In case you weren't sure if Dennis Bergkamp was good at football

Watch the whole thing. It's worth it.

What does godliness look like?

If I had to answer right now, I'd say humility.

John Piper on Preaching - An index

Many of us were greatly blessed by God yesterday as John Piper shared with us what he's learned about preaching. It was awesome. Far better then even his evening address.

Here's some introductory comments that he made on the topic of preaching.

He then gave us his thoughts on 5 key areas of preaching. Its aim, its content, the manner of your preaching, preparation for preaching and the act of preaching.

These are just notes and at times fail to capture the depth and significance of each of the points that he made. Mulling over them and their depth may well be very beneficial. A quick scan will likely miss much of the significance of his address.

Piper #6 - The act

What does it mean to 'serve in the strength that God supplies'? 1 Peter 4:10-11.

APTAT is how you preach in the power of the Holy Spirit.

A - Admit that you can do nothing. There is nothing that I can do without you.

P - Pray for help. Luke 11. "If then you who are evil, know how to give good things to your children...

T - Trust a specific promise. Taken from my daily reading.

A - Act. Just get up there and do it. You were made to do it. Work out your salvation, for God is at work in you.

T - Thank him.

Piper #5 - Preparation

2 Timothy 2:7 --> God's command is to think over what Paul has said. I'm spending all my time in preparation thinking.

The great compliment:

As soon as I think I've got a problem with what you've said, you raise the problem and go over it.

This isn't against the concept of the inner workings of the Spirit. "Think, because in and through that sanctified thinking God will show you." Thinking doesn't deny the work of the Spirit, the Spirit works in and through that thinking.

Pray. Continue to pray. Help me, help me, help me. In every aspect of the prep, at every moment of the prep.

John's prayer: IOUS.

I - Incline my heart to your testimonies - Sometimes I don't feel like reading the Bible, so please...

O - Open my eyes. I'm reading the word and just seeing black marks on a page, so please...

U - Unite my hear to fear your name. Psalm 86:11. Don't have two of you: one does it and one watches. If the one watching likes it, he gets proud. If he doesn't, he gets down, does a bad job, etc... (Please give us the blessing of self-forgetfulness)

S - Please give me satisfaction in the God that I preach. May it never be that I don't love the message that I'm preaching.

Piper #4 - The manner

What is the manner of talking that honours Christ, and that is kerusso.

This is not just teaching.

Having small emotions for Jesus is blasphemy.

It is so out of step with who he is and his value, and preaching is supposed to be the thing that brings together right thinking and right emotions about Him.

Preaching is expository exultation.

His job is to expose what is here and to exult over it.

Doing worship in the pulpit. I'm trying to speak this content to you in such a way that has some resemblance to its massive value.

(Kutz note: So the spirit-filled preacher is responding to the word that he is speaking in the pulpit. Emotionally what is true of his response to the word is there.)

Piper #3 - The content of preaching

So what do I say in order to do that?

Preach the riches of Christ

2 Cor 3:18-4:6 --- "beholding the glory of the Lord they are being transformed". My simple principle is that seeing Jesus, my people are transformed. So put up Jesus before your people. In all his glory. In as many aspects as you can.

Where is that glory seen most clearly? 2 Cor 4:4 says the devil is trying to stop people from seeing the gospel so that they don't change. So ministry must be centred on the glory of Christ and the gospel.

The gospel in 6: (needs every piece to be the true gospel!)

1. The gospel is planned -> according to the Scriptures, pre-planned
2. The gospel is in history, it happened -> take that away, no gospel
3. He accomplished something at that moment when he died. -> before it ever affected you.
4. The free offer of the gospel. By grace, for faith alone, not works.
5. Applied to you. Take that away, you're going to hell, there's no gospel! Justified, reconciled,
Many people stop at those 5. But why would you want to be forgiven? (There are wrong answers to that question!)


When I sin against someone, I wreck the relationship with someone. Why would I want forgiveness with that person? To restore the relationship!!! Not just so I don't have a guilty conscience, but so that we are restored in our relationship with God.


1 Peter 3:18. --> "to bring you to God". Just to have God himself. Not just to avoid hell. But to treasure Christ himself. To have that relationship, not just to feel better about oneself.

It would be perverse for a person to want their spouse to forgive them for a harsh word said, but only wanting to assuage their conscience and not caring about fixing the relationship.


Don't cut the gospel short of that final point.

