PCRT Session 3

Session 3

God the Just and Justifier

Steve Lawson

Romans 3: 21-26

How can God be both just and justifier at the same time? If God failed to punish sinners, He would become unjust. A judge who knowingly lets a guilty man go free becomes a participant in the guilt, in the crime. God must punish every single sin.

How can God both punish sin and justify sinners?

Our sins were punished to the fullest extent of the law on the cross of Jesus Christ.

Calvin said of justification: The main hinge on which salvation turns. (Heavy vault doors swing on relatively small hinges.

Luther: Justification by faith is the chief on which the church stands or falls.

What does this doctrine of justification tell us about God Himself.

- Theology produces doxology

Seven attributes of God seen in the doctrine to justification (Dr. Lawson always has a series of points)

- The faithfulness of God: God promised to send a redeemer, a sin-bearer. God bore witness through the law and the prophets throughout the Old Testament. God keeps His promise, providing what He promised so long ago. (Rom 1:2)

- The righteousness of God: Rom 3: 21-22, 3:25-26; Eze 18:3 Breaking the law of God requires the death penalty.

- The holiness of God: Rom 3:23 All have fallen short of the mark, short of the glory of God. Intrinsic glory of God and the ascribed glory of God.

- The immutability of God: Rom 3:24 Being justified as a gift. We are justified in the past, the eternal declaration of God (we were justified before we were even born and committed even one sin)

- The grace of God. Even the faith in God is a gift from God. Dead sinners have no will to have faith in God. (Eph 2:8; Phi 1:29; Heb 12:2)

- The wrath of God Rom 3:25 God provided Christ as propitiation. There is not one drop of wrath in the cup of God’s judgment left for us. Now the smile of God’s pleasure is upon us (this is my beloved Son…)

- The forbearance of God. Rom 3:25. He passed over sins previously committed. His wrath and mercy was held back until the time when Christ came forth. God is patietn and long-suffering with sinners.

As those who has been justified by an act outside of ourselves, how do we justify separation from others who have likewise been justified outside of themselves in denominations, factions and sects?

PCRT Session 1

My notes from last night...


The Great Exchange

Steve Lawson

(Started off, as always at PCRT with the Westminster Brass and the singing of the great Reformation song A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. That is always good but some of the hymns written by Alliance of Confessing Evangelical leaders? Not so much, no one knew the words or music, people were mumbling the songs and the organ was so loud that it was all you could hear. Stick to the 400 or so hymns we know!)

2 Cor 5: 16-21, esp. verse 21

Double imputation at the cross, something taken from us and laid on Christ and something was taken fro Christ and laid on we who believe. It was the worst about us, our sins, and the very best of Him, His perfect spotless righteousness. That is what you call grace.

This is how lost sinners can be right with a holy God (imputation and penal substitution)

What is imputation? It is drawn from the courtroom, with authority from the judge making a pronouncement. Or resource deposited into the account of someone else. The double imputation of justification. His righteousness has been credited to our account.

Five things to see in this verse…

The saving God. “He made Him”. Three key pronouns: He, Him, our. God he Father is the He who made Him, Christ, sin for us. It is not God and man, it is God and God alone. We could not make Him sin, we could not lay our sins on Him. Only God can do this. The only thing we bring to the exchange is the sin laid upon Jesus Christ, our sin-bearing Savior. There are three things that Spurgeon said we must know about this God: a) God is a sovereign God, only One with supreme authority b) God is a just God who must be propitiated for our sins. The God of the Bible is a ruler who, when His subjects rebel, never forgives them until He fully punishes their sin c) He is also gracious, He loves to bestow His blessings.

The sinless Substitute. “Him who knew no sin” That is our sinless substitute, distinguished from “Him”, the King of Heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. He knew no sin. In no uncertain terms, Christ is set before us as one who is absolutely sinless and perfect. He took on human flesh but without a sin nature. All of the apostles were uniform in their assertion that He is righteous and without sin, even sinners testified to this (Judas, Pilate, the thief on the cross). Only one who knew no sin of His own could bear our sins and take the wrath of the Father.

The sin imputed. “He made Him to be sin” He was personally holy but forensically guilty. God did not just write off our sin like a toxic asset, He did not look the other way. Every sin in the world will be personally punished by God. Either in hell or in forgiveness in Christ. There is a prior imputation of sin, the sin of Adam imputed to all men. (Rom 5:12, Rom 5:18) When Adam sinned, we all sinned. But not only is Adam’s sin imputed to all men, but all of the sins of the elect and heaped them upon the sinless Savior, our substitute, Jesus Christ (Lev 16, Isa 53, 1 Pet 2:4) He died in our place, suffering under the wrath of God FOR US.

