Over on Adrian Warnock’s blog he’s posting a series of interviews that he conducted and recorded whilst at the recent New Word Alive Conference, back in April.

In these first two interviews he interviews Don Carson:

You can read Adrian’s posts here and here.

T4G 08 – The Panel Sessions

One of the very interesting things about the T4G conference is the panel sessions.

Frequently littered throughout the conference, usually after a main session, the T4G-4 (Dever, Duncan, Mahaney & Mohler) would sit together, joined by the guest preacher who had just delivered his message, and have a “round-table” discussion about the message, its affect on them as individuals, and its wider application to the hearers.

It is fascinating to observe the interaction and listen in on the discussion between these big guns, as they throw around questions and ideas about what they’ve just heard. CJ Mahaney did a great job of leading these times, and asking the initial questions to get them going.

For me, the panel sessions, brought forward some great “one-liners” of wisdom and application for each topic covered. To get a sense of what the panel session were like, here’s a short video clip to watch, showing the discussion followign R.C Sproul’s message:

The audio for each of the panel discussions can be downloaded from here.

Having mentioned earlier about our next Family Matters (don’t forget!) I thought this little video clip of all the things you mums have ever said to your kids packed into 60 seconds might give you a good laugh! Enjoy!

Peter is under-the-weather at the moment with the dreaded “man-cold”, for those unaware of the diagnosis of this serious condition, please view the video below:

T4G 08 Session 2: Thabiti Anyabwile – Bearing the Image: Identity, the Work of Christ, and the Church.

Thabiti was the “surprise” guest speaker this year, a new addition to the T4G line-up. Not a household-name evangelical rock-star like John Piper, but what an addition, and what a message!

Thabiti currently serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman. It’s difficult to categorise a message as “my favourite” from the conference, but this would certainly be in the running!

Download the audio from here. 

Thabiti began with the challenge to us that for many of us our entire outlook on life, concerning the area of race and racism is misplaced, wrong and/or inadequate. He challenged us that believing in race is a bit like believing in unicorns, because race does not exist; and laid out that his task for that evening was to convince us that we’ve all been looking at the world with an unbiblical set of assumptions and we urgently need to go back to the Scriptures to get biblical assumptions on “race” that will change how we do pastoral ministry.

He laid out his 4-point messages like a baseball diamond (lost on most of us Brits!), but his point being you need to work round the bases in order – Base 1 is fundamental, before you move on to base 2, etc…

His “4 bases” were:

1. Our Unity in Adam
He took us to Genesis, to show the Scriptures don’t support race. We are united in Adam. When this is said, it is normally referring to our unity with Adam in sin; but Thabiti drew our attention to the fact that we ALL are genealogical, biological descendants of Adam. And like Adam, we are all made equally in the image and likeness of God.

He emphasised that Genesis 10 is about sameness, not difference — our unity and oneness in Adam; and that Genesis 10 actually speaks about the rise of ethnicities, not the rise of races. He said that, race, as viewed from a non-biblical, worldview, is defined by the idea that there is an essential biological difference between people groups. But ethnicity is about differences that include language, nationality, citizenship, cultural patterns, etc.

Thabiti encouraged us to see that the Scriptures don’t focus on our differences, labelled “race” but our unity in Adam.

2. Our Unity in Christ
As Christians, our union with Christ, gives us an even greater reason for unity together, than just that we are ‘united in Adam’. Thabiti focused our attention to the fact that we no longer share a merely biological lineage in Adam, but a deep lineage through Christ. (2 Cor 5:14-18)

3. Our Unity in the Church
Thabiti talked about how this restored, redeemed, dynamic, biblical view should be best/most keenly observed in these days (i.e. this side of heaven) in the life of local churches. He challenged us that Jesus is not impressed by our failure to love others who are ‘not like us’, but to love as Jesus did…as one who loved and died for those not like Him.

4. Our Unity in Eternity
As he closed out, Thabiti spoke of Revelation 5, about the reality we are headed towards, and left us with a final exhortation: “Why not live like that now?”

Here’s a brief video clip from his message:
 

The Resurrection message from Easter Sunday is available to listen to/download from here.

I also came across this quote by Phillip Ryken from his book The Message of Salvation (thanks to Girltalk for the quote):

“The proof that God saves is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Imagine for a moment that Jesus died on the cross without ever rising from the grave. In that case, how could we be certain that Jesus really had dealt with our sin and all its terrible consequences; guilt, alienation, suffering and death? At most we could say, ‘Perhaps God has accepted the cross of Christ as the atonement for my sin, but I cannot know for certain.’ We would have no receipt to show that the price of our redemption had been paid in full. We would have no token of affection to show that we had been reconciled to God. Nor would we have any reason to believe in the resurrection of our own bodies. If God did not raise Jesus, how could he be expected to raise anyone else?….[But] God has raised Jesus from the dead. By doing so, God showed that Jesus did not die in vain, that his sacrifice was accepted. The crucifixion, which was the verdict of sinful men, was overturned on appeal. God rendered his verdict on Jesus Christ in the resurrection, which is God’s seal of approval on the crucifixion, the proof that his justice is satisfied. By raising Jesus from the dead, God has attested that Jesus is the Saviour ‘who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.’”

There also this recent message on the Resurrection from CJ Mahaney, that is worth a watch: