . .  for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

The writer is talking about progressive sanctification not our positional holiness in Christ. That’s why he says “strive for holiness.” Without it, we won’t see the Lord.

As we celebrate what Christ has saved us from, we must also give thought to and make effort concerning all that Christ has saved us to.

Those most passionate about the gospel of God’s free grace should also be those most dedicated to the pursuit of godliness.

This talk is not about why we must be holy, but how we can grow in holiness.

Thousands of people in the church feel “not very holy” and they want to move into the category of “more holy.”

What will you do and say? How will you help them get there? How will you get there?

• Will you give them legalism?
• Will you give them license?
• Will you give them platitudes?
• Will you ignore the topic altogether we are gospel people and gospel people don’t talk about personal holiness?
• How do Christians grow in godliness?

That’s the question of this message. And here is my answer: Spirit-powered, gospel-driven, faith-fueled effort.

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

Paul says that he is last (v. 8) and least (v. 9), but, v. 10: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

Paul is not saying, “don’t judge, God made me this way.” He’s saying, “I’m an apostle by the grace of God. I may be one untimely born. I may be completely undeserving. I may not have the history that the other apostles have. But I am still an apostle by God’s grace.”

Paul says he is “working hard,” and he also says “that’s the grace of God at work within me.”

Our work is not only a response to grace, but an effect of grace.”

Two things you need to understand about the pursuit of holiness: (1) You need to work hard, and (2) God’s grace needs to work in you.

Growth in godliness requires (1) Spirit-powered, (2) gospel-driven, (3) faith-fueled (4) effort.

Sometimes we speak in generalities; good phrases—even biblical—but they can become meaningless (like sports inteviews).

“Just look to Jesus.” “Just bathe it in prayer.” “Just be soaked in the Spirit.” “Just be washed in the word.” Sure sounds clean!

So we need to unpack what ” Spirit-powered, gospel-driven, faith-fueled effort” means.

I. Spirit-powered

1 Peter 1:2: “sanctification of the Spirit.”

Biblical image 1: Spirit as power, not a weak little spirit (Eph. 3:16; Rom. 8:9-13)

Biblical image 2: Spirit as light, revealing sin (John 16:7-11), revealing truth, revealing glory (John 16:14; 2 Cor. 3:18).

The Spirit sanctifies by revealing sin, revealing truth, and revealing glory.

When we close our eyes to this light, the Bible calls it resisting the Spirit (Acts 7:51), or quenching (1 Thess. 5:19) or grieving the Spirit (Eph. 4:30)—situations where we do not accept the Spirit’s sanctifying work in our lives.

The Spirit keeps flipping the light on, but do you keep running into another dark room?

II. Gospel-driven 

Everyone agrees that the pursuit of holiness must flow from the gospel.

But how exactly do good deeds grow out of good news? How does the flow work? We need to connect the dots for our people.

Two examples:

(1) The gospel drives us to godliness out of a sense of gratitude (Rom. 12:1—”in view of God’s mercies, present yourself”). A fitting response to grace. Piper: Humility + happiness from  thankfulness tend to crowd out what is coarse, ugly, or mean.  If you have anger problems or bitterness problems, you can be sure you have a gratitude problem.

(2) The gospel drives us to godliness by telling us the truth about who we are.

Certain sins become more difficult when we understand our new position in Christ.

• If we are heirs to the whole word, why should we envy?
• If we are God’s treasured possession, why be jealous?
• If God is our Father, why be afraid?
• If we are dead to sin, why live in it?
•  If we’ve been raised with Christ, why continue in our old sinful ways?
• If we are seated in the heavenly places, why act like the devil of hell?
• If we are loved with an everlasting love, why are we trying to prove our worth to the world?
• If Christ is all in all, why am I so preoccupied with myself?

We need to do spiritual warfare with the sword of the Spirit.

• Remember that there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1).
• Remember that the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you (Rom. 8:11).
• Remember that you are a child of God, and if a child then an heir (Rom. 8:16-17).
• Remember that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38-39).

Understand your identity. Embrace your identity. Be your identity.

Lady Gaga’s “born this way”—it resonates, it’s a half-truth, and it conceals a damnable lie. We resonate with the idea that “we cannot be something that we are not.” You are absolutely right—but you can be born again a different way.

III. Faith-fueled        

We are justified by faith, and, in a different sense, we are sanctified through faith.

“Sanctification by faith.” This can be a true statement, but we should be cautious about using it because we have to mean something different by the word “by” than we do with “justification by faith.” The two phrases only both work when you mean something very different by them.

In justification faith is passive (to receive and rest). In sanctification faith is active (to will and work).

We need to be so careful here!

Better to say: the pursuit of holiness is the fight of faith—fueled by belief in God’s word to us.

We believe

• the gospel
• what God says about our identity in Christ
• the word of God against the lies of the devil
• God’s promises

You can see this illustrates in the faith-fueled promises of the Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 5:5, 8; 6:1, 4; 7:13.

The holy life is always a life of faith, (1) believing not just in our justification but (2) believing with all our hearts all that God has promised to us now and in the future, and then (3) acting as if it were really true.

