(Author: Tyler Kenney)

Yesterday's Ask Pastor John contains his answer. Watch it below, or scroll down for an edited transcript.

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

How do you go about writing your sermon manuscripts?

My pattern is not to be followed by anybody except those who are wired exactly like I am, which is probably no one. We are all so different. When I teach preaching to the guys, I really stress, "Look how I do it and take that into account. But please don't try to imitate me, because it might not work for you."

This is my approach. If I know my text fairly well and it is familiar to me, I don't work on it until Friday. I pick out the title and text either weeks or days ahead of time because I have to get it to the worship guys by Tuesday. But I don't study it, and I don't write or work on a sermon until Friday morning. I devote all of Friday to sermon preparation.

If I need to I will stay up all night. I've never stayed up all night on Friday, but I've stayed up until 2am when I didn't know what I was going to say and needed more time to study. Or I might get an interruption because of a ministry crisis during the day that is totally unexpected, which causes me to stay up late studying on Friday. The nights are always there as buffers, however, I almost never stay up that late.

So I start on Friday by putting the text up on my computer in English-Greek or English-Hebrew. I read through the original language getting all the help I need with my mouse. I will also have a half sheet of paper in front of me on the desk where I write out the text and make comments as I go. As I write out the text I'm praying, "God show me what's here for my people. Show me what's really here, not something in my head that I force inside the text. Let me see new things that I've never seen before."

And as I write, for whatever reason, I see things. The pen, the computer, the Greek, the Hebrew, the writing it out. I circle things and make little comments in the margin. The little half sheet looks like an absolute jumble when I'm done, and I've generally got a whole slug of questions that can be answered. I've got lines drawn all over the place.

Then I step back and say, "Lord, what am I going to do with all that? I could talk on that for three hours, but I've only got 35 or 45 minutes to do this." In prayer and thought some of those circles come together, and I say, OK, I'm going to make those two, three, or four points. And I take out another sheet of paper and try to figure out how those points should fit together. Backwards? Forwards? Should I start in the middle? All of this may happen by lunch time.

Then I go eat lunch, and when I get back I put up my word document and I just start writing. I take my thoughts that I scribbled out and I compose straight on to the computer, editing as I go. As I write I think and preach out loud, feeling it and praying. That takes four, five, six, seven, or even eight hours to get written. And after it is written I print it out and go to bed, or go to be with Noël or whatever.

Then Saturday after lunch, after Talitha and I go to Leanne Chin or Jimmy John's, I come home and I really go to work on internalizing it with all my little markings. What I take into the pulpit on Sunday is about 10 double-spaced pages that are so marked up they look like chicken scratch, and they function as my outline while I'm talking.

It works for me. Most people who hear I do it that way say, "No way can I start on Friday." Or, "No way can I take a manuscript into the pulpit and not have it be canned." No problem. Wear your own armor, not mine.

(Author: Tyler Kenney)

The redemption by Christ is particularly wonderful upon this account, inasmuch as the justice of God is not only appeased to those who have an interest in him, but stands up for them; is not only not an enemy but a friend, every whit as much as mercy.

Justice demands adoption and glorification, and importunes as much for it, as ever it did before for misery; in every respect that it is against the wicked, it is as much for the godly.

Yea, it is abundantly more so than it would have been for Adam: for him it would be only because He graciously promised; but it is obliged to believers on the account of the absolute merit of the Son of God, and upon the account of an eternal agreement between God and his Son.

—Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies #38

(Author: Jon Bloom)

One thing the Bible isn't is utopist about life in this world. It gets unfairly criticized for encouraging a pessimism that makes people passive about doing anything to improve things; people who are "too heavenly minded to be any earthly good."

Of course, that's a lot of hogwash. History has shown that those who have a hope of heaven are far more likely than their agnostic or atheist neighbors to willingly make the personal sacrifices necessary to seriously address the horrors and hopelessness in the world.

