Colin Adams at Unashamed Workman has posted a massive listing of resources and audio related to sermon preparation, including audio by Packer, Stott, Carson, Dever, Piper, Doriani, Begg, Keller, Lawson, Hughes, Azurdia, MacArthur and many others.
Many thanks to Colin Adams for putting all of this together for us.
Author Steve Nichols discusses some of the themes and observations found in his book Jesus: Made in America.
Nichols and the team at Christ the Center discuss the distinctions between the common cultural perception of Jesus as opposed to the Biblical Jesus. Our impressions of Jesus are largely based on a Victorian misrepresentation that our society has built a false image on.
One chapter he has titled ‘Jesus and Vinyl’ where he demonstrates that Christian’s draw most of their understanding of Jesus from phrases and choruses from Christian music that taken together provides a very distorted picture of who Christ is, and in reality is theology in a vacuum.
The bottom line of Nichols argument is that our society has made Jesus in our image which is far from the Biblical context.
This is a very enjoyable discussion about a subject that impacts every Christian today.
The 2008 Xenos Summer Institute conference this year was titled “True to the Word, True to Our Mission” and most of the messages are in response to the Emergent Church movement. Don Carson, Mark Driscoll and many others were involved in this conference, which was held this past July.
Both Carson and Driscoll bring well informed backgrounds to bear on the dangers of the Emergent church.
Don Carson has studied this movement extensively, and his book Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church is one of the best overviews to the causes, challenges and effects of the Emergent church.
Mark Driscoll began as one of the leading Emergent church leaders, beginning Mars Hill Church under that banner, but has since separated himself from the more destructive elements of this movement, and has become one of it’s strongest critics.
Don and Mark’s messages provide a good perspective on this movement, both pro and con. In spite of this movement appearing to be dying a rapid death, there are a lot of lessons the church can learn in it’s wake.
Don Carson’s messages:
Evaluating a Complex Movement mp3 >>>
A Biblical Meditation on Experience & Truth mp3 >>>
Mark Driscoll’s messages:
How the Local Church can reach our Postmodern Culture mp3 >>>
Al Mohler interviews Col. Shane Blanton, the president of a Christian boys school. While most of the conversation surrounds this school that Blanton oversees, Mohler discusses some of the current challenges parents face with raising boys.
Monergism has updated it’s listing of Don Carson audio, adding a handful of new titles. If you haven’t visited Monergsim, they have a huge library of mp3 files.
Without a doubt, one of the most talked about, blogged about messages in the past two years was given by John MacArthur at the 2007 Shepherd’s Conference. Maybe you remember it.
When I wrote a post about this message I fielded numerous comments that attempted to begin a heated debate within my comment section. No other post has generated such a strong interest in debate. None of these comments were published because FBH is not designed to be a forum for debate.
Two years later, that original post continues to be the second most trafficked post on this site to this day, and as I listen to many interviews and discussions, others continue to reference MacArthur’s message, both for good and for ill.
My intent in bringing attention to this message again is not to stir up controversy, or to assert my posture for or against. In the foment following the Shepherd’s conference there were an abundance of scathing attacks against MacArthur by people who did not hear the message and would not pay the $3 to download it.
The Shepherd Conference message is still available for a fee. However, now that the MacArthur vaults at Grace to You are open for free, you can download MacArthur’s 3 Sunday sermons by a less-than-insinuating title that developed into the Shepherd’s Conference message. So if you missed the Shepherd’s conference message, you can now listen to a much longer examination of the same subject.
Why Every Calvinist Should be a Premillinialist:
Os Guinness comes from a legendary Irish family which has historically been very strong in the Christian faith. Not only are they the family of the Guinness Brewery, one of the Guinness daughters married the missionary Hudson Taylor.
Mark Dever provides a fascinating interview Os Guinness about his life and work. Guinness talks about his years with Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri, and why Guinness never took a pastorate, even though one congregation asked him to. Os, who wrote a book titled, The Calling, explains why he never believed he was called to be a pastor, but rather was called to do what he does today which doesn’t have an easy job description. His work keeps him in the secular world, and his work is on a more popular level where he prefers it to remain.
Dever and Guinness also talk about the current state of the church, the decline of western society, and a great many other topics of interest.
If you poke around Reformed circles you’re eventually going to hear about a man named Herman Bavinck. If you don’t know who he is, well, join the crowd. However, he seems to be a man worth knowing.
Herman Bavinck is a Dutch Reformed pastor of the late 19th, early 20th centuries, who wrote what many consider to be the best Reformed systematic theology in print. Bavinck is solid, balanced, and very well informed.
Being Dutch, his works have not been translated into English until very recently, and hence, the new notariety for Bavinck. As one of the panelists said, even though he can read Dutch and wrestle through Bavinck’s work in Dutch, having it in English is a gold mine.
Ron Gleason, pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Yorba Linda, California, and co-editor of the book Reformed or Conforming, is currently finishing a soon to be published biography of this man Herman Bavinck. His discussion with the folks at Christ the Center provides a very intriquing picture of this man and his work.
The interview begins with Gleason talking about his work on the book Reformed or Conforming.
Iain Murray recently gave an address which overviewed the Puritans and the place they hold in history. If you’re not interested in Puritan history this is probably not going to be an enjoyable listen. Murray assumes the listener will have some general understanding of the Puritans, of who they are and what books they wrote. If you don’t, the names and book titles will begin to sound like meaningless noise.
One interesting note — Murray relates how the Puritan’s came to be known as the Puritans. They set out to reform, or purify, the Church of England. No news there. Their motivation for church reform was due to the prevalent idea in those days that a strong country was made strong by a strong, unified church. So under-riding their motivation to remain in the church of England was a desire to see a strong, unified national church.
The subject of suffering has seen the attention of some big theologians this year (see D. A. Carson’s seminar on suffering).
Piper tackles this subject with characteristic fervor, compassion, and posture of trembling at God’s Word. John spends a great deal of time considering Elihu, the youngest of Job’s friends who came to his aid. Piper considers Elihu a favorable counselor and provides good biblical reasoning for not lumping Elihu in among the other self-righteous friends who misrepresented God. Elihu’s counsel to Job comes close to God’s disclosure, and so Piper allows himself to unpack some of Elihu’s words to Job.
Piper is very down to earth, and handles a very delicate subject with great pastoral concern and theological skill.
Faith by Hearing 