IV. Effort 

Not saying

• we do it in our own strength,
• we do it to make ourselves right with God,
• we get justified by faith and then it’s nothing but work as we get sanctified.

The call of Christian preaching is never to make effort at godliness apart from the power of the Spirit, the truths of the gospel, or the centrality of faith.

But  neither do the realities of Spirit, gospel, and faith eliminate the need for human effort.

“Effort” should not be a four-letter word in your theological vocabulary.

Romans 8:13 says by the Spirit we must put to death the deeds of the flesh.

Ephesians 4:22-24 instructs us to put off the old self and put on the new.

Colossians 3:5 commands us to put to death what is earthly in us.

1 Timothy 6:12 urges us to fight the good fight.

Luke 13:24 exhorts us to strive to enter the narrow gate.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 speaks of running a race and beating the body.

Philippians 3:12-14 talks of pressing on and straining forward.

2 Peter 1:5 flat out commands us to “make every effort!”

Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus says the reward of eternal life goes to those who conquer and overcome.

As gospel Christians, we should not be afraid of striving, fighting, and working.

Ryle: “The child of God has two great marks about him: he is known for his inner warfare and his inner peace.”

Calvin: “As it is an arduous work and of immense labor to put off the corruption which is in us, he bids us to strive and make every effort for this purpose. He intimates that no place is to be given in this case to sloth, and that we ought to obey God calling us, not slowly or carelessly, but that there is need of alacrity; as though he had said, ‘Put forth every effort, and make your exertions manifest to all.’”

Hodge: “In the work of regeneration, the soul is passive. It cannot cooperate in the communication of spiritual life. But in conversion, repentance, faith, and growth in grace, all its powers are called into exercise. As, however, the effects produced transcend the efficiency of our fallen nature, and are due to the agency of the Spirit, sanctification does not cease to be supernatural, or a work of grace, because the soul is active and cooperating in the process.”

Monergism v. synergism is not the right debate for sanctification. That has to do with regeneration.

Bavinck: “Granted, in the first place [sanctification] is a work and gift of God (Phil 1:5; 1 Thess. 5:23), a process in which humans are passive just as they are in regeneration, of which it is the continuation. But based on this work of God in humans, it acquires, in the second place, an active meaning, and people themselves are called and equipped to sanctify themselves and devote their whole life to God. . . .”

We don’t just say “get more gripped by the gospel.” We also need to work. We don’t hold to Keswick’s “let go and let God.” Sanctification is not by surrender but by divinely enabled toil and effort.

V.  Applying this to ourselves and to our people.

 To ourselves. 

Being a pastor is hard work.

Colossians 1:28-29: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

People should see in us an example of faithful toil.

What about workaholics? Family neglect? Lack of sleep? We can’t work too hard (just like you can’t be too gospel-centered or too focused on grace). But we can work in the wrong way (just like we can be gospel obliterating or have a one-dimensional view of grace). We can work in an imbalanced way (or not work hard at resting or turning away from emails or saying no to requests).

No one is in danger of working too hard—but we can be working very foolishly. You need to work hard at resting, at not being distracted, at being present when you come home in the evening, to guard your day off. Working 80 hours a week as a pastor is not hard work—working 60 is. It’s easy to be a lazy workaholic.

 To our people.

I think many of us are getting scared to tell people to do some stuff—and not do some stuff. The Bible is full of lots of texts telling God’s people to do things (Great Commission—teaching them to obey the commands of Jesus!).

I don’t meet any hardcore antinomianisms (against the law). But plaguing some of our churches could be nomophobia (afraid of the third use of the law). But law came after gospel. Ten commandments after deliverance.

If you preach on David and Bathsheba and never say anything about great David’s greater Son who succeed for David failed, then you aren’t connecting the dots.

But if you preach on David and Bathsheba and don’t say anything about adultery and sexual sin and how the thing David had done displeased the Lord, then you aren’t preaching the text. It ends: “the thing David had done displeased the Lord.”

Luke 18: the parable is told so that they won’t stop praying and will not lose heart. There’s a legalistic way to lay into people about this—it’s easy to do. Everyone feels guilty for everything you’re talking about. But as an alternative, the climax of a sermon on prayerlessness ends with forgiveness. There are lots of things to motivate us in the text (elect, God as father, faith).

Preach not just the content, but the mood of the text.

You cannot assume that everyone in your church needs a kick in the pants—or a hug. Preach the text!

Making an effort to be holy is not somehow sub-gospel.

The gospel is the good news about salvation. And salvation is in three tenses—it’s about God saving you

• from wrath
• unto holiness
• for glory.

Don’t give people half a Savior—half of the grace of God. When we get to obedience we are still talking about grace—the grace that will change you.

Benediction from Hebrews 13:20-21:

    Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Rock of Ages:

Rock of ages, cleft for me,

let me hide myself in thee;

let the water and the blood,

from thy wounded side which flowed,

be of sin the double cure;

save from wrath and make me pure.

With faith in the gospel, the power of the Spirit, and the grace of God at work within us, we will be teaching pigs to fly.

