Ligonier London Conference 2023

Chris L, Mike R, Sinclair F, Steve L, Burk P

Steve Lawson

Back in 2019 Ligonier Ministries organised their first London Conference in Westminster Central Hall. Last Friday and Saturday they were finally able to have a second conference. This time we were in the slightly smaller Westminster Chapel, whih was a wise decision. We really missed Alistair Begg but the other speakers all did well ion the whole.

We started with an extra bit for ministers. In that session Steve Lawson preached a typically robust call to Preach the Word and then Mike Reeves spoke helpfully on prayer. (I thought it very interesting to hear that Spurgeon once said of public prayer, “I am not able to see any reason for depriving me of the holiest, sweetest, and most profitable exercise which my Lord has allotted me; if I have my choice, I will sooner yield up the sermon than the prayer.” [See his lecture on it to his stundents]). We also had an excellent expositon of Jude from Sinclair Ferguson and the final message was from Burk Parsons on ordinary means. There was also a worthwhile Q&A.

We did not reconvene until 3 in the afternoon for the start of the conference proper. Entitled Pilrims and Exiles the conference addresses looked at verses from the opening chapters of 1 Peter. On that first day we had Ken Mbugua on Elect Exiles, Mark Johnston on The Salvation of Exiles Prophesied and Our Living Hope in Exile by Burk Parsons. By this time it was very hot, perhaps more difficult to concentrate. I certainly found it so.

We reconvened the next day to hear four more messages and to listen to two Q&A sessions. We heard Holy Living in Exile by Michael Reeves, Foreknown for the Sake of Exiles by Steve Nichols, The Word of God for Exiles by Steven Lawson and finished on a high note with Honourable Conduct in Exile by Sinclair Ferguson. The chairman throughout was Chris Larson.

About 600 were present I guess from 27 different countries. One could do without the regular applause for preachers that was felt necessary and the little band for some of the hymns is just what people do these days. The main thing was to hear the Word faithfully expounded, to meet friends old and new and to see the wonderful bookstall. If yoou love the Word you can only wish Ligonier well.

Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God

This Ligonier book is a collection of ten addresses on the general subject of the holiness of God given at a conference back in 2010 or so. The opening and closing chapters are from the late R C Sproul. Other chapters are from the hands of the usual suspects (Thabiti Anyabwile, Alistair Begg, Don Carson, Sinclair Ferguson, Robert Godfrey, Steven Lawson, Derek Thomas). The chapters inevitably vary in their usefulness. I particularly appreciated Sinclair Ferguson on the holiness of the Father and Robert Godfrey on Isaiah 6. Beautifully presented in hardback once again.