But the Bible doesn't gloss over horrors. Reading the whole Bible through, we wince a lot. And it is pretty frank about what we can expect during our sojourn on earth:

So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 11:8)

When Jesus walked the earth he was not a bouncy, positive-thinker. He was "a man of sorrows" (Isaiah 53:3). And he promised his followers, "In the world you will have tribulation" (John 16:33).

Life is hard. The days of darkness will be many. And you know what? That's hopeful.

When we find ourselves experiencing "weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities" (2 Corinthians 12:10), something strange isn't happening to us (1 Peter 4:12). It is what we must expect living in a creation subjected to futility (Romans 8:20).

But it was subjected to futility in hope—hope "that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). And yes there is deep groaning as we wait for the completion of our redemption (Romans 8:22-23). But it is a hope-infused groaning, full of anticipation for what is coming.

And it's this Spirit-empowered dynamic in the soul that allows us to be both "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing" (2 Corinthians 6:10). We expect sorrow from the world and redemption from our Savior, who will work even our sorrows for ultimate good (Romans 8:28).

So in your days of darkness, Jesus understands (Hebrews 4:15) and wants you to take heart:

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

(Author: Jonathan Parnell)

Saddleback Church held its first public service in 1980 when 205 people from all over the spiritual map gathered together in Lake Forest, CA. The gathering had begun as a small Bible study in Rick and Kay Warren's small condo with one other family. Thirty years later the church has grown to host more than 200 ministries that serve the local and global community.

Saddleback highlights four signature ministries of their church:

• Celebrate Recovery seeks to celebrate God's healing and redemptive power over addictive, compulsive, and dysfunctional behaviors.
• The PEACE Plan is a massive effort to mobilize Christians worldwide to address the problems of spiritual emptiness, corrupt leadership, poverty, disease, and illiteracy.
• The HIV/AIDS Initiative was born out of the conviction that "The global HIV and AIDS pandemic is the Church's greatest opportunity to serve the hurting like Jesus did, to show God's love to skeptics, to share the Good News, and to extend a helping hand in communities around the world."
• Orphan Care is rooted in the command of James 1:27 to care for orphans and widows. The Church's role is pivotal here: "As the distribution center for hope in a community, the local church is best able to identify needs and support interventions for orphaned and vulnerable children in every community."

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

Have you ever been asked to read the Qur'an, the Book of Mormon or the Bhagavad Gita after encouraging a non-Christian to read the Bible? Today's Ask Pastor John offers thoughtful criteria for determining how to respond. Watch the video below, or scroll down for a transcript.

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

If I want people of other religions to consider the message of the Bible, should I be willing return the favor and read their holy books as well?

I think it depends on how serious they are and how serious you are. It also depends on what kind of person you are. Not everybody is gifted or called to be an analyzer of other people's religious literature. I think it could be dangerous—especially if the other person is just provoking you.

But if you have a serious conversation going with an intellectual person, a professor of Islam or a thoughtful colleague who takes their holy book very seriously, and you want them to consider reading the Bible, and they say, "Could we trade? We'll talk about my holy book this week, and we'll talk about the Bible next week." And if you are wired to be involved with an intellectual person at that level, then yes! I think that would be good.

I just want to avoid the train of thought that says, "In order to be a credible Christian you've got to read the Qur'an, or you've got to read the Hindu holy books, or you've got to read the book of Mormon." I don't think so.

Most people don't have the time, the inclinations or the intellectual wherewithal to read all the things in the world. And if you said the only way to have a credible faith in Jesus is to read all the options and discover all the reasons why those options don't suffice, then you'd spend your whole life, or at least a big hunk of it, reading all this stuff.

There has to be a way to read the Bible and see enough self-evidencing and validating truth—Jesus shining forth from the Scriptures winning our trust—that we know this is true and don't have to be threatened by other holy books that we haven't read. If you trust that what you have is honey, and somebody else says, "I've got another brown thing over here that is honey." But you know you already have honey, and you can tell it is honey because you've tasted it. You don't need to experiment with every brown thing that is brought to you in order to be sure that what you have is honey.

(Author: Paul Tripp)

Jason sat in front of me with the head-down, humped-shouldered posture of a confused and disappointed man. It wasn't that Jason's life had been a sad narrative of personal suffering. Sure, he had faced some hard things, but they were the typical things that you face when you're living in a world that has been broken by sin. It wasn't that Jason was alienated and friendless. He was surrounded by a group of less than perfect, but pretty faithful companions. It wasn't that Jason was impoverished or homeless. No, he had a decent job and an adequate condo.

Jason's problem was that he was lost in the middle of his own faith. It had become harder and harder for him to connect the beauty of what he believed to the gritty and often difficulty realities of his daily life. Jason's problem was that he carried a gospel around with him that had a great big hole in the middle of it.

Jason could explain to you what it meant to say that he had been "saved by grace," and he knew that he was going to spend eternity with his Savior. His problem was in the here and now. Day after day, in situation after situation and relationship after relationship, Jason didn't carry with him a vibrant and practical sense of the nowism of the grace of Jesus Christ. Yes, Jason believed in life after death, but he desperately needed to understand life before death; the kind of radical life you will live when you understand what Christ has given you for the life he has called you to right here, right now.

Let me suggest four critical aspects of the nowism of the gospel (there are more) that Jason seemed functionally blind to.

1. Grace will decimate what you think of you, while it gives you a security of identity you've never had.
   
   Grace will expose your sin, but it will not leave you without identity. Grace had liberated Jason, but he didn't know it or live like it. He had not only been forgiven and empowered, but he had been given a brand new identity. Jason had been freed from looking inward for his identity. No longer did he have to measure his potential by his track record or the size of the problems he was facing.
   
   His potential was as great as the grace of Christ. He had been freed from looking outward for his identity. No longer did he have to search for identity in his relationships, possessions or achievements. Jason had been freed from looking horizontally for what he had already been given vertically.
   
   His sense of self was no longer rooted in what he could earn or achieve, but in what he had already been given in Christ. The problem was that he didn't know it, so he was on a constant quest for meaning and purpose, looking for identity in places that could never deliver.
   
   
2. Grace will expose your deepest sins of heart, while it covers every failure with the blood of Jesus.
   
   No longer did Jason have to work to excuse, deny, rationalize, or minimize his sin. No longer did he have to exercise his inner lawyer when someone pointed out a wrong. Because of the cross of Jesus, Jason could admit his weakness and failure before a holy God and be utterly unafraid. And if a holy God had accepted him as he was, why would Jason fear the opinion of others?
   
   Jesus took Jason's rejection so that he would never see the back of God's head. Grace had freed Jason from having to prove to God, himself and others that he was righteous. Jason's hope and security was no longer in his own righteousness, but the righteousness he had been given in Christ. The problem was that he didn't know it, so Jason careened back and forth from fear to pride, swindling himself with self-atoning excuses and defending himself to others.
   
   
3. Grace will make you face how weak you are, while it blesses you with power beyond your ability to calculate.
   
   Grace does require you to admit how weak you are, but it doesn't leave you there. The cross not only dealt with the guilt of sin, but with the inability if sin as well. In this broken world of regular difficulty and constant temptation, Jason did feel weak and unprepared, so he lived more out of fear and avoidance than with hope and courage.
   
   Jason had not only been granted forgiveness, he had been filled with power; power beyond his ability to calculate. (Ephesians 3:20, 21) The problem was that Jason didn't know it, so, Jason gave in to things he had the power to defeat and he avoided things he had the power to conquer.
   
   
4. Grace will take control out of your hands, while it blesses you with the care of One who plan is unshakable and perfect in every way.
   
   Jason had some kind of distant belief in the sovereignty of God, but it was almost completely separate from his everyday experience. He lived like he had no idea that Jesus was ruling over all things for his sake (Ephesians 1:20-23). So Jason was constantly dealing with the frustration of trying to control people and things which he had little power to control.
   
