Ligon Duncan:

“How should we read the fathers? We should read the fathers respectfully, but carefully, under the authority of scripture. . . . Our greatest concern in studying the church fathers is not to read what they said about a particular doctrine and then decide that what they said about that particular doctrine is authoritative, infallible, and true, but to learn what they said about a particular doctrine in order to know how they read the scriptures. The scriptures are our final authority, and they help test our reading of scripture. Sometimes they’re right; sometimes they’re wrong. But they help us, whether they’re right or wrong, to read the Bible better, and to sit under its authority better, and that’s how we need to read the church fathers. We don’t go back and say, ‘What did they say about this doctrine, and whatever they say about this doctrine must be infallibly true.’ No, we say, ‘What did they say about this doctrine, because what they say about this doctrine will help me see if I am completely out to lunch as to how I’m reading the Bible.’ They may be wrong, and I may be right. I may be wrong, and they may be right, but I’ll read the scriptures in conversation with these expositors, these early expositors, of God’s Word. So we read the fathers respectfully, but carefully, under the authority of scripture. This is exactly what the Magisterial Reformers in the days of the Reformation did.”

“The fathers were best in polemics. We do not like polemics today, or we don’t like it for very long; it feels to negative for us. When godly men start criticizing other Christians, after just a short period of time, we get the heebie-jeebies, and there’s a whole psychology behind that that is unique to this generation. But listen to this, my friends, when you read the fathers, in areas that were not disputed contested matters of church doctrine in their own time, let me give you this word of advice: watch out, because they’re all over the map. But when you read the fathers in any area which was a disputed debate in the church in their time, they almost always get it right, and gloriously so. And so heresy served the church to get the Bible’s proper understanding rightly articulated to the people of god. In the church fathers you find this repeatedly. So the church fathers will serve you best in the areas where the truth of the scriptures is under assault in their own time, and where it is not under assault, you better watch out, because sometimes they will assume the gospel, sometimes they will muddle the truth, and they will contradict one another, but put them in a fight, and they’ll almost always get it right.”

Matt Chandler [possibly the most quotable statement from the entire conference]:

“I don’t care what you think; I care what the Bible says. There’s a way that seems right to all of us, and in the end, it gets everybody killed. If you want to talk about the text, that’s great; if you want to tell a story about your cousin Jim, I don’t care.”

C. J. Mahaney:

“Never assume those in your church have exhausted their need for the gospel. Never assume those in your church have a sufficient knowledge of the gospel. Never address a topic isolated from the gospel. Never exhort to obedience apart from the gospel. Never be more passionate in your preaching on another topic than you are the gospel. You have been entrusted with the old, old story. You must not alter that story; you must not adjust that story; you must not add to that story. Instead, we are charged to faithfully proclaim this story. You will experience temptations to stray from this story, temptations to satisfy the sinful inclinations described in [2 Timothy 4] 3 and 4, but you, as for you, you must be faithful to preach the Word, and in order to be faithful to this charge, you must resolve to be unoriginal. . . . You must preach the Word with an absolutely clear commitment to unoriginality, because if you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, you will easily be distracted by matters of secondary importance instead of fixed on the matter of first importance. If you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, you’ll be distracted by all that is new, and trendy, and popular, and supposedly original. If you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, the administration of the church will eventually take precedence over your preaching the gospel to the church. If you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, your intelligence, or historical skill, or personality will take precedence over you faithfulness to the message of the gospel. If you don’t resolve to be unoriginal, you will lose sight of what matters the most.”

Mark Dever:

“I wonder if God’s holiness, his awesomeness, is reflected in our public gatherings. So is God presented in our services, in our lives, as one who is unique, and holy, and set apart, and distinct. You know. I think in our generation, we treat casualness as if it’s the height of intimacy. But in the Bible, what happens again and again when people really run into the real God? They are undone; they confess their sins; they fall on their face. Ezekiel, with all of his religious knowledge and training as a priest, is silent.”

