T4G wrap up

It was a real privilege to attend Together for the Gospel the last 3 days. There is much I could say about the conference - it was a tremendous encouragement to hear great teaching, sing our Savior's praise with 7,000 other brothers, spend extended time with a group of guys from our church, and get 32 free books (between the conference and Band of Bloggers pre-conference). Praise the Lord for the opportunity and a wife gracious enough to carry the load at home and send me to Louisville.

I'll probably be offering a few more thoughts on the conference in the coming days, but for now, here are a few quotes that stood out from the various teaching segments. Enjoy!

Mark Dever
"The Christian life is personal but it is certainly not private!"
"The church is a group of people who leverage our lives to 'not make sense.' In order to display the character of God... the church is called to display evangelism."

R.C. Sproul
"We go to great lengths to improve the gospel... to say, 'God can give you purpose for you life' is not the gospel!"
"The Gospel has definite content: Who Jesus is and what He has done."
"Don't improve the Gospel, it's not your Gospel, it's God's! A synthetic gospel is no Gospel."

Al Mohler
"We believe that God spoke words through rotten-toothed desert tribesman... and we're going to preach it! Hear now the Word of the Lord!"
"Eventually our postmodern critics will run out of doctrines to deny."

Thabiti Anyabwile
"There's not one square inch of all of creation where Christ doesn't say, 'Mine!'"
"There's an antithesis between the Gospel and the world. We try to manipulate/change the world, but it manipulates back. Secular does not equal safe."
"The church is multi-ethnic but not multi-cultural. We have one culture, and it is none of our native cultures."

John MacArthur
"We often think we have to overcome the sinner's resistance, but the wonder of the Gospel is that you sow the seed, you go to bed, and it grows!"
"When I preach, I never preach to the will or the emotions. I preach to the mind - I want them to understand the truth."

John Piper
"No matter how righteous you are, or how moral you are, or how religious you are, or whether God has produced all that in you or you have produced that in yourself, do not trust in anything that is in you, or that you do, as the basis of your justification before God... Trust in Christ—his blood and righteousness—as the sole basis of your justification."
"Never forget that all your good attitudes, all your good intentions, and all your good works will serve at the judgment not as the ground of your acceptance, but only as the public fruit and evidence and confirmation that you were indeed born again, and that you did have faith, and that you were united to Christ, who is your sole justifying righteousness."
"Give Christ all his glory in the work of salvation, not just half of it. Half is the work of pardoning sin by becoming our wrath-absorbing punishment. But the other half is the work of providing our perfection by fulfilling everything that God required of us, and then imputing it to us. Don’t rob the Lord of half his glory in bringing you to God. Christ is our pardon. Christ is our perfection."

Ligon Duncan
"The fathers help us to understand how to read the Bible... they help us to read the Bible better. But they aren't our infallible guides - scripture is."
"Heresies caused the fathers to get it right. When they have to fight, they get it right."

C.J. Mahaney
"Never assume those in your church has exhausted their need for the gospel, their obedience to the gospel, and their growth in understanding the story."
"The pastor doesn't get his message from his people, but he does get his message with his people."
"When faith for your people is replaced with frustration with your people, you are in trouble."
"When one godly older pastor was asked what his goals were for the next year, he replied by saying, 'I'm going to keep on doing the same thing I've been doing for the last 15 years.'"