Don Carson is wicked smart. He writes, teaches, and is generally one of the most intelligent, most God-centered men around. He recently lectured at Western Seminary, as posted on the Paul and Timothy Blog, a great resource for men looking for biblical instruction and discipleship in the NT model of Paul and Timothy.

There are 6 pillars that support a way of looking at reality that guarantees Christian maturity if you live by them. These 6 pillars are not something in which you tell someone who is—at the moment—going through suffering. But these are pillars that one should think and reflect on in order to prepare you for suffering. In this way you will be sustained through the times of pain.

The 6 Pillars:

1. Insights From Creation—everything God made was originally good.
2. Insights from the end of the Bible’s story line.
3. Insights from the place of innocent suffering
4. Insights from the mystery of Providence
   2 propositions
   1. God is absolutely sovereign but his sovereignty never serves to mitigate human responsibility
   2. Human beings are morally responsible creatures. These two poles are taught throughout the Scriptures:
5. Insights from the Centrality of the Cross
6. Insights from Our Obligation to Take Our Own Cross and Follow Jesus

From Justin Taylor’s article on NewAttitude.org

This is a good, hard question. The way we answer it will both reflect and inform our understanding of justice and mercy.

The question is about what happens in the book of Joshua when God commands Israel to slaughter the Canaanites in order to occupy the Promised Land. It was a bloody war of total destruction where God used his people to execute his moral judgment against his wicked enemies. In moving toward an answer it will be helpful to think carefully about the building blocks of a Christian worldview related to God’s justice and mercy.

1. As the maker of all things and the ruler of all people, God has absolute rights of ownership over all people and places.
2. God is not only the ultimate maker, ruler, and owner, but he is just and righteous in all that he does.
3. All of us deserve God’s justice; none of us deserve God’s mercy.
4. The Canaanites were enemies of God who deserved to be punished.
5. God’s actions were not an example of ethnic cleansing.
6. Why was it necessary to remove the Canaanites from the land?
7. The destruction of the Canaanites is a picture of the final judgment.

From Colin Adams’ interview with Tim Keller

1. Where do you place the importance of preaching in the grand scheme of church life? It is central, but not alone at the center. Pastoral ministry is as important as preaching ministry, and lay ‘every-member’ ministry is as crucial as ordained ministry. I wouldn’t make a heirarchy out of these things–they are interdependent. But pastoral ministry and lay ministry is no substitute for strong preaching.

2. In a paragraph, how did you discover your gifts in preaching?
I preached about 200 different expositions a year for the first nine years of my ministry (when I was age 24 through 33.) During that time I was considered interesting and good but I never got a lot of feedback that I was anything special. I’ve grown a lot through lots of practice.

3. How long (on average) does it take you to prepare a sermon?
I pastor a large church and have a large staff and so I give special prominence to preparing the sermon. I give it 15-20 hours a week. I would not advise younger ministers to spend so much time, however. The main way to become a good preacher is to preach a lot, and to spend tons of time in people work–that is how you grow from becoming not just a Bible commentator but a flesh and blood preacher. When I was a pastor without a large staff I put in 6-8 hours on a sermon.

4. Is it important to you that a sermon contain one major theme or idea? If so, how do you crystallise it?
I don’t know that I’d be so rigid as to say there has to be just one Big Idea every time. That is a good discipline for preachers in general, because it helps with clarity. Most texts have too much in them for the preacher to cover in one address. You must be selective. But sometimes a preaching-size text simply has two or three major ideas that are too good to pass up.

5. What is the most important aspect of a preacher’s style and what should he avoid?
He should combine warmth and authority/force. That is hard to do, since tempermentally we incline one way or the other. (And many, many of us show neither warmth nor force in preaching.)

6. What notes, if any, do you use?
I use a very detailed outline, with many key phrases in each sub-point written out word for word.

7. What are the greatest perils that preacher must avoid?
This seems to me too big a question to tackle here. Virtually everything a preacher ought to do has an corresponding peril-to-avoid. For examples, preaching should be Biblical, clear (for the mind), practical (for the will), vivid (for the heart,) warm, forceful, and Christo-centric. You should avoid the opposites of all these things.

8. How do you fight to balance preparation for preaching with other important responsibilities (eg. pastoral care, leadership responsibilities)
See my remarks on #3 above. It is a very great mistake to pit pastoral care and leadership against preaching preparation. It is only through doing people-work that you become the preacher you need to be–someone who knows sin, how the heart works, what people’s struggles are, and so on. Pastoral care and leadership is to some degree sermon prep. More accurately, it is preparing the preacher, not just the sermon. Prayer also prepares the preacher, not just the sermon.

9. What books on preaching, or exemplars of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?
British preachers have had a much greater impact on me than American preachers. And the American preachers who have been most influential (e.g. Jonathan Edwards) were essentially British anyway.

10. What steps do you take to nurture or encourage developing or future preachers?
I haven’t done much on that front at all, and I’m not happy about that. Currently I meet to with two other younger preachers on my staff who also preach regularly. We talk specifically about their preaching and sermon prep.

From The Idol of Marketing (part 2)

We trust more that we can get people to church with our flash then we trust that God will do what he says.

Painful, but true, and sinful.

I heard a popular worship song recently and realized that it could just as easily apply to a male/female relationship as it could to my relationship to God. Something felt wrong about that. Looks like I’m not the only bothered by “Jesus is My Boyfriend” songs.

