Proc Trust EMA 2024 Second Afternoon

It was good to hear Conrad Mbewe again giving his first address on the second day of the conference. He spoke form 2 Corinthians 2 on God's power in preaching. Sadly, I wasn't abe to stay for the last session of the day - Nigel Styles 1 Thessalonians 2:1-3:8 - as I had to get home to travel to Aberystwyth. I also missed the third andd final day of Kevin DeYoung (on the daughters Zelophehad) Conrad Mbewe (on preaching, from 1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20) a second round table (with different participants) and Nigel Styles (on 1 Thessalonians 5). Needs must, however, as my fourth son is getting married.

Proc Trust EMA 2024 Second Morning

Our second morning followed the pattern of the first, with Kevin DeYoung and Mike Reeves speaking in the two sessions. This second time Kevin DeYoung took us to Leviticus 8, another difficult chapter that he was again able to highlight in very helpful way. Mike Reeves carried on with what he had to say about evangelicalism, this time warning us against the dangers of the revelation, redemption, regeneration paradigm. I guess this is the meat of his book Evangelical Pharisees just as yesterday was (I think) bsed on his book Gospel People.

Proc Trust EMA 2024 First Morning

It was good to be for the first time in a long time at the 41st Evangelical Ministry Assembly organised by The Proclamation Trust. The EMA has been in the Emmanuel Centre for a while now but it was my first time  here. We began with an excellent expositon of Genesis 38 by Kevin DeYoung. It was very thorough, helpful and well executed. It was a privilege to be here.  In the second half of the morning Mike Reeve spoke of evangelicalism, remindng us of the central matters of the faith in his usual clear tones. Loads here, some of whom I know. Had a nice chat with Dave Gobbett who I had enjoyed listening to on catch up on Sunday. See here.

And yet another five

The latest five books I have read have mostly been overtly Christian books but also the hardback tome Fake Heroes by Otto English, the follow up to Fake Histories. This one looks at Kennedy, Che Guevara, Mother Theresa, John Wayne, etc. I have also read the encouraging and hopeful A change of affection by Becket Cook, the former homosexual; Sinclair Ferguson's Worthy which contains a lot of material that we understandably heard recently at Catalyst and is great stuff (although I do think he has things wrong with regard to Joseph, like so many others); the little book by Kevin DeYoung Do not be true to yourself which also contains four other graduation addresses or similar. Nice; and finally Pastoral Friendship by Michael Haykin, Brian Croft and James Carroll. I have decided I am not keen on books with multiple authorship. Part of the problem here was the way the book was written but also my own curmudgeonly attitudes. My retort would be that if the book, which wants pastors to make more friendships doesn't win over people like me than it won't do any good. I feel that a book that encouraged friendliness (rather than making friends) would have been better.

Day off Week 40 2019

This week's day off was quite similar to last week's. I wanted to make it different as it is easy to get stale but there we are. I read a chunk of Kevin DeYoung's book on the Synod of Dort Grace defined and defended and one or two stories from a collection called Capital Crimes. The former is beautifully produced - hard back with a lovely dust wrapper. Both books were good contnewise but in different ways. I also watched the latest Dave Gorman and then when Eleri came home we caught up on our TV (Sanditon, The Capture, A Confession). 

IPC Catalyst Conference Days 2 and 3

The rest of the conference went off very well and it was good to be there for the whole of it as it improved day on day, I felt. Andrew Randall on knowing God was perhaps a little nervous on day one but really settled into his subject and gave two excellent messages that were warm and pastoral. Scott Swain continued to look the Westminster Confession Chapter 3. I thought the first two messages were perhaps a little pedestrian but when we came to the third session on the Trinity we went into overdrive. I had missed the Themelios article of last year available here, which he presented again to us. It is mind blowing and rather shocking in its own way. let me quote the digest

B. B. Warfield’s 1915 ISBE article on the Trinity presents the Princeton theologian’s mature thinking on the biblical bases and meaning of the doctrine and offers a revisionist interpretation of the personal names of “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit.” Instead of interpreting the personal names of the Trinity in terms of relations of origin, Warfield argues that the personal names only signify likeness between the persons. The present article locates Warfield’s revision within its immediate and broader historical contexts, critically engages Warfield’s proposed revision, and discusses the importance of a traditional interpretation of the personal names for Trinitarian theology.

Warfield is such a hero it is hard to believe he could have been so wrong in this area, yet Scott Swain appears to have him bang to rights.  Others, such as Grudem and Reymond (we could mention Carson and Reeves too, perhaps) have apparently followed him. Wow!

Kevin DeYoung has an analytical grasp and a good sense of humour and so his addresses on creation and providence were great. Perhaps the second half of the one on creation, dealing with male and female, was the stand out portion.

