Dr. Mohler was by far the most personable that I have ever seen him in my career at either Boyce College and now at SBTS.  In the panel discussions, I saw a completely different Dr. Mohler.  In the pulpit, as was said in a panel discussion, his sermon was “vintage Al.” 

His charge was to tackle the subject of preaching with the culture in view.  Boy!  Did he do that.  I am going to provide my notes to you.  I will do this for each of the sessions, except for John MaCarthur as I was unable to attend the last session.  Keep in mind….these are my notes that I took while the preachers were preaching.  I am NOT Tim Challies and do not have anywhere near the ability that he has.  I would recommend visiting his site to read his posts from the liveblog of the conference.  I just pray that my notes may be helpful for instruction and encouragement to you as I was instructed and encouraged.

Dr. Mohler 

(Thanks to Timmy Brister for this wonderful shot of Dr. Mohler)

So without further delay….

Together for the Gospel
4-27-06 AM Session #2
Dr. Albert MohlerPreaching With the Culture in View    

We come together for the gospel and we come together in a sense of crisis.  In our times, there is a polarity of dangers.  There are some who see no danger in the culture; there are some who think culture is an irrelevancy to our preaching.  We are in a culture in which we assume many things, yet Christians do no take into account the culture, of which they take for granted, in which they live.

In setting the stage, we must define expository preaching.  It is the mode of Christian preaching that takes as its central motive the task of preaching the Bible.  As the Word of God, the Scripture has the right to establish both the substance and the structure of the sermon.  It makes clear how we establish the identity and worldview of the people of God.

Preaching to culture.  Our first task is to present the biblical text the way the apostles would have presented it.  Its authority is unchanging.  If we do this, we will find ourselves unavoidably applying the Word in the world in which we live.  We as the church start from a different place of meaning when talking about the culture.  We don’t talk about cultural renewal or recovery; we preach the gospel to sinners.  We look to culture to find sinners; it is not about the culture itself

The primary conviction that we must bring to preaching the culture in view is the conviction that the Bible is a message to persons within every culture.  We are the only ones with a message that does not need to be transformed and redefined in every culture.  The problems and sin and the solution of the cross of Christ transcends all cultures.

It might be helpful to define culture; the United Nations defined it as set of distinctive social, spiritual material within a group…… (**Look for this on the UN Webpage)  An academic definition is a system of shared values, beliefs, and artifacts that are transferred from generation to generation….  We are living in a time in which culture is being celebrated and cultural diversity has become a social observation.  This diversity is actually very arbitrary.  Culture encompasses everything about our experience, our knowledge, our thinking.  It is like Aristotle’s thinking on the fish and being wet.  Aristotle said the last person to ask about being wet is a fish…he does not know what it is like to be dry.

The main idea of trying to understand culture came from the 1950s and 1960s in mainline Protestantism.  Neibert saw five types: (1) Christ against culture, which is seen in the New Testament.  You cannot withdraw from culture.  After Genesis 3, we are deeply embedded in culture.  (2) A combining of church and culture without distinction.  Christ is understood to make no cultural claims on His people.  The problem is painfully obvious.  We must see a distinction between the world and the church.  (3) Christ above culture.  Christ and culture are understood to make claims on the people.  (4) Christ is culture in paradox.  There is no point of contact between them.  The problem is that you cannot bifurcate these two.  If you hold this position is that there is an ethic for the world and the church and the two do not touch.  (5) Christ the transformer of culture.  It is the mission of the church to transform the culture with Christ.  In the end, he says there is no right answer

If there is no answer – what are we to think?  Dr. Mohler suggests that there is no real answer for all people at all times for the church.  We would think or look at this differently at different times in church history.  OT Jews, NT Christians, and us today face very different challenges.  It is through the same good hand of our Great God, but it is in different cultures.  Today, there is a divided and confused mind among evangelical pastors on this issue.

Culture is as fallen as the human beings who are behind it.  It is a must for us to make sure that we are so deeply immersed in it to where we cannot communicate what is necessary – the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We must go back to Augustine, not Neibert, to understand this.  Augustine’s City of God is wonderful for understanding culture today.  Augustine spoke of the city of God and the city of man.  He defined these two as two different minds, loves, and passions.