The specific extent. For whom did Christ become sin? The entire world, those who die in unbelief, those who were dead and already in hell? “So that in Him we might” On our behalf. See verse 20, then 19, then 18. All speaking of all believers. He did not die in vain. It was a purposeful death.

The spotless righteousness. The second half of the great exchange. Not only did Christ get our sins, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” His perfect righteousness was transferred to us. “So that” this great exchange might take place. All of the people of God, the elect of God.

What is this righteousness?

It is posted to our account (Romans 3:26, Romans 8:33) by God in imputation.
It is an alien or foreign righteousness (Luther). It does not originate in us. In is external to us. Romans 1:17

It consist entirely in Christ’s doing, His sinless life and substitution death. He is the head of His people, the elect of God, as Adam was the head of all humanity. He lived for thirty plus years because He had to be born under the law and keep the law that we are constantly breaking. We are credited as if we had lived the perfect sinless life of Christ. Not just taking away sin but His righteousness given us (not putting us in neutral standing, but in righteous standing)

Received exclusively by faith alone in Christ alone. Not faith and anything else. Not baptism, not works, not the Lords Supper, not church membership. Not to the one who works, but to the one who does not work.

It is given immediately, in whole. Not in installments. Immediately and completely when the sinner repents of his sins and lays hold of Jesus Christ. (Luke 18: 10-14)

It is given exclusively in Jesus Christ alone. There is no righteousness of God to be given to any sinner except it be given in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is not one drop of saving grace outside of Jesus Christ.

It is given forever, never to be rescinded. It is irrevocable. Justification is a once and for all time declaration. (Rom 8:33).

This is the dual nature, the double imputation of the cross of Jesus Christ.

We need to know two things: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.

(Lawson, like all Baptists at these conferences, calls sinners to repent. I always like that they take the opportunity to speak to a large group and not assume the Gospel but also preach the Gospel)

Preconference Session 2

Steve Lawson

The expository preaching of John Calvin

Calvin was perhaps the most gifted expositor of God’s Word that the church has known for over 1000 years.

The pulpit was his principal ministry. The heart of his ministry. Of all the many things he was, he was a pastor first.

10 Hallmarks of his preaching:

Biblical in Content: The minister has nothing to say apart from the Word of God. Everything that is not in the Bible is futile and boasting.

Sequential in Flow: One verse to the next. When he was exiled and then returned to Geneva, he walked in the first Sunday and opened his Bible to the exact verse that he left off on three years earlier.

Direct

Extemporaneous in delivery

Exegetical in depth

Familiar in language: “He put the cookies on the bottom shelf”. His preaching was attainable and understandable with minimal jargon and academic language. (I find his commentaries to be very accessible)

Pastoral in tone

Polemic

Evangelistic

God centered in conclusion

As a sign of how brilliant Calvin was. He preached in French, taught academy in Latin and preached extemporaneously from Hebrew and Greek text, translating on the fly.

Preconference Session 1

Steve Lawson

The extraordinary life of John Calvin

Other than Christ Himself no other figure in history has been as misunderstood and misrepresented as Christ.

Aspects of his life…

Devoted Believer: Out of 71 volumes of writing, he speaks of himself only three brief times.

Brilliant Teacher: His secular studies helped prepare his mind for his later study of the Word. He was self-taught primarily as a theologian. No seminary for him! Started the Institutes at age 25.

Faithful Pastor: If Calvin was anything, he was a pastor. He spent half of his 54 years in ministry, preaching like crazy. Several times on Sunday and every day of the week, every other week. Book after book, chapter after chapter, verse after verse.

Prolific Author

Zealous Reformer

Visionary Educator

Vibrant Church Planter

Indomitable Worker: Frail and weak, sick, much of his life, used to be carried from his bed to the pulpit to preach.

Dr. Lawson urged the men present to focus on the depth of their ministry and let God worry about the depth. That sounds great, but how do you do that if your pay is dependent on the local church?

