Life-long learning is the key to longevity in teaching. It’s the key to being interesting and it is the key to staying the course. Teaching is a life-long marathon assignment, and who wants to be in a marathon and only last 3 miles in the race? Or 17 miles? No one. You don’t just show up at a marathon having never engaged in training for the event. A marathon is more than a 26 mile race and the key to finishing well is to have a strategy and to implement it. Lasting well and being fresh every time you speak is not something that happens by accident. It takes a disciplined approach and a commitment to a strategy.
Stay humble and teachable. It’s what you learn after you “know it all” that matters.
So many pastors/preachers/teachers become stale after a few
years into ministry because they lose their passion for learning. Don’t let
that be true about you.
People talk about “burn out” in ministry, but if a man is
enthused with what he is learning, and has an on-going walk with the Lord
personally, he always has fuel in his tank, so to speak.
A major key in learning is the skill of good note taking. Never
be caught without either pen or paper or the ability (electronically) to take
good notes. Good quotes are like the sharp blade on a knife. They cut deeply,
especially when people realize what you are saying is not just your opinion,
but the greats in ________ (name the discipline) have said the same thing
before you. e.g. This is not new, Martin Luther said this…. Einstein…. George Washington,
etc.
People then realize, “oh, if I oppose this concept, it is
not just the preacher in front of me I have issue with, but long established, recognizable
authorities on this matter.”
But to have good quotes you must first capture them and have
them ready at your disposal. A great quote out of reach never helped anybody.
STATING THE OBVIOUS
In note taking, let me state the obvious.
Capture the main headings. Capture the outline. This
establishes the main points being made.
List any scripture reference mentioned. (Be ready to check
out the quote and also read any verse in its context – that’s part of your
homework)
Use abbreviations constantly (but only ones that can be
understood by you later on).
Remember, you are taking notes for YOU, not writing for
others (at this point). If you cannot understand the abbreviations later on,
you will be scrambling to make sense of your notes. And that would be a waste
of your time.
These things are obvious, but many do not do this, and five
years later, are guilty of the same exact thing – they do not develop the skill
of note taking.
And again, remember the above – great teachers are great
learners.
By the end of any sermon or teaching you hear, you should have been able to capture the main thoughts and have all the scriptures quoted, and can sum up the message you heard for anyone else who was not present.
This is all about having the main things written down – you are not expected to have every detail in your notes.
Illustrations – unless you develop the ability to write every word you hear (which professionals can do) what you have will be a SUMMARY. Don’t beat yourself up over that. That is OK! That is what you are after in fact.
If the message is recorded, you can always go back, hear/watch it again and make fuller notes, if desired.
But if I am not present to hear a message and you were, you
should be able to sum up the main points.
Make sure that helpful illustrations you hear are captured
(though remember, you can only summarize them).
Enjoy the ride… enjoy learning the skill of note taking. As
long as your notes make sense to you, you made great notes.
You will get better at this, the more you do it. But it
starts by making it a habit.
A golfer is not great by being on a golf course 4 times a
year. It is practice that makes perfect.
Just something on that… practice does not always make
perfect. Sometimes, practice just makes permanent.
Take the golfer, for example… if someone has a defective golf swing, practice can simply make the bad habit in the swing permanent. What the golfer needs is an outside onlooker who can observe the issue and coach him to eliminate it.
But generally speaking, practice does make perfect. Practice the art of note taking by making this commitment. Never listen to a message without taking notes. The only exception to this is when driving.
Did the church invent the canon? What is the role of the canon? How is the Bible a creative force? Was the canon in place before church councils? What can we say biblically, theologically, and historically about the foundation and formation of the canon?
In this short video, Michael Kruger discusses the formation of the canon, the role of the canon, and the church’s relation to the canon.
One of the first promises in the Bible is given to Abram, whom God appointed to be a blessing to the whole earth. Not only did God tell this patriarch that he would receive a good land and have many children, but He also promised Abram, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse” (Gen. 12:1–3). That’s an incredible promise, isn’t it? God will favor those who favor Abram and set Himself against those who oppose Abram.
Like me, you probably want God’s blessing and favor on your life. This verse gives us the secret to obtaining that blessing. We just need to bless Abram. Abram, later renamed Abraham, died some four thousand years ago. So, one might think that it is no longer possible to bless him. That is not the case. The promise to Abraham was passed down through his son Isaac to his grandson Jacob (Gen. 27:1–29). Jacob, of course, was renamed Israel, his sons being the founding fathers of the tribes of Israel. So, the promise of Abraham passed on to Israel as well (Num. 24:1–9).
So, God is going to bless those who bless Abraham, which means He is going to bless those who bless Israel. And this promise was never withdrawn. It must come to pass, which means it is still in force today. But does the Israel of God exist today?
From a biblical perspective, the Israel of God does still exist. But here is where things get perhaps a little tricky, for in today’s world there is a nation-state named Israel that is occupying much of the geography that the Old Testament refers to as the promised land. So, this must mean that if we want God’s blessing, we have to do good to the modern nation of Israel by supporting everything that nation does, right?