But without the biblical exhortation to effort we’ll be confused, wondering why sanctification isn’t automatically flowing from a heartfelt commitment to gospel-drenched justification. We’ll be waiting around for enough faith to really “get the gospel” when God wants us to get up and get to work (Phil 2:11-12).

When it comes to sanctification, we need to understand two points: (1) holiness does not happen apart from trusting, and (2) trusting does not put an end to trying.

Libertarian Jennifer Roback Morse is not impressed with the arguments of her fellows libertarians that government should get out of the marriage business and leave it to the churches:

We cannot escape the fact that marriage is an intrinsically public institution. We can’t avoid making collective decisions about its meaning and purpose. If we don’t do it explicitly, we will end up doing it implicitly.

As a libertarian myself, I have been quite disappointed that the “default” libertarian position on marriage has become little more than a sound-bite: “Let’s get the state out of the marriage business.” With all due respect, this position is unsound.

I will not be able to respond to this sound-bite with another sound-bite. The issues surrounding marriage are too deep. But I am not deterred from trying to persuade thoughtful readers who are up to the task of following a complex and unconventional argument wherever the search for truth may lead.

I make three points in this series of articles.

First, in today’s article, I show that it is not possible to privatize marriage.

Second, in tomorrow’s article, I show that the attempt to privatize marriage will not result in an increase in freedom, but will actually increase the role of the state.

Finally, in the third article, I show that attempting to privatize marriage will perpetrate great injustices to children.

Any of these reasons is sufficient to put an end to the “get the government out of the marriage business” mantra. All three of these reasons taken together form a compelling case for absolutely opposing the redefinition of marriage and for working tirelessly to create a robust cultural norm of one man, one woman, for life.

“Get the government out of the marriage business,” or its close cousin, “Leave it to the churches,” is a superficially appealing slogan. When I hear this, I often get the feeling that it is a way of avoiding the unpleasant dispute currently raging over the proper definition of marriage. I sense that its proponents are hoping we can remove this whole contentious topic from the public square and put it into the private sector. Each person or group can have its own version of marriage. The state, with its powerful coercive instruments, need never get involved in resolving this seemingly impossible stalemate.

While I understand this impulse, I believe it is fundamentally misguided. Taking a stand on the purpose and meaning of marriage is unavoidable. Here is why.

Don Carson, drawing on the historical practice in France and biblical-theological concerns about church and state along with creation and church ordinances, adds an interesting twist to this discussion:

I would argue that marriage is a creation ordinance, not a church ordinance. I’m not sure that ministers of the gospel should be involved in the legal matters of weddings at all. I rather like the practices that have developed in France (though I admit that they developed for all the wrong reasons). There, every marriage must be officiated by a state functionary. Christians will then have a further service/ceremony/celebration, invoking the blessing of God and restating vows before a larger circle of family and friends, brothers and sisters in Christ. Similarly, Christians seeking to be married may well undergo pre-marital counseling offered by the church. But the legal act of the wedding is performed exclusively by the state. That is one way of making clear that marriage is not a distinctively Christian ordinance (though it has special significance for Christians, including typological significance calling to mind the union of Christ and the church); it is for a man/woman pair everywhere, converted or not, Christian or not—truly a creation ordinance.

Ideally, of course, the state should adopt the same standards for marriage and divorce as those demanded by Scripture. But where that is not so—whether by sanctioning marriages after prohibited divorces, or by sanctioning marriages between persons of the same sex, or whatever— Christians will be the first to insist that because we take our cues and mandates from Scripture, our own standards for what will pass for an acceptable marriage will not necessarily be those of the state. So our own members will observe the biblical standards, regardless of what the state permits. The tensions we feel on these occasions arise from one of the most obvious truths in the New Testament: we live in the period of inaugurated eschatology, in the period between the “already” and the “not yet.” As a result we have two citizenships. We owe allegiance to “Caesar,” to our country in this world, and we owe allegiance to the kingdom of God. But where the two allegiances conflict, we must obey God rather than human beings. In this light, and remembering the history of marriage in the Western world, ministers of the gospel who perform marriages (as I do) better remember that when they do so, they are not performing a sacrament, or making a marriage union more holy; they are functioning as officials of the state, licensed by them. They are discharging their duties as citizens of an earthly kingdom. Then, in the larger service in which the wedding is performed, they may also be discharging their duties as Christian ministers—assigning to marriage a much higher value than the state does, drawing attention to Christian obligations for husbands and wives, reminding all present of the wonderful typological connection between Christ and the church, and so forth. In France, all of these Christian duties are separated from the legal marriage vows themselves; here, they are integrated (in church weddings) precisely because the minister is serving both as a minister of the gospel and as a minister of the state.