A famine in the land

(I am reprinting this post from December of 2007 because it still resonates with me. It was a time in my life when I was pretty angry, more than usual, almost exclusively angry with myself. I was in kind of an ugly place in my life, so keep that in mind. My thinking on the church has changed quite a bit since then, but much of this still captures the heart of the issue. I don’t care where or how you worship, if you are not focused on the Word of God you are wasting your time.)

"Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land-- not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD." Amos 8:11 ESV

I love this verse and hate it. I love it because it is so true, I hate it because it is so true. It is not the Word that is at fault though, but the church. It is the church that has been established and ordained as the dispenser of the Word, and it is the church that has sought to replace the Word of God with anything else, anything but the Word.

Dr. Steve Lawson is one of my favorite preachers. I heard him in person in the Spring of 2007 at the Toledo Reformed Theological Conference, and his sermons on John 10 and the Good Shepherd were absolutely dynamite. Though Steven Lawson sounds, and kinda looks, like the elder President Bush, he is a powerful preacher and a prophetic voice in our day. I came across a sermon he gave on Amos 8:1-11, and it struck a chord. You don't hear a ton of preaching like this today, and we are poorer as a people for it.

His message is pretty simple, as is true of all good sermons. All is not well. The modern church gives off an image of successful evangelicalism, but it is at it's heart rotten to the core. Churches not only don't transform lives, they hardly even raise eyebrows. The simple proclamation of the Word, Thus sayeth the Lord, has been replaced by slick marketing campaigns. I am all for slick marketing campaigns in the business world. In fact I often benefit quite handsomely from them. But these aren't balance sheets and stock prices we are talking about. These are the eternal souls of sinners standing condemned before a just and holy God.

Our mooring point is not in the infallible Word of God, but in our programs, in our outward success, in our influence over the political process. Our churches measure their faithfulness not in the making of disciples, but in the number of bodies in the pews, the size of the budget, the number of paid staff or the magnificence of their audio-visual system. We ought to grade churches based on their fidelity to the Word of God, and yet that is in many cases the last concern. Far more important is the music style, or the personality of the preacher, or the size of the youth program or what translation of the Bible is used (not whether or not it is a faithful translation, but whether or not it is the right faithful translation.)

The people cry out to be fed, and spend more time and money on "Christian" books and music than ever before, but those same people are being slowly starved to death, starved in the hearing of the Word of the Lord. We starve to death in a land of plenty. Worse yet, it is the church, established and ordered by God, that is withholding the feeding. People come, and what they hear is anything but the Word in so many churches. There is little wonder that so many people are so ambiguous about church, because there is no power when the Word is absent. A church that neglects the Word becomes nothing but a social club or a self-help therapy session. Once people get over their hang up du jour, they move along.

Another of my favorite passages is found in Ezekiel 3, and Dr. Lawson rightly brings it up...

And he said to me, "Son of man, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel." So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat. And he said to me, "Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it." Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. And he said to me, "Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them. Ezekiel 3: 1-4 ESV

What value is the Word of God if it is relegated to dusty tomes sitting unused and unopened in the racks on the back of pews? There is nothing magical about the cover and the paper, about the ink on the pages. The power of the Word of God comes from reading it and devouring it. Why should God send forth the Word when people reject it? This sermon from Dr. Lawson and these ancient words from the prophet Amos are required hearing and reading for the church today. May we weep, as I have and I do, for how we have failed in carrying out the mandate of God to declare His Word.

Less than three months away!

The 2009 Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology in Grand Rapids is right around the corner, March 27-29. The topic this year is Right With God: The Doctrine of Justification. Looks like several of my comrades are planning on trekking down from northern Michigan, so I anticipate some great teaching, great music from Westminster Brass, great fellowship and at least one trip to BW-3 (although I know at least one person who is coming who can't handle the wings there, maybe he can order some cream of wheat or something...)

The schedule is posted here, looks like the speakers for Grand Rapids are Michael Horton, Richard Phillips, Philip Ryken and Steven Lawson.

As a bonus, we might be moving at around that same time, so maybe I can cajole some of my boys into helping us move...

(I hope they don't realize I am a Baptist, otherwise I may be barred from a conference on "Reformed theology")

A famine in the land

"Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land-- not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD." Amos 8:11 ESV

I love this verse and hate it. I love it because it is so true, I hate it because it is so true. It is not the Word that is at fault though, but the church. It is the church that has been established and ordained as the dispenser of the Word, and it is the church that has sought to replace the Word of God with anything else, anything but the Word.

Dr. Steve Lawson is one of my favorite preachers. I heard him in person in the Spring of 2007 at the Toledo Reformed Theological Conference, and his sermons on John 10 and the Good Shepherd were absolutely dynamite. Though Steven Lawson sounds, and kinda looks, like the elder President Bush, he is a powerful preacher and a prophetic voice in our day. I came across a sermon he gave on Amos 8:1-11, and it struck a chord. You don't hear a ton of preaching like this today, and we are poorer as a people for it.

His message is pretty simple, as is true of all good sermons. All is not well. The modern church gives off an image of successful evangelicalism, but it is at it's heart rotten to the core. Churches not only don't transform lives, they hardly even raise eyebrows. The simple proclamation of the Word, Thus sayeth the Lord, has been replaced by slick marketing campaigns. I am all for slick marketing campaigns in the business world. In fact I often benefit quite handsomely from them. But these aren't balance sheets and stock prices we are talking about. These are the eternal souls of sinners standing condemned before a just and holy God.

Our mooring point is not in the infallible Word of God, but in our programs, in our outward success, in our influence over the political process. Our churches measure their faithfulness not in the making of disciples, but in the number of bodies in the pews, the size of the budget, the number of paid staff or the magnificence of their audio-visual system. We ought to grade churches based on their fidelity to the Word of God, and yet that is in many cases the last concern. Far more important is the music style, or the personality of the preacher, or the size of the youth program or what translation of the Bible is used (not whether or not it is a faithful translation, but whether or not it is the right faithful translation.)

The people cry out to be fed, and spend more time and money on "Christian" books and music than ever before, but those same people are being slowly starved to death, starved in the hearing of the Word of the Lord. We starve to death in a land of plenty. Worse yet, it is the church, established and ordered by God, that is withholding the feeding. People come, and what they hear is anything but the Word in so many churches. There is little wonder that so many people are so ambiguous about church, because there is no power when the Word is absent. A church that neglects the Word becomes nothing but a social club or a self-help therapy session. Once people get over their hang up du jour, they move along.

Another of my favorite passages is found in Ezekiel 3, and Dr. Lawson rightly brings it up...

And he said to me, "Son of man, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel." So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat. And he said to me, "Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it." Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. And he said to me, "Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them. Ezekiel 3: 1-4 ESV

What value is the Word of God if it is relegated to dusty tomes sitting unused and unopened in the racks on the back of pews? There is nothing magical about the cover and the paper, about the ink on the pages. The power of the Word of God comes from reading it and devouring it. Why should God send forth the Word when people reject it? This sermon from Dr. Lawson and these ancient words from the prophet Amos are required hearing and reading for the church today. May we weep, as I have and I do, for how we have failed in carrying out the mandate of God to declare His Word.

The Good Shepherd and His sheep

My favorite speaker at the 2007 Toledo Reformed Theological Conference was Dr. Steven Lawson from Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama. He looks and sounds kind of like the first President Bush, so I was not sure what to expect but his three sermons of John 10 were absolutely dynamite. Those three sermons on John 1o are now available for free through the New Reformation Ministries. These are highly commended. I am using the basic outline of them when I get to John 10 later this year (just started preaching in John, preached on John 1:1 this morning). Listen, enjoy and be edified!

The Good Shepherd Part One

The Good Shepherd Part Two

The Good Shepherd Part Three

Toledo Reformed Theological Conference

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General Session

Friday Evening

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Steven Lawson had perhaps the best talk of the evening, quite a rousing sermon on the first 6 verses of John 10 (with the rest to follow) Pastor Lawson preached a rock solid, Gospel focused, no holds barred, unapologetically Calvinist sermon. Good stuff, and you can believe that when I finish the life of Abraham in Genesis and start preaching through the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to John, when I hit chapter 10 I am going to borrow liberally from Pastor Lawson's materials! If you buy any CDs from the Toledo Reformed Theological Conference, this is the one to get!

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Steve Lawson
The Good Shepherd and His Sheep (part 1)

His golfing is like his preaching, it is long, to the right and usually gets him in trouble.
(He sounds kind of like President Bush the Senior)

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John 10:1-6
Jesus reveals Himself as the Good Shepherd of our souls. He guides and guards us. Feed us and leads us, even lays down His life for us. Examples of the shepherd image in the Old Testament...

Psalm 23:1 The Lord is my shepherd
Psalm 78:52 But made his own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.
Psa 100:3 Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Isa 40:11 He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.
Jer 31:10 "Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away; say, 'He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.'
Mic 5:4 And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.
Mic 7:14 Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your inheritance, who dwell alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land; let them graze in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old.
Eze 34:11-12 11 "For thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. 12 As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness

Nine key features

1. Note the false shepherds (v. 1). He begins by identifying the Pharisees to themselves, God’s indictment. The do not come the lawful way, they come to steal and slaughter. All you corrupt the Gospel of Jesus Christ are thieves and robbers, the children and grandchildren of these robbers. It will be this way until the end of the age.

2. The sheepfold. There are two sheepfolds. The first one is the community sheepfold in town, with many different flocks of sheep. The second in verse 7 and on, it is out of town, the countryside sheepfold. The community sheepfold here is Judaism. (Thieves and robbers can’t break into heaven, and it isn’t the church because the shepherd lead them out of the sheepfold.) The sheepfold represents all dead religion. All true sheep must be and will not be left in this sheepfold.

3. The true shepherd (v. 2) Contrasted with the false shepherd. The true shepherd comes in a different fashion, he comes in the door, legally and in the right fashion. He is the true owner of the sheep, His sheep are His possession because the Father gave them to Him. He lays down His life for them.

4. Note the door. He, singular, who enters by the door is the true shepherd; those who do not are false, plural false shepherds. There are many false shepherds, but only one true shepherd. The others are breaking in, self-appointed saviors of the sheep.

5. The sheep. Verses 2-4, sheep mentioned four times. Who are these sheep? The ones within Israel who hear the shepherds voice, called by name, led out by the shepherd and follow the shepherd wherever He leads them, they are His own sheep. Those given to Him by the Father from all eternity, the elect sheep, the chosen sheep, chosen before time began. They, we, are His inheritance from the Father. But not everyone in Israel is one of His sheep. There are elect sheep among Israel but also from among the nations. See John 6:37. They were given long before the sheep heard His voice. It is not necessarily a compliment to us to be called sheep: wayward, easily led astray, defenseless. Isa 53:6. (Not everyone is a sheep and not every who claims to be a shepherd is a herald of the true Shepherd)

6. The doorkeeper. Verse 3. To Jesus, the doorkeeper opens the door. Who is the doorkeeper? Two possible answers. It could be God the Father or the Holy Spirit, who vouches for the genuineness of the Shepherd to the sheep. Or it could be John the Baptist, the one who was the voice crying in the wilderness. The latter is preferred by Steven Lawson.

7. The shepherds voice (v. 3). Why do the sheep follow Him? They hear His voice and know His voice. The sheepfold is full of sheep, from all manner of flocks, led by all sorts of shepherds. In the morning comes the one true Shepherd, presents Himself to the doorkeeper and the doorkeeper recognizes Him and gives Him access. He calls them by name, individually, one at a time. When He calls them, they hear Him and the others who aren’t called don’t hear Him and ignore Him and go about their business. But those who hear their name called, while the others keep grazing, oblivious, they hear His voice and lift their heads and follow. The effectual call of the Shepherd for His sheep, called by name by His voice. It is a vast flock, a huge number, but it is a finite number. 2 Peter 1:9 . Every use of the Word call in the epistles refers to the effectual call to the sheep to the Shepherd. He called us, what did we provide? We provided the sin.

8. The shepherds leading. Leads them besides still waters, in the green pasture, He leads them out. He doesn’t leave them in dead religion. He leads them out to a place where they may be fed and nurtured. He leads us by His Word, His voice.

9. The strangers voice. As they are led out of town by the shepherd, many other voices will call out to the sheep, trying to seduce them to go back to the other sheep (v. 5) A stranger they will not follow. They will flee from them, from every other perverting shepherd because they do not know their voices. The voice of Tillich, Bultmann, the voice of the Pope, the voice of Brigham Young, the voice of Muhammad are the voices of strangers and His sheep will not follow. Why does God allow false prophets? To pull the tares out of the sheep, to purify the church, to draw away those who are not His sheep away from those who are. Pink said that the man of the world can listen to preachers, one preaching truth and one falsehood, and he cannot tell. But the child of God can will immediately recognize the falsehood of vile teachers. Hearing the voice is not the same as making an emotional decision, joining a church, hearing an audible voice. You hear that you are a great sinner and Christ is a great savior. (Again, a Baptist preacher declaring the Gospel, not assuming we are saved!) Go to the Shepherd and there you will find life and life abundantly.

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