“Many of you are very careful about what the gospel is, and you should be. We hope to help you in that in this very conference. Should you also be very careful for the church who Christ gave this gospel to? Recapturing seminaries and even whole denominations for gospel work is good, but its fruit will not be with us for long if we don’t get on with the much larger task of cleaning up thousands upon thousands of local congregations who are poor witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“Realize that if we denounce sin from the pulpit, if we clearly, courageously, stand for the fact that abortion is a murder, the taking of a human life, and we do nothing about the members in our church who are doctors who are performing those abortions, then what are we saying with all our courageous-sounding words, if we’re not willing to do that difficult work down in the trenches of calling the guy up, getting involved in his life, speaking to him clearly about the decision he has to make, either to abandon his claim to follow Christ, or to abandon his sin? Friends, that’s what gives all our high-sounding words reality, and without them, those words can even be dangerous drugs to fool us into thinking we’re doing what we’re not really doing at all.”

John MacArthur:

“. . . I sleep very well. Just generally, wherever I am in the world, it seems I sleep. I think that my ability to sleep is, to some degree, related to my theology. That’s kind of where that title [A Theology of Sleep] comes from. If I believed that the salvation of souls depended on me, I don’t know that I could sleep well. I understand the horrors of eternal hell; I understand the wrath of God; I understand eternal judgment; I understand what’s at stake. It’s a passion for me to reach people with the gospel, and I suppose with that kind of conviction dominating my heart, under some circumstances and under the framework of some kinds of theology, I might have a hard time sleeping because of the urgencies of the issues at hand. But my confidence is in the Lord and in his power, and not in me. So I can enjoy rest, refreshment physically, occasionally diversion from the task, because I don’t do the Lord’s work. My responsibilities are very limited.”

John Piper:

“No matter how righteous you are, or how moral you are, or how religious you are, and no matter whether God has worked that in you or you have worked that in you, don’t trust in it. Don’t trust in anything that is in you, I don’t care how good it is, and I don’t care if it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. Don’t trust in what God has worked in you. Don’t trust in it. Trust in Christ alone, and his life, and his work on the cross, his blood and righteousness. Trust that. Trust that for your acceptance with God, for your justification.”

R. C. Sproul:

Quoting Francis Schaeffer, “The church has lost its sense of antitheses.”

Albert Mohler:

“Once you buy into the logic of anti-supernaturalism, there’s no place to stop. . . . If you start to say, ‘It can’t happen; there is no possibility of a god who would act in that way,’ then you can’t stop at one doctrine just because you decide to stop there, or if you do, you need to understand that what you’re doing is merely exercising some arbitrary operation of the will, not some consistent operation of a theological mind. And one of the other problems that you have with this is that you run out of doctrines to deny. This is one of the most delicious predicaments of modern Protestantism. They started here, and they pretty much run through the catalog. Bishop Spong has denied every doctrine there is to deny, and he’s written a book on it, and he’s already been on the Today Show and Good Morning America, and there are no more doctrines to deny. He’s retired now.”

“When you come to understand liberal theology, you don’t know anything about theology, but you know a lot about liberals. Because their theology is an expression of who they are: ‘This is who I am; here’s my doctrine.’”

Thabiti Anyabwile:

“We must be ruthless about rooting our pastoral purpose and the mission of the church in the Word of God itself, and the gospel itself. So just to make this plain, is it the purpose of the church to win the culture, or engage the culture, or change the culture? Is that your pastoral purpose when you show up Monday morning at the church office? I would suggest to you that that very language — winning the culture, engaging the culture, changing the culture — as ambiguous as it is, the language itself signifies that mission-drift is already underway. We are gospel men. We are proclaimers of this gospel; we are appliers of this gospel; we are representatives of this gospel; we are stewards of this gospel; and the one thing we must do, and not go away from, is this gospel, its proclamation, its preaching.”

“This attempt to acculturate the gospel, to make it fit into our own cultural confines, as we engage the culture, is an adjustment of the gospel, and less than the gospel. When we say ‘church,’ I would implore us to think, to understand, to see, whenever we hear the word ‘church’ — certainly not the building, certainly not just the Sunday gathering — when we say church, I implore us to see the people, and not just people, but by definition, nations. The church is a multi-ethnic thing. And let me be clear: it is not only inescapably multi-ethnic, biblically, but it’s not multi-cultural. It is multi-ethnic, but it is mono-cultural. And it is not any of our native cultures. It’s this new way of being that God has created through Christ in the gospel. It’s a gospel culture.”

