Here is the first of my promised T4G updates. After I registered, which took awhile since there are 7,000 attendees, I visited what could be called Shangri la (the bookstore). It takes up about 10,000 sq. ft. and the selection is unbelievable. I am currently trying to convince Aubrey that we don’t need groceries for the next two months.
Ligon Duncan opened the conference by telling us that here God speaks first and he then read 2 Corinthians 11:16-33. He summarized the reading by telling us that Paul was not great, God is great and that Paul was not glorious, Christ is glorious.
CJ Mahaney then led us in prayer. Before he prayed he asked us to pray. He asked us to thank God for the many volunteers, to pray for our families that had sacrificed to let us attend and finally he asked us to cast all our cares on Christ so we could fully appreciate what God would reveal to us over the course of this conference.
Al Mohler then welcomed us to the conference by emphasizing that it is the gospel that unites us together.
Then we sang. It was unbelievable. I cannot begin to explain the power of 7,000 Christians praising God together; certainly it was a small taste of heaven.
The first speaker was Mark Dever, the pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Christ and the founder of Nine Marks Ministry. His talk was entitled “The Church is the Gospel Made Visible” and was based on Ephesians 3:10. He started by asking the question, how does your church make the gospel visible? Or to phrase it differently, what kind of gospel does your church make visible? His point was that Jesus’ evangelism plan is the local church because the church is the proof of the gospel. He went on to say that the gospel we proclaim must also be displayed in our life together. Dever then gave four ways that the gospel needs to be manifested in our church.
1. Our lives need to reflect God’s nature and character. He emphasized three specific aspects of God’s nature that the church needs to display:
• Holiness – we are sinners but we must make it clear that we are “repenting sinners.”
• Love – we must inconvenience ourselves for the glory of God and the good of others.
• Authority – he explained how authority is life giving and that elders need to exercise godly authority and that those under authority must submit out of godliness.
2. Our lives need to reflect the truth about human beings created in the image of God:
• Because all mankind was created in the image of God we must break down natural barriers (race, age, etc.)
• But we must also not minimize the reality of human depravity. He made one point here that I believe is particularly important, he said we need to interact with one another as sinners. What this means is that we need to learn how to confess our sins to one another and we must learn to lovingly forgive.
3. Since we are the body of Christ and His temple we must manifest Christ in all that we do. He gave some specific ways in which to do this:
• Christ must be at the center – we are called to be His witnesses.
• We must extend grace since grace has been extended to us.
4. To manifest the gospel we must be people of repentance and faith.
• The church is not a club for the righteous.
• Since our Christian life is personal but not private we must live selflessly and in loving unity. The gospel is more visible in our togetherness.
• We must hold out the promises of God to one another.
His bottom line was that the cross is just an abstract idea if we don’t live the gospel.
After tonight’s sessions I will summarize the talks given by R.C. Sproul and Albert Mohler.
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