All three days ended with Sinclair Ferguson on 2 Timothy. This was very warm, quite challenging at certain points, and a thorough exposition of New Testament ministry. It will be worth checking out the recordings when they appear - probably here.

It was nice to see Scott Swain getting some sort of revenge on Paul Levy, in the form of a medal for Tweeting.

IPC Catalyst Conference 2019 Day 1

Around 200 gathered at the lovely new building of the IPC in Ealing for day 1 of this year's conference. Four men spoke - Andrew Randall, Scott Swain, Kevin DeYoung and Sinclair Ferguson - so two Scotsmen bracketing two Americans. All spoke well and helpfully. If anything, I detected a gradual rise in the quality of presentations through the day so that we ended on a high note with Sinclair Ferguson encouraging us from 2 Timothy at the end. Kevin DeYoung gave a very thorough and useful exposition of Chapter 3 of the WC and Scott Swain of Chapter 2:1. Good day. Mostly strangers to me at the conference but I had a number of nice chats with different people.

Book Review The Art of Turning

I had meant to inclue this review which I wrote for EN towards the end of last year

THE ART OF TURNING From sin to Christ for a joyfully clear conscience

Kevin deYoung

10Publishing

40 pages. £1.00 ISBN 9781911272212

This briefest of books can be read in no time but its five short chapters are crammed with good things. It looks at the rather neglected subject of conscience.

It begins topically enough in this this anniversary year of Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door of the church of the castle of Wittenberg. We are taken four years further on to Worms and Luther's stand for the truth before Emperor Charles V. He famously said there that his conscience was captive to the Word of God, raising the question for all of us as to whether ours are too

Chapter 2 takes a further step backwards, to the Scriptures themselves, and especially to 2 Corinthians 1:12 and a dozen other places where Paul talks about conscience. Our author points out that Paul like Luther treasured his conscience and so should we.

In Chapter 3 we come to a definition: the moral faculty within human beings that assesses what is good and what is bad. We should recognise the role conscience plays both for the prosecution and the defence (or defense as it is here, the book uses American orthography). The chapter closes with an almost irresistible reference to Pinocchio.

Chapter 4 deals with misfiring consciences. It keeps to four examples only – the evil, the seared, the defiled and the weak conscience. It deals with these very cogently. The closing chapter is on the way to a clear conscience. It calls for repentance, faith and for Christians to live the life they were meant to live. The final point is to remember that conscience should be our friend.

The only possible slight criticism of the book would be that it may appear to give a higher position to conscience than the New Testament warrants. One would have appreciated more on the importance of love. In such a brief book, however, it is difficult to avoid some measure of imbalance. This really is a great little book, one that everyone should read.

Gary Brady Pastor of Childs Hill Baptist Church and author of Candle in the wind on the conscience

A day at the EMA

As many of you will know the annual Evangelical Ministry Assembly was on at the Barbican this last week. We had a friend from Germany staying with us again. He attended all three days and really enjoyed it. I was only able to attend one day, the Wednesday, (£55 it cost me, travel and food extra, coffee free). As usual, there were a vast number present, most of whom I did not recognise. One of the first people I saw who I knew was an old college friend now based in France. It was good to catch up with him. I also bumped into two or three others over the day.

The highlight on Wednesday for me was Kevin deYoung on sin. It was great to have someone address such a central issue and it was done in a very competent and helpful way.

I found the other three sessions less rewarding. Andy Gemmill spoke on Ephesians 2. It was a very thorough presentation and made some good points. However, when you consider that Christ is mentioned more than ten times in the chapter, I fear we were short changed on that front. Graham Beynon on 1 Peter 2 was equally competent on the importance of the church but the elephant in the room seemed to me to be the whole parachurch question. In the afternoon there were seminars and I went to the main one with Justin Mote on application in preaching. This was the distillation of a whole course yet beyond calling for a distinction between what he called primary and secondary (ie direct and indirect) applications there was not much to help us here. It was more about hermeneutics really.

Truth is I'm very hard to please and can be rather negative by inclination. My fear is that the Proc Trust's pleasing obsession with exegesis is not yielding the rewards it really ought to. Not sure why.

The best thing was just to be there with men who clearly love the word. It was also nice to see a fine selection of books there (thanks to Jonathan Carswell). I completed my set on the Five Solas edited by Matthew Barrett. I also picked up Kevin deYoung's very brief book on conscience, which I have also now received for review.

Another bonus was to sing a recent revival of an old hymn by the Victorian hymn writer Ada Habershon

When I fear my faith will fail,
Christ will hold me fast;
When the tempter would prevail,
He can hold me fast.

He will hold me fast, He will hold me fast; For my Saviour loves me so, He will hold me fast

I could never keep my hold,
He will hold me fast;
For my love is often cold,
He must hold me fast.