One doesn’t need to agree with every jot and tittle in this piece by Michael Horton, but I think it advances the discussion regarding the framework for thinking through the relationship between Christianity and politics:

1. Distinguish Christ’s kingdom from the kingdoms of this age without seeing them as enemies. Although he is the Lord of all even now, Christ will make the kingdoms of the world his own realm of direct rule (without caesars, presidents, mullahs and tribal chiefs) when he returns. At present, the church participates in this kingdom in a partially realized way. Ultimate justice, righteousness, and peace with God have been established in the world through the new creation in Jesus Christ. As the Spirit unites sinners to Jesus by his Spirit through the Word, a colony of this kingdom is planted in this present evil age. The politics of this age can never bring about ultimate justice, peace, or righteousness. Just because earthly governments and other social structures (such as voluntary associations, relief agencies, schools, neighborhoods, etc.) can’t bring in the consummated Kingdom of Christ does not mean that they are not God’s means of contributing to the common good and preserving society with a relative order, justice, and peace in the world.
2. Closely related to this, distinguish common grace from saving grace. Radical Protestantism has often bred radical politics, which feeds off of a nearly Manichean opposition of light and darkness. On one hand, this makes us presumptuous about ourselves, as if non-Christians can only create darkness and Christians can only create light. It has never been that simple historically, because non-Christians are beneficiaries of God’s common grace and Christians are also still sinful. God’s saving grace comes to us in Jesus Christ through the means of grace ministered by his church. God’s common grace comes through the wisdom, vocations, education, and other gifts that the Spirit bestows on unbelievers as well as believers. These common callings cannot build Christ’s kingdom, but they are the means through which he loves and serves us and our neighbors every day. So enough of this Manichean dualism! Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. The best works-and policies-fall short of God’s glory. Nevertheless, they are still commanded and are critical for the common good.
3. Distinguish between the church as institution from the church as its members. Abraham Kuyper expressed this distinction in terms of church-as-organization and church-as-organism. In the former sense, the church is Christ’s embassy of saving grace through the ministry of Word and sacrament. In the latter sense, it is believers-saved-by-grace who are scattered into their worldly callings as salt and light. The institutional church is entrusted with the Great Commission, with no calling or authority to reform the world. Being shaped decisively by this Word, believers are called to serve their myriad neighbors in the world. Sometimes this provides opportunities for newsworthy impact, but that is not our concern. Our calling is to be faithful at our posts. Where the state has accrued a dangerous monopoly on cultural activity, politics is seen as the most significant sphere of activity. However, Christians can testify by their quiet faithfulness at their posts how essential are the daily and often mundane gifts. Ambition to make a noticeable difference in the world may be a God-given purpose and calling, but it can also be an expression of our pride and self-righteousness. It is easier to abandon the callings where God has placed us to love and serve our neighbors in order to “be somebody” and to be remembered for our “legacy.”
4. Distinguish between “necessary” and “good” consequences of Scripture. The Westminster Confession reminds us that our ultimate authority is Scripture: whatever is contained there explicitly or “by good and necessary consequences may be deduced therefrom.” One of the benefits of preaching through the Bible (rather than topically) is that we are forced to concentrate on the whole teaching of Scripture. By contrast, when we follow our own topical hobby-horses, we are prone to avoid some biblical teachings and to over-emphasize others. Some preachers manage to avoid texts that address sexual ethics or creation stewardship. Others may harp on moral and political issues, with speeches that could have been written if the Bible had never been written. What we need today more than ever is a rigorous submission to the Word, standing under it rather than over or alongside it. It’s not just that we can’t preach anything contrary to God’s Word; we can’t preach anything that isn’t required by it. Not only must our interpretation and application be a good inference; it must be a necessary one. Abortion-on-demand is an obvious example of a “good and necessary inference” from Scripture: namely, the prohibition of murder. Surely opposition to the modern slave-trade, whether in early America and the antebellum South or in current forms around the world, finds multiple sources of good and necessary application. Sound preaching and teaching over the years should shape people who think of creation as neither divine nor something to devour and destroy, but as the work of God’s hand. On many other issues, Christian preaching will shape the worldview that we bring to our lives and policy decisions. Nevertheless, we cannot require specific policies that are not required by legitimate exegesis of God’s Word.
5. Distinguish between the sufficiency and scope of Scripture. Scripture is sufficient for everything necessary for faith and practice. That does not mean that Scripture is sufficient for everything necessary for daily life. For example, doctors and auto mechanics have wisdom and knowledge that we need. God committed to Scripture what he deemed essential for our salvation and godliness. The scope of Scripture is the Triune God as he is known in Jesus Christ in the covenant of grace. Whatever in Scripture informs and directs our decision making in daily affairs bears divine authority. However, the Bible is not a manual for personal, domestic, and foreign policy. There are commands and promises, but they have to be interpreted and applied according to their natural sense and with sensitivity to their covenantal context. Everything we need for salvation and worship is given in Scripture, but the Bible’s purpose or scope is not everything we need for life. We should not be surprised when an unbeliever who is a trained economist is better-equipped to address sweeping questions of poverty in developing countries than a preacher armed with the Bible.

You can read the whole thing here.

Dane Ortlund:

Few things bring our weakness to the surface like seminary. Spending all day with classmates who read faster than you, memorize paradigms more easily than you do, and preach better than you do pours gasoline on the flames of our insecurity. Ongoing moral failure–for young men in today’s hypersexualized world I am thinking especially of sexual failure, though spiritual pride, laziness, envy, intellectual haughtiness, and a bent toward divisiveness also reveal our weakness.

Seminary gathers up all our latent insecurities and forces them before us. We begin to ask questions of ourselves.

