Religion Saves - part 2 of 2

Well, I can't imagine anyone was waiting with bated breath for the second part of this post (first one here), but for completeness I include it!

Also, I will only include minor comments, because it was so long ago that I finished listening to them, I can't remember much!

Talk 6 - Faith & Works - a good one, helpfully explained the difference between Calvinism and Armenianism at the beginning, and then the application was great - just about the gospel.

Talk 7 - Dating - this one was excellent, similar to talk 1. He laid an appropriate framework for Christian dating, both for singles living at home, still under the care of parents (especially Christian parents) and a framework for older singles who have moved out and are more in charge of their own lives. A lot of what he said here resonated and made sense.

Talk 8 - Emerging Church & Talk 9 - Regulative Principle - both interesting, but I think had more relevance to the American Christian scene than the Australian one.

HOWEVER, the real reason I have included this post, is that my monthly email from christianaudio.com tells me that their free download of this month is the book that came from this sermon series - Religion Saves. Driscoll himself is the narrator - which I think would add to its 'ease of listening'! So, if you feel like listening to the book instead of the sermons, that's another option.

Religion Saves - part 1 of 2

I have been listening to a series of talks recently - Religion Saves and 9 other misconceptions, by Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill, Seattle. I know there are some major fans of Driscoll out there, however this has been the first time I have heard any of his sermons. I have found them thought provoking and generally quite helpful.

He addresses 9 major questions, which were determined from online surveys and responses. Each sermons deals with one issue. I am not going to go through them in depth (mainly because I did not take detailed notes, as they were my exercise listening material!), but I will just give a summary of each, to see if you might also be interested in listening to them.

I know that Driscoll uses humour somewhat harshly, and can be quite overt in his preaching style and therefore sometimes he can offend. However, even so, I find his exegesis is usually pretty good and when it is appropriate to be serious, he certainly is.

Talk 1: Birth Control - I found this talk extremely helpful. He started by outlining ~16 principles of family, life and children from the bible. Then he scaled the types of birth control from 1 (nothing) to 5 (abortion and abortive methods). I found it well balanced, educational and biblical. I have written about contraception before, and this helped me to think again about the issues - how we should view pregnancy and life and the contraceptive methods which are appropriate, inappropriate and which are grey areas which mean that you need to be well informed.

Talk 2: Humour - This one appealed to me less, and in this one I thought his exegesis was questionable in several areas. (eg. Jesus named Peter 'Rock' like 'Rocky' making fun of him, because he was so weak, and unlike a rock. I disagree, for while Peter struggled to even own Jesus during his trial, the resurrection transformed him and in Acts, Peter is instrumental in the early church). He seemed to be trying to find jokes in the bible to suit his purpose. Now, I fully agree that there is humour, satire and irony in the bible and that Jesus used irony often in his parables and stories about the Pharisees. However, it doesn't seem to be to 'get a laugh' but to point out the sad misconceptions and mis-interpretations that 'religious people' had.

He does say that we should never mock God, never mock those who are godly and never mock our spouses, children or mothers. Those who were most open, in his opinion, to mocking were ourselves, which is very true - we should not take ourselves too seriously, and also religious people, who take themselves too seriously.

I didn't like the use of 'mock'. Mocking seems to imply an unkind element. The whole sermon, while having some very good points still sat a little uncomfortably with me. It seemed like the whole thing was designed to justify his own stance and the way he preaches. Having said that though, he earnestly apologised for anyone who he may have offended or sinned against, while at the same time urging them to honestly think about why they were offended (ie. was he right and therefore it was too personal?)

Talk 3: Predestination - started with the history of various views including Augustine, Calvin and Arminius. This helped to set up where he stands on this issue - Jesus died for all to be saved, and God saves those he has elected. I found this talk informative and helpful. He uses an extremely powerful illustration at the end to show how predestination is the act of a loving Father. It did not answer all questions someone would have about predestination, but really could anyone? He only touched on the impact this doctrine can have on our view of evangelism, but helpfully used Paul as an illustration - eg. he firmly believed in predestination, having seen it in action in his own life, and he was a committed evangelist.

Talk 4: Grace - this was great. Contrasting with a few of the previous talks, where he shouted a lot, this one was very gentle and therefore much easier to listen to. He talked about both common grace (the grace God shows to all humanity) and saving grace (the grace which believers experience). He had about 15 types of saving grace that God bestows on his believers, including electing grace, sanctifying grace, transforming grace and preached grace. I liked this one.

Talk 5 - Sex (sexual immorality). This sermon even started with a warning about its explicit nature! He starts by talking about how much sex has saturated society, to the point where sex is like a major religion, with its own adherents. It is idolatry which has taken over much of the world. Most of his application was related to how sex is idolatry, and we need to worshipping God and him alone, rather than any idol that the world offers. (I did disagree with his exegesis of the 'gift of singleness' in this talk)

One point that was excellent was that, for those who are married, our standard of beauty should be our spouse and nothing else. So when your wife is 20, that is your standard of beauty. When your wife is 40, that is your standard of beauty, as it is when she is 60 and 80, etc. Obviously the same applies in reverse and the way my husband looks now is my standard of beauty/handsomeness.


I'll get to the other 4 in the next few weeks, once I have listened to them!

I just discovered that Driscoll has recently turned this sermon series into a book, which I saw on the Koorong website.

Talks by Don Carson

I have been listening to a series of talks recently by Don Carson, titled Reaching an Untouched Generation, given in 1997 at a conference in Toronto.

There are five talks - each around 1 hr. And they are excellent.

If you want to understand the culture around us a little better and where people today are coming from in their thoughts, especially the under 30s age group - they are well worth your time. They would be excellent thinking material for anyone involved in university student work.

He points out that evangelism today is markedly different from previous ages. Today, we are trying to reach people with the gospel who have no knowledge of the bible or biblical history at all.

In Talk 1 - Postmodernism and Biblical Illiteracy, Carson sets out his framework. He starts by giving a history of modernism and post-modernism and how Christianity has been affected by them. He talks about how many Christians now feel ill-equipped to speak to others about Jesus and how the idea of tolerance has shaped conversation in the western world:

It used to be that a tolerant person was understood to be someone who might have held strong views, but who insisted that you have the right to your views. Nowadays a tolerant person is someone who doesn’t have strong views, except perhaps the strong view that you must not have strong views. (Lecture 1, 50:40)*

In Lecture 2 - First Steps Towards Regrouping, he outlines how Christians can begin to address these issues. He starts by thinking through the benefits that post-modernism has brought to Christians, including shooting down some of the arrogance of modernism and enabling us to insist on inclusion in a conversation about different points of view. He goes on to talk about how we can enter into meaningful dialogue with post-modernists without buying into their rhetoric, and how we can challenge the very framework in which they operate.

Lecture 3 - Worldview Evangelism raised three main results of post-modernism and biblical illiteracy. Firstly, our struggle is a worldview struggle. The Christian worldview has been lost:

The hardest thing I do nowadays in university missions is not talking about the death and resurrection of Christ - that’s pretty easy - it’s talking about sin. But the fact of the matter is that unless people already have a Judeo-Christian worldview where God is the One who is offended, and sin is an objective and real and ugly guilt before God that must be paid for, to talk about Christ dying for our sins just doesn’t make sense…it becomes sentimental nostalgia, but nothing more. (Lecture 3, 13:05)*

Secondly, our role is to to fill in the story of the bible. The story of the bible is not clever, it's elementary, but we have to preach it, because almost no-one knows it anymore. And, we must keep in mind that it "takes time to build a biblical worldview in which the gospel of Jesus makes sense" (~36mins).

Thirdly, Carson says that we need to focus on where is the discussion going, rather than how to start a discussion. For if you don't agree on the bad news (eg. sin, hell, judgement), you will never agree on the good news - the people to whom we speak will end up with the wrong picture of Jesus. eg. if you are not able to explain that we have sinned against God in ignoring him and running our own lives, how will you be able to convince someone they need a saviour?

You simply must think of ways ... of tracking backward into the Bible's whole storyline. Otherwise the whole gospel of Jesus Christ is simply incoherent. (Lecture 3, 47:15)*

Carson finishes with a few simple and very helpful comments of how churches can make services more accessible to outsiders.

(judging by the detail of the notes for this talk, you may be able to discern that I was home with paper, rather than out walking as I was for the others!)

In Lecture 4 - Apostolic Evangelism of Biblical Illiterates, Carson looks at Acts 17 when Paul speaks in Athens, for it it the clearest example of preaching to biblical illiterates in the bible. He deals with:

• the realities Paul faces (eg. remarkable pluralism);
• the priorities Paul adopts;
  
• the framework Paul establishes; and
  
• the non-negotiable gospel Paul preaches.
  

In the final, Lecture 5 - Faith in the Cross of Christ, Carson focuses in on Romans (esp. 3"21-31), using it to explain:

• we are condemned apart from the cross of Christ;
• we are justified because of the cross of Christ;
• source of God's righteousness is the gracious provision of Jesus Christ as propitiation for our sins;
• demonstration of the righteousness of God through the cross of Jesus Christ, "the cross of Jesus Christ not only is the basis of our forgiveness but of the placarded demonstration that God is just and the one who justifies the ungodly" (54:28), and
  
• we are saved by faith, "faith is that God-given gift by which you trust the promises and provision of God in Christ Jesus, you trust the truth of the gospel, you trust Christ and his his death on your behalf" (100:21)
  

Carson concludes the talk with this:

Brothers and sisters in Christ, these are the non-negotiables of the gospel..and in our presentation of the gospel to friends and neighbours these things need to be learned by us and then reproduced in fairly simple forms so that people understand what the heart of the gospel is - this is non-negotiable. The other 4 sessions [the previous 4 lectures] ... have tried to layout the framework that is necessary to make sense of this gospel, but do not spend all of your time in the framework and then forget the cross. (101:51)

Great talks. Challenging, interesting and biblical.



I downloaded these talks from this Sydney Anglicans Audio Website link, they are the only five talks there by Don Carson.

* These quotes have been copied from the New Horizons Church Website, where someone has already typed up sections of the talks, the talks (#1-4) can also be downloaded from there.

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