Basics Pastors Conference, Alistair Begg

I just love Basics, the annual pastors conference at Parkside Church in Cleveland Ohio!  Of course, those who know me well know that I love Parkside’s preacher, Alistair Begg; my favorite contemporary expositor hands down.

I’m here this week with my student minister, Matt McCraw, and we’re enjoying this year’s speakers: Alistair Begg, Sinclair Ferguson, and John Shearer.

Alistair will speak tomorrow.  Today we heard from Sinclair Ferguson and John Shearer.  Some favorite quotes…

From Sinclair Ferguson, who spoke first on “Preaching Christ from the Old Testament.”

“If you’re going to preach Christ from the Old Testament you’ve got to learn to preach Christ from the New Testament.” (i.e., it’s not about “finding yourself” in the text, but exalting Christ Jesus from the text).

“The (sum passages and narratives, etc.) of the Old Testament can be viewed as footnotes to Genesis 3:15.”

“God is not to be thought of as good because things are going well.”

“God is to be thought of as good because as the seed of the serpent was bruising the heel of the seed of the woman, God was crushing his head.”

From John Shearer, who spoke on 1 Timothy 4.

“It is better to suffer at the hands of men for being faithful than to suffer at the hands of God for being unfaithful.”

“Nourishing others means we must nourish ourselves.  We must not become ‘sermon machines’…we can’t keep giving out without continuing to take in.”

“You won’t pick up godliness at a conference, not even this conference.”

“If you preach the Bible you’ll never run out of seed to sow.”