The book ends with a great illustration from Sproul

My favorite illustration of how callous we have become with respect to the mercy, love, and grace of God comes from the second year of my teaching career, when I was given the assignment of teaching two hundred and fifty college freshman an introductory course on the Old Testament. On the first day of the class, I gave the students a syllabus and I said: “You have to write three short term papers, five pages each. The first one is due September 30 when you come to class, the second one October 30, and the third one November 30. Make sure that you have them done by the due date, because if you don’t, unless you are physically confined to the infirmary or in the hospital, or unless there is a death in the immediate family, you will get an F on that assignment. Does everybody understand that?” They all said, “Yes.”
On September 30, two hundred and twenty-five of my students came in with their term papers. There were twenty-five terrified freshmen who came in trembling. They said: “Oh, Professor Sproul, we didn’t budget our time properly. We haven’t made the transition from high school to college the way we should have. Please don’t flunk us. Please give us a few more days to get our papers finished.”
I said: “OK, this once I will give you a break. I will let you have three more days to get your papers in, but don’t you let that happen again.”
“Oh, no, we won’t let it happen again,” they said. “Thank you so, so, so much.”
Then came October 30. This time, two hundred students came with their term papers, but fifty students didn’t have them. I asked, “Where are your papers?”
They said: “Well, you know how it is, Prof. We’re having midterms, and we had all kinds of assignments for other classes. Plus, it’s homecoming week. We’re just running a little behind. Please give us just one more chance.”
I asked: “You don’t have your papers? Do you remember what I said the last time? I said, ‘Don’t even think about not having this one in on time.’ And now, fifty of you don’t have them done.”
“Oh, yes,” they said, “we know.”
I said: “OK. I will give you three days to turn in your papers. But this is the last time I extend the due date.”
Do you know what happened? They started singing spontaneously, “We love you, Prof Sproul, oh, yes, we do.” I was the most popular professor on that campus.
But then came November 30. This time one hundred of them came with their term papers, but a hundred and fifty of them did not. I watched them walk in as cool and as casual as they could be. So I said, “Johnson!”
“What?” he replied.
“Do you have your paper?”
“Don’t worry about it, Prof,” he responded. “I’ll have it for you in a couple of days.”
I picked up the most dreadful object in a freshman’s experience, my little black grade book. I opened it up and I asked, “Johnson, you don’t have your term paper?”
He said, “No”
I said, “F,” and I wrote that in the grade book. Then I asked, “Nicholson, do you have your term paper?” “No, I don’t have it.” “F. Jenkins, where is your term paper?”
“I don’t have it.”
“F.”
Then, out of the midst of this crowd, someone shouted, “That’s not fair.” I turned around and asked, “Fitzgerald, was that you who said that?”
He said, “Yeah, it’s not fair.”
I asked, “Weren’t you late with your paper last month?”
“Yeah,” he responded.
“OK, Fitzgerald, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. If it’s justice you want, it’s justice you will get.” So I changed his grade from October to an F. When I did that, there was a gasp in the room. I asked, “Who else wants justice?” I didn’t get any takers.
There was a song in the musical My Fair Lady titled “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Well, those students had grown accustomed to my grace. The first time they were late with their papers, they were amazed by grace. The second time, they were no longer surprised; they basically assumed it. By the third time, they demanded it. They had come to believe that grace was an inalienable right, an entitlement they all deserved.
I took that occasion to explain to my students: “Do you know what you did when you said, ‘That’s not fair’? You confused justice and grace.” The minute we think that anybody owes us grace, a bell should go off in our heads to alert us that we are no longer thinking about grace, because grace, by definition, is something we don’t deserve. It is something we cannot possibly deserve. We have no merit before God, only demerit. If God should ever, ever treat us justly outside of Christ, we would perish. Our feet would surely slip.

Banner of Truth Conference 2018 Slots 9 and 10

At 5 pm on Wednesday we had a useful panel discussion on preaching.
Then later Dr Lawson's final address looked at the last words of Paul in 2 Timothy 4. He reminded us again that the main thing for the minister is the preaching of the Word of God. If you are called to preach this is your focus. You will never outgrow this God's charge from heaven. His points were

1. The seriousness of this charge

2. The substance of this charge

Nine consecutive imperative verbs. The first verb is the substance, the rest the specifics. Preach the Word. Herald it.

3. The specifics of this charge

What matters is not only what you say but how you say it. The specific qualifying specifics are

1 Be ready - in season and out of season

2 Correct. Expose what is wrong.

3 Rebuke

4 Encourage

5 With great patience

6 And careful instruction

7 Be sober (keep your head) "If there is no passion there is no preaching"

Banner of Truth Conference 2018 Slot 6

Steven Lawson's second session was on 2 Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as a workman ....

Early on he quoted John Piper

"at the heart of every pastor’s work is book-work. Call it reading, meditation, reflection, cogitation, study, exegesis, or whatever you will — a large and central part of our work is to wrestle God’s meaning from a Book, and proclaim it in the power of the Holy Spirit."

He went on to note five distinguishing marks of the biblical pastor

1. An eager or zealous spirit to dig into God's Word

The word used (Do your best or be diligent) means to use speed. We need to use speed, to be prompt, to hasten to the Word of God. He used a personal illustration revealing his non-academic stature until his conversion. We may not need more men in the ministry, he suggested, but fewer who are more eager.