Am I supposed to be here? we wonder. Shouldn’t I be better at the languages if this is where God wants me? Shouldn’t I be able to preach in front of 8 brothers in a homiletics practicum without my eyes being chained to my notes and my palms sweating? Shouldn’t my finances be less strapped if seminary is the Lord’s good purpose in my life? Shouldn’t I be able to finally kick that habitual sin if I’m spending so much time pondering God and the Bible?

Brother: those soul-squeezing questions are your friends. Without them you would coast through seminary and graduate a shallow, twaddling little man with no depth and trite answers.

God’s grace is sufficient for you. Get over yourself. You are weak. You are inadequate. You always will be. And the story of the Bible is God’s delight in taking weak, inadequate men and doing the unthinkable. Stop insulting the Holy Spirit. Your weakness is the single crucial prerequisite for him to make your life a miracle. To think “I don’t have what it takes” is precisely what it takes. Don’t try to overcome your weakness. Leverage your weakness into a lifetime of 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 ministry.

God’s power is made perfect in your weakness.

Victoria’s Secret has run an ad campaign asking the question, “What is sexy?”

How would one answer that question from a biblical-theological perspective? Can it be asked? Should it be answered?

On March 21, 2012, Dr. Mark Liederbach—associate professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and senior fellow at the Bush Center for Faith & Culture—gave a faculty lecture at SEBTS trying to address just such a question.

Professor Liederbach seeks to avoid an overly physicalist analysis on the one hand and a functional Gnosticism on the other. One of his arguments is that “while many of us have an over-spiritual syrupy Christianized Gnosticism definition on the lips we live and function with the overly physicalistic answer offered by Victoria’s Secret in our hearts and minds.”

The paper has three goals or movements:

First, it will lay out the rudimentary elements of a biblical and theological ethic of worship from which to engage the question of sexiness.

Next it will identify nine biblical and theological principles that ought to shape our view of sexiness in light of an ethic of worship.

Finally, it will give particular attention and application to answering the question “what is sexy?” in light of the conclusions reached in the preceding sections. And in this way I hope to provide a foundation for redeeming sex and sexuality.

You can read the entire paper here, or watch it below:

Here is the conclusion to his provocative and insightful work:

So at the end of the day how ought we Christians answer the question of “what is sexy?” and what are we to do with the claims of Victoria Secret.

In regard to the latter question, the problem is not that we like to see human bodies or that we have particular tastes, but that we take them out of proper contexts, we make them primary in our understanding, and most tragically, we do not evaluate them in light of the overall and dominating purposes for which we and our sex and sexuality were created.

Victoria’s Secret is not wrong in claiming that the human body is attractive and sexy. In fact, in many ways they are exactly right. God did make humans physical and sexual. Further, as Scripture indicates, in the right contexts and from the experience and pleasures of sex and sexuality are meant not only to bring us great joy, but are also seen as very good by God himself. In fact, one could say that when we rightly pursue and express our sexuality it not only brings us great pleasure and joy, it makes the Father joyful as well.

But where the perspective of Victoria’s Secret is woefully inadequate and tragically deceptive is in the utter shallowness of their depiction of what “sexy” is. Divorced from the fuller biblical context of understanding and the great task we are created for, separating out the physical dimension from a richer and more holistic biblical understanding of embodied selves, and rooting the physical enticement in selfish forms of lustful want strips sexiness of its essentials and prostitutes a cheap and anemic imitation for self-oriented lusters to ever consume and never find satisfaction.

The great tragedy is not that it celebrates the human body, but that it does so by taking that which is most subjective and most temporal from the larger, grander picture of sexiness and parades it about as if it were the final goal and highest expression. Thus it is not the body form that is evil, but the context and exploitive nature of its uncovering as well as the disoriented expression of its use that is the counterfeiting thief. In truth, the secret Victoria is not telling us is that she is taking a good and beautiful element out of the beauty of its context twisting it to head in a selfish direction and undermining the higher and more satisfying pleasure.

But God offers something of far exceeding excellence for us to discover to our great and lasting joy. For it is God, the one who created sex, sexuality and sexual expression, it is God who invented pleasure, it is God who gave this great gift to the human race, and it is God who also provides contexts, purposes, and guidelines to enable its fullest expression and meaning. God understands “sexy” better than anyone and it brings Him great joy when we trade in our petty and anemic views of “sexiness” for a much more enticing one.

Thus, if there is a higher and better definition of sexy than the one paraded around in our culture, then even if it is at first hard for us to see or accept, we must trust the Maker of all good things, and seek to alter our perspective in light of His. After all He is the One who declares in Psalm 16:11 that in His presence there is fullness of joy and in His right hand there are pleasures forever. If this verse is true than it must be God’s definition of “what is sexy” that is actually the most tantalizing. And what God finds sexy, we ought also to find sexy.

