As we continue to gear up for upcoming conference weekend — Clarus ’10 — you might be interested in getting to know more about Wayne Grudem. Here are a couple of excellent interviews.

1.  C.J. Mahaney did a four part interview with Dr. Grudem (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). Some of the questions covered:

• Please describe your morning devotions. What time do you wake up in the morning? How much time do you spend reading, meditating, praying, etc.?
• If you could study under any theologian in church history (excluding those men in Scripture), who would it be and why?
• What single bit of counsel has made the most significant difference in your effective use of time?
• What single bit of counsel has made the most significant difference in your leadership?
• Where in ministry are you most regularly tempted to discouragement?
• What do you do for leisure?
• If you were not in ministry, what occupational path would you have chosen?

2.  If you prefer audio, Mark Dever has an hour-long interview with Dr. Grudem, which covers many issues of theology and ministry.

Hope you plan to be with us Apr 30 – May 2 to learn from Wayne Grudem and Randy Alcorn. If you haven’t yet, you can get tickets online, in the DSC church office, or at local Christian bookstores, Chronicles and Bibles Plus.

On Sunday, we looked at Luke 18:9-14 — the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector.

I think this parable best exemplifies Jesus’ message, specifically as that message comes to us through Luke. Like we said on Sunday (and have said many times before), in Luke the “righteous” are the so-called righteous — those who think themselves to be righteous even though they aren’t (none are). The “sinners” in Luke are the famously sinful — those who know themselves to be sinners, partly because society constantly reminds them that they are sinners and are in trouble. In Luke, the “righteous” really are sinners — not least because their self-righteousness, self-deception, and works-pride are sin. The “sinners,” however, can be made righteous by grace in Christ through faith.

Let me encourage continued thought and prayer on this parable, its teaching, and its implications. Here are some ways to do that.

At Together for the Gospel this week, John Piper’s message spent time on this parable as he examined the broader question of whether Jesus and Paul had different “gospels.” He concludes that Jesus’ gospel is also Paul’s, and then follows that up with these imiplications:

• Nothing We Do Is Basis for God’s Acceptance
• Our Standing with God Is Based on Jesus, Not Us
• Transformation Is the Fruit, Not Root, of Justification
• All Our Goodness Is Evidence and Confirmation, Not Grounds
• The Gospel Is for Every Person and Every People
• Jesus Gets the Full Glory

John Bunyan has a 128 page book on this parable. The full text is available for free on Google Books. I used a couple of gems from it in Sunday’s message:

• “The Pharisee’s whole righteousness was sinful.”
• “Godly men are afraid of their own righteousness.”
• “We must be made righteous before we can do righteousness.”

Spurgeon preached several messages on this parable, but (I believe) only one is available online. What a great title: “Too Good to be Saved!”

Tim Keller’s message on this parable is devastatingly good. Unfortunately, many of Keller’s sermons aren’t free, but this one is. Download it and listen. Then download and/or read everything else from Keller you can get your hands on. For instance, here is Keller, in The Prodigal God, explaining the same message — how we must repent not only of our bad works but also our good works:

What must we do, then, to be saved? To find God we must repent of the things we have done wrong, but if that is all you do, you may remain just an elder brother. To truly become a Christian we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right. Pharisees only repent of their sins, but Christians repent for the very roots of their righteousness, too. We must learn how to repent of the sin under all our other sins and under all our righteousness – the sin of seeking to be our own Savior and Lord. We must admit that we’ve put our ultimate hope in both our wrongdoing and right doing we have been seeking to get around God or get control of God in order to get hold of those things.

It is only when you see the desire to be your own Savior and Lord—lying beneath both your sins and your moral goodness—that you are on the verge of becoming a Christian indeed. When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not just being good, you are on the brink. If you follow through, it will change everything—how you relate to God, self, others, the world, your work, you sins, your virtue. It’s called the new birth because its so radical.

Is this a new concept for you? Maybe check out the three hour Saturday Seminar that DSC did some years back, “The Gospel for Christians.”

Fighting my Pharisaical self-righteousness with you until Jesus returns.

Tim Keller describes a frequent problem with our prayers:

People are used to thinking about prayer as a means to get their personal needs met. However we should understand prayer as a means to praise and adore God, to know Him, to come into his presence and be changed by Him. We need to better learn how to pray, repent and petition God as a people.