Louisville is pronounced lō-ŭ-v’l.

Some people are more comfortable with themselves than perhaps they ought to be. At lunch with Steve Weaver, he found himself sitting above an air conditioning vent. I suggested moving to another table, but Steve declined. “I’m fine,” he said. “It just feels like I don’t have any pants on.”

My wife doesn’t trust my self control. Sitting on the sidewalk in front of an Irish pub Wednesday afternoon, I sipping a glass of Jameson, she expressed her concern that I might get liquored up and do something crazy, “like raise [my] hands during the singing.”

I shook Mark Dever’s hand. I did not swoon or become speechless.

Finally, and more importantly, T4G 2010 video can be found here. Audio is here.

Addendum: We got these!

Another on-the-fly summary taken down on the run by Mrs. Thirsty Theologian.

Kelly’s Notes on John MacArthur’s Conference Session

Mark 4: A Theology of Sleep

MacArthur notes he can enjoy rest wherever he is because he rests in the lord. We are here because we are motivated by Scripture. The crowds that followed Jesus were not committed, but shallow. The parable of sower only appears in John. The man who sows and does not know how the crop grows, but he harvests it. The Gospel is like this: you sow it, then go to sleep, and it grows. We cannot explain it. All the work and forces are apart from us as the farmer sows but God caused the increase. Spiritual birth and life is a divine miracle. Nicodemus comes to Jesus and asks, “How do I enter the kingdom of God.” It calls for something beyond us. We did not participate in our earthly birth we cannot participate in our spiritual birth. Jesus gives the example of the wind blowing: we do not know how it works or the power of it. This is like the Holy Spirit. One of the most unique conversions in the scripture is the thief on the cross. Of the two thieves, one of them was sarcastically thinking, “You, the Messiah! You are a victim, a joke.” But the other one rebukes him. Where did he get his theology? He understood the sinlessness of Christ and his kingdom. The only explanation is the power of God on his soul. Jesus looked so defeated, yet God brings salvation to a thief’s soul. This is in MacArthur’s mind the greatest conversions in the bible. In salvation we may be the means but we are not the power. We go to sleep and let God do the work. The simple principle is sow and sleep. However, there are essential elements at work.

How do we approach evangelism:

1- humility
The surprise in the first parable is that the seed produced 30, 60, 100 fold. The Lord is saying there will come a harvest that is massive. He then explained the parable. The sower sows the Word. No adjectives describe the sower; he is just one who throws the seed. We are not the issue in evangelism. The seed is the word. Salvation cannot occur apart from the word of God. Why did Christ do miracles and then say don’t tell? Luke 9:22- The son of man must suffer many things, and then be raised. The message is the cross and the resurrection; after that, then go tell everyone. This is our seed and our message. It is offensive, foolish, but it is our message. We preach Christ because to those who are called this is the power of God. We can sow the seed we cannot change the heart. In MacArthur’s preaching he does not appeal to the human will. All appeals are to the mind, to understand the truth. We do not want self-willed responses. No fleshly religiosity. These are a far cry from genuine salvation. It makes acceptance hard. The sinner needs to get past the self will. It is not enough to have good feelings about Jesus. True repentance is not necessarily joyful. We approach this sowing humbly. The lord is the one to take out stony hearts.

2- Parable of the Lamp
We are obedient because we know we posses the light. Our role is to be the lamp. How will they know without a preacher. Nothing is to be hidden. Scatter the seed, spread the light.

3- Evangelize diligently
Evangelism is in proportion to the seed sown. That leads to divine blessing and eternal reward. To those who sowed little, little was given; to those who sow much, much is given.

4- Evangelize confidently
How do we picture the kingdom of God? Like a mustard seed. God has determined an exponential outcome. The disciples went from being in a boat where they all could have drowned to turning the world upside down.