Phillip Jensen on some of the mistakes he’s made:

The first is that as a young man I enjoyed a fight too much. I grew up in a family of brothers. We fought a lot, and I grew up through debating and arguing, and I liked a good argument. A very kind senior academic came and talked to me years ago, and pointed out that when the Bible urges us to “flee the passions of youth”, it’s not talking about sex. It’s talking about argumentativeness, if you look at the context (in 2 Tim 2). The Lord’s servant must not be argumentative, but teach patiently and pray that God may change your heart. So as a young man, my own personality and argumentativeness was too strong. So that was a lesson to learn.

And a balancing word from his advice to those starting in ministry:

You’ve got to take up your cross and follow Jesus. So this is no career move for the faint-hearted. This is no career move for someone who wants an easy life or a nice life. You’re not going to be accepted, and you’re not going to be liked: you are following the crucified one.

So grasp that reality before you start. That’s not an invitation for nasty people to join the ministry. If you enjoy conflict you have a spiritual problem. But if you withdraw from conflict, or think you’re going to win people over by niceness, you have a major problem because you’re not actually dealing with Christianity. People like using the suffering servant of the cross as an image of loving service. It is that. But it is also an image of painful martyrdom and alienation and rejection. That’s what Christian ministry is always going to be about.

You can read the whole thing here.

1. Incarnational Leadership

Alan Hirsch

We need to rethink ministry and leadership. If you want to be a missional-incarnational then you need to have an appropriate forum. You can’t have a revolution without revolutionaries.

The key take is found in Ephesians 4:1-16.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. . . . And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Vv. 1-6 is on true unity and the upbuilding of the church.

Vv. 7-11 tell us that God gave us apostles, prophets, teachers, etc.

Vv. 12-16 tell us why

You can’t get to vv. 12-16 without vv. 7-11.

We need apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers (APEST). How can we be the kingdom of God if we mess around with the forms? We have deep institutional slumbers. The devil has messed around with vv. 7-11.

Jesus has given us everything we need to get the job done. We need the generative form.

From his website:

APOSTLES extend the gospel. As the “sent ones,” they ensure that the faith is transmitted from one context to another and from one generation to the next. They are always thinking about the future, bridging barriers, establishing the church in new contexts, developing leaders, networking trans-locally. Yes, if you focus solely on initiating new ideas and rapid expansion, you can leave people and organizations wounded. The shepherding and teaching functions are needed to ensure people are cared for rather than simply used.

PROPHETS know God’s will. They are particularly attuned to God and his truth for today. They bring correction and challenge the dominant assumptions we inherit from the culture. They insist that the community obey what God has commanded. They question the status quo. Without the other types of leaders in place, prophets can become belligerent activists or, paradoxically, disengage from the imperfection of reality and become other-worldly.

EVANGELISTS recruit. These infectious communicators of the gospel message recruit others to the cause. They call for a personal response to God’s redemption in Christ, and also draw believers to engage the wider mission, growing the church. Evangelists can be so focused on reaching those outside the church that maturing and strengthening those inside is neglected.

SHEPHERDS nurture and protect. Caregivers of the community, they focus on the protection and spiritual maturity of God’s flock, cultivating a loving and spiritually mature network of relationships, making and developing disciples. Shepherds can value stability to the detriment of the mission. They may also foster an unhealthy dependence between the church and themselves.

TEACHERS understand and explain. Communicators of God’s truth and wisdom, they help others remain biblically grounded to better discern God’s will, guiding others toward wisdom, helping the community remain faithful to Christ’s word, and constructing a transferable doctrine. Without the input of the other functions, teachers can fall into dogmatism or dry intellectualism. They may fail to see the personal or missional aspects of the church’s ministry.

Tom Lin

I was taught to live the sexy life. My parents suffered so that I wouldn’t have to suffer. Now I do it again with my children. As the book title says, we are A Nation of Wimps. We want something cool, easy, and shallow. We don’t teach our children how to suffer. But God invites leaders to suffer.

Jesus always called his followers to die. Think of the Rich Young Ruler.

It’s not easy or sexy to follow Jesus. There’s nothing “sexy” about leaving money or idols behind, or in being persecuted for our faith.

Being an incarnational leader means dying to our comfort zones. Are we settling for comfortable leadership instead? God called Tom to work with Inter-Varsity in Mongolia in four years, in poverty. Loneliness and tears; parents cut off communication. His mom said to him, “Our lives are in the palm of your hand; please don’t crush us; if you do this I will kill myself.”

The Rich Young Ruler encounter ends with Jesus promises manifold blessing for those who give up everything to follow. Leadership bring suffering that’s so good. After 10 years of unreconciliation with his mother; she called him to her bedside before she died of stage 4 cancer and asked for his forgiveness. God is faithful when we step into suffering for the sake of the gospel.

Jeremy Story

Over the past thirteen years he has worked to encourage and train Christian ministry and church leaders on campuses across the nation and world to fervently pray and work together to transform college students and the society these students graduate to lead.

The key to leading incarnational-missional movements is not hanging out with unbelievers; it’s hanging out with God.

To incarnate something is the embodiment of idea through action. It’s by leading others through influencing people through what you do, and this requires pray. Kingdom leadership exerts leadership for the gain of the King. Only that brings lasting change. We can’t incarnate the King’s authority without being in constant contact with the King.

We can be like to be like kids who pretend to be ballerinas.