   He spent way too much time calculating the "what ifs" and regretting the "if onlys." He seemed like he did not know that his security and rest were not to be found in his ability to predict the future and control the present, but in the faithful love and expansive wisdom of his sovereign Savior, Jesus, so his living always was more anxious than restful.

You see, Jason didn't need more grace. No, he needed to understand and live in light of the grace he had already been given. Jason was a grace amnesiac and so he lived like he was poor, when grace had made him exotically rich. He lived like he was weak, when grace had made him strong. He lived like life had no plan, when, in fact, he had been included in the unalterable plans of the God of redeeming grace.

Jason had a big hole right in the middle of his gospel, and because of that, he didn't live out of the freedom, beauty and security of what he had been given right here, right now. What about you?

Paul David Tripp is the president of Paul Tripp Ministries, a nonprofit organization, whose mission statement is "Connecting the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life." Paul is an international conference speaker, Pastor (Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA), seminary professor (Redeemer Seminary, Dallas, TX), Executive Director of the Center for Pastoral Life and Care, and the author of many books.

(Author: Jon Bloom)

Today, July 28th, marks the 28th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Christian singer/songwriter and evangelist, Keith Green. He was 28 years old. Also lost in that crash were two of Keith's children (Josiah & Bethany), the pilot (Don Burmeister), and an entire family (John & Dede Smalley and their six children).

I clearly remember July 28, 1982. I had just turned 17 and only recently had discovered Keith's music. He was unlike anyone I had ever heard. It wasn't music that drew me to Keith. It was his heart.

Keith was in love with Jesus in a way that few seemed to be. His passion was the kind I read about in the New Testament. Keith was real. You could tell just by listening to him. And you could also tell that Keith wasn't mainly about music, he was about a message. He didn't care about his career; he cared whether or not people followed Jesus. Keith was all about spreading a passion for the supremacy of Jesus.

And because of that, I loved his music. Keith had quickly become a hero of mine. His sudden death was shock.

The main reason I pay tribute to Keith today is because his influence has shaped one significant aspect of Desiring God. When John and I launched this work in 1994, we both agreed that DG should adopt the same whatever-you-can-afford policy for our resources that Keith's Last Days Ministries had for his music. This policy has served thousands of people. And I thank God for Keith's example in this.

Keith certainly didn't get everything right. He didn't have great things to say about Reformed theology, although some of his song lyrics show that he was more reformed than he may have realized (see "You Put This Love in My Heart"). But he was only a Christian for about 7 years and did almost all of his growing in public ministry. And considering how long it's taken me to learn things, I'm amazed at how well he did.

But in many ways Keith was a kindred spirit. He was passionate about Jesus, sought to spread that passion, loved the Bible, lived a war-time lifestyle, exhorted people not waste their lives, sought to mobilize people for missions, and lived out radical generosity. Keith's life was short, but he lived well and did not compromise.

So it's fitting that today we thank God for the life of Keith Gordon Green.

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

Westminster Bookstore is having a a sale on The Essential Edwards Collection, through Monday, August 2nd. The set is marked at 50% off list, making the cost for all 5 books $22.50. (That averages out to be $4.50 a book!)

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

Tune in to desiringGod.org/live to see Dave Harvey live streaming tonight, from 7-9PM CT. Ask him questions via Twitter using hashtag #dglive.

If you don't know Dave Harvey, check out our recent blog posts about him and the recent buzz he has created around the blogosphere.

(Author: Matt Heerema)

Last month we launched the public preview of the new DesiringGod.org, opening it up for your feedback and asking you to help us find problems with the Web site. Your response was amazing! A lot of great feedback was given, many bugs were discovered, and great improvements will result. We are grateful for all of you who took the time to take a look and write us.

We have been hard at work since then, and we are currently in the middle of a major push to complete this project. The whole Web team is literally working night and day this week, fixing problems and making improvements which you will see rolling out over the next several weeks.

But we could use your help, one more time.