This is another quick-and-dirty summary taken down on the run by my wonderfully accommodating wife.

Kelly’s Notes on Thabiti Anyabwile’s Conference Session

“Fine-Sounding Arguments”—How Wrongly “Engaging the Culture” adjusts the Gospel

A lot has been said about engaging in the culture. It is fraught with pitfalls. What is culture? Is it pop culture? Is it the things a society produces? Is it ethnic culture, political culture, or high culture meaning beliefs and ideas? If we engage in the culture how do we know we’ve won or changed it? We can’t predict the outcome if we do change it. What are the terms if we do engage in changing the culture? Is it what Christians are called to do? Col. 1:24-2:?

1- Paul’s pastoral purpose
His purpose was to make the word of God fully known and to make every Christian mature in Christ. His purpose is that everyone embody Christ. He joyfully suffers, preaches, and toils for this purpose. He relates the care for all the churches weighs heavily on him. He desires to make them conform to Christ. Is this our burden? Does this consume us? We need to be gripped by the beauty and splendor of this task. 2:4 a danger false arguments. It is possible for ideas to displace the goal. We must be ruthless in holding to the Gospel. We need to be gospel men. Paul’s social context was complicated. Slavery, Roman occupation and idolatry were practices of his day. He writes to address the church, God’s people. Paul wants God’s people to think of slavery as inconsistent with the Gospel. He wants the Gospel to change how you address that issue. He engages the culture by engaging the church and lets the gospel change the culture. 2:6-7 Paul wants his people to be rooted in Christ. How do we do that? He begins by talking about the person of Christ. He reminds us of benefits and promises of the Gospel. Then Paul talks about baptism, new life. Then he talks about forgiveness through the cross. Paul wants his people to wake up in the morning and hear the nails of the cross.

2- Paul’s philosophy.
His concern is are we captured by Christ or the world’s ideas. If we depend on human wisdom we do not need the cross. Paul sets the gospel over and against human philosophies of the world. Christ cannot be blended with the world. The world is not a safe place. It manipulates. We need to be prayerful and discerning. We cannot hobnob with the world. Scripture talks of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. The world is at warfare with God. Paul commends us to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Paul wants us not to be carried away by other philosophies.

3- paul’s practice Paul wants us to not let others judge us by our practices. Such an approach is futile. How do our various cultures affect our pursuit of the gospel? All our cultures are basically apostate. We need to shed the skin of our culture. We notice different peoples and their different cultures What then does it means to be God’s people. God gives us a culture. God gives his people law and sets them apart. The gentiles question, Acts 15: the Jerusalem council. How do we include these people? The council said don’t put any other burden on them then what the gospel says. All the other things are a shadow but the substance is Christ. There is a unique threat to the gospel that says let me just be with people like me. Think of the church as not the building but people. Multiethnic but not multicultural.

4- Paul’s perspective His ambition was to present them with Christ and to see Him because that’s where we should live. We need to set our minds on Christ’s coming. We need to raise our gaze form the culture and look at Christ.

I type very poorly, 35wpm at my lightning-fastest when I’m typing my own material, so I’m definitely not live-blogging. However, as Mark Dever was being introduced yesterday, I leaned over and asked my dear wife, Kelly, if she intended to take notes. She nodded affirmatively, whereupon I said, “type them, then.” What I meant, of course was, “If you please, My Dear, would you be so kind as to type them for me?” but time restraints precluded good manners. Understanding as she was (and always is), she unsheathed my laptop and began immediately. Now, Kelly seldom types, and never takes dictation, so what follows will hardly be a verbatim account. But, having abilities I lack — listening and typing simultaneously, and doing so with all ten fingers — she brings you what I never could. So I thank her, and so should you.

Kelly’s Notes on Mark Dever’s Conference Session (only barely proofread and edited —David)

Introduced by Albert Mohler ( Note: Mohler has lost weight!)
Dever was commended for his training of men in his church.

Ephesians 3:10
The church is the Gospel made visible.
How does your church make the Gospel visible? A healthy church reinforces the Gospel. It reflects it to folks around us.