He then describes the biblical alternative — Kingdom-centered prayer:

1. It is focused on God’s presence and kingdom.

Jack Miller talks about the difference between “maintenance prayer” and “frontline” prayer meetings. Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical, and totally focused on physical needs inside the church. But frontline prayer has three basic traits:

a.  a request for grace to confess sins and humble ourselves

b.  a compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church

c.  a yearning to know God, to see his face, to see his glory.

It is most interesting to study Biblical prayer for revival, such as in Acts 4 or Exodus 33 or Nehemiah 1, where these three elements are easy to see. Notice in Acts 4, for example, that the disciples, whose lives had been threatened, did not ask for protection for themselves and their families, but only boldness to keep preaching!

2. It is bold and specific.

The characteristics of this kind of prayer include:

a.  Pacesetters in prayer spend time in self-examination. Without a strong understanding of grace, this can be morbid and depressing. But in the context of the gospel, it is purifying and strengthening. They “take off their ornaments” (Exod. 33:1-6). They examine selves for idols and set them aside.

b.  They then begin to make the big request–a sight of the glory of God. That includes asking: 1) for a personal experience of the glory/presence of God (“that I may know you” – Exod. 33:13); 2) for the people’s experience of the glory of God (v. 15); and 3) that the world might see the glory of God through his people (v. 16). Moses asks that God’s presence would be obvious to all: “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” This is a prayer that the world be awed and amazed by a show of God’s power and radiance in the church, that it would become truly the new humanity that is a sign of the future kingdom.

3.  It is prevailing, corporate.

By this we mean simply that prayer should be constant, not sporadic and brief. Why? Are we to think that God wants to see us grovel? Why do we not simply put our request in and wait? But sporadic, brief prayer shows a lack of dependence, a self-sufficiency, and thus we have not built an altar that God can honor with his fire. We must pray without ceasing, pray long, pray hard, and we will find that the very process is bringing about that which we are asking for – to have our hard hearts melted, to tear down barriers, to have the glory of God break through.

May it be increasingly so, Lord!

Sunday’s message looked at two passages on the “now and not yet” reality of the kingdom of Christ (Luke 17 and 21). While we didn’t spend any time talking about the different interpretive timelines of the “last days” — Premillennialism, Postmillennialism, Amillennialism, etc. — the below charts show the basic eschatological options.

AMILLENNIALISM

POSTMILLENNIALISM

HISTORIC (CLASSIC) PREMILLENNIALISM

DISPENSATIONAL PREMILLENIALISM

These are taken from Capitol Hill Baptist Church’s Core Seminar on Systematic Theology.

For further reading, I’d recommend:

• Millard Erickson, A Basic Guide to Eschatology
• “An Evening of Eschatology” — a conversation on the Millennium with John Piper, Sam Storms, Doug Wilson, and Jim Hamilton (available for free in video, audio, or text formats)
• Anthony Hoekema, The Bible and the Future
• Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillennialism
• Sam Storm’s many articles on eschatology, including three (Pt 1, 2, 3) on the Olivet Discourse (Mt. 24 and Lk. 21)
• Craig Blomberg and Sung-Wook Chung (ed.), A Case for Historic Premillennialism

Carl Trueman points us to Hans Kung (a Roman Catholic theologian) and his recent critique of the Catholic church (critique from within, mind you):

Hans Kung has fired a fine salvo in the discussion of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.  As usual, his take on his own church is far more astute and perceptive than the many rose-tinted interpretations that are the stock-in-trade of prominent American evangelicals.  You can read it here.   For those with stronger stomachs (you have been warned) Christopher Hitchens has also something to say on the matter here.   Is the Reformation over?  Let’s hope not.   American evangelicalism may be, to use Frank Schaeffer’s phrase, addicted to mediocrity; there is no evidence as yet that it is addicted to child rape and cover ups of the same.

Checking my own legal responsibilities at Westminster [Theological Seminary], it would appear that, if child abuse was taking place on campus with my knowledge, and I did not immediately inform the police, I would be in serious legal difficulties — and that’s just the legal situation, before we even get to what my moral responsibilities might be.   At this point, to use the British terminology, one has to ask why the Pope isn’t down at the local constabulary, helping the police with their inquiries?