Pray is not our power source or a tool; God is the power source. It is actively seeking God’s presence in our life—measured by both quantity and quality. We are to pray frequently. Jesus discouraged meaningless words in prayer, but he didn’t discourage time in prayer.

Jesus was incarnationally leading others in missional lifestyle, but he was often pulling back to be alone with the Father. His solution for rest is prayer.

Prayer movements today worldwide are emphasizing large quantities to prayer. Do you want transformation in the Western world, then we should pray in large quantities like the Ugandans are doing.

This is not legalism. We should have not only the form of godliness but also its power.

Persistence means praying over and over again; press into the authority God has given for you. If you want to be an incarnational ministry, spend more hours in prayer and fasting each week. Busyness is overcome by intentional prioritizing and accountability.
(Jeremy Story is the fastest talker of the conference thus far!)

Tara Russell

Tara is the CEO & Founder of Create Common Good, a social + entrepreneurial venture serving the marginalized. Tara has worked internationally for Fortune 500 companies and NGOs. Her work spans process engineering at General Motors in Shanghai, technical sales and marketing at Intel, and product development at Nike.

She also co-founded NightLight International, an organization serving women at-risk in Bangkok, Thailand.

Refugees aren’t choosing to leave; they are fleeing, looking for food and water. 16 million refugees around the world; 45 million displaced. Her organization helps refugees find and retain their first jobs. Food can be a natural vehicle to change lives.

Keller says that leadership is the cultivation and stewardship of resources.

Our kids make us stuff to hang on the fridge, but at the end of the day we just want to hug our kids and be with them. Likewise, we must care for our own souls first before our heavenly father. God used land and food in the garden for our good. Isaiah 61:3, we are to be “oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.” God is the father and the farmer who loves us.

Dhati Lewis

Only God can imagine and speak something and it happens.

At Dallas Seminary, there was a constant flow of chapel speakers who talked about the important thing we all should be doing. That’s the tension we face at conferences. How do we take these things and incarnate them.

We need to remember: God is sovereign, omniscient—and I’m not. That gives us freedom. The gospel changes people, and people changes world. We don’t see more transformation because we haven’t been more transformed by the gospel. We need to cultivate our hearts to love and follow God above all else.

Three rules: (1) love God with everything you have; (2) love your neighbor as yourself; (3) do whatever you want to do. The restriction is in the first two.

The apologetic of our day is authenticity.

We want to unleash healthy people to do ministry where life exists.

The church is a family, not an orphanage. When we talk about incarnational leadership, we must have the same passion for the church as we have for our kids. The church is not like a family—it is a family. U

Dave Gibbons

How many of you have prayed, “God, let me change the world for you.” God will answer that prayer, but maybe in ways unexpected. Maybe it’s not through your strengths or gifts or personality, but through your suffering and pain and weaknesses.

Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

If you keep talking about your weaknesses, you’re going to be cycled out into some 12-step program.

Are some of the strategies we’re developing part of the “flesh and blood” approach?

The most important thing we can do is to lead in power by the Holy Spirit.

The most important thing this generation needs is not another form, but an encounter with God.

How are you depending on the Holy Spirit? We have to create space during our work week to listen to God—not just when we’re alone but when we’re with people.

I know how to strategize and program stuff and am an introvert—how do we deal with unusual manifestations of the Holy Spirit in healing?

(FYI: better transcribers than I could take down the various stories being told, but I can’t do them justice.)

We believe the Holy Spirit is real, but we don’t go to meet him every day? When you woke up did you go to the “flesh and blood” stuff, or were you pumped that you could encounter the Spirit of Christ? You can’t make it through ministry in the flesh. Who are you depending on? The next quick-fix at a conference with ten action steps? The Spirit himself will give you action steps.

I crave being in God’s presence; I can’t live without it.

Immersion. We need to immerse ourselves in the power of the Holy Spirit. We don’t make time for this. A real sign of your dependance on the Holy Spirit is your prayer life—not just at an individual level but at a corporate level.

Customizaton. We should look not just at “strengths and weaknesses” but also pain, weaknesses, addictions. A lot of us stop at “confess your sins.” Do that too much and you’re an addict, not at the center of the church. What if we “embrace” our humanity (Romans 7). We want to project like we’re Superman. Maybe the best indicator of a person’s destiny is bound up with their pain—which can become their gift.

Collaboration. Have you ever thought about the giftings in a church are to be lived out regionally? Pulpit exchanges? Choirs? We must be willing to risk losing our people, but we should do what’s best for them. What if we’re think to think globally?

We have a power within us by the Spirit; we are to live supernaturally; our pain is a gift.

2. Disciple-making

Neil Cole

A multiplication movement can’t be fully seen until the fourth generation.

2 Timothy 2:2: “what [2] you have heard from [1] me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to [3] faithful men who will be able to teach [4] others also.

It’s not ultimately about having a dynamic leader.

If the gospel doesn’t motivate your people, you’re never going to see a movement. We need people so in love with Jesus that they can’t keep quiet and can’t keep still. Love is the best motive. Love requires a choice. Too many parents have the goal of their kids not being criminals, so they develop a parenting option. If you don’t have bad options, you don’t have love. There’s a difference between moral and godly children.