The more people we can get poking around the new site—finding resources, signing up for a DG Network account (or logging in to your existing one), syncing with Facebook, joining groups, favoriting resources, and suggesting new resources to friends—the more it will help us find any final outstanding issues.

Essentially, you could join the Web team this week as we work around the clock to make the new DesiringGod.org a wonderful resource for the Church everywhere, to the Glory of God.

While site errors will automatically be reported, please email us at feedback@desiringGod.org with any questions, problems or comments.

Thank you again for how you have helped us already, and thanks in advance for another round of help!

(Author: Jon Bloom)

A few days ago I listened to a sermon by a man who is preparing to lead a missionary team that will plant itself into one of the least reached nations in the world.

The most optimistic estimates of the number of indigenous Christians in this nation is less than the number of people who attend Bethlehem Baptist Church on a Sunday morning. A lot less.

Listening to him was like listening to the writer of Hebrews. This man knows what he's getting into. He's planted a church in this nation already. The cost to follow Jesus in this nation is high. A good week is when no one in the church has been beaten.

These brothers and sisters are experiencing a "hard struggle with sufferings" (Hebrews 10:32). There are beatings, property plundering, heresies, divisions, and immorality. Most church troubles we read about in the Epistles, they have it.

Listening to this missionary left most of us American Christians wondering if we'd be able to hack it. And that's unnerving.

The New Testament teaches us that whether or not our treasure is really in heaven is most clearly seen when it costs us our earthly treasures in order to obtain it. But American Christians live in the most prosperous nation in world history and the one in which it costs the least to be a Christian.

This environment can be deadly to faith. It allows false faith to masquerade as real very easily. And its power to dissipate zeal and energy and mission-focus and willingness to risk is extraordinary because it doesn't come to us with a whip and a threat. It comes to us with a pillow and a promise of comfort for us and our children. The former makes us desperate for God. The latter robs our sense of desperation.

And it's the lack of a sense of desperation for God that is so deadly. If we don't feel desperate for God, we don't tend to cry out to him. Love for this present world sets in subtly, like a spiritual leprosy, damaging spiritual nerve endings so that we don't feel the erosion and decay happening until it's too late.

So we must fast and pray for and support the suffering church in the diseases that can set in from harsh adversity. But we must also fast and pray for God to deliver us from the diseases that set in from prosperity. We need him. We can discipline ourselves in various ways. But we cannot manufacture our own desperation. Only God can make us desperate for him.

So God, whatever it takes, increase our awareness of our dependence on you in everything! Keep us desperate for you so that the deceitfulness of sin does not harden our hearts (Hebrews 3:13). In Jesus' name, amen.

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

In this final installment of the Essential Piper series we consider John Piper's exhortation, "Don't waste your life!"

It is possible to waste your life. Few things make me tremble more than the possibility of taking this onetime gift of life and wasting it. Every morning when I walked into the kitchen as a boy I saw hanging on the wall the plaque that now hangs in my living room: "Only one life, twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last." And now I am almost 58, and the river of life is spilling over the falls of my days with tremendous speed. More and more I smell eternity. And oh, how I want to use my life well. It is so short and so fragile and so final. You get one chance to live your life. And then the judgment. I speak as a father who has children your age, and I am jealous with Jesus that they and you not waste your life. ("Don't Waste Your Life," from December 29, 2003)

Posts in This Series

• Essential Piper: Christian Hedonism
• Essential Piper: The Sovereignty of God
• Essential Piper: The Supremacy of Christ
• Essential Piper: The Centrality of Scripture
• Essential Piper: Let the Nations Be Glad!
• Essential Piper: Expository Exultation
• Essential Piper: Don't Waste Your Life

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

We currently have internships available in the following departments. If you know someone in the Twin Cities area who is skilled and passionate in one of these areas, please send them our way.

Graphic and Web Design

• Design experience
• Fluent in HTML/CSS and Photoshop or InDesign

Media

• Experience in video editing and video production
• Fluent in Final Cut or After Effects

Information Systems

• Ability to perform self-directed research
• Fluent in a scripting language such as Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.
• Linux server administration ability

Marketing and PR

• Experience in marketing
• Fluent with Google docs and social media
• Strong writing skills

Web Content

• Strong writing skills
• Blogging experience
• Familiarity with current DG resource library

If you are interested in one of these positions send your resume to interns@desiringGod.org. Please include the position title in the subject line of the email.

(Author: Tyler Kenney)

For 27 years, from 1982 to 2008, John Piper wrote and read a poem for each Sunday of Advent, as a gift to Bethlehem Baptist Church. Most of these poems were about biblical characters who find their lives intertwined with significant events in redemptive history. Some of them even became books, such as Job, Ruth, The Innkeeper, and The Prodigal's Sister.

Pastor John has written poetry on other occasions as well, whether to celebrate his son's marriage, his daughter's baptism, or, most especially, to express his love for Noël. (See the entire list of his online poems.)

Back in December of 2007, Pastor John spoke at an after-church event at Bethelehem titled "A Pastor and His Poetry." It was an informal presentation, intermingled with Q&A, where he answered four main questions:

1. What is poetry?
2. Why read poetry?
3. Why write poetry?
4. How do I write poetry?

You can now listen online or download the audio.

(Author: Joe Osburn)

In 1787, at the age of 28, William Wilberforce wrote a personal mission statement: "God has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners." Remarkably, by the grace of God, 50 years later Wilberforce had largely achieved his goals of abolition and cultural renewal in Great Britain.

Wilberforce was a redemptive change agent for Britain and his model of a purpose-driven Christian life is one that the Wilberforce Academy endeavors to train college-age students to bring to their home societies.

The Wilberforce Academy was officially founded in February 2009 and launched in April 2009. The vision of its founder, Dr. Robert Osburn, was the culmination of 18 years of reflection and scholarship which attempted to answer the question, "How can the best and brightest amongst us, especially those from foreign countries who study in North America, be empowered to bring the redemptive, healing influence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to bear on the deepest problems facing their home societies?"

To that end they are not only developing a curriculum, but on October 8-9, 2010 the Wilberforce Academy will unveil a stimulating and thoughtful platform where international and American students can discover how to be redemptive change agents in their home societies: the Worldview for World Healing conference.

Together with community members, Christian activists, campus ministers, and professors, students will

• Understand why effective action demands deep grounding in a biblical worldview and personal transformation by Jesus Christ
• Hear stories of Christ-animated students and others who have been redemptive change agents in their communities and in the world
• Meet passionate students and innovators who share the same culture/ethnic/national and vocational interests
• Meet agency advocates who connect a world of need to students ready to act
• Learn about the Wilberforce Academy's Making a Redemptive Difference curriculum

Speakers for the conference include Eric Metaxas (author of Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery and Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy), Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin, and Darrow Miller, and many other breakout session speakers.

The conference will be held in Roseville, MN. For more information or to register visit the conference website.

(Author: Tyler Kenney)

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived:

• neither the sexually immoral,
• nor idolaters,
• nor adulterers,
• nor men who practice homosexuality,
• nor thieves,
• nor the greedy,
• nor drunkards,
• nor revilers,
• nor swindlers

will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you.

But

• you were washed,
• you were sanctified,
• you were justified

in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

Today is the first installment of a seven part series on the local church. Every day this week we will look at a different Bible passage, seeing how it shows the local church to be vital to the life of a believer.

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3:12-14)

In this passage we have wonderful assurance and firm warning. The wonderful assurance comes from the last sentence: For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. Said another way, if we have come to share in Christ, we will persevere. True believers will never fall from grace and be disqualified from their inheritance, period.

On the flip side, this passage comes as a firm warning. We are exhorted to seek out the means that God has appointed to keep us from falling away. Namely, the local church. Not only as an institution or formal assembly, but as friends and encouragers—brothers and sisters battling for each other's sanctification and perseverance. This regular and honest interaction with other believers is a means of grace that God has appointed to counteract the self-deceiving, heart-hardening sin that would otherwise lead us away from God.

God has designed for our perseverance to be realized in authentic community—living and dying together in the gospel of Christ.

Posts in This Series

• The Local Church: For Your Perseverance
• The Local Church: Training You for Ministry
• The Local Church: Helping You Grow Up
• The Local Church: People to Suffer With
• The Local Church: People to Rejoice With (coming Friday)
• The Local Church: A Safe Place to Be Judged (coming Saturday)
• The Local Church: Indispensable (coming Sunday)

(Author: Tyler Kenney)

I am now convinced, that conversion under the old [covenant] was not only the same in general with what it is commonly under the new, but much more like it as to the particular way and manner, than I used to think.

Among the children of Israel, there was always without doubt two sorts of persons, wicked and godly, and there used to be as manifest a difference between these two as there is now. It appears that the wicked were the same as they are now: vain, profane, light, proud, scornful, hating the godly. The righteous, by the descriptions we have of them, were also the same: humble, meek and lowly, devout, full of fear, love and trust in God, just, righteous and charitable. And we can't question but that there were as frequent conversions from one to the other as there is now.

This turning is very often spoken of in the Old Testament, frequently urged and encouraged; and we have no reason to believe that what was said had no effect. And undoubtedly the first motives of their turning were a sense of the dangerousness of sin, and of the dreadfulness of God's anger; and [they] were convinced so much of their wickedness, that they trusted to nothing but the mere mercy of God, and then bitterly lamented and mourned for their sins. Wherever turning is urged, such a turning as this is urged; and what instances we have were of this kind. And thus it doubtless was, not only amongst the Israelites but also among the antediluvians, and from the beginning of the world.

—Jonathan Edwards, Miscellanies #39

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man." In light of this, is it appropriate for men to listen to female speakers and teachers?

Saturday's Ask Pastor John addresses the issue.

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

I'm a guy. Is it wrong for me to listen to Beth Moore?

No. Unless you begin to become dependent on her as your shepherd—your pastor.

This is the way I feel about women speaking occasionally in Sunday school. We don't need to be picky on this. The Bible is clear that women shouldn't teach and have authority over men. In context, I think this means that women shouldn't be the authoritative teachers of the church—they shouldn't be elders. That is the way Rick Warren is understanding it, and most of us understand it that way.

This doesn't mean you can't learn from a woman, or that she is incompetent and can't think. It means that there is a certain dynamic between maleness and femaleness that when a woman begins to assume an authoritative teaching role in your life the manhood of a man and the womanhood of a woman is compromised.

What I just said is unbelievably controversial. There are thousands, even millions of people that think this idea is absolutely obscene. That is the language people used back in the 70's when I was fighting battles over biblical manhood and womanhood. It isn't obscene. It is recognized profoundly in a lot of young people today, as well as older people.

To the question of whether men should listen to a woman like Elisabeth Elliot—who was the Beth Moore of my generation. Elisabeth Elliot provoked students to be lay down your life missionaries. I love it! Sock it to them Elisabeth! She was so in your face about laying your life down and being radically obedient and totally committed. She was not a pastor, and she didn't even preach on Sunday mornings. She is my kind of lady. I can learn heaps from her.

I want to learn from my wife and I am happy to learn from Beth Moore. But I don't want to get into a relationship of listening or attending a church where a woman is becoming my pastor, my shepherd or my authority. I think that would be an unhealthy thing for a man to do. I could give reasons for that biblically, experientially and psychologically, but I have given the gist of it.

So the answer is, no it is not wrong for you to listen to Beth Moore, but it could become wrong. I think Beth Moore would be happy with that answer. I've talked to her about this, and I think she would be OK with what I've said. Our paths cross at the Passion Conference every now and then, and we talk.

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

At our 1991 Pastors Conference John Piper delivered a biographical message on Martyn Lloyd-Jones titled "A Passion For Christ Exalting Power."

Nine newly-available recordings of Lloyd-Jones' Spirit empowered preaching can be downloaded for free, thanks to the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recordings Trust.