This is perhaps the most ownage thing I have ever seen. Let’s take a look at the speakers:

Speakers

1. Thabiti Anyabwile
2. Mark Dever
3. Ligon Duncan
4. John MacArthur
5. C.J. Mahaney
6. Albert Mohler
7. John Piper
8. R.C. Sproul
9. Matt Chandler

Breakout Speakers

1. Eric Bancroft
2. Tony Carter
3. Kevin DeYoung
4. Greg Gilbert
5. Brian Habig
6. Joshua Harris
7. Michael McKinley
8. David Platt

Um… that’s all I can say. It’s going to be amazing. I might as well start pooling my money together to purchase whatever sort of material they’re going to release after the conference is over.

But seriously… AHHH!!!

-Riley

Top hits:
-God
-Jesus
-Gospel
-Life
-Love

-Riley

Obviously, “God is love” is true. It has to be true. But I don’t think it means what we sometimes want to think it means.

Obvoiusly, God hates sin, and condemns the sinner (Psalm 5:5, Psalm 11:5, Lev 20:23, Prov 6:16-19). And yes, Jesus was sent to cover this sin, poured out from the gracious mercies of the Father when we could not help ourselves (Rom 5:6). To tell the unregenerate that God loves them is beautiful, precious truth. It is life-direction-changing truth. But it is not the ultimate truth.

Here’s what I mean. To tell someone that God loves them, especially a lost person, is good. It is very good. But if it’s your main point, then there’s a problem. Because as humans, and as unregenerate people before being covered by the blood of Jesus, we will take that to feel better about ourselves. “God loves us,” we will think, “so we will be okay.” “God loves me how I am.”

God loved me so much that Jesus was sent so that I could be renewed and… live happily ever after? … have a better life? … feel better about myself? … get rid of that pesky sin  debt? No, God loved me and sent Jesus so that I could be cleansed, repent, and glorify Him. It’s all about God and it’s all about glorifying God through Jesus. The love we feel, the grace we experience, the righteousness that we wear, they are all side effects of the glorious main plotline: our glorification of God. So while “God is love” is true, it doesn’t always mean what we think it means. In light of the gospel, in light of Jesus, “God is love” means that everything God does, from destroying iniquity, from condemning the rebellious, from having beautiful mercy on the sinner, from bringing the Church through Jesus to glorify him, is love. They are all love. When we say “God is love,” we must means that “God is God.” They must be synonymous. If they are not, we run into the trap of fabricating a God or leaving the hard stuff out.

This doesn’t mean we stop showing mercy on the brokenhearted, or being utterly devastated to proclaim the Gospel to the lost, or sympathizing with the hurting. But it means we do them for the right reasons. And this doesn’t mean we stop saying “God is love,” but that when we say “God is love,” we point people to God the Father through Jesus. We don’t point people to love. We don’t point people to acceptance or good feelings or a better life. We don’t point people to sympathy, or even mercy. We point them to Jesus. The love, the mercy, the acceptance, the grace, they are all beautiful side effects of knowing the Lord. They are all beautiful results of communion with the Father. They are all characteristics of God that we come to know by first seeking Him. A man without a watch continually needs to be told the time. What he needs is a watch, but he’s too attracted to the concept of knowing what the time is that he forgets to acquire the necessary device from which notification of the current time comes. We could continue to tell him the time, or we could direct him to the Source: the watch. When he gets the new watch, he realizes how much he has needed it. He pours over it, examines it, and excitedly wraps it around his wrist. He puts it to his ear and hears it ticking. He polishes the glass face. He also looks at the time. What was once the object of his search is now the result of a new Object: the watch. Knowing the time is now a result of knowing the Watch. No analogy is perfect, but what a lost person needs is Jesus. They don’t need or deserve good feelings, or acceptance, or provision, or mercy, or grace, or propitiation, or even to breathe their next breath. But when we as humans are directed to Jesus, as the current lost person would be and as we were, we are brought to new life. We enter into communion with the Father. We glorify and worship his Name. And praise the LORD! We also receive his love, and his mercy, and his grace, and we receive eternal communion with Him. Thinking like this makes the Gospel so much deeper and so much more beautifully scandalous.