I don’t want to be motivated by anything other than the gospel and by love. It’s the energy behind any movement. We cannot energize anybody with anything less. You can trust him to lead and love your people better than you. With that kind of love, no one and nothing can stop us.

Roderick Gilbert

Discipleship is central not only to the Great Commission but to the worldwide mission of God.

I was born and raised in a small town in Northern India. My mother came to the Lord as an 8-year-old. She discipled me from birth.

Discipleship takes intentional mentoring. Luke 2:19—Mary cherished all these things in her heart, which is what she used to mentor Jesus.

You do not begin to disciple someone only when you become a mature Christian. Any disciple should reproduce him/herself at any stage in life. You just need to be able to impart the meaning of obedience to others.

What is discipleship? Hard to explain, but a mother tiger is a very effective discipler. She feeds her cub, then teaches them how to hunt in various stages. At one point she half-kills the animal for them to finish killing. She doesn’t do this forever.

Discipleship is very conditional. If you do not take up your cross, if you do not bear fruit . . .

What is a fruit of mango? A mango tree.

The fruit of a disciple is a disciple-maker.

George Patterson

When you hear the word “liberate,” what comes into our minds?

Jesus freed us to obey his commands any time and anywhere.

All God’s promises are yes in Christ. We need to free people from the “no zone” that paralyzes the body of Christ (no’s are first learning Bible doctrines, ordination, denominational funding, etc.)

What is a second track?

Our cell groups are not multiplying via evangelism. We should leave behind any bylaws that aren’t in the NT—any rules that keep us from obeying Jesus. We need to take the church to the people. Our churches bylaws can keep us from obeying Jesus. We should work with people who are not receptive to attending an institutional church. Many churches have started a second track. We need to tell our denominational leaders that we’ll obey Christ above all else.

Advice for talking to your strong church leaders: be calm; don’t be anti-institutional church; talk about Jesus’s basic commands; pray, pray, pray about how you can be obedient to Christ’s commands.

How do we find receptive people? Keep asking God; look for the new members; go on prayer walks and find the strong man in the community; look for bad folk, who make for good soil.

All around the world people are doing what Jesus said: healing the sick and setting them free.

What do we do with the kids? Jesus used children; include them!

Even the most institutional church can start a second, simpler track: requiring only what the NT requires to serve Christ.

Kevin Peck

What if our generation is the generation that gets to see the return of Jesus? It’s good for our souls, every so often—like a thousands times a day—to dream that Christ’s return might not be a thousand years away.

Our message doesn’t change. And God’s method of discipleship doesn’t change either.

As a follower of Jesus, I’m a lot of things, but primarily his son and a disciple.

Jesus’s plan is to rescue every one of his children from every tribe, and tongue, and nation, and he will do it through discipleship.

Jesus’s plan for the world-evangelization project is to spend time with a few to reach the many. Why do we spend time with the many to reach the few?

Jesus is not just wise about the message but also about the method.

If you’re a parent, you already get this. We enter into their world and love, explain, shepherd, chill, hang, disciple. It happens through dialogue, not just monologues.

Leaders, don’t use people to reach the many. When you look at the people around you (staff, friends, family), how are they treated? Used for ministry, or invested for ministry?

There is no plan B. This is God’s plan for the nations.

Jo Saxton

1 Cor 4:14-17

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

When Jesus did discipleship, the world changed.

Most of Jesus’s time was spend investing in his disciples.

Paul is giving us an image of what discipleship looks like. It’s the difference between a pedagogue and a parent. Paul is urging the Corinthian church to imitate him, as a father. You can’t be what you can’t see. Timothy is not a perfect example but he’s a living example. They needed someone to imitate.

Jesus’s discipleship approach involved three things: information, imitation, and innovation.

Growing up as a foster child, I didn’t know whose I was and therefore didn’t know who I was.

Will I let people imitate our lives? Do we have a life worth intimidating?

For our kids, we’ll lay down our lives for our kids to succeed. We also need to rise up and be parents to other people, like Jesus and Paul and the disciples did—then we’ll see the world change.

Jeff Vanderstelt

I’m convinced we don’t have a disciple-making problem at all. We have plenty of disciple-makers—the question is what are we making disciples of? Imitation is how the world works.  We need not just to ask how but what.

Some just teach them the truths about God (cognitive understanding), which is good. Others focus on spiritual disciples. We’re not against these, but you can practice the disciplines and be far from God.

The point of making disciples is making disciples of Jesus. We need to lead people to ongoing surrender to Jesus Christ and his gospel.

We shouldn’t start with evangelism (defined as the his sufficiency in the gospel) and then move on to work for God. We can’t stop preaching the gospel through the whole process. If you don’t make disciples through the gospel of Jesus Christ we’re making disciples of something else. We don’t want to grow them up into something else.

3. For the Nations

Instead of reading my inadequate summaries, you can watch the stream live here.

Rick Warren is interviewing an Asian church planter whose identity cannot be shared or it will be compromised.

Then Matt Carter and David Platt will speak on God’s heart for the nations.