The conference is over and the content has been posted. If you haven’t stumbled across it already, audio and video of all sessions is available online, and text notes are available for most.

I may post some thoughts later as I go through the sessions. I watched Driscoll’s talk last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was very pleased with what he presented and was stretched a bit to boot so it was an excellent talk. Earlier today we started watching Ferguson’s talk but the kids weren’t all that engaged and their noise made it hard for us to be engaged. Oh well, we will be driving to Florida in a few hours. The six hour drive there will give us time enough to work through most of the sessions.

After much consideration and conversation we’ve decided not to attend the Desiring God National Conference. It’s too late to refund our tickets, but if we went we’d have to pay more than double the ticket cost for hotel stays and gas. Combine that with all the transitioning that will be going on and a few hesitations I have about the conference, we’ve decided to stay home.

Hope everyone going has a great time!

We’ve been busy out and about the last few days so I’ve had no time to post updates.

It looks like we will be headed for Panama City, FL! The congregation of Immanuel Baptist Church voted to call me as pastor and I accepted. My first Sunday there is slated for the third Sunday in October.

In a few days we will begin the trek to Minneapolis, MN for the Desiring God National Conference. We’ll be driving and since it’s about a 16 hour trek we’re planning to split it up and do the drive in two days. Everyone driving to the conference should develop some secret headlight flash or something so we can signal to each other along the way and conspire to keep the bad drivers out of our way.

I’ll have my camera and laptop with me so there will be pictures and some blogging while there. I am hoping the blogging is reflective and informative and not controversial. Pray for an edifying conference with good instruction on the proper use of words. I am nervous about a few things that *might* happen at the conference. I pray they do not.

See you all there!

Psalm 70:4-5

May all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you!
May those who love your salvation
say evermore, “God is great!”
But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, O God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O Lord, do not delay!

My first (and last?) sojourn into video podcasting. In the video I discuss a personal item and the issue of double predestination.

From watching the video I can see a few things I will want to do differently if I do another one of these. We shall see!

From Ligonier Ministries, R. C. Sproul discusses the first of five things he believes every Christian needs in order to grow: Bible study.

We might give several reasons for fighting sin. These reasons are good, but until recently I had not considered the best reason to fight sin. Here are the good but not quite complete reasons to fight sin:

• Sin keeps us from living the way we were created to live. To experience the best kind of life we must live the way the Creator intended.
• Sin is displeasing to God. If we want to please God we must avoid sin.
• Sin distracts us from accomplishing God’s will. If our minds are following sin, we will not be following God.
• Sin disrupts human relationships as it keeps us from seeing and loving one another as we ought.

Again, those are all good reasons. But here is what I am now thinking is the best reason to fight sin:

• When we sin we treat something as greater than God himself. We are distracted from delighting in God and instead delight in our sinful actions. The delight may not be obvious – who would consider it delightful to go off in a murderous rage? But nonetheless even then we desire our rage more than we desire God. When we sin we have that sin and not God as the center of our being. We fight sin so that we can keep our eyes fixed on Christ and our delight fully on him.

This post follows my announcement Calvinism: Planting My Flag.

Throughout history many Christians have contributed a great deal of time, energy, and even blood to promote and defend the cause of Christ. I don’t want to downplay the important work that has been carried out by many non-Calvinists throughout history but I want to mention a few individuals specifically and some general trends that make me more appreciative of Calvinism.

We often hear people say that Christianity is under attack today. In many ways this is a false statement in that it implies Christianity is facing challenges today that it has not faced in the past. The truth is Christianity – more specifically, Christ – has always been under attack. In our generation some of the attacks of Satan have just become a little more evident than in the previous generation.

Among the attacks Satan has leveled against Christ and his church have been many attempts to undermine Christian trust in the word of God. We are rightly described as people of the book for it is this one Book that guides our faith and practice. Scripture is the God-given revelation of himself which tells us who we are, who he is, and how he wants us to live. In a way it is wrong to speak of the Bible as being our authority since God is our authority, but the Bible is the authoritative word that God has given and preserved for us. If trust in the Bible were undermined then Christianity itself would be undermined. Knowing this, Satan has leveled many attacks against the Bible over the centuries. Today’s attacks generally come from the liberal branches of Christianity and liberal attempts to dismantle the Bible and rebuild it more to their liking.

Against these attacks have stood many faithful Christians but I see Calvinists more than others standing in firm, faithful, and reasonable defense of Scripture. Calvinists and non-Calvinists on the conservative end of the spectrum would agree about the value, importance, and trustworthiness of Scripture but I really appreciate Calvinist attention to Scripture. Calvinist churches tend to be churches that want to teach their people doctrine. They want their people to know the word of God and how God’s word gives one coherent message of God’s work with humanity. I am very sad to say that most of the non-Calvinist churches I am familiar with do not go very deep with the Bible. They have firm commitments to the Word of God as the Word of God but they often do not take their people deep into the Word.

