Mark Driscoll on Preaching Christ

I found this on Adrian Warnock’s blog. Driscoll was at the Dwell Conference recently in London and this is one of his sessions. I have yet to listen to it personally (although I do intend to soon), but thought I’d post it if any of you wanted to. If you want to just read the notes, Warnock provides a nice outline on his blog here (Aug. 17th entry). I’ve found that listening to pastor conferences on how to interpret scripture has helped me during my own quiet times, and may also be helpful for small group leaders as they “prep” their weekly passages.

Going Into Debt for His Glory

As some of you might know, I listen to church sermons, conference seminars and seminary lectures while I travel and generally alternate between the three “genres”. This is something I commend to those of you who use public transportation to get to work; I find it a good use of time.

Currently, in terms of conferences, I’m working through the New Attitude 2007 Conference. The focus of the conference was on discernment. Of the seminars at NA2007, I would recommend “Discern Your Culture” by Al Mohler, “Discern Your Doctrine” by Mark Dever and “Discern What Pleases God (2 Parts)” by John Piper. If you want to listen to the main sessions at NA2007, click here to download them.

This is the nugget of gold I got out of John Piper’s seminar titled “Discern What Pleases God: Personal Obedience.” The overarching concept of Piper’s message was not falling into the subtle temptations of using work as a means of justification. We’ve thought through this concept quite a bit, I think, in regards to the role of grace in justification and sanctification, so I’m not going to go too deep into Piper’s cautions of not falling into the mindset of obedience as a way to “pay God back” or obedience as the groundwork for a “works-based theology”.

Piper brought forward an objection to this idea of not “paying God back” for the cross, and in responding to that objection he presented a wonderful Biblical truth.

“¹²What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me? ¹³I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD” (Psalm 116:12-13).

So in verse 12, we see the question of how we “pay God back.” But what is seen here is that we do not in fact pay Him back. In the next verse, we see the psalmist explaining what we must “render to the LORD for all his benefits,” which is to lift up the cup of salvation. The cup of salvation is an empty cup that must be filled. How do we see this? Because the psalmist couples the lifting of the cup with calling on the name of the LORD.

So what do we “render to the LORD”? Ask for more! God is glorified when we ask Him for more grace. Thank God for His grace to us sinners by asking for more grace. This truth can be summed up in the third stanza of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”:

O to grace how great a debtor

            Daily I’m constrained to be!

Daily, we grow more and more in debt to the grace of God. And by growing more in debt to grace, the more God is glorified.

2008 Resolved, Gospel Video

I found this on The Shepherd’s Scrapbook and thought I should share it. Not very often do you find good, artistic videos that convey the Gospel with clarity–point-blank and straight-forward.

Is He Enough?, by Joshua Harris

Joshua Harris presents an exposition of Psalm 73 to talk about whether God is enough. Not in the sense of questioning if He is enough, but if we can really say “God is enough” with true sincerity and belief. Is God enough? We want to say yes, but a majority of us can’t.