Piper #2 - The Aim of preaching

The Aim (Point 1 of 5)

A deeper faith

Wants us to consider deeply the nature of saving faith. What is the nature of faith? What is the 'main' feature of a saving faith?

Not simply intellectual recognition, else we share that saving faith with the devil...

To 'receive him as your lord and saviour'? Doesn't do enough. The question is, what drives people?

What's their treasure.

Phi 3:8 "everything else is garbage compared to God". That's what I want to awaken in my people. It is then that they are believing him, receiving him for who he is.

So, the aim?

A Spirit-given treasuring of Christ as supremely (above all else) valuable

Piper #1 - Introductory comments

The topic of John's address is the proclamation of the word about Christ.

He opened with a recognition of the necessity of the work of the Spirit in the proclamation of the Word. A helpful turn of phrase was: “I cannot make happen the one thing that I want to make happen.”

So the extended title is: "The preaching of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit"

The nature of the working of Preaching
Does the work that only God can do happen by works of law? Or only by hearing the word with faith? (Gal 3:1-3) Miracles in the lives of people come from people hearing the Word with the Spirit that awakens faith in those who hear it.

These together enable our people to crucify sin and magnify Christ.

How the Spirit and word work together
John 14:16:

The Holy Spirit is not interested in empowering anything but Christ. So if you preach and magnify Christ, then he is right there with you. Like a wingman, a jet in formation. Because his purpose is to magnify the Son.

When you preach Christ, he's there to put boosters behind it all the time.

How we fight temptation 'by the Spirit'
Romans 8:13

We want our people to kill sin. So how do they do it? What does 'by the Spirit put sin to death' mean?

John understands that to mean wielding the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. When faced with temptation, remind yourself of a truth of the glory of Christ by which that temptation is killed. And so we need to be teaching them the word well so that they have a sword with which to kill sin when temptation arises.

A tough day

Off to preach at my grandfather's funeral. Here's my text.

26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Doug Moo on translation - compiled

QTC has had the pleasure of hosting New Testament scholar Douglas Moo over the last few days. While probably not the most fruitful of his lectures to have live-blogged, I did take some notes from the exclusive ACT lecture that he did today on his experiences as a member and now head of the NIV translation committee.

You can find them, in order, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

And for those visual learners, here's a snap of Doug with QTC's professional fanboi, Joseph Wee.

Questions for Moo

Wez: Why are there less conjunctions in English NIV than in the Greek?

Doug: They use more conjunctions in Greek than in English, we take into account what it adds to meaning and then put that into the way we translate it.


Ian: Do you take a particular perspective on tense/aspect in Greek, which is the basis of the language? (Or in Hebrew?)

Doug: No particular stance. Waltke is on the committee, so his stances do have a significant bearing on how we see Hebrew things.


Kutz: Any bits where you didn't get your way?

Doug: Any bit that you don't like, that's a vote I lost.


Kutz: Do you kick the Hebrew guys out of the room when translating the NT bits?

Doug: No, we work together as a single committee for everything. No sub-committees or separate work. This is actually really valuable as most of the time is spent on working out not so much what the original language means, but on how to render it in English.


Q: Do you employ an English stylist?

Doug: No. The NIV committee doesn't. The NLT committee did. Not always to the satisfaction of the NIV committee.


Doug: A totally new study Bible is coming, with Carson as the editor.


Jeremy: How is it decided who is on the committee?

Doug: A brief doctrinal statement, similar to NA evangelical association one. Have to sign up to that, have to be an expert in Greek or Hebrew, but after that it's the committee's choice as to who to invite. Try to keep a variety of English spoken, nationality, experts on different parts of Scripture, culture, etc.

Translation: things Doug Moo has learned #6

To be wary of 'Biblisch'.

"Daughter of Zion" but Zion IS the daughter. "Daughter Zion"

"Blessed is the one... who does not stand in the way of sinners" ("ie, the way sinners do things, not standing in front of them to block them")

• ESV - "Understandable English"
• NIV - "Natural English"
• NLT - "Easy English"

Metaphors

Live vs. Dead metaphors. Do you continue to use the metaphor, or do you substitute the word for the idea.

Examples:

• "Cut off" meaning "destroy"
• "walk" meaning "live," "direct one's life"
• "sleep" meaning "die" (Not enough evidence that this is a dead metaphor. So using 'sleep 'in death' may help.)

