Desiring God Blog

• John Piper's Biographical Message on J. C. Ryle
  

  John Piper gave his annual biographical message at the 2012 Conference for Pastors. This year he spoke about the life and ministry J. C. Ryle. Download the audio and video.

  Pastor John begins the message by explaining what he means that "Christianity has a masculine feel."

  Theology and church and mission are marked by overarching godly male leadership in the spirit of Christ, with an ethos of tender-hearted strength, and contrite courage, and risk-taking decisiveness, and readiness to sacrifice for the sake of leading, protecting, and providing for the community — all of which is possible only through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

  It’s the feel of a great, majestic God, who by his redeeming work in Jesus Christ, inclines men to take humble, Christ-exalting initiative, and inclines women to come alongside the men with joyful support, intelligent helpfulness, and fruitful partnership in the work.

  
  
• Love That Jesus Calls the Weak
  

  I want to be like Jonathan Edwards, don’t you? The guy was amazing. He was a polymath, an incomparable scholar, “probably the greatest America mind ever” (as they say). Writing a treatise on spiders was like a few rounds of Angry Birds to him. He was the pastor-theologian. A school president. A missionary to unreached peoples. A leader in a movement that changed America. He was a giant.

  Paul Talks About Us

  And then the Apostle Paul reminds us with the Corinthians: “not many of you” were wise or powerful or noble. “Not many of you.” It doesn’t apply to everyone, but it does to most of us.

  Most of us don’t come to faith in Jesus with the intellectual respect of secular scholars. Most of our conversion stories don’t include anything close to a Nebuchadnezzer-like experience of boasting in our kingdom. Most of us weren’t born into noble families with financial freight and international influence. It doesn’t take any soul-searching to figure this out. Quite simply, we understand that Paul is talking to us.

  Feeling Our Weakness

  We understand that we’re weak. We’re weak and called by God and so we enter seminary for theological and pastoral training. Yet here’s the thing: we want to be trained, yes. To grow and to learn, yes — but it's not to become unweak.

  1 Corinthians 1 can begin to make less sense to us. We learn dense theological truth, and fumble through the original languages, and consult high-level scholarship, and sign up for a Student Membership in ETS. We’re trying to get stronger. We either don’t feel very foolish in the way we’re able to dissect Edwards’s Essay on the Trinity, or perhaps we realize we’re so far off the map that we resent God making us the way he did. Why can't I be smarter! Forget Edwards, who cares?

  Christ Crucified

  Whichever we are, let’s come together, each with our own measure of faith assigned by God, and let’s love that Jesus calls the weak. Let’s love the biblical narrative: how Abraham embarrassed himself twice in the pseudo-sister incidents, how insignifcant Judah should have been, how Gideon was just Gideon, how David was the little one. . . .

  That no matter how remarkable our giftings may be or how simple our understanding is, the message we proclaim is stupid to the world. Let us be known less for our strengths in academic rigor and more for how that rigor goes deeper in grasping what it means that a man was crucified to save the world.

  Intellectual proficiency takes a back seat when our only hope is in what some call offensive, and others call folly.

  ________

  How to Stay Christian in Seminary:

  • Introduction: Seminary: Life or Death?
  • #1: Know Your Value of Values
  • #2: Be Fascinated with Grace
  
  
• Darrin Patrick on Being and Building Men
  

  Darrin Patrick's message at the 2012 Conference for Pastors was on being and building men in the local church. He expounded Galatians 5 and walked through the on-the-ground work of killing sin and living in the Spirit. Download the audio and video.

  Memorable Quotes

  • "When you become a leader of men, you plug your life into an ampiflier and everyone hears it."
  • "You don't obey for your acceptance, you obey from your acceptance."
  • "You don't measure your maturity by comparing yourself with others. You judge maturity by comparing yourself to Jesus."
  • "Paul tells us to crucify the flesh. Crucifixion is a slow death, but it is a certain death."
  • "Your flesh is anything you use other than Jesus to get God’s approval. Your flesh will take your ministry and make it your righteousness."
  • "A key to killing your spiritual flesh is through surrounding yourselves with brothers. You have to have some guys who aren’t impressed with you. You need elders who tell you no."
  • "You need guys around you who hate your sin. You need guys who are pursing Christ to the degree that when you look at them you say 'I want to pursue Christ like that.'"

  
  

• Read and Share "Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ" for $5
  

  The price William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton paid to translate the Word of God, pave the way for missionary mobilization around the world, and lead the hostile to Christ was great. Yet their stories show how the gospel advances not only through the faithful proclamation of the truth but through representing the afflictions of Christ in our sufferings.

  You can now order the book for just $5.

  (Offer good only for purchases made through our online store and while supplies last.)

  Other Specials

  • Finally Alive ($5)
  • The Dangerous Duty of Delight ($5)
  • Think ($5)
  • A Holy Ambition ($5)
  • Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ ($5)
  • Fifty Reasons Jesus Came to Die ($5)
  • The Gadarene ($5)
  • Portrait of Calvin ($3)
  • God Is the Gospel ($5)
  • With Calvin in the Theater of God ($5)
  • Ruth: Under the Wings of God ($5)
  
  
• Crawford Loritts on Lessons Learned from His Father
  

  Crawford Loritts' message included practical insight and a short exposition of Galatians 5 on what it means to live and walk by the Spirit. Download the audio and video.

  Memorable Quotes

  • "Manhood is not a private matter. It is a public thing. A man aspires to be the desired destination at which others arrive."
  • "This summarizes my dad: Stepping up, never walking away, if it belongs to you, you do something with it."
  • "Our disproportionate desire for relevance is injecting embalming fluid into the next generation."
  • "Out of struggle comes strength; out of strength comes discipline; out of discipline comes integrity; out of integrity comes inheritance."
  • "How people treat you should never define you. It's not what people call you, but what you answer to."
  • "All we have to give to the next generation is what we have become."