HT: Ligonier

The power and implications of what the church celebrates this weekend are well captured in this moving trailer for an upcoming Resolved conference. But beyond its use to promote a conference, this short film provides a capsule of the horrors and implications of the cross of Christ. At the cross the Father crushes his Son with his wrath for our sin. At the cross we see the Son’s death as our substitute. By faith his blood and sufficient atonement brings full forgiveness, unshakable hope, and eternal joy.



The entirety of C.J.’s Resolved 2007 conference message seen in this video (“The Suffering Servant”) can be downloaded here or listened to here:

APEX, NC—Last weekend C.J. traveled to North Carolina to join Sovereign Grace Church in celebrating the grand opening of their newly-renovated facilities and to draw attention to God’s kindness.

Saturday night, senior pastor Phil Sasser invited C.J. to Cameron Indoor Stadium, to watch the Duke men’s basketball team host Miami. C.J. was thrilled to experience the deafening environment where his beloved Maryland Terrapins have repeatedly upset the Blue Devils.

On Sunday morning C.J. preached from 1 Corinthians 2:6-16, a text highlighting the active work of God in graciously revealing the gospel to blinded sinners.

Toward the end of the sermon, C.J. shared his testimony in light of God’s sovereign initiative and left the church with words of hopeful anticipation. God will bless the church not because of capable human leadership (which it has) or because of dedicated, faithful, and humble members (which it has). The future fruitfulness of the church is supported by the goodness of God who initiated and now sustains his church.

His comments are worth quoting at length:

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“Therefore, if you are a Christian this morning you must realize you did not discover God. He graciously revealed himself to you. And that realization should leave you freshly amazed by the grace of God this morning. If you have received and responded to the message of the cross, this wasn’t the fruit of human wisdom or human intelligence. The ability to perceive the wisdom of God wasn’t resident within you from birth and eventually exercised and developed by you. This was, instead, revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. No one discovers God through human wisdom. Divine wisdom is revealed. If it is perceived, it is because it has been revealed, revealed through the preaching of the gospel and by the work of the Holy Spirit revealing Christ and him crucified to sinners like you and me.

I can’t read this passage without reviewing and reliving my conversion.  

You see, apart from this distinct, gracious work of the Spirit, this wisdom of God—as defined and displayed in the cross—is foolishness to us.  

Prior to my conversion everything taking place in this church this morning would have appeared to me as complete foolishness. If you had known me and had been so kind as to invite me, and I was seated in your midst, this is what I would have been thinking had I come—This is incredibly strange.

And it was hard to impress me with strange, because I was immersed in the drug culture at the time. For a lengthy period of time I—sadly, and to my shame—took hallucinogenics daily, as if they were vitamin C. Therefore I was very familiar with strange!

And yet, prior to my conversion, had I come upon this church or any church like this church I would have thought, OK, this is very strange. They are singing and they seem to be singing to someone. And they seem to be singing very specifically and passionately to someone. I would have thought the words to the song were very, very strange. I would have thought anybody in here raising their hands very, very strange. And then there is an offering and people are happy to give? I would have thought, It is getting stranger by the minute in this place. But then if I was sitting out there listening to someone like me preach the gospel—apart from the Spirit of God working in my soul—I would have thought it was very, very strange.  

And apart from the Spirit impressing this truth on my soul I would be thinking, OK, when does it end? I am thankful my neighbor asked me here, and I am grateful there is food afterwards and so hopefully, hey, pal, how about wrapping this sermon up?

I was selfish and arrogant, rebellious, hardened, and I would argue (to some degree) a happy sinner. I was enjoying the pleasures of sin. And I was passionate about sin. I wasn’t just observing others sin. I was passionately pursuing sin and recruiting and training others to participate with me in my passionate pursuit of sin. Had you met me, you would not have liked me, and you would have justifiably disliked me.

A good friend of mine I had grown up with moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. While in Florida, he somehow wandered into a church one day—and he heard the gospel, experienced the miracle of new birth, turned from his sins, and trusted in the Savior!

Within just a few weeks my friend had a single mission he would not be deterred from completing—to return to Maryland to share with his friends about the gospel that dramatically changed his life. And so after having not heard from him for a lengthy period of time, suddenly I heard from him and we arranged to get together. I anticipated that the partying that took place previously would just continue. I had no idea he was a Christian.

That first night as we sat together in my room, I took out various forms of hash I had to offer him. He declined. And for just a moment I was surprised, but I wasn’t deterred and so I began to smoke.

As I began to smoke, he began to talk.

Now, he hadn’t been a Christian but for a few weeks. He knew, actually, very little theology. But he knew the gospel. And because human wisdom hadn’t been integrated, the cross he preached to me was not emptied of its power. Oh, no. It was full of power! And for the first time in my life I heard the gospel. My friend told me that Christ died for my sins. And in that moment, as he preached, I can only tell you God acted on my soul. Something took place in my heart.  

I now look back and know it was the miracle of regeneration. And what I had previously thought was folly and idiocy suddenly became the gracious wisdom of God in the form of a cross and a Savior who died for the worst sinner I knew (me) in order to forgive my sins. And that night, in that place, I turned from my sins and I trusted in the savior. Everything immediately and dramatically changed in that moment.

What happened in that moment? What happened was the fruit of what had been decreed in eternity past. In eternity past God decreed to send and sacrifice his Son. In eternity past God decreed to, by his Spirit, reveal his Son and the sacrifice of his Son to me through the preaching of the gospel by my friend. And in that evening I was acted upon by God.

Even in the midst of all my theological ignorance, had you pulled me aside and had you in any way implied that I initiated this, that I was seeking God, that somehow I discovered him I would have said to you as tactfully as I knew, ‘You don’t have a clue. You don’t know me. I wasn’t seeking this!’ …

My friend didn’t reason with me (not that there isn’t a place for reasoning with somebody). But he shared the gospel with me. And God, by his Spirit, revealed the gospel to me. And that night I was aware of a few things distinctly. One was this—the initiative for all of this came from above…

Oh, brothers and sisters, join with me now in ascribing the change in your life wholly to God.

Wholly to you, Lord! We ascribe it wholly to you! We ascribe the existence of this church and the continued sustaining of this church wholly to you. We didn’t initiate this. This is not the fruit of human leadership and human intelligence. Oh, thank God for that! This church’s future does not rest on human leadership and human intelligence. Oh, how grateful I am for the leadership!

Here is why I have confidence in the future of this church. He—the one who began a good work in this church and in and through your hearts—he will sustain you and he will bring it to fruition and completion until the day of Jesus Christ (Php 1:6). That is my confidence in the future of this church.”

-C.J. Mahaney, preaching at the grand opening of Sovereign Grace Church in Apex, NC (February 3, 2008)

 

WAKE FOREST, NC--Last Friday night, more than 800 college students from the University of North Carolina, North Carolina State, Campbell College, Appalachian State, Clemson, and Duke all gathered for the Missio Dei conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The students were treated to messages from C.J., seminary president Dr. Daniel Akin, and several of the most strategic missions leaders within the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Missions Board.

On Friday night the conference kicked off with C.J.’s sermon “The Cup,” a message centered on the narrative of the Garden of Gethsemane (Mk 14:22–28, 32–42).

Throughout the gospel of Mark, the Savior has been forgiving sin, healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead, walking on water, calming storms, feeding thousands with a few loaves and fish, was briefly transfigured, amazing all with his teaching, boldly confronting the religious authorities; he was compassionate, authoritative, fearless. But in the Garden of Gethsemane everything changes. Something dramatic takes place in this garden. Here we encounter a Savior we are unfamiliar with. Here we discover what it meant to him, the Holy One, to bear away our sin. Here in this garden, he contemplates God’s wrath and resolves to endure God’s righteous wrath through the experience of human weakness.

Outline

The experience of human weakness involved:

1. Relational abandonment (vv. 27, 50 with 15:33-34). “This crucible of human weakness would involve relational abandonment.”

2. Distress of soul (vv. 33-34). “During the Last Supper, Christ was giving thanks and leading his disciples in the singing of a hymn. There was no indication of deep distress or shuddering terror. But once he enters this garden, he is deeply distressed and deeply troubled and overwhelmed with sorrow even to death. Why? In this garden, the Savior begins to experience a foretaste of what it means to be the sin bearer. Here in this garden, the Savior contemplates the cup and its contents. The cup dominates the heart and mind of the Savior while he’s praying in Gethsemane. Isaiah tells us the cup is the furious and righteous wrath of God against sin. This prospect of being the object of God’s righteous wrath is so horrific to the Savior that he prays, ‘If possible, take this cup from me.’… The Savior staggers—he does not sin—but he staggers as he contemplates the weight of this horrific prospect. In the garden he is not contemplating the physical pain of crucifixion; he is contemplating the fierceness of God’s wrath poured out upon him for our sin.”

Application

1. Recognize his love for you in his darkest hour. “He resolved to drink the cup of wrath dry on our behalf and leave not a drop so that we—by grace—may drink the cup of salvation. Just a few moments before he contemplated this cup, he took another cup representing his blood and the New Covenant and his finished work on the cross, and he placed that cup in the hands of the disciples (who were both undeserving and ill-deserving). Then he went to Gethsemane and took in his hands the cup we deserved.”

2. Receive his care for you in your darkest hour. “It’s important that we make distinction between his suffering and our suffering.…I don’t want to minimize your suffering in any way. But I want to protect and preserve the uniqueness of his suffering, because if I do, you can be comforted in your suffering. Having endured this suffering, he is uniquely qualified to comfort us in the midst of our suffering. He uniquely understands our darkest hour (Heb 4:14–16).”

Conclusion

After the message, Dr. Akin summarized the message’s impact with these words:

I was listening very carefully when C.J. preached. Sometimes at a conference like this people are very enthusiastic and demonstrative in their response to the preaching. But tonight as C.J. preached, there was a holy silence in this room. There was not much stirring because we were standing on holy ground. I’ll never, ever look at the Garden of Gethsemane the same again.

Listen to the complete address here (see Fri., Feb. 1).