I am grateful especially to John Piper. It was his teaching and preaching that helped me finally understand parts of the Bible that had previously seemed irreconcilable. How in the world can Romans 9 and 2 Peter 3 be in the same Bible and how in the world can we see the consistent message in both? Piper helped me to understand how. Piper’s preaching is thoroughly biblical and if I sometimes disagree with Piper’s interpretation of Scripture I cannot fault his commitment to Scripture. I recently remarked to my wife how different it is to read John Piper versus some of the non-Calvinist writers I have appreciated. Their writings might contain biblical insights but they do not contain much of the Bible itself. With Piper and many other Calvinist writers one cannot go more than a few sentences before coming across direct appeals to Scripture. That is the kind of teaching I pray we see more of.

I am grateful to John MacArthur, even though I disagree with him a bit more often than with Piper. He shares Piper’s commitment with Scripture and has a desire to see Christians apply biblical truth to all of life.

I have a growing appreciation of the Calvinist saints of old. Men like Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards and John Owen. I look forward to reading more of their works and discovering even more saints that time has tried to obscure. These men all share a firm commitment to Scripture and a desire to teach doctrine that comes not from human wit or wisdom but from the word of God. They use human wit and wisdom to help others understand what God has revealed in his word but the Bible remains their foundation. I pray we follow in their example.

I pray that God would continue to raise up saints – Calvinist and non-Calvinist alike – to firmly, faithfully, and lovingly promote and proclaim the Word of God to their churches and to the world. And with my flag now in the Calvinist camp, I pray that God would help my non-Calvinist brothers and sisters understand that Calvinism is not just acceptable, it is biblical. It comes not from the mind of man but from the mind of God. May God find us faithful as we seek to rightly divide the Word of Truth and to rightly apply it to our lives.

This post follows my announcement Calvinism: Planting My Flag.

There is really just one thing to mention here and I’ve mentioned it already. I am still wrestling with the question of how God receives more glory when some are saved and the rest damned than if all were saved. If we take 2 Peter 3:9 at face value (which I think we should) and we believe that God has complete control over his creation and could save everyone if he wanted to (which he does and could) and yet we recognize that not everyone is saved, we face the question of why he does not save everyone. I discussed this some in my post Why I Am A Calvinist so I won’t rehash it here. I am completely satisfied to say there are two wills in God and that his will that all be saved stands under his will to magnify his own glory. But why is it more glorious that some be saved and others lost rather than all be saved? And as I discussed in my post on Calvinism, I am somewhat – though not completely – satisfied with Jonathan Edwards’ answer that for God’s glory to shine fully he must make manifest all of his character and nature, his wrath and justice as well as his mercy and love. Thus some are saved and demonstrate his mercy and love while others are damned and demonstrate his wrath and justice. The saved are saved only by his grace and the damned are damned justly because of their own sins.

This post follows my announcement Calvinism: Planting My Flag.

In ways the controversy surrounding Calvinism is somewhat surprising. While on the one hand Southern Baptists (specifically, Lifeway) hosted the Building Bridges conference on Calvinism which encouraged people on all sides of the issue to come together, on the other hand Jerry Vines put together the John 3:16 conference as a response to Building Bridges and as an attempt to show people the problems with Calvinism. It is reported that the number of Calvinists in the Southern Baptist Convention is growing, but at the same time the number of churches refusing to hire Calvinist pastors also seems to be growing. Many of the concerns seem to be more about misunderstandings than actual differences. People have many assumptions about Calvinism and have heard a number of nasty rumors that leave them suspicious of anyone calling himself a Calvinist. But most of those assumptions and rumors are false. What I want to address in this section is what it means to live as a Calvinist. There shouldn’t be anything surprising here – I will simply be discussing what the Bible says about the Christian life. Some, though, might be surprised to find out that Calvinists believe and practice some of these things.

Continuing my love of sections, I will discuss Christian living under the headings of evangelism, church life and personal holiness.

Evangelism

Most of the misconceptions about Calvinism fall into this group. Many people believe that since Calvinism teaches that only the chosen will be saved, evangelism is not something Calvinists feel is important. If God chooses the people that will respond to the gospel and their response is guaranteed, why evangelize?

Despite this misconception, most Calvinists are right there with most non-Calvinists in recognizing the need for evangelism. But why would Calvinists feel the need to evangelize? Several years ago I heard R. C. Sproul respond to this question by saying we feel the need to evangelize because God told us to evangelize. One cannot escape the gospel imperative to go out into all the world and spread the good news. And our preaching, teaching, proclaiming and evangelizing is not in vain. God uses the work of his servants to bring people to himself. This is the meaning of Paul’s words in Romans 10:14-17:

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

For his own reasons God has chosen to work through his creation in bringing salvation to the world. We did not hear the gospel through angelic proclamation. You heard it through a father or mother, Sunday school teacher, pastor, friend, or perhaps a random tract left by a stranger. Even Saint Augustine heard the voice of a child telling him to take up and read. However it happened for you, God used people to bring you to himself. Ultimately the work was his own. No human had the power to move you to Christ. But God used humans to be his agents on earth.