2. A presented life

He took the example of Whitefield adn quoted Dallimore

There he is at five in the morning ... on his knees with his English Bible, his Greek New Testament and Henry’s Commentary spread out before him. He reads a portion in the English, gains a fuller insight into it as he studies words and tenses in the Greek and then considers Matthew Henry’s explanation of it all. Finally, there comes the unique practice that he has developed: that of ‘praying over every line and word’ of both the English and the Greek till the passage, in its essential message, has veritably become part of his own soul. See Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, 1:82, 83

3. Hard work

Self-denial is required. Luther said

Sure, it would be hard for me to sit “in the saddle.” But then again I would like to see the horseman who could sit still for a whole day and gaze at a book without worrying or dreaming or think about anything else. Ask ... a preacher ... how much work it is to speak and preach. ... The pen is very light, that is true . . . but in this work the best part of the human body (the head), the noblest member (the tongue), and the highest work (speech) bear the brunt of the load and work the hardest, while in other kinds of work either the hand, the foot, the back or other members do the work alone so such a person can sing happily or make jokes freely which a sermon writer cannot do. Three fingers do it all . . . but the whole body and soul have to work at it

For the pastor every week if final exam week. We don't retire, he suggested, we refire.

4. A godly fear

Painful emotion, a consciousness of failure is always there. All we do will be tested by fire. He described how as an American footballer he would be sat down as the coach went through his moves and  graded him. So it will be for the preacher. We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ.

5. Precise exegesis

The idea is of cutting it straight - handling the Word of God in the right way. No sloppy work. The word used was used for a workman making a straight line, a farmer ploughing a straight furrow, a builder getting the bricks straight, a roadmaker making a road straight and flat road, a tent maker laying the tanned hide down and using a pattern to cut around so that the hide perfectly fits the profile, later to be sewn together.

OT NT, all the component parts must be grasped so that the Bible speaks with one voice. All wired together like a perfect tapestry.

He closed with this quotation

Fling him into his office. Tear the "Office" sign from the door and nail on the sign, "Study." Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books and his typewriter and his Bible. Slam him down on his knees before texts and broken hearts and the flock of lives of a superficial flock and a holy God.

Force him to be the one man in our surfeited communities who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through. And let him come out only when he's bruised and beaten into being a blessing.

Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks, and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every nonessential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence. Bend his knees in the lonesome valley.

Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God. And make him exchange his pious stance for a humble walk with God and man. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical success sheets.

Put water in his gas tank. Give him a Bible and tie him to the pulpit. And make him preach the Word of the living God!

Test him. Quiz him. Examine him. Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, batting averages, and political in-fighting. Laugh at his frustrated effort to play psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise a chant and haunt him with it night and day-"Sir, we would see Jesus."

When at long last he dares assay the pulpit, ask him if he has a word from God. If he does not, then dismiss him. Tell him you can read the morning paper and digest the television commentaries, and think through the day's superficial problems, and manage the community's weary drives, and bless the sordid baked potatoes and green beans, ad infinitum, better than he can.

Command him not to come back until he's read and reread, written and rewritten, until he can stand up, worn and forlorn, and say, "Thus saith the Lord."

Break him across the board of his ill-gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands for celestial wisdom. And give him no escape until he's back against the wall of the Word.

And sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left-God's Word. Let him be totally ignorant of the down-street gossip, but give him a chapter and order him to walk around it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward, until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity.

And when he's burned out by the flaming Word, when he's consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, and when he's privileged to translate the truth of God to man, finally transferred from earth to heaven, then bear him away gently and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two-edged sword in his coffin, and raise the tomb triumphant. For he was a brave soldier of the Word. And ere he died, he had become a man of God.

Lawson Calvin 03

Lawson Calvin 02

Lawson Calvin 01

It was my turn to lead the Theological Study Group at the John Owen Centre yesterday. We were looking at Steve Lawson's book on Calvin's preaching and I prepared a study sheet for it. part 1 is above. [Click to enlarge]. We plan to look at Abraham Booth's Reign of Grace next time.