So what is my point? What am I trying to say? That the watch-less person isn’t looking for the watch. They’re looking for the time, and something to polish, and the sound of the ticking cogs, and the feeling of the solid timepiece on their wrist. But they need the watch. Let’s give them the watch! Even much more so, the lost person is looking for love and acceptance and forgiveness and mercy. But they desperately need Jesus. When they know Jesus, when they glorify Him, when they bring him praise and bow to the ground in worship of His name; when we do those things, it makes the blessing of forgiveness and the depth of mercy in the cross so much more profound. Why does Jesus matter? Not because we escape Hell. Not because he makes us feel loved and accepted. But because he brings us to God and imputes to us his righteousness so that we can worship the One True God. And praise Him! He allows us so many great blessings through this communion. But the object, the object is God. The way and life is Jesus. Giving the lost person a feeling of acceptance, or making them feel loved, these are not our objects. Jesus is. These things will be some of the glorious side effects of communion with a God who is love and life and goodness.

That’s my point. It’s all about Jesus. If it’s all about good feelings and love and peace and grace and mercy, we will keep leading the watch-less man to search aimlessly for all of the qualities of the watch but not search for the true Object: the watch itself. We will keep leading the lost person to search aimlessly for all of the wonderful free gifts through Jesus but not search for the true Object: God Himself.

Let’s give them the Watch.

-Riley

So here is my rebuttal, in the form of an article titled “What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff”. Rather, this is my edited version of Shane’s article.

To all my non-believing, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have done so much trying to preach the Gospel without words that we have forgotten to ever tell anyone what the Gospel is all about, and have forgotten the Cross of Christ, and the Life and Salvation that He bought for us with His blood.

Forgive us. Forgive us for leading you on to think that being a Christian is about being a good person and not doing bad stuff.

All over Christian television and radio and bookstores, you find people preaching that message. And if you talk to the average American church-goer, you’d probably find a similar perspective. It comes in many different forms, ranging from fundamentalism to mainstream megachurch-ism to hip Christian/New Age combinations, but the message is basically the same. “If you do this, good things will happen for you in this life and in the life to come. If you don’t do bad things, bad things won’t happen to you in this life or the life to come. Here are some simple, easy ways that you can make your life better.”

And while a large portion of America seems to be buying into it, most people can see right through it. They realize that there is no real power there–that that feel-good religion cannot really bring life, or explain the suffering and pain that happens despite all the promises of happiness as a reward for a good life. And so some reject it with bitterness, and spend their lives mocking and insulting Christianity as a whole. Others simply say “well, we can’t ever really know for sure”, and just give up on ever finding truth. Others just laugh and poke fun at everyone who is ’so weak that they need religion to make themselves feel good about themselves.’ Personally, it breaks my heart that people confuse this watered down and adapted form of New Age spirituality for the Gospel, and occasionally I just want to stand up in the classrooms of my school and the street corners of my city and cry out: “No, that’s not what it’s all about! God is not Santa-Claus!”. Maybe one day I will. But as for now, I just have to take every opportunity that I can create to preach the true Gospel to the people I interact with on a daily basis.

Because more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus and the teaching of the apostles, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through an “unspoken witness” but through bold and unashamed declaration of the beauty and scandal of the Gospel. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less Cross-centered. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the gospel many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like life-giving “good news” and more and more like an banal, lifeless religion that offers only good feelings and inspirational speeches.