I am precious in His sight,
He will hold me fast;
Those He saves are His delight.
He will hold me fast.

He’ll not let my soul be lost,
Christ will hold me fast;
Bought by Him at such a cost,
He will hold me fast.

Kevin DeYoung on Homosexuality

At the recent Banner Kevin DeYoung mentioned to some of us that his next book was to be on homosexuality. Crossway were eager for a book on a very hot topic from a reliable and gifted writer. The book is well written and very helpful. On the face of it, it should not be a difficult task to show that the Bible opposes homosexual practice. What Kevin DeYoug does here is not only to deal with the relevant Scriptures in a way that is both orthodox and theologically robust but also to answer a series of seven common objections to the orthodox position - “The Bible Hardly Ever Mentions Homosexuality”;.“Not That Kind of Homosexuality”; “What about Gluttony and Divorce?”; “The Church Is Supposed to Be a Place for Broken People”; “You’re on the Wrong Side of History”; “It’s Not Fair”; “The God I Worship Is a God of Love”. This really is a very thorough book and very helpful. It also includes three appendices - same-sex marriage, same-sex attraction and what he calls a 10 commandments on the subject.

Crazy Busy Late

I got hold of Crazy Busy by Kevin Deyoung last year but was too crazy busy to read it, although I did manage to read his book Taking God at his word (though not hole in our holiness which has been hanging around the house too). Anyway having met Mr Deyoung the other week I was stimulated to get CB read (my wife also has a copy uncompleted). I know you've all read it but I don't mind being late - I was often last boy out of school as child.

The book is pretty free of earth shattering new ideas. One book he footnotes is Ordering your private world which I remember reading years back. (I'd never heard of Tim Chester's book on the same subject). There are helpful things here on pride, using the Internet and not resting (not really my problem although the way things are no longer divided up day/night, work/leisure, etc, set me thinking). What he says about not getting too worried about your kids I'd already worked out a while ago I guess but then I am at quite a different stage to young Kevin with five (now six) kids still at home and some of them in diapers/nappies. (He also has a church of 700 so there's not much the same at all in our lives). I thought the final point about getting the quiet time right was well made. If you are busy and haven't found time for this book I would recommend it.

Banner 2015 - Five Minutes of fame

Jeff Kingswood, Alan Davey, Stuart Olyott, GB, Kevin Deyoung, Geoff Thomas

(I deliberately stood between Stuart Olyott and Kevin DeYoung to impress my sons)

Banner Conference 2015 07/08

After such a good day yesterday it was hard to imagine it being bettered and yet already we have had two excellent messages from Stuart Olyott and Kevin DeYoung. First, Stuart Olyott took us to 2 Corinthians 4, neatly summing up its message under there monosyallabic heads - Wow! Owe! and Now. He spoke of the glory of the Christian ministry, its demands and how we keep going. Kevin gave a us a pretty full and convincing defence of the impassability of God.

In a great paper he argued the traditional view, closing with these five reasons why impassibility is good news.

1. We have an unchanging God who is not in the same mess we are in. This is the truth that process theology misses. Process theologians ... argue that God is immanent, so enmeshed in our world that he is bound up in all our brokenness, so that his effort to rescue us is an effort to rescue himself. God is the process of delivering himself just as we are being delivered. This sort of God is a far cry from the God who reigns in heaven, receives unceasing worship from the saints and angels, needs nothing from human hands, and always delights in his own glory and goodness.
2. This unchanging God – who is ontologically outside of our mess – is nevertheless intimately involved in our mess, which makes his presence all the more meaningful. When my son is working on Legos and getting frustrated because the boat is not coming together properly, I don‘t have to help him. I‘m not screaming my head off because the flat, 2x2 red piece is missing. But because I love him, I stop what I‘m doing (sometimes), get down on the ground, dig through the bucket and find the piece for him. Now he may not recognize it, but my love is more loving because I do not need to find the Lego piece to ease my emotional burdens.
3. God‘s love is freely given, thoroughly unmotivated by any need or deficiency in him. God does not feel inner angst, agony, or distress. He does not love in order to relieve the suffering he feels on account of our suffering. He chooses to love because he is love. In the Triune Godhead there is a constant fullness of mercy, joy, and goodness to which we cannot add and from which we cannot subtract. God always acts out of overflow, never out of want.
4. With divine impassibility, the incarnation is not a revelation of the eternal suffering of God, but rather the deepest expression of God‘s gracious character, whereby he chose, in love, to suffer as one of us. Our comfort in the midst of suffering is not that the Father suffered with the Son, nor that God continues to suffer with us. Our profound consolation is that, moved by love, God the Son, in perfect cooperation and agreement with the God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, laid aside his immunity to pain so that he might suffer for us, as one of us.
The incarnation of the Son of God and his subsequent passion is more glorious, more mysterious, and more loving because God in the person of Christ was experiencing, by his own free choice, what God in himself had never experienced, and would never again experience, namely, human suffering.
5. Finally, impassibility is good news because only an impassible God who suffered as a man can truly sympathize with us. What good would it do to have a God who as God was overcome or distracted by pain? What we need is a God who knows what it is like to be a man.
Here‘s the irony: if God suffers as God, we actually lock him out of our experience instead of bringing him into it. What we need is the sure knowledge that the Son of God knows exactly what we are feeling.
So do not look to an angst-ridden, pain-stricken, eternally grieving God for comfort. Look to the cross. Carl Henry was right:

It is into the why of Calvary that we can now focus every other me of human existence. Christ is our sympathetic high priest, but he had to become this high priest. He had to be made perfect through suffering. He was not qualified to be our Redeemer or Sympathizer until he took on flesh to share in suffering with his brothers and sisters. And never forget: Christ did not suffer simply to identify with us, but to rescue us. We need someone to do more than feel our pain. We needed someone to triumph over it by conquering all that causes pain: sin, death, and the devil.
Our hope in death is that the Immortal died. And our comfort in suffering is that in the Incarnation the Impassible was made passible for us.

(See a previous version of his message in pdf form here).

Banner Conference 2015 05/06

So on Tuesday evening we had reports. Ten men spoke about various works around the world - Albania, Nigeria (Ani Ekpo), Pakistan, South Africa, Portugal, France, SASRA and two missions working in Muslim areas. including MERF. Also Paul Wells spoke about a new theological magazine coming out soon.

Later that same evening Kevin DeYoung again spoke well on suffering in the ministry, looking this time at Mark 14 and Christ's prayer in Gethsemane. The Taffia had a good little session with Mr DeYoung later finding out about his church and his books and so on.

Banner Conference 2015 02

Our second session here in Leicester featured the lesser known Kevin de Young from the USA.  The theme is the ministry and suffering and going to Mark 15 and focusing on the subject of our shame in the ministry he helpfully gave us a good perspective on the subject by showing how Mark's focus is on how our Saviour was shamed on the cross. So a decent start. We have a good day ahead tomorrow.

Banner 2015

The programme for the UK Banner of Truth Ministers Conference is out (and the Youth one). It's a privilege to be involved. April 14 marks the first anniversary of my heart op.

Monday, 13th, April

• 5.15pm – Opening Sermon – Christ, Precious to Believers – Gary Brady
• 8.15pm – Jesus, Our Hope and Example in the Midst of Injustice (Mark 15:16-32) – Kevin DeYoung

Tuesday, 14th April

• 7.25am – United Prayer
• 9.15am – Yes, it is hard, sometimes very hard, but . . . Paul’s testimony (2 Corinthians 11-12) – Stuart Olyott
• 11.15am – The Puritan theology of suffering – Michael Reeves
• 5.00pm – Reports Session
• 8.15pm – Praying in Pain (Mark 14:32-52) – Kevin DeYoung

Wednesday, 15th April

• 7.25am – United Prayer
• 9.15am – Ten Minute Address
• 9.30am – Yes, it is hard, sometimes very hard, but . . . Paul’s counsel (2 Corinthians 4) – Stuart Olyott
• 11.15am – The Impassibility of God, the Sufferings of Christ and Good News for the Christian Hebrews (Hebrews 2:5-18) – Kevin DeYoung
• 5.00pm – ‘To proclaim my name; to suffer for my name’ – Alan Davey
• 8.15pm – Faith amid suffering in the life of Charles Spurgeon – Michael Reeves

Thursday, 16th April

• 7.25am – United Prayer
• 9.15am – The Bruised Bride – Jeff Kingswood
• 11.00am – Closing Sermon – The Plight of Man and the Power of God – Geoff Thomas

Check here for an old fun video

Taking God at his Word

Kevin DeYoung's name is one you hear a lot of at the moment. Born in 1977, he is an American theologian and author (he has a number of books out at the moment, several of them award winners). A pastor in the Reformed Church in America and a member of The Gospel Coalition, he was born in South Holland, Illinois and grew up in Michigan, where his parents were involved in Christian radio. He has an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Seminary and is currently working on a history PhD on the theology of John Witherspoon (John Coffey is his advisor).

His Taking God at his Word came out in April this year and I bought  it in Aber over the summer and read it last month. It is a short basic introductory book good as a starter, a refresher or a guide for a short series of sermons, perhaps. The subtitle gives a lot away - Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me. Written in a very engaging way, it covers the reliability, sufficiency, clarity, finality, necessity and a last chapter on Jesus and the Bible plus an appendix with further reading and two indexes.