The difficulty of the varieties of English used today

This gives some license for the translator to use different expressions to translate the same underlying word.

Wez: But surely you should try to preserve the same rendering for a word within the same author?

Doug: Well, not so much just within the one author, but where we think the author is trying to make a link between the two usages.

Gender: Third Person Singular Generics

A problem not of understanding the Greek, but of understanding the English that you're translating into.

ESV keeps third-singular forms

Luke 9:23 - "And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross..." (over 'literal' assumptions?)

NLT moves to second-person forms

"Then he said to the crowd, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must ..." (but what do you lose here?)

CEB uses plurals

"All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross ..."

NIV often uses the so-called 'singular' they

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross ..."

But, is that correct English?

NIV commissioned a study by the Collins Dictionaries, who own the Bank of English. (4.4 billion words)

Problem, then, is the different 'idiolects' that you find all over the world. What English are you translating into?

The database primarily filled the blank in "Every citizen was sent a ballot so that ____ could vote" with "they". This then is used as a snapshot of spoken English around the world. So the question is whether the lack of masculine focus in the original that would be present in the English by using 'his' is actually helpful.

Translation: things Doug Moo has learned #5

Some more tough texts:

Hebrews 2:6-9. Where do the pronouns become referent of Jesus?

• We do not see all things subjected to humanity, but we do see Jesus, the representative human.

Or

• We do not see all things subjected to the son of man, Jesus, but we do see him now crowned with glory and honour.

Translation: things Doug Moo has learned #4

To make tough choices

The Italian proverb: Translators are traitors. True. You simply cannot bring across all the rhetoric, meaning, nuance and form of one language across to another.

So, again with sarx, some options:

• Translate in a way that approximates the sense for an English reader? - "sinful nature"

• Translate less interpretively, treating the word as a "technical" word that a reader will have to figure out? - "flesh" (Such as a novel about sailing. At first, you may not understand all or any of the technical terms, but eventually you'll get a 'feel' for it from the usage and context.)

So, the question is, do I think that my English speaking audience has the interest and the capacity to do the sort of work required to come to understand the technical term in its fullness and nuance.

Proverb: Never watch sausage or translations being made.

Interesting fact: Now more people who speak English as a second language than people who speak it as a first language.

The Hebrew of Proverbs 31:10

• "Woman of strength"? - too physical?
• "Woman of noble character"? - too ethical
• "Woman of excellence"? - OK, but... (went with this one)
• Kutz (But what about 'woman of nous' ?)

Translation: things Doug Moo has learned #3

Syntax and 'literal' translation

Col. 2:11 "te peritome tou xristou"

Circumcised 'of' Christ, or circumcised 'by' Christ?

Some seem to think that 'of' is the literal rendering of a Greek genitive. This isn't true. There is no 'literal' or default rendering of a genitive, simply a number of options.

A principle of Metzger
"As literal as possible, as free as necessary"

But this leaves questions, says Moo. Particularly, "as necessary" to accomplish what?

In practise: Colossians 4:5

Form, but no concern for meaning
In wisdom walk toward the outside the time buying up

Form over Meaning
Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the beset use of the time. (ESV)

Form and Meaning (NIV :P) (Doug is head of NIV translation committee)
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity

Meaning, but less concern for form (NLT)
Live wisely among those who are not believers, and make the most of every opportunity.

Moo's point: All of these texts have made translation choices. None could be rightly called literal.

Things Doug Moo has learned #2

To detest the word "literal".

How most people think translation works:

You apply a code that translates each word from its Greek or Hebrew original to its English equivalent.

Ie, a greek word that menas "X" = English word

How translation really works:

There is no single, default 'meaning' of a word. Instead, words have a semantic domain. A semantic range. A word's meaning within its semantic range is determined by its context.

There may not actually be an English word that is equivalent or even has a similar semantic range.

An Illustration: the Greek word sarx

One possible translation option -> "a person"
Another translation option -> "sinful nature" (NIV 1984 & NLT) or "flesh" (NIV 2010)

There is no translation that seeks to always use the same word to translate sarx. To do so would be to betray the meaning of the Greek.

How you translate the word 'bit' into another language would depend greatly upon whether you were talking about horses or computers.

We should ban all talk such as "this word literally means..."

Moo on translation #1

Current bibles being read

KJV: 31% (old KJV: 18% and NKJV is 13%)
(T)NIV 30%
NLT 12%
ESV 7%
Others 20%