Not exactly. You see, the Bible is also clear that the Israel of God is not any modern nation-state and that it is not made up of one people group. The Israel of God is Jesus Christ and all those who are united to Him by faith alone. Referring to the young Jesus’ return to the promised land after the death of Herod the Great, Matthew quotes the prophet Hosea, who said “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matt. 2:15). This quote comes from Hosea 11:1, where Hosea is referring to the nation of Israel. Essentially, Matthew is saying that the true son of God named Israel is none other than Jesus the Messiah. Similarly, in John 15:1, Jesus says, “I am the true vine.” Every Jew who heard Him would have remembered the many places in the Old Testament where Israel is referred to as God’s vine or God’s vineyard (e.g., Isa. 5:1–7; Jer. 6:9; Hos. 10:1). Jesus’ point is clear: because He is the true vine, He is the true Israel of God.
But the Israel of God is not Jesus alone. It’s also all those who trust in Him alone for salvation. Turning to Romans 11, we find the Apostle Paul explaining why so many Jews—Israel according to the flesh—do not believe Jesus is the Messiah while so many gentiles do. Paul likens Israel, the people of God, to an olive tree and notes that those who are part of the tree by birth—the natural branches, the Jews—can be broken off by their unbelief in Christ, and those who were not part of the tree by birth—wild branches of a different tree, the gentiles—can be grafted in to the olive tree of Israel and become part of that tree. Faith in Christ, then, is what makes a person a member of the Israel of God, not mere ethnic descent. Paul confirms this elsewhere in Galatians 6:16, where he calls the Galatian church—made up predominantly of gentiles who believed in Jesus—as “the Israel of God.” The true Israel of God, then, consists of Christ and all the Jews and gentiles who believe in Him.
Blessing the Israel of God, therefore, does not mean supporting every policy of the modern nation-state of Israel. There may be good political reasons to support many of the modern nation-state’s policies, but Genesis 12:3 does not provide a theological reason to do so. And of course, Christians are called to do good to all people and to take the gospel to both Jews and gentiles (Rom. 1:16; Gal. 6:10). But blessing the Israel of God means, in this new covenant era, blessing the church of Christ—supporting its work, doing good to its people, striving for its peace and purity, and so forth. God will bless those who bless His people, the church.
While I don’t really like the term “Calvinist” for the simple reason that it is always a term that needs to be explained (I am not a follower of Calvin) it seems to be a term we are stuck with to express in a single word, someone who holds to the soteriological doctrines of the acrostic TULIP.
Elsewhere I have written, “I speak for many when I say that I have not always embraced the doctrines of grace or what is commonly called Calvinism. Its actually unfortunate that a man’s name is associated with the doctrines that came out of the Protestant Reformation. Calvin was not the first to articulate these truths, but merely was the chief systematizer of such doctrines. There was actually nothing in Calvin that was not first seen in Luther, and much of Luther was first found in Augustine. Luther was an Augustinian monk, of course. We would also naturally affirm that there was nothing in any of these men that was not first found in Paul and Peter and John in the New Testament.
Even now, I have no desire to be a Calvinist in the Corinthian sense of the word – a follower of John Calvin, per say. Though I believe Calvin was a tremendous expositor of the Scriptures and had many great insights, I am not someone who believes he was in any way infallible. I am with Spurgeon who declared, “There is no soul living who holds more firmly to the doctrines of grace than I do, and if any man asks me whether I am ashamed to be called a Calvinist, I answer – I wish to be called nothing but a Christian; but if you ask me, do I hold the doctrinal views which were held by John Calvin, I reply, I do in the main hold them, and rejoice to avow it.” (C. H. Spurgeon, a Defense of Calvinism)”
The following is an article by Justin Dillehay (MDiv, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), a pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Hartsville, Tennessee, where he resides with his wife, Tilly, and his children, Norah, Agnes, and Henry. He is a contributing editor of The Gospel Coalition. I believe it contains very good insight:
To this day, whenever I stand behind a pulpit and say things like “All true saints will persevere to the end and none will be lost,” I still have to pinch myself. I laugh inwardly and think, What would the 22-year-old me say if he could hear me now?
You see, I wasn’t always a Calvinist.
I was raised a classical Arminian in the Free Will Baptist tradition. As a teenager, I cut my teeth on theologians like F. Leroy Forlines and J. Matthew Pinson, along with older divines like James Arminius and John Wesley. As a 22-year-old man, I believed and taught that grace was always necessary but never irresistible, and that genuine Christians could abandon Christ and forfeit their justified status.
Beneath these beliefs lay a view of the God/man relationship that went like this: humans were created to exist in a loving relationship with God. The nature of that loving relationship requires a free—and undetermined—response on our part. To quote Forlines, I saw God working with man in an “influence-and-response relationship” rather than a “cause-and-effect relationship” (like the Calvinists thought). God could influence us, but he respected our personhood by always leaving the final decision up to us. And God did this, not because he was weak, but because this was how he meant for the relationship to work.
