Always Only Preach the Cross-Mark Driscoll

This last weekend I got to hear Mark Driscoll speak several times, the first occasion was at Destiny Church Edinburgh, where Driscoll broke all the rules of preaching, such as do not go overtime, do not have more than 3 points, stick to one text, because he preached for an hour and a half, and preached an 11-point sermon from the whole bible. His starting text was 1 Corinthians chapter 2:2, that Paul came preaching only the cross. He said that the commentators tell you that Paul was using hyperbole here, that of course he did not just preach the cross. He said this is wrong, Paul preached the cross and only the cross, because it is the Christ of the cross who alone that brings us life eternal and reconciliation.
Mark was concerned to show that substitution atonement is the Gospel, he said with passion that he cannot understand how trend setting youthful ‘heretics’ can argue that penal substitution isn’t biblical. He showed that the first instance of substitution began in the garden when our first parents substituted themselves for God. He then went to the cross, where the innocent God suffered at the hands of sinful men and died in our place. Mark pointed out that we killed God, God came to earth to die for our sin that is, our sin is the reason Jesus took up the cross. This is why Propitiation shows God’s love for us. Mark said those theologians that didn’t believe this are stupid, God hates sin and yet he took the price of sin upon himself and died for sinners. Mark argued against the distorted idea we get that God loves the sinner but hates the sin, he pointed out that the Psalms tell us that God hates sinners. "It was Gandhi who said God hates the sin but loves the sinner and he was on a whole different team.”
Mark lead us to consider imputation, that our righteousness is not our own it is Christ’s righteousness. He argued that our Sunday school teachers have Noah all wrong, it is a distorted gospel to say that Noah was good and God drowned all the bad people. The Bible says Noah found favour in God’s sight that is why he was righteous because of Grace, undeserved favour. You can see it was imputed righteousness because in Genesis 9:12 “he gets drunk and naked and if I did that I’d be out of a job.”
He also spoke about Chrestus victor, a favourite theory of atonement amongst Pentecostal Christian’s because Jesus defeats Satan and demons at the cross and that is a good thing!

Later he spoke about Jesus as a spirit filled man, that Pentecostals think the bible starts at Acts chapter 2 but Jesus was filled with the spirit. He then went on, we should all be charismatic, like Jesus who loved the lost and glorified God in his suffering. That is a good type of charismatic, if you wanna be charismatic sitting on thrones with a wife who looks like she lost a battle at a paint ball event, then that is a bad thing.

Mark reminded us that music does not mediate the way to God, nor does the pastor or preaching or even reading the Bible (all of these are good things) yet the only thing that can mediate between us and God is Christ himself, that is why the preacher must always only preach Christ and always only preach the cross!

I'll post some more over the next few days.

God Bless

Stephen