Gospel-centered Preaching: July 2007 Archives
This is so very good and helpful!
“The great gospel imperatives to holiness are ever rooted in indicatives of grace that are able to sustain the weight of those imperatives. The Apostles do not make the mistake that’s often made in Christian ministry. [For the Apostles] the indicatives are more powerful than the imperatives in gospel preaching. So often in our preaching our indicatives are not strong enough, great enough, holy enough, or gracious enough to sustain the power of the imperatives. And so our teaching on holiness becomes a whip or a rod to beat our people’s backs because we’ve looked at the New Testament and that’s all we ourselves have seen. We’ve seen our own failure and we’ve seen the imperatives to holiness and we’ve lost sight of the great indicatives of the gospel that sustain those imperatives. … Woven into the warp and woof of the New Testament’s exposition of what it means for us to be holy is the great groundwork that the self-existent, thrice holy, triune God has — in Himself, by Himself and for Himself — committed Himself and all three Persons of His being to bringing about the holiness of His own people. This is the Father’s purpose, the Son’s purchase and the Spirit’s ministry” (Sinclair Ferguson).
(HT: John Fonville)
You can listen to the plenary sessions of The Gospel Coalition 2007. Since I've been without internet at home for over a month, I've just started to listen to them. Click here to go to the media page. Here's what you'll find:
Don Carson - What is the Gospel? Tim Keller - What Does Gospel Centered Ministry Look Like? Don Carson - Plans and Purposes of the Gospel Coalition John Piper - The Triumph of the Gospel in the New Heavens and the New Earth Crawford Loritts - Passing the Torch
Sinclair Ferguson preached the sermon for Richard Phillips' Sunday night installation service at Second Presbyterian Church, located in downtown Greenville (SC), this past Sunday. I heard from someone who attended the service that it was vintage Sinclair. You can download the mp3 here: Becoming a Model Church. Richard Phillips preached on John 1:1-3 for the morning service (download it here: The Word).
I had a brief opportunity to talk with Richard Phillips and welcome him to Greenville at the CBA convention early this week. I'm very excited that he's here and eager to see how God uses his ministry in this unique city. Richard was kind enough to give me (and many other people) a free signed copy of his latest book, Jesus the Evangelist: Learning to share the gospel from the book of John.
