I recently had the privilege of speaking at the ReFocus Conference in the amazing city of Vancouver, BC. In conjunction, we also had our first ever Acts 29 church planting boot camp in Canada, which went very well. Highlights of the trip for me were getting some time with Dr. John Piper and Dr. Bruce Ware, and getting to meet Dr. J. I. Packer.

Dr. Packer (born in 1926) has been an evangelical stalwart for many generations. The list of books he has written or contributed to is lengthy, and his most recent accomplishments include serving as general editor of the English Standard Version of the Bible. At the conference I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Packer teach in person for the first time, on the subject "The Sufficiency of Scripture." As I looked around the room at a few hundred mainly young Christian leaders, two things struck me. First, author Eugene Peterson's words about "long obedience in the same direction" are well illustrated in the life of Dr. Packer. He has been serving God and others with his teaching gift for many years and to now see the fruit of his labor was tremendously encouraging. Second, it seems that generational conflict skips a generation. The very grandfatherly Dr. Packer had a roomful of twenty-somethings hanging on his words and it seemed apparent that younger Christians are happy to receive instruction from older faithful servants of Jesus, which is very encouraging and explains the great interest in everyone from now-deceased saints such as Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, and Francis Schaeffer, along with living legends such as John Stott, Billy Graham, and J. I. Packer.

For anyone interested in obtaining the main sessions from the conference in audio or video format, they are available for free here thanks to the folks at Willingdon Church and Pastor John Neufeld.

Sadly, Dr. Packer's session is not posted, likely because it was a breakout session. But the following notes are some of the highlights of his lecture, although admittedly not perfectly dictated direct quotations.

Packer began by reading Psalm 119:97–104, which says, "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts get understanding; therefore I hate every false way."

He then went on to explain how, through Scripture, God speaks truth that is transcultural and transgenerational and therefore for all people, times, places, and circumstances. He explained that Scripture is ultimately about the person and work of Jesus and is therefore sufficient because Jesus Christ is sufficient. He then continued by explaining how Scripture is sufficient for three realities:

1. Scripture is sufficient for truth about God, the world, and ourselves. To support his point Dr. Packer quoted Jesus' own prayer that God's Word is Truth from John 17.
2. Scripture is sufficient for teaching. To support this point Packer quoted Jesus' instructions to Peter in John 21 to feed His sheep.
3. Scripture is sufficient for trials and the dark and difficult seasons of life. In support of this point Packer spoke of the encouraging ministry of Scripture from Romans 15:4.

Speaking of the current cultural condition in the West, Packer said that our age is secular in that it is religion-centered without any real concern about whether one's religion is true or one's God is correct. To combat this trend, he reasoned, Christians should use the previously listed three functions of Scripture to know the way, show the way, and contend as cultural warriors for the Truth as fellow travelers along the way to Jesus.

To establish the historical transition in the Christian approach to Scripture, he then briefly traced an important series of changes. For the majority of its history, the Church has seen Scripture in a way akin to Jesus in that both are divinity expressed through humanity. The Bible was considered to be divine revelation of God speaking to us through human authors, so the Church perceived itself as needing to humbly live under the truthful authority of Scripture.

However, the enlightenment, which he called "a movement of spiritual darkness," then so elevated human reason that it became the arbiter of truth and the final authority on all matters. The result was skepticism which led to naturalism and a corresponding suppression of the work of God the Holy Spirit as the illuminator of Truth. Subsequently, those who were considered the experts on Scripture were no longer humble people filled and led by God the Holy Spirit to live a life of love in obedience to Jesus, but rather rationalistic modern critics of both Scripture and the supernatural. According to Packer, the sad result of such subjectivity, where there is no truth but rather only one's opinion, is that my opinion only matters to myself. Tragically, as Francis Schaeffer predicted, subjectivism leads to despair because if there is no Truth and no answers to the great and perplexing questions about life beyond my own subjective opinion, then hope is forever buried.

In contrast to this, Packer encouraged God's people to continually return to the Scriptures to humbly ask what God would have to say to His people through His Word by the ministry of His Spirit about His Son. He then closed with three final exhortations:

1. The hope of our glory must always lie beyond this world and to nurture that hope a reading of the Puritan Bunyan's book Pilgrim's Progress is essential.
2. Total and continual immersion in the Psalms is exceedingly good for the soul and too infrequently practiced.
3. Studying the lives of those who faithfully handled God's Word is helpful and Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones must be included at the top of that list.