The God Who is There

(That is, of course, if it works for you.)

(NOTE: this blog is long.. and I had to get all of my thoughts out there. You have my full permission to "skip" speakers or blaze through the points that most interest you... however, if you have the strength and stamina to read through it all, then, by all means to do so.)

Musings on “The Supremacy of Christ in a Post-Modern World”

It’s been almost three weeks now, and I suppose I’ve had plenty time to muse on the happenings of my recent sojourn to the 2006 Desiring God Ministries Conference… “Above All Earthly Pow’rs: The Supremacy of Christ in a Post-Modern World”. (Talk about great titles.) John Piper was the host pastor for the event, accompanied by David Wells, author of Above All Earthly Pow’rs, Voddie Baucham, Tim Keller, Mark Driscoll, and D.A. Carson. (Talk about great speakers.) I was accompanied on the journey by a very ancient copy of The God Who is There by Francis Shaeffer, which also greatly shaped my thinking throughout the weekend, and continues to do so. Allow me to share a thing or two.

David Wells
David Wells is an educated theologian and the author of “Above All Earthly Pow’rs”. His introduction was strong and convicting… a great beginning.

As post-modernism progresses in our western world today, it is now true, frightening fact that there are more Christians outside of the West than in it. Christianity, amidst all the pain and persecution our brothers have experienced and are still experiencing, has grown astronomically through this very oppression.

However, Christianity differs from other religions in one essential aspect – its centre is not a language, a place or a culture. Our centre is the exalted, resurrected, and abiding person of Christ.

All former prophets were messengers, bringing bits and pieces of information regarding the Messiah. Christ is our great and glorious end.

Mr. Wells used Hebrews as a parallel to the Christian of today. The whole book is focused on exalting the preeminence of Christ in all things. In chapter 11, the Hebrew believers have begun to seek approval and go back to their old ways and rituals – losing sight of the sufficiency and deliverance of Christ.

This is beginning to happen again.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Suffering and uncertainty are one side of this walk of faith. We do not fear for our safety here in our comfortable, modernized, western lives – but our world distracts us, making it difficult for us to focus on the supremacy of Christ amidst it all. We are losing root. We have forgotten the Christ in whom we once trusted fully. Like the Hebrew believers, Christianity has begun to sink into the ways of the world, to marry into the spirit of the age.

In Christ’s conquest over death
The back of evil is broken.
The outcome cannot be changed.
The battle is won and victory complete.
The game is locked up.

Christianity is only about this Christ. We don’t have anything else to give a post-modern world. Christ is central, sufficient, and supreme.

(As soon as I heard these words, I inwardly cried a resounding “Amen!”)

The “slimmed-down” Gospel is no Gospel at all.

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That very night I began to read The God Who Is There. I could not have picked a more appropriate accompaniment to the weekend as a whole. I had heard all about the man, his teachings, and his life, but I was not prepared for this book.

“…the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his
own generation. If he does not do this, he is not resisting the spirit of the
world at all. In the words of Martin Luther… Where the battle rages, there the
loyalty of the soldier is proved…

… [the Christian] must understand what confronts him antagonistically in his own moment of history. Otherwise he simply becomes a useless museum piece and not a living warrior for Jesus Christ.”

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I rolled slowly out of bed the next Saturday morning, realizing all too late that jet lag had worked to my decided disadvantage. What was 8:00 was now 10:00, and the conference started at 10:30. Besides, Vodie Baucham was up next, and there was no way I was about to miss a sentence. We all threw something on, caught a little something warm at the Starbucks downstairs (yes, we were decidedly pampered)… and ran the block or so to the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Vodie Baucham
The Supremacy of Christ in Truth in a Post-Modern World

Vodie began by citing the 2 competing worldviews in our culture today: Christian theism, and secular humanism. One says there is a necessary, intelligent, sovereign, all-powerful God. The other says there is no god and there is no truth. One says man is made with purpose and in the image of God. The other man is a single celled organism run amock, “a glorified ape – a cosmic accident.” Nature is either created by this intelligent and sovereign Being… or nature is a closed system and man is an evolved beast. One says ethics are absolute; the other that ethics are cultural.

There are 4 basic questions of mankind:
1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here?
3. What is wrong with the world?
4. What can be done to make this wrong right?

Our culture says 1. Man is nothing. Man is an accident. Man is a mistake. 2. We are all here to consume and enjoy. “Get all you can, can all you get.” 3 and 4: People need more education and more government.

And yet... “Take an adulterated, murderous human being and teach him more stuff… and he will only become more sophisticated in his ability to destroy.

Colossians 1: Christ’s Supremacy
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created… all things were created by Him and for Him.

Christianity answers…
1. Who am I? I am no accident. I am made in the likeness of and am the crowning glory of the creation of the one and only God.
2. Why am I here? We are here to bring honor and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are here to exalt the preeminence of Christ. This is our primary role and function.
3. What is wrong with the world?
Myself.

Many students will ask… why does God let bad things happen to good people? The real question is this… Knowing what I did yesterday, why does a holy, sovereign, omnipotent God let me live on another day?

