Mark Dever on how to preach the gospel:

“When we hold forth the good news in our preaching, we should particularly beware of presenting this gospel as an option to be exercised for the betterment of sinners’ lives. After all, what would a carnal person consider “better”? Leading questions like “are you scared of death?” “Do you want happiness?” “Wouldn’t you like to know the meaning of your life?” are all well-intentioned, and any of them may be used by God’s Spirit to convict someone, and to lead to their conversion. But such questions may also be answered by a simple “no.” To use such questions as if they are the starting point for those considering the gospel is to make it sound all too optional.

I don’t care if my hearers are scared of death, wanting happiness or meaning in life, I know that they will die and stand before God to give an account of their lives. And I know that God will therefore rightly condemn them to an eternal Hell.

• So I find verses like Mark 8:38 useful, where Jesus taught “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
• Or again, Romans 3:19-20, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.”
• Or Hebrews 9:27, “man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment . . .”

This demand—rather than a marketer’s appeal—is to be the basis of the evangelistic call in our sermons. Our gospel sermons are not to sound like the solicitations of a salesman, but the summons of a judge.

—Mark Dever, from “Evangelistic Expository Preaching,” in Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship, Philip Graham Ryken, Derek W. H. Thomas, and J. Ligon Duncan eds. (P&R, 2003), 134-135.

I will always remember this day and age in the future, when I look back at my (pre-) seminarian life. When I consider what battles I am facing in evangelicalism right now, I shiver at the mere thought of the war we are in right now. I gulp and swallow hard at what Paul wrote to his young pastor-disciple Timothy a long time ago:

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” (1 Tim. 4:3-4)

Unfortunately, that time has come again (though some would say it’s always been here). I have not even started my seminary education yet, and already there is so much in Christianity being questioned that I never, ever would think would be doubted. As John MacArthur has continually noted, the battleground in the church will always be centered around truth. It is still the same today on April 25, 2007.
Read the rest of this entry »

On the July 15, 2005 episode of Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on PBS, Brian McLaren was interviewed on the emerging church.

When asked, “Are there truths related to the faith that we can know, that we can be certain about?” — McLaren dodges the question completely and responds with the following (*this is his complete, unedited response):

Well, first of all, when we talk about the word “faith” and the word “certainty,” we’ve got a whole lot of problems there. What do we mean by “certainty”? If I could substitute the word “confidence,” I’d say yes, I think there are things we can be confident about, and those are the things we have to really work with. This is one of the concerns that some people who are critical of my work have, and I understand their concern. Their concern is they feel you have a choice between certainty and a lack of confidence. Well, I think that there is a proper level of confidence. For example, the people who are sure that white supremacy was justifiable based on the Bible — they were certain about it. I don’t think they had many second thoughts about it. The Europeans who spread around the world and stole lands from the first nations, the native peoples of Africa, North America, South America, Asia — they had no shortage of confidence. They were certain that they were allowed to go and take everybody’s lands and, I mean, the results were horrific for hundreds of years.

So certainty can be dangerous. What we need is a proper confidence that’s always seeking the truth and that’s seeking to live in the way God wants us to live, but that also has the proper degree of self-critical and self-questioning passion. And that’s not a passion for being wishy-washy or, what was the word in the last election, to be a “flip-flopper.” It is a passion to say, “We might be wrong, and we are always going to stay humble enough that we’ll be willing to admit that.” I don’t see that as a lack of fidelity to the teaching of the Bible. I see that as trying to follow the teaching of the Bible. It has a lot of positive things to say about humility.

Read the rest of this 2year old emerging ooze here.

(If you didn’t know, I think I should make it clear: I strongly disagree with McLaren–for there are many things in our faith that we can know for certain. For starters, Christ’s death and resurrection in our place, and Scripture as God’s own breathed, inerrant word. Without even these 2, our faith falls to pieces.)

“Doth that man love his Lord who would be willing to see Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, while for himself he craves a chaplet of laurel? Shall Jesus ascend to his throne by the cross, and do we expect to be carried there on the shoulders of applauding crowds? Be not so vain in your imagination. Count you the cost, and if you are not willing to bear Christ’s cross, go away to your farm and to your merchandise, and make the most of them; only let me whisper in your ear, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”

-C.H. Spurgeon

As my sister already mentioned, I just got back from Southern Seminary’s Preview Conference. I’ve got a few comments and photos I’ll share soon in reflection of the weekend in Louisville, but for now, here’s an recent article about Southern Seminary from their news service:

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has reached an all-time high in enrollment and is continuing to draw scores of ministers desiring to prepare for ministry in the local church, President R. Albert Mohler Jr. told trustees at the annual spring meeting Tuesday.

Seminary enrollment this semester grew to more than 4,200 students, Mohler said, the vast majority of whom are preparing to serve as pastors of local Southern Baptist churches. Enrollment has doubled since 1995.

Mohler said the increased enrollment has come by God’s grace because the school has sought to attract students during a time when theological institutions in America are turning out “professional ministers” and not pastor-theologians. Many seminaries are going away from training pastors in the classical theological disciplines and, instead, are preparing them to meet the felt needs of a therapeutic culture, he said.

“When you look where the bulk of the enrollment is right now in the theological seminaries of North America, much of it is in what you might call the ‘helping’ professions rather than in the pulpit ministry,” he said.

“We are watching before our eyes in the course of one or two generations the redefinition of theological education away from theology, away from the pulpit and away from the church.”

Mohler called Southern a “contrarian institution” whose primary focus is raising up God-centered pastors who are faithful expositors of Scripture.

Continue reading article.

I think this song is going to be very appropriate for the phase of life I find myself in these next 3 months. There’ll be a lot of goodbyes to be said, a good number of “see you soon”s. It’s going to a be a bittersweet time when I leave home in August, and thus I am trying to make use of all the time we have together: to embrace the grace that Christ has given us, the friendship we have built, the joys and tears we have shared, the time we have spent together.

Today’s song is an oldie, but a goodie: Goodbye To You (Acoustic) by Michelle Branch. This one is probably meant for somebody specific, but it’s hard to remember (yet impossible to forget). Regardless, here’s a few words in remembrance of the life I’ve lived in Toronto for the past 20years…

Lyrics here: Read the rest of this entry »

I am about to visit Southern Seminary Thursday night through Saturday afternoon with my family for the seminary’s Preview Conference. This is a long time coming, and even as it is only a day away, I feel more unprepared than ever. For I feel weak and inadequate, not ready for seminary and not capable to do His work effectively–a sinner whose disobedience has left a crimson stain on his hands. And yet at the same time, I feel strong and ready to face the seminary & ministry challenges ahead because of Christ’s Spirit that is at work in me, the Holy Ghost empowering me to do His work–a servant of God whose sinful heart Christ has washed white as snow.

I was graciously reminded by a friend during a recent conversation that the most important quality of a pastor/preacher (or any Christian for that matter) should be integrity of character. What’s interesting to note is that I am hearing this at a time when I’ve been listening to a lot of sermons from many Reformed pastors (most of whom are my theological heroes)–men of God who have a great skill of making me feel guilty (almost to the point of tears) for the sin in my life and un-impassioned disciple I seem to be. Their skill at expounding the power of God in His Word draws me to grow in my own ministry skills, increasing a desire to convict my listeners of sin and to convince them of grace.
Read the rest of this entry »