Augustine understood that only one city is eternal – that is the city of God.  The earthly city is passing.  Empires rise and fall and none survive.  God’s people are saved by the blood of the lamb and belong to the city of heaven.  We do not live there yet, but our citizenship is more real, there.  As Augustine would say, we do not care about culture for culture’s sake.  We care about culture because we must proclaim the city of God to them.

Ontologically, we should consider ourselves as in heaven.  Yet we are not there yet.  So what do you do?  Reject?  Scandalize it?  Embrace it?  No!  Do not love the city of man, but love those who are in the city of man.  Jesus made it very clear that love of neighbor is derivative of love of God.  We cannot love God if we do not love our neighbor.  The city of man is falling and passing and yet it is filled with men whose passions are for that city.  They will not find it there.  We should not be surprised that sinners act like sinners.  We must point them to Christ.  We cannot withdraw from the people.

In a sense, we do have a dual citizenship.  We must be careful how we see it, though.  One is doxological (city of heaven) and one is missiological (city of man).  When Paul said that our citizenship is in heaven, he was not denying that we do have an earthly citizenship (he invoked his Roman citizenship).

In one sense, we should see culture as a gift, so that we can communicate the gospel to them.  Yet we must keep culture at a distance because of our allegiance to God alone.

Why our culture, right now, presents significant problems to the Christian gospel.  As a culture, we assume that things change…they are always liquid.  Most of our culture does nothing with our hands anymore.  We work with symbols and knowledge and ideas.

How do we understand, missiologically, where we are…with the gospel….in culture.  We have inherited a National Geographic understanding of culture.  That is over there.  We are here.

Here is a description of our culture today.  We must keep these in view if we are to preach with the people of this culture in view.

Self-fulfillment.  We live in a culture full of self-fulfillment.  We want an exciting, exhilarating, life.  We are now living in an age in which the primary question by persons is “am I well.”  Our culture sees this as all human beings as either in therapy or in denial.  Even current Christian commercial literature has Christianized this.  Most Americans believe that what their problem is is something that has happened to them and their solution is found within.  They believe they have an alien problem and the solution is within.  The gospel says that the problem is within and the solution is alien (outward) grace from God.

Self-sufficiency.  We can provide what we need.  The gospel is not how to become more self-sufficient.  Any word that begins with self is counter to the gospel.

Self-definition.  We now define what it is to human, male, female, marriage.  We are self-defining at we claim for ourselves the right to do so.  This comes hand in hand with postmodern definitions of truth

Self-absorption.  This leads now to expressive divorce.  “I divorced because I needed to….”  We generally think that this life is all about us.  In this culture, we believe that we can make the world come to terms with us.

Self-transcendence.  This explains why people are so enamored with spirituality.  They will hear your preaching of the gospel as another spirituality.  Recognize that there is a spiritual capacity within us – this is what the world would tell us today.  We really have to be clear about the “mono” in monotheism.  We live in Canaan and the Canaanite bookstore is propagating to the people in our pews.

Self-enhancement.  What culture would have the kind of debate we have been having about baseball players who take metabolic steroids and get away with it.  We live in a culture in which this makes sense to people.  Plastic surgery is now aesthetic surgery.

Self-security.  We have warnings on coffee cups, childproof caps, vaccines, antibiotics, cat scans, OSHA, bumpers on our cars, seatbelts, and the like.  We have a massive military, a police force, and hospitals.  We think we are safe.  We have investments when we retire.  We feel safe.  Most Christians throughout history did not feel safe.  There is a sense, of sorts, in which the gospel is about safety.  Romans 8 would say that there is no other safety.

1 Peter 1:1 & 1 Peter 2:9.   The ESV translates 1 Peter 1:1 as “elect exiles.”  Do we consider ourselves as elect exiles?  All of culture is missiologically important, yet eternally insignificant.  We are elect exiles.  We cannot just withdraw from culture…this would deny our commission.  We cannot negate our true citizenship…this denies our identity.  Our task is to preach and teach the gospel until we see the eschatological vision of every tribe, people, and language around God