Yet…
Col. 1:22 But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight without blemish and free from accusation…

How can what is wrong be made right?
No way but through the blood of Jesus.

These are our answers to a lost and dying world. Herein lies truth. Herein lies our purpose.

By the time that great man of God had left the stage, we were all on our feet in thunderous applause. Tears streamed down his face as he shared with us this simple, yet profound truth. I was so encouraged I could have shouted from the rooftops… but the conservative Christians that occupied the place probably wouldn’t have taken kindly to such ecstasies. So I kept them inside – but shouted nonetheless.


I shall only share a few more things… my own mind is on overload with the extent of information I received… so you will have to download the whole conference for yourselves. (And I highly recommend doing so!) However, I would like to share a bit about the messages from Mark Driscoll and John Piper – two very different men, yet men of God still.

That first Friday night, after Mr. Wells’ address, there was a “Conversation with the Pastors” and here a discussion arose between Dr. John Piper and the “young upstart” Mark Driscoll on the matter of relevance. (The R word!) The interviewer put it this way…

“Now Mark, we know that you go to movies, listen to secular music, go to football games, etc. And John, you… don’t. How, John, do you stay relevant? And how, Mark, do you stay faithful?”

And so the issue arose.

(Mark Driscoll was, in fact, one of the “founding fathers” of the Emerging Church Movement in Seattle, and his name is often still listed among them. He has long since broken off from the movement, but he remains “on-the-edge” for many.)

Mark Driscoll spoke first. His impassioned speech Saturday afternoon was one I will not soon forget, and on a topic I am still working through. (I welcome comments on the subject.)

His doctrine was, indeed, strong and assured, and he left no doubt as to where he stood on the key issues of the Gospel and the Word of God. So far from the ECMers, the man was practically burning with passion in the defense of Christ and His Good News. He burned against the “chickified”, “beat-up-able” Jesus of today… and upheld the Jesus of the Bible. He believes that the Bible is the true Word of God. He believes in the sovereignty of God. He believes in the virgin birth, total depravity, substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross, and the exclusivity of Christ. He believes in the difference between men and women, in a biblical hell, and that Kingdom has priority over culture.

So far, so good.
And then…
“We must contextualize… communicate the Gospel effectively to other peoples and cultures as missionaries. Missions is not only all around the world… but down the street as well. Let us mix timeless truth and timely ministry. … There is a difference between seeker-sensitive and seeker-sensible. We want the unbeliever to understand that he might believe. We must win some.”


No… we do not change “church” to make it fit the unbeliever. We say the gospel in a way that the unbeliever understands. This is Mark’s point. We don’t use words and vocabulary to phrase the center of our faith – the Gospel – in a way that makes us sound good. We want to make the Gospel first. Therefore, we must seek to reach our culture with the Gospel in a way that they might see and understand and declare that God is indeed among us.

John Piper said later that, in his cleverness with the culture, Mark is in danger of winning some with cleverness as opposed to the Gospel. A dangerous pitfall this would be… so I agreed with Dr. Piper and moved on.

The last morning it was John Piper’s turn to teach. (You can hardly imagine my glee.) And yet his introduction shocked me. A listener in the audience had approached him the night before and told him this… “Dr. Piper, you said Mark Driscoll was clever on the cultural level. But you, Dr., are clever on the academic level.” Humbly John Piper came before us, declaring the truth and perceptiveness of the comment, and pleading with us all to pray for them both, that they might not trust in their own strength but in Christ alone.

We all have our pitfalls. May the Lord give grace to us all.
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John Piper
Final Session

1. God (one and triune) is the only Being who has no beginning so all other things are dependent on Him for being and value.
He is I AM.
2. From eternity God has been supremely joyful in the fellowship of the Trinity – He did not create the world because He needed it.
3. God created human begins to display the supreme value of His glory – to reflect and display it.
4. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, came to live and die and absorb the wrath of the glory of God that we might be redeemed.

What is the ultimate goal of the cross? What is the ultimate good of the good news…

1 Peter 3:18… to bring us to God…

5. The enjoyment of God is the ultimate way of reflecting His glory back to Him.
“There are no so-that’s after joy.” Our ultimate goal is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. Joy is not a means to an end. It is the deepest reverberation in your heart to your value of God.

6. There is fruit to this joy – visible, self-sacrificing acts of love through which we show His glory to others.

7. The only joy that reflects the glory of God is rooted in our true knowledge of Him.

False doctrine undermines God-glorifying joy.

8. The right knowledge of God and His ways is the servant of God-glorifying joy and love for His people.

9. Let us not marginalize or minimize right and healthy doctrine, as some are now doing – but rather build ourselves, our lives, and our relationships on it.

10. May the church be the buttress and pillar of truth and therefore of joy.

Rarely have I seen such a truly joyful, humble, God-glorifying man.

We ended (and I began to weep) with a simple hymn.

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ, the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, his covenant, his blood
Supports me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound
Oh may I then in Him be found
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne!

On Christ, the solid Rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.

Let us therefore, with a humble orthodoxy, contend with right knowledge against the spirit of the age – and put our trust in the one foundation that holds firm in the whelming flood.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand.