“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” – Exodus 34:6-7
Dr. Ross Blackburn speaking at a CTC night session
In 2024, we attended a conference organised by the Gospel Growth Fellowship (GGF) called CTC. Creation to Consummation’s (CTC) 2024 conference was titled “The God Who Makes Himself Known”. It was timely for the church, having just finished up the Exodus sermon series, that we could attend CTC on the same book.
Although we had already spent about four months covering the whole book of Exodus, it was our desire that we as God’s people would learn and grow deeper in our understanding of God’s Word as a whole and appreciate the glory of our God who has made Himself known through His Word. CERC is grateful that a Biblical Theology conference like CTC exists, and that it was on the Book of Exodus that year.
CTC 2024 was attended by over 140 churches from across Malaysia and we were blessed to have Dr. Ross Blackburn (pictured above) who came all the way from the United States as the speaker for the conference. Dr. Blackburn is the author of the book “The God Who Makes Himself Known: The Missionary Heart of the Book of Exodus” from which CTC 2024 was named after.
Sometimes Christians struggle to hold together tensions they find in the Bible. For example, when reading in Exodus about God’s mercy towards the Israelites and God’s judgment of Pharoah through the hardening of his heart, we might turn to emphasising God’s mercy and brushing over his judgment because of how difficult it is to comprehend that of our God.
Dr. Blackburn came to help us understand that reading the book of Exodus biblically theologically helps us to address our tensions and tendencies to fragment the text. In other words, when we read Exodus in light of the whole Bible and with God’s salvific plan in mind, we can see how what happens in Exodus is consistent with God’s commitment to make Himself known that is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
CERC attending a CTC Night session with other brothers and sisters in Christ
CTC’s very ‘full-filling’ schedule
CERC at a Behind-The-Scenes (BTS) session
The annual week-long city conference came with its good-old offerings of biblical theological goodness. On the Sundays before and after CTC, there were the prelude and postlude sessions hosted by CERC. On weekday mornings, there were the BTS sessions, followed by the Night Talks. On Saturday, there was the climactic Building Healthy Churches session. Through CTC, CERC was blessed with all these opportunities to further deepen our understanding of Exodus and its implications for us.
Never too young to learn and enjoy Biblical Theology!
Our university students with their respective CFs at CTC
It was encouraging to see many university students from different university Christian fellowships and students from our own Tertiary Growth Groups (TGGs) attend the conference as well.
Rainier (centre) at CTC with his friends from Monash University
One of the university students who attended the conference was Rainier William from TGG MonSun. Reflecting on the CTC week, he said, “At the end of it, I looked back at all the conference days and thought it was really insightful. The stuff I learnt in CTC really complimented all the things I had already gone through in [CERC]…I could even probably say I learned new tools from Dr. Blackburn in doing Biblical Theology, but most importantly, [the conference] had a clear gospel message throughout the talks.”
“CTC this year was very instrumental for me in constructing a picture of God and His people in Exodus, where every detail covered was a pixel contributing to the whole,” he added.
On how CTC 2024 helped him understand Exodus better, he said, “Overall, it enhanced the resolution of this paradigmatic picture I have in Exodus, enabling me to spot out more things through this paradigm. For example, the laws given by God in the desert not merely as laws but really, as household rules that He administered for His own people to relate with one another on His terms.”
The Building Healthy Churches session hosted at CERC
On Saturday, CERC hosted the Building Healthy Churches (BHC) session, which served as the culmination of CTC. This session provided an opportunity for God’s people to synthesize the week’s learning from CTC, drawing from our study of Exodus and Biblical Theology to explore how we might practice healthy ecclesiology together.
One key aspect of healthy ecclesiology is sound doctrine. Rainier reflected on how the conference’s good theology helped him change his prior thinking of the law.
“Growing up, I was taught a certain kind of understanding of the Law from my elder. I would understand the Old Testament laws being comparable to a ‘love letter’ by God or a ‘photograph’ of him,” he said. “Though I got the ‘love letter’ and ‘photograph’ analogy right, this interpretation in the end made me think of the Law as a showcase of God’s love and character, and I understood this to mean that obedience to the Law was not really the point, but it was about deeply appreciating how much God loves His people.”
After going through CTC, Rainier was able to discern that “actually the Law is good, and God did intend [for] His people to obey them, imitating Him to be the humanity that communicates and displays His glory to the world, seen consistently ever since the Creation in Genesis.”
In conclusion, although bad theology seems to only make slight differences to good theology, it actually “makes all the difference”. The reason they make the difference is because “they change how we live our Christian lives today and tomorrow before God.”
“It was humbling to know this and make me think of how precious the knowledge of our God should be for us that we can live for Him rightly and faithfully,” he reflected.
Praise the Lord, who is committed to both His glory and our good, demonstrating this commitment perfectly through His Son, Jesus Christ. We are thankful for GGF’s faithful work and pray that the Lord will continue to bless their ministry as they equip evangelicals to be deeply grounded in His Word, all for His glory.