In order to understand God’s love, we must understand his anger. God’s anger inevitably leads us to the cross, where justice and mercy meet in perfect, soul-wrenching, Christ-crushing, sin-forgiving, life-giving, love-flowing harmony. For those that hope in Jesus, the anger of God against our unrighteousness is mercifully diverted from us onto His beloved Son. As a result, God preserves and promotes his justice and humanity’s joy where anger and love converge—at the cross.

The purpose of God’s anger is to display the depth and character of his eternal justice and his love for us. When we understand that God’s love is God’s because of his justice and anger, only then can we begin to comprehend how great a love he has for us.

So how do we write worship songs that speak of God’s great love, not cheap love? Three suggestions:

1. Contrast God’s great love with his great wrath. The more we see God’s just wrath, the more we see how great his love is to save us (“a wretch like me”).
2. Show how God’s love is ours in the death of his Son. Text after biblical text ties God’s unfailing love to the sacrifice of his Son.
3. Articulate the greatness of God’s love alongside the magnitude of his glory. Reveal that God’s love is just one aspect of God’s many-splendored glory.

Been reading a lot about the atonement lately. Gerald Hiestand at Straight Up posted a very thought-provoking article about our being saved through Jesus and from God.

God is for the Israelites, but they have not been properly for him. They have joined the opposition and sided with the enemy—an enemy God is determined to crush. But God is gracious in the midst of his vengeance. Another ark of salvation is prepared in the midst of a second flood of vengeance; the blood of a lamb is shed and God’s people are delivered once again…from God. We, like the Israelites in Egypt, need to be saved from our Savior.

And that’s a basic point of penal substitution—that God, in his willingness to save us from the power and dominion of sin—must also somehow save us from himself. Any view of the atonement that fails to grapple with this uncomfortable—yet distinctly biblical—reality, falls short. [From Saved from the Savior]

From Michael Wittmer on why clarity on doctrinal issues is important

My class on the Reformation wrapped up today with a look at the Baptist denomination, which arose from within the Puritanism of 17^th century England. Near the end of the class we peeked ahead to the GARBC split from the Northern Baptists in 1932. As I prepared for the class, I was struck again by the similarities between the liberalism/fundamentalism controversy of the early 20^th century and what seems to be happening today.

Only 1% of the Northern Baptists were considered liberal, but they were able to gain control of the denomination because the majority of Northern Baptists just wanted everyone to get along. The conservatives pressed for clear doctrinal positions, but they were voted down by the majority as intolerant and divisive.

Most thought that the conservative call for clarity was unloving. Why couldn’t they be content with vague generalities? Didn’t they care that clear statements of faith were bound to divide brothers and sisters who realized in the bright light of clarity that perhaps they disagreed in some important areas? Better to wink and get along than to be clear and risk breaking the bond of unity.

Isn’t this similar to what is happening today? Conservatives increasingly are asking key Christian leaders to clearly say what they believe: must you believe something to be saved? Is hell for real and forever? Is the Bible a revelation from God? Does Scripture teach that homosexual practice is sin?

Many leaders duck these questions, often answering with another question, saying that these are the wrong questions to ask, or questioning the motive of the person who asked it.

Here is my question: which person in this scenario does not love his neighbor? Many assume it is the one raising the question, for she appears to be the aggressor, putting the leader on the spot. I propose it is the obfuscating leader, for muddying the waters on purpose demonstrates disrespect for the listener. Teachers who love their students, pastors who love their people, and authors who love their readers take care to nourish their faith with truth. Those who conceal their actual beliefs (or bury them in the endnotes) likely care more about their own careers than the followers who depend on them for guidance.

It is not unloving to ask these leaders to clearly spell out what they believe. Considering the stakes involved, it would be unloving—both to them and to their followers—not to.

From Andy Naselli via D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo’s Introduction to the New Testament

1. James: around 46–48 (just before the Jerusalem Council)
2. Galatians: 48 (just prior to the Jerusalem Council)
3. 1 Thessalonians: 50
4. 2 Thessalonians: either in late 50 or early 51
5. 1 Corinthians: probably early in 55
6. 2 Corinthians: 56 (i.e., within the next year or so of 1 Corinthians)
7. Romans: 57
8. Philippians: mid–50s to early 60s if written from Ephesus (61–62 if written from Rome)
9. Mark: sometime in the late 50s or the 60s
10. Philemon: probably Rome in the early 60s
11. Colossians: early 60s, probably 61
12. Ephesians: the early 60s
13. 1 Peter: almost surely in 62–63
14. Titus: probably not later than the mid-60s
15. 1 Timothy: early to mid-60s
16. 2 Timothy: early or mid-60s (about 64 or 65)
17. 2 Peter: likely shortly before 65
18. Acts: mid-60s
19. Jude: middle-to-late 60s
20. Luke: mid or late 60s
21. Hebrews: before 70
22. Matthew: not long before 70
23. John: tentatively 80–85
24. 1 John: early 90s
25. 2 John: early 90s
26. 3 John: early 90s
27. Revelation: 95–96 (at the end of the Emperor Domitian’s reign)

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HT: David Jackman’s 10 Exhortations For Preachers

1. Get rid of the idea that we have to make the text relevant.

2. Go back and work hard on the text, to find out what it meant to its first hearers or readers.

3. Make sure the original context determines your contemporary application.

4. Set the passage also in its wider Biblical theological context.

5. Focus your understanding and purpose in key sentences.

6. Develop a clear programme.

7. Study your congregation.

8. Apply the truth to the whole person.

9. Make your language count.

10. Pray for the Holy Spirit to blow his life-giving breath through it all and to do the gracious and powerful work of which only he is capable.

The whole article here.

15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.n>