Evangelism, then, is essential because it is through evangelism that God saves sinners. Relentless evangelism – that is, indiscriminate evangelism is also essential. Calvinists do not believe you can pick and choose who you will share the gospel with. Christians have no special discernment that tells us who will respond and who will not. We must spread the gospel to all people. God will bring in the harvest. In the parable of the seeds sown on different types of soil, we normally focus on the soils themselves. But don’t miss the fact that the sower in this parable did not try to discriminate good soil from bad. In this sense he was a poor farmer, but it made him a great evangelist. Spread the word of God wherever you have opportunity and trust God to be at work in the soil.

No one is ever convinced to turn to Christ because of evangelism. But through evangelism God reveals who it is that he has turned to himself. The evangelist has no cause for boasting when people respond to his proclamation. Their response was not due to his skill or his clever ability to elicit a response. This is one thing that should give all people confidence to go out and witness. It does not matter how skilled a talker or debater you are. In the end whether or not the person responds has nothing to do with your ability anyway. God has promised to guide you by the Holy Spirit, and we are told that he is the one that gives growth to our labor. Trust him with the growth and do not worry if you feel inadequate to the task. We are all inadequate but God is glorified all the more through our weakness.

(Note: As you’ve noticed, this section does not contain a comprehensive picture of evangelism – there is a lot I’ve left out – but it is intended to focus on those issues that tend to make non-Calvinists suspicious of Calvinists.)

Church life

There is no such thing as a solo saint. Christians are called to be a part of a vibrant community of believers, spurring one another on toward holiness for the glory of God. Similarly, those communities are to be vibrant beacons of God’s truth to cast off the darkness of the world. Calvinists have sometimes received the label frozen chosen due to the tendency of some (usually referred to as hyperCalvinists) to remain holed up in their churches, leaving other Christians and the world to make it on their own. But the life of Christ teaches us that the will of the Father is for a people who abide with one another, that are made one through the bond of Christ himself. And as a unified community we are not here to look inward but to look upward, seeking to glorify God. One way he has called for us to glorify him is by being a community that spreads his glory into the world. This relates to the previous section on evangelism. When Christians gather together the purpose of our gatherings should not be to entertain nor to talk about Christian facts. Our gathering together should be for the purpose of building up one another to carry out the ministry of Christ. In this I am getting a little more controversial. The gathering of believers is not the place for evangelism, but it is the place to prepare believers to go out and evangelize. It is not the place to try and draw in the lost. It is the place to teach the found how to live out and proclaim the gospel so that all the lost will see and hear. The community of believers should also be active in seeking ways to carry that message to the lost. Throughout the book of Acts we read of missionary endeavors planned and carried out from within a local group of believers. Churches need to be intentional about equipping and organizing believers to share the gospel with a lost world. Churches need to instill in members a passion for Christ, such a love for him that they cannot help but overflow to the world so that all will see their love for Christ. Our gatherings should never be about entertainment (contrary to too many modern church fads) nor should they be about the accumulation of facts (contrary to a rare number of over-intellectualized churches). Our gatherings should equip the saints to glorify God with their lives as they proclaim the gospel to the world.

Personal holiness

Sometimes those who believe salvation can be lost wonder how those who teach perseverance can also teach holiness. If we cannot lose our salvation, if forgiveness means all our sins, past and present and future, are taken care of, why should anyone live a holy life? If I know that accepting Christ ten years ago secures me for the rest of my life, why not party down and enjoy the lusts of the flesh until I die and go to paradise?

There are a few ways to respond to this. The first is that no one who has been born of God will go on sinning. That is the message John delivers over and over again in 1 John. This doesn’t mean the believer never sins. It means the pattern of his life is no longer characterized by a striving for sin but by a striving for holiness. It is very strong evidence that a person’s faith is not genuine if Christianity for them is no more than a kind of cosmic fire insurance. They walked the aisle, their name is now on the church role, so they are safe to live however they want. To this Scripture says No! If a person is born again, regenerate, transformed from life in the flesh to life in the Spirit, he will not go on living in a pattern of sin. Some periods of struggle and straying will be greater than others but his life will show a definite pattern of striving for holiness. The Bible does not present any other option.

Another way to respond is by noting that ultimately Christianity is not about salvation from Hell nor the attainment of Heaven but is about the attainment of God himself. John Piper writes about this in some length in his book God is the Gospel. We have not been saved so that we can escape Hell. We have not been saved so that we can go to Heaven. We have not been saved so that we can enjoy blessings now and throughout eternity. We have been saved so that we can live in a loving relationship with God. True love will always seek to do that which is best, the greatest good. If you love God as you claim then you will seek to live before God in the best way possible. The only way to do this is by living in obedience to him. If someone claims to love God and yet lives in opposition to the commands of God, his claim of love is nothing but a sham, a lie.

Holiness is not an option for the believer. It is something we must always strive for. It is a striving that never ends this side of Heaven but when we stand before the Lord and the perishable becomes the imperishable we will finally experience the true fruit and joy of absolute holiness. This is the promise of Ezekiel 36:25-27.