Justin Taylor's Blog, page 163

3801 Lancaster

Since you won’t hear much of anything this week on Kermit Gosnell and his little shop of abortion horrors—not on the nightly news, not on NPR, not in the newspapers—you can hear about it for yourself here:

3801 Lancaster from 3801Lancaster on Vimeo.

How to Preach without Putting People to Sleep

On the new book, Saving Eutychus: How to Preach God’s Word and Keep People Awake by Gary Millar and Phil Campbell:

“I have read books on how to make sure your sermon is interesting, and I have read books on how to make sure your sermon is faithful to the text, but this book wants your sermon to be both. If I could, I would make this little book mandatory reading for seminarians everywhere, and then urge them to read it a couple more times during the course of their ministry. It avoids cutesy and manipulative suggestions, and makes its practical points while urging integrity, faithfulness, and imagination. Many books on preaching are published every year; this one is a “must.”

—D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“This book deserves to be included in the ‘must read’ category for preachers. It is readable, which always helps! And, as we would expect, it is biblical and practical. But it is also funny and forthright in a way that made me re-evaluate my preaching and resolve with God’s help to improve. This is a different book from Lloyd-Jones’ Preaching and Preachers and Between Two Worlds by John Stott, but it may prove to be just as influential.”

—Alistair Begg, Senior Pastor, Parkside Church, Cleveland, OH

“Some writing so solemnly exalts the task of preaching, or so heavily complicates the method, it depresses and discourages ordinary mortals like me into thinking we can never really do it and should just give up. Since most preachers feel that every Sunday night anyway, such books don’t really help the cause! This one does. I like it because it is short, (lighthearted but not lightweight), very human, and very much to the point. I am involved in training preachers, but I still have plenty to learn. I am very grateful for a resource that will both help me, and help me in helping others—with enjoyment, encouragement and some fun along the way!”

- William JU Philip, Senior Minister, The Tron Church, Glasgow

“This book teems with ‘plusses’: it is short (as a tome that takes Eutychus as its poster boy must be); it is stretching (the authors force one to deal with longer texts—and leave one asking, “Why can’t I summarize extended passages like that?”); it is specific (they include actual sermons with critique); it is searching (in case you skip the first chapter, ‘pray’ occurs eight times in the conclusion); and stirring (you still want to preach when you’ve finished reading). If you don’t buy the book, don’t cry if Eutychus isn’t saved!”

—Dale Ralph Davis, Bible expositor and author

“Millar and Campbell write with much wit and wisdom for the sake of our listeners. At some point every preacher must decide whether to preach for the regard of one’s peers or for the welfare of Christ’s people. Millar and Campbell have obviously decided for the latter and give much sound advice for the rest of us to do the same.”

—Bryan Chapell, Chancellor, Covenant Theological Seminary

“Two men who would never be deadly boring or dull are Gary Millar and Phil Campbell, and in this book they use their lively wit to help other preachers keep Eutychus awake. More importantly, they are united in their understanding of and commitment to the task of making God’s word known. I pray this book will be of benefit to both preachers and congregations.”

—Phillip D Jensen, Dean of Sydney, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, NSW

You can read a sample from the book here.

One of My Favorite Prayers in the Whole Bible

“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

—2 Chronicles 20:12

Does Your Church Have Room to Sing of Lament?

Bifrost Arts:

Carl Trueman:

Perhaps . . . [the Western church] has drunk so deeply at the well of modern Western materialism that it simply does not know what to do with such cries and regards them as little short of embarrassing.

A diet of unremittingly jolly choruses and hymns inevitably creates an unrealistic horizon of expectation which sees the normative Christian life as one long triumphalist street party—a theologically incorrect and a pastorally disastrous scenario in a world of broken individuals.

Has an unconscious belief that Christianity is—or at least should be—all about health, wealth, and happiness corrupted the content of our worship?

. . . In the psalms, God has given the church a language which allows it to express even the deepest agonies of the human soul in the context of worship.

Does our contemporary language of worship reflect the horizon of the expectation regarding the believer’s experience which the psalter proposes as normative?

If not, why not?

Is it because the comfortable values of Western middle-class consumerism have silently infiltrated the church and made us consider such cries irrelevant, embarrassing, and signs of abject failure?

—Carl R. Trueman, “What Can Miserable Christians Sing?” in The Wages Of Spin: Critical Writings on Historical and Contemporary Evangelicalism (Christian Focus, 2005), 159-160.

Satisfied in You

Brian Eichelberger’s “Satisfied in You” based on Psalm 42 and John Piper’s sermon on “Spiritual Depression in the Psalms“:

I have lost my appetite

And a flood is welling up behind my eyes

So I eat the tears I cry

And if that were not enough

They know just the words to cut and tear and prod

When they ask me, “Where’s your God?”

Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

I can remember when you showed your face to me

As a deer pants for water, so my soul thirsts for you

And when I survey your glory, you so faithfully renew

Like a bed of rest for my fainting flesh

I am satisfied in you

When I’m staring at the ground

It’s an inbred feedback loop that drags me down

So it’s time to lift my brow

And remember better days

When I loved to worship you and all your ways

With the sweetest songs of praise

Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why so disturbed within me?

I can remember when you showed your grace to me

As a deer pants for water, so my soul thirsts for you

And when I survey your splendor, you so faithfully renew

Like a bed of rest for my fainting flesh

I am satisfied in you

Let my sights give way to songs that sing about your faithfulness

Let my pain reveal your glory as my only real rest

Let my losses show me all I truly have is you

Cause all I truly have is you

So when I’m drowning out at sea

And your breakers and your waves crash down on me

I’ll recall your safety scheme

You’re the one who made the waves

And your Son went out to suffer in my place

And to tell me that I’m safe

So why am I downcast?

Why so disturbed?

I am satisfied in You.

I am satisfied in You.

I am satisfied in You.

Come Thou Fount

Page CXVI:

On Not Losing the Gospel in the Next Generation

Daniel Darling, writing for Leadership, asks Don Carson, “You’ve often said that the Church is three generations from losing the gospel entirely. What advice would you give to pastors and church leaders to ensure that this doesn’t happen?” Here is his answer:

This question is an important one, but very difficult to answer in a few lines.

Read and meditate on the Scriptures constantly, and self-consciously place yourself under Scriptural authority.

Walk with epistemological humility—and that means carefully learning from Christian leaders in the past so we do not tumble into precisely the same mistakes.

Devote yourself to disciplined prayer. A prayerless person is a disaster waiting to happen.

Never stop evangelizing: it is much easier to get sloppy about the gospel if you are not proclaiming it and seeing men and women come to Christ.

Develop close attachments with a handful of trusted people who are experienced and discerning, and make time for edifying fellowship.

If you are a pastor, read widely—commentaries, theology, historical theology, devotional literature, and so forth. A pastor must be a general practitioner. One is far more likely to make mistakes of proportion and judgment where one sees oneself as a kind of specialist.

Mohler on Convictional Leadership

Al Mohler talks about the ideas behind his book, The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership that Matters.

Suicide, Mental Illness, Depression, and the Church

David Murray, an unusually wise teacher and the author of Christians Get Depressed Too, addresses 7 Questions about Suicide and Christians. He writes, “As well-publicized suicides tend to increase the suicide rate quite dramatically, I thought it would be good to address seven of the questions that arise in our minds at times like this.” Here are the seven questions he answers:

How common is suicide?
How do I know if someone is thinking about suicide?
What should I do if I’m worried someone I know is going to commit suicide?
Do Christians who commit suicide go to hell?
Who is to blame?
What if I’m thinking of suicide myself?
What can the church do to prevent suicide?

See also Ed Welch’s wise counsel on how to answer the question, “Do People Who Commit Suicide Go to Heaven?”

Here is a sermon by John Piper (2007) for a young member of his church, the son of an elder, who committed suicide after a long struggle with depression.

Michael Patton writes an incredibly painful post about Matthew Warren, with no easy answers, about the torture of those who cannot clearly see the light and suffer the asphyxiation of hope.

Ed Stetzer has a piece at CNN’s religion blog on mental illness and the church, arguing the following points:

There are people in the pews every week—ministers, too—struggling with mental illness or depression.
People of faith know that God has freed them to love others, and that love extends to everyone, even (and sometimes especially) those we don’t understand.
Christians need to affirm the value of medical treatment for mental illness.
Compassion and care can go a long way in helping people know they don’t have to hide.
Mental illness has nothing to do with you or your family’s beliefs. It can impact anyone.

Here are some resources on battling depression and ministering to those who do:

David Murray, Christians Get Depressed Too
Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness
Edward T. Welch, Depression: The Way Up When You Are Down (booklet)
Jeffrey Black, Suicide: Understanding and Intervening (booklet)
John Piper, When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God—and Joy
John Piper, “Battling the Unbelief of Despondency” (sermon)
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure
“Depression and the Ministry” (blog series by the Biblical Counseling Coalition and the Gospel Coalition)

For those in ministry, the writings by and about Charles Spurgeon on depression may be particularly valuable:

Charles Spurgeon, “The Minister’s Fainting Fits” in Lectures to My Students
Darrel W. Amundsen, “The Anguish and Agonies of Charles Spurgeon“
Zack Eswine, “Listening for the Sound of Reality: The Melancholy of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Haddon Spurgeon“
John Piper, “Charles Spurgeon: Preaching through Adversity“
Randy Alcorn on how Spurgeon’s writings on depression helped him go through his own depression in 2007 (part 1, part 2, part 3)

Union with Christ: Joy and Confidence Before God

I wish every reader of this blog would avail themselves of the teaching of Mike Reeves, theological adviser for UCCF in the UK and the author of Delighting in the Trinity. There are few teachers I would rather listen to, either on historical theology or theology. He combines deep learning with a very engaging and accessible style.

Here are some talks he gave earlier this year (January 2013) on adoption and union with Christ at Transformission Scotland. He says that some of us have a functionally boring “gospel,” but in teaching on gospel, union, and adoption, he says that he expects that listeners will be joyfully transformed.

You can listen to the audio (1, 2, 3), or watch the videos below. (The teaching begins in the first one around the 4:00 mark.)

1. The benefits of union with Christ (we are adopted into Christ’s own sonship and find complete security through pure grace).

2. How union with Christ works (Christ takes all that is ours [our sin and shame] and shares with us all that is his [his righteousness and blessing]).

3. Q&A on the first two talks, then looks at what Scripture teaches on being united to Christ and the fruit these truths produce in our lives.