1- The truth about God. How his nature is displayed. The lives of the members in our congregations should make God clear. Our lives are to make clear the Gospel Lev.12. When people in the OT run into God they are undone and repent. We are also to reflect His character in love by the concern we have for others. A love that is willing to be inconvenienced for someone else. If we don’t have that kind of love we are just another group. The church should also reflect God and His authority. Authority is meant to be a good thing. Satan tempts us to think otherwise. But God can both rule us and correct us. A right use of authority reflects God’s Authority. Example:husbands, parents, elders. This reflects the character of God. A word of caution; authority abused is especially destructive. Do our churches show the world a better use of authority? We can lead in such a way that people will say that pastor was trustworthy.

2- The truth about human beings. Each person is of value because they are created in God’s image. Not their wealth or other things. The local church needs to include all. We need to teach human depravity. We are fallen and we know that. We must show people that we are sinners. Saints are sinners. The world does not need to see sin soft-pedaled.

3- the truth about the savior Jesus Christ. We are the people who worship Him and we are his temple his body How do we make Him visible to the world? It is His work at the heart of our churches. We need to be gracious and merciful and loving. How do we know we are loving God? By how we love each other. We are to love by being inconvenienced, by laying our lives down as Jesus did. Are we valuing the differences of others in our churches? The world then asks what keeps you together, How come you love those so different from you? In our world today one of the biggest divisions is generational. Without the local church the cross is a just an abstract idea.

4- the right response to the Gospel. Our churches are to confess our sin and to repent from it. The Christian life will necessarily involve us in the lives of others. We are to teach faith faith in God. We are all acting on things we cannot see with our eyes. God’s promises are to be foundational We are to run to those promises to hold to them. It is the word of God that will build his church. We look forward to seeing God and our faith will be sight Heb 10:34. We have better and lasting possessions. He is a faithful God at times we bring him glory by just putting one foot in front of another, in hard times.

Conclusion- help your church be built on the Lord. A Christian church is proof of the Gospel to the world. It shows what the Gospel looks like. It is the clearest picture of what God is to the world. Be careful for this church. Pray for those churches who do not proclaim the Gospel clearly. Be willing to get involved in the lives of your People.

Greetings from Louisville! We got in about 10:00 PM last night, tired and hungry. Fortunately, there was one restaurant still open here at the Galt House. On that note, it would be a great sin of omission not to recommend the onion soup at the Café Magnolia. I would drive 1200 miles just for that. I would crawl 1200 miles on my hands and knees . . . no, I wouldn’t, but that is the kind of hyperbole it inspires.

We’re heading out to get registered for the 2010 Together for the Gospel Conference and then off to the Band of Bloggers meeting. We’re looking forward to hearing from Mark Dever, R. C. Sproul, and Albert Mohler this afternoon. I don’t know how often I’ll update, but I probably won’t again until late tonight or tomorrow morning.

This is my first cinematic production. Video was shot with the webcam on my Dell Mini and edited and mixed on the same machine with Windows Movie Maker in about two hours at a total cost of $12.06 (lunch for the cast).

On the Road with
The Thirsty Theologian

If my movie producer cousin is reading this, I’m sorry, no, I can’t jet out to California to work on your latest project. I’m much too busy. You’ll just have to muddle through on your own.

This April 11–17, my wife and I will be on the road, attending the 2010 Together for the Gospel Conference in Louisville, Kentucky (the conference takes place April 13–15). We made the trip two years ago as well and enjoyed it so much that, despite my aversion to travel, we’re doing it again this year.

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If you would like to attend but have not made your arrangements yet, time is quickly running out. Visit t4g.org to register and find all the information you will need on lodging and the conference schedule. Registration closes March 28.

If you are a blogger, consider attending the Band of Bloggers gathering preceding the conference. It’s a good time of encouragement and a unique opportunity to see your favorite bloggers in the flesh, and possibly meet that guy you might have argued with over your lapsarian views.

Be there or be square.

Related:
Tim Challies at Together for the Gospel 2006 and 2008.