And in case you’re wondering, the difference between a God who influences and a God who causes can be summed up in one word: guarantee. Forlines puts it this way in his book The Quest for Truth:
I think the description of God’s relationship to man that Calvinists would give would be much like my description of influence and response. However, the result is thought to be guaranteed. . . . Any time the result is guaranteed, we are dealing with cause and effect. When the guarantee is gone, Calvinism is gone.
He’s right. I agreed with him then; I agree with him now. I’ve simply changed sides. So what happened? The short answer is I ran up against Romans 8:28–30.
Passionate Preacher, Problem Passage
Romans 8:28–30 is often referred to as “the golden chain of redemption”—so called because of its five “links” of divine foreknowing, predestining, calling, justifying, and glorifying.
As an Arminian, I saw Romans 8:28–30 as a problem passage. Verse 29 was definitely a key prooftext for election-based-on-foreseen-faith. But the rest was difficult. I knew what my preferred commentators said about it, but I’d never been fully satisfied. So I chalked it up to an anomaly. After all, no theological system explains everything perfectly.
Eventually I came to realize that Paul’s golden chain, like Calvinism, was very much about a guarantee.
Then I started listening to John Piper’s sermons on Romans, and my world was unmade. It was 2004, I was 22, and I had never heard such preaching. His meticulous exposition exposed all the weaknesses I already sensed in my interpretation of the passage, while uncovering some new ones. I can’t say I emerged from those sermons a convinced Calvinist. But my confidence was severely shaken. And eventually I came to realize that Paul’s golden chain, like Calvinism, was very much about a guarantee.
Will the Chain Be Unbroken?
Let me lay out verses 29–30 to help us visualize the argument. (Read from the top left to the bottom right, and note carefully the italicized words and matching letters.)
As an Arminian, I naturally agreed with commentator Joseph Benson: “The apostle does not affirm . . . that precisely the same number of persons are called, justified, and glorified.” After all, that would imply a guarantee. The more I studied the passage, though, the more it seemed like that was exactly what Paul was affirming.
First, consider each link individually. (For clarity, I’ve labeled the five groups with letters.) Paul begins by describing a group of people based on something God does for them (“those whom he foreknew”). He then adds something else God does for that same group of people (“he also predestined”). The word “also” in each link tells us that we’re dealing with the same people in both halves. Those he foreknew are also the ones he predestined. Hence A = B. This is true in each clause of the chain.
Paul is affirming that precisely the same number of people—indeed, the exact same group of people—are foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified.
But then notice the overlap between each clause. The second verb in each line serves as the first verb in the next. This is what binds the five clauses like links in a chain. And it’s why I eventually had to conclude that Benson and I were wrong. Paul is affirming that precisely the same number of people—indeed, the exact same group of people—are foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. Or to spell it out, A = B = C = D = E.
As an Arminian I’d been forced to argue that these five steps were simply a general sequence all true saints had to pass through, with no guarantee that those in group A would make it to group E. Indeed, I believed that some could fall out at any stage in the process. It was less like a chain and more like a bullseye, in which the circles got smaller as you moved inward.
But the more I examined the actual language, the more implausible this belief became. This inevitably pushed me to Calvinism. After all, if all the called get justified, then the call must guarantee faith, since faith precedes justification (Rom. 5:1). Further, if all the justified get glorified, then justification must be a permanent status—a verdict God never revokes.
This much I had always been uncomfortably aware of, though I hadn’t fully appreciated the difficulty before listening to Piper. But there was one more problem Piper raised that I hadn’t yet considered.
Guaranteeing Purpose of the Golden Chain
It’s important to recognize why Paul forges this chain to begin with. The answer is found in the famous verse 28:
And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Notice that Paul isn’t simply making a factual claim here (e.g., “All things work together for their good”). He’s making a knowledge claim (e.g. “we know that all things work together for their good”).
Which raises the question: “How do we know?” What guarantee can we possibly have that, despite all appearances, all things will conspire for the good of those who love God and are called by him? That’s the question the golden chain exists to answer. That’s why verse 29 begins with the word “for”—it’s providing an argument for how we know verse 28. And here’s the argument in a nutshell: We know that all things will work together for the good of the called because if you’re called, that means you were first foreknown and predestined to be the conformed to the image of Christ, and it means that you’re now justified and will eventually be glorified.
That’s how we know: because there are no breaks in this chain.
God hasn’t left the composition of Christ’s family in the hands of fickle human beings.
Forlines was right. In the Arminian influence-and-response framework, there can be no guarantee. But that would defeat the purpose of the passage, because a guarantee is exactly what Paul is after. If people can fall out of the chain at any point, then we can never know that all things will work together for the good of the called. They might, but then again they might not—because the outcome would ultimately depend on the called themselves. Many of the called would never be justified, much less glorified.
But the good news is that this chain is unbreakable, having been forged by God himself. None of this means that our preaching or faith is unnecessary. Nor does it mean we can be assured of our salvation regardless of whether we persevere. It simply means that God hasn’t left the composition of Christ’s family in the hands of fickle human beings. God does more than just influence—he predestines. That’s why all things will work together for the good of the called, and Christ will be the firstborn among many brothers (Rom. 8:29).
God is in charge. The outcome is secure. And that, my friends, is a guarantee.
