Take Up and Read: Thursday Edition

Here is a link to all the Desiring God Pastors Conference messages. They are all worth your time. I found Pastor Piper's on J.C. Ryle to be excellent.

If you are looking for a crash course on the conservative view of the Constitution, check out these lectures from the president of Hillsdale College, Dr. Larry Arnn.

The Elephant Room 2 has changed some things in reformed world.  Thabiti Anaybwile discusses what has changed and what has not changed. His words are wise. I especially enjoyed these three points: Theological depth is critical, We need a practical understanding of repentance and Our cooperation can have a liberalizing tendency. It is a shame we leave events like these behind so quickly. In our world, lessons are disposable. No doubt, by this time next year the Elephant Room 2 will be forgotten, along with the lessons God intended for us to learn from it.

Here Toby Sumpter explains how corporate salvation and individual salvation fit together. This paragraph was fantastic:

One conclusion to draw from the inextricable connection between our individual salvation and our corporate sharing of salvation is a pastoral one: to call sinners to repentance is necessarily to summons them to care about the people sitting next to them. To call a man, woman, or child to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is to call them to begin to love their neighbors, brothers, sisters, parents, and children. This is witnessed in the household conversions in the New Testament, and meshes with the big picture.

How often do we view repentance only as a turn away from sin towards God?  But if what Jesus says in Matthew 22:37-40 means anything then repentance also involves turning in love towards our neighbors.

Finally, Eric Metaxas gave a speech at the national prayer breakfast. With President Obama in the audience he winsomely decried false Christianity, declared Christ to be the one way and compared abortion to the Nazi Holocaust. I did not agree with every jot and tittle, but in our age it is a rare man who will speak with such boldness on a very public platform.  Here is an article at nationalreview.com describing the event. Here is the video of Metaxas giving the speech. He begins speaking around the 34 minute mark. Here and here are links to Metaxas' two biographies, one on Bonhoeffer and one on Wilberforce.