Comedian/filmmaker Penn Jillette once said “How much do you have to hate someone to NOT proselytize? How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible, and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe it, and that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you.” But it would seem that most Christians today are too meek to “tackle” people with the hard truths of the Gospel–that man is sinful and thus rightly damned by a just and holy God–and too shy to declare to people that a rescue is possible–that Eternal Life exists, and is possible for us to attain by the blood of Christ. We have been content to listen to the demands of the ignorant, blind man about to be hit by a truck that we leave him alone and keep our ridiculous beliefs to ourselves, and thus have brought on ourselves a crisis of message–we don’t even know any more what Christianity is all about. And it’s ugly stuff, because to some degree the blood of the man that gets run over because we wanted to avoid the social awkwardness is on our hands. And that’s why I begin by saying that I’m sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and your “privately Christian” friends are wrong — and that the Gospel really is a matter of life and death. That being a Christian is about being saved from God’s wrath and then given a new heart so that you can love and exult in things that are good for you–namely fellowship with God–instead of ruining your life in pursuit of the fleeting and empty pleasures of sin, and not just about being nice to people and staying away from the taboo fun stuff so that one day when you die you can get a robe and a harp and wings. (If there is anything I have learned from prosperity-gospel preachers and PC-police, it’s that you can seem like you’re really nice to people and preach a very pleasant-sounding message, and yet not be doing what is best for them in the long run… and that true (agape) love a lot of times has to hurt.)

The Bible that I read says that Jesus did not come into the world to bring not peace but division… to separate the light from darkness and reveal the salvation that He brought for all men. The Bible I read says that the Cross is offensive to both religious people and heathens, because to the former it is an affront to self-righteousness and to the latter it seems like sheer folly, but to those who are saved by it, the Cross is the most glorious and powerful and scandalous and beautiful thing. That is the Gospel I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I wanted an enhanced life, or a pick-me-up, or some kind of vague spiritual “comfort”… but because He is the only hope I have for salvation from myself. For those of you who want to believe the Bible but stumble over the seeming emptiness and just-like-every-other-religion-ness of American Christianity, I hope that you do not reject Christ because you misunderstand who Jesus really is and what He really accomplished for you. At the core of our Gospel is the message that Jesus came “not [for] the healthy… but the sick”–that you must realize your dire need before your can embrace your Savior. So if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven, and may it not be simply to make yourself feel better or be more successful, but rather because you understand that you need Him.

Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that Jesus does save from Hell and get you into Heaven and give you true joy, but too often all churches have done is promise the world small rewards for “converting”, and have neglected to tell people the real good news–that you can know God!. I am convinced that the Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but that God came down to us. And Jesus never promised a better life to believers: in fact, he promised trials and self-sacrifice and even persecution. So it’s not about a better life now, it’s about Eternal Life now.

One of Jesus’ most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A scribe, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan… you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I’m sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine… but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch. But contrary to popular opinion, this parable is not just about being a good person–it is a Messianic prophecy by the Messiah himself about what He did for us. We are the bruised and broken and dying person lying in a ditch. The priest and the scribe represent the world’s approach to how we can be saved–through man’s efforts to get to God by being generally good and not doing bad stuff. And Jesus turns everything upside down. He is despised and/or hated by the religious and secular folks alike (just as Samaritans were hated by both Jews and Gentiles), including the bruised and broken and dying man in the ditch (who was a Jew as well), and yet out of His goodness and love He came and rescued us.

Shane Claiborne has a friend in the UK who talks about “dirty theology” — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man’s eyes to heal him.

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just stay “out there” but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, “Nothing good could come.” It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society’s rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. The religious folks and the heathens alike didn’t like Jesus’ claims that He was the only Way to the Father, both because they thought that they could get to God just fine on their own. But the first step to salvation is to give up and simply pray, as Martin Luther learned to: “Save me: I am Yours”.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors… a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend how I could have the right to tell someone who doesn’t believe in the Bible and lives in downright rebellion that they weren’t a Christian, if they claimed to be. And I responded with something like this: “It would seem like the ‘loving’ and ‘nice’ thing to do to let people believe what they like, and not discount their religious beliefs. But it would in reality be something much more like hate, because to leave them alone is to let them just go to hell because I don’t love them enough to tell them the hard truths.” True love picks up the dying man out the ditch even as he curses me for causing him discomfort. True love applies the salve and oil to clean his wounds even as he screams for me to stop. True love takes the man to a place where he can be cared for even as he spits in my face. And the True Lover did that for me. And He did it for You. I pray that if you reject Christ you will stop and consider the true meaning of the Gospel. Accept the bad news that you are in dire straits, and then run to the One who provided the escape, and let Him breath Eternal Life into your soul.

Your brother,
Trey

“To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The other night I headed into downtown Philly for a stroll with some friends from out of town. We walked down to Penn’s Landing along the river, where there are street performers, artists, musicians. We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn’t quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don’t know Jesus.

Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up. A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs, “God is not a monster.” Maybe next time I will.

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, “I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ.” A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That’s the ugly stuff. And that’s why I begin by saying that I’m sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it’s that you can have great answers and still be mean… and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it… it was because “God so loved the world.” That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven… but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our “Gospel” is the message that Jesus came “not [for] the healthy… but the sick.” And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God’s Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” On earth.

One of Jesus’ most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan… you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I’m sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine… but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch.

It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly. God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute. In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David… at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since. So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting someone we think God could never use, we should think again.

After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on everybody else: “The tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you.” And we wonder what got him killed?

I have a friend in the UK who talks about “dirty theology” — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man’s eyes to heal him. (The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy that day.)

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay “out there” but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, “Nothing good could come.” It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society’s rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors… a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, “I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.” If those of us who believe in God do not believe God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world… well, we should at least pray that it is.

Your brother,

Shane”

* – not that truly, fully understanding while on this earth the fullness of God’s glory and the depth of our sinfulness is easy to accomplish, but that driving forward to further understand these things is key to sacrificial living for the gospel.

A prayer: “God, may we be reminded of the plan that you have for your Church and for her growth and sanctification. May we be truly burdened for our local churches and their leaders and make commitments to be actively obedient to Scripture by loving them, taking part in them, praying for them, and being obedient to them. Thank you for our ability to worship in light of the blood of Jesus. May it continually cleanse us and remind us of how little we are and how big Your glory is.”

Let’s be burdened for our local churches and have a renewed since of devotion to them and a renewed sense of respect and love for our leaders. It’s not all about me.

-Riley

Please don’t try to download the songs, wait until I release them. That helps me and you out by you getting the best version. Anyways, enjoy! Here’s the track listing for all you organized types.

1. Indecision

2. Tinted Glasses

3. Enough

4. Open Us Up

-Riley

Just think of all the ways we could use it:
“You totally praught it last weekend” (from Kasey C.)
“Oh, that message was totally praughten” (credit to the elder Wilson brother)

and then the best of all, Dr. Seuss Stu poetry written for seminary classes:

“Just be sure what you praught was divinely wrought and more than just a human thought.
For human men and human words can always only count for naught.
For the wisdom of God cannot be bought so if you preach be sure you praught!”
(Dr. Sheehan, you are genius)

These are the trying times
The times that test the lines between obedience and faith
And these are the dying times
The times that show the growth and simultaneous decay

Sometimes you never know where you’ll end up
All you know is where to cling
And when your time’s all spent up
You’ve counted costs and laid down everything

So open our eyes so that we may see
Your power displayed in everything
Your love constantly intercedes
Open them up, open them
Open our mouths so that we may speak
Your words, they are merciful and meek
With power and courage when we are weak
Open them up, open them

These are testing times
Times that put our discipline and trust in Him to test
But these are destined times
Times that prove that God is God; Christ alone can conquer sinful flesh

Sometimes you never know where you’ll end up
All you know is where to cling
And when you’re times all spent up
You’ve counted costs and laid down everything

So open our eyes so that we may see
Your power displayed in everything
Your love constantly intercedes
Open them up, open them
Open our mouths so that we may speak
Your words, they are merciful and meek
With power and courage when we are weak
Open them up, open them

These are occurring times
Times that prove the battlefield is still a place of war
Oh LORD, may these be stirring times
Stir in us a passion for You and the world that shakes us to the core

-Riley