Dr. Joel Beeke explains in this video that pride is a very dangerous sin that can lead to great destruction. The Reformers said much about it and warned about it. Have you ever grieved or fasted because of pride in your life? We are truly far off from where we should be.

Proverbs 16:18 (NKJV) - "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

In some ways I think we've heard enough. When Jeff was talking I kept thinking of the Puritans and how they fought back the pride of their heart in powerful ways. And were honest with themselves about it and fighting it back and then fasting against it. Jonathan Edwards said, pride is like an onion. You peel away one layer and there's another one underneath.

And Hugh Martin said, I just love it when people tell me what a wonderful sermon I preached. And then I hate the joy that I felt. Cotton Mather said, I spent today in his diary a day of fasting to conquest the pride of my heart. Imagine we ever spent one hour grieving over our pride, hating it, fasting over it. We are really far off from where we ought to be.

John Bunyan, A lady met him at the bottom of the pulpit and said, that was just such a wonderful sermon, Mr. Bunyan. He said, yeah, you're the second person that told me. The devil told me already. You know, they were courageous to tell people.

That's not what I need. That's not what I need to hear Well a few weeks ago my my daughter came to us and told us she was expecting a baby And that's really been burning in my soul. I never had the experience of having a grandchild before. And it makes me think a lot more about eternity somehow. And that's been with me for a number of years but particularly in the last couple years.

But it's accentuated more now that maybe it's just getting older as well that you, I just want everything about me and everything I do and think and say to have eternal fruit and whatever is not going to last, Whatever God couldn't use for eternity, I just I don't want to get involved in it. I don't try to keep up with every new idea and every fad and every new book written about some small idea. I want to live, I want to live for eternity. Now I'm really estranged this way I think, at least I don't mean many people like me, but I feel closest to God when I'm writing. And I don't know what it is, but it's just being alone with God, having to put your thoughts down on paper, and sometimes writing is very, very hard work.

But books are very important in my life. The primary means of grace that God has used for me, I believe in my own spiritual well-being, whatever well-being I have, has been reading the Puritans. I always try to keep one Puritan going at a time and I read other books as well of course, but I just feel these men are so real, taking Jeff's word, and they're so powerful and they're so humbling. And they stress so much what will be the theme of next year's conference, the fear of God, and that's been burning in my soul as well, the fear of God. We just published a book by L.

Martin on it a few weeks ago, and my teacher's aide and I have just finished a book, John Bunyan on the Fear of God, and it's just amazing how that theme penetrates all his writings. John Brown as well, by the way. In fact, John Brown has the best definition of the fear of God I've ever come across. And he says, the fear of God is to value and esteem the smiles of God greater than the smiles of men and the frowns of God greater than the frowns of men." So living in this consciousness of the fear of God and eternity and knowing that our lives are just but a little blip, just a moment, And we're just here also, yes, to be conformed to Christ, that's critical, but also to be useful. To be useful through that conformity, to be useful to use whatever gifts God has given us and to be faithful and to work while it's day and keep our hand on the plow and be faithful in doing the Lord's work so that those things those things burn burn within me A couple of concrete things here that I want to mention.

One is what's become a much bigger part of my life in the last five years, and especially in the last couple years, is the translation of books into foreign languages. I'm getting more and more burden for men and women and children all around the world who, and I see things sprouting up in South America and Africa and I just, I just overwhelmed by the thought that there's 100, 000 ministers in Africa who have only nine books in their study, never had a chance to have education, and I think most of them, at least many of them love the Lord, but they just need instruction so badly and help. I'm getting the same burden now for South America and we're in the throes right now at Reformation Heritage Books of opening up a Spanish division of books We've been talking a lot actually with Paul Washer and wanting to bring out some of his books in Spanish and our study Bible. And I don't know where this is all going to go, but I just feel like we're on the cusp of something great. What impresses me so much is when I go to foreign countries that when people get books in their hands, they don't just sit them on the shelf.

They read them and they pass them on to others and their lives are changed and they're teachable. Sometimes I think books in foreign languages will do more good than in English. Also in terms of English books I think what's burning most of my soul is we're doing the works of William Perkins, the father of Puritanism, the second volume came out last week or a couple weeks ago, and I have the great privilege of editing those and when I read what Perkins is writing, it's just I just I want to bring out all ten volumes and in the next year I just It's burning in my soul because he's so, so focused on promoting the kind of holiness that I anticipate this conference will be talking about. And then, all of this is on one piece with what's happened at our seminary. Men from the foreign countries, we've been training, we have men from 20-some foreign countries, we send them back, but these men had been appealing to us, and I've been resisting this, unfortunately, for several years.

They've been appealing to us to open a PhD program because they said we go back and we become theological teachers in schools, but often the professors around us are liberal And we're like odd in this school. We influence people, and by the grace of God we do good, but the students aren't getting a seamless education. But if you open a PhD program and you could train some of our men who really feel burdened with Reformed, Puritan truth, they could come back to our country, particularly we've had that pressure from Brazil, and become presidents of seminaries and then influence and draw in other solid Reformed teachers that would emphasize holiness and the fear of God and that whole seminary could then train men seamlessly and they could go out and impact their nation and their churches and so that finally I'm a slow learner here but finally I've been persuaded that's important and what we what we have done is we've developed a program and last week a week ago Friday our Senate accepted that completely so now it goes to ATS it's a final resort we're hoping to open a PhD in Reformation and post-Reformation studies in fall of 2016, biblical studies fall of 2017, and this is burning to my soul, a PhD in homiletics in 2018 because every PhD in homiletics in America is from a very, very liberal school.

And if you can train men, The Holy Spirit alone can make them preachers, but if you can train men to go back and become teachers in this area in a God-fearing way in their seminaries, that may well have the most impact of all. And then one more thing is burning in my soul that just, the whole homosexual issue combined slash with the abortion issue continues to overwhelm me and it continues to burden me. And last week, my wife and I, for the very first time in our lives, I'm ashamed to say I'm going to have written about abortion and preached about it and prayed about it, poured my heart out about it, but I've never gone to an abortion clinic and stood in front of the building and just prayed and we have only one abortion clinic in Grand Rapids but I went there with my wife last week, and I asked God before I went that if this really wasn't his favor to do something like this, I felt a little uncomfortable about it, and yet I felt compelled to do it, that he would show me somehow. And We're standing there praying for 15 minutes and a lady walks by and as she walks by She mutters the words abortion saves babies.

I just I was like kind of numb I was I just could fathom where she was coming from it. I was trying to digest it and meanwhile she had walked on I didn't say anything. I was feeling guilty. I just went back to prayer and five minutes later a vehicle comes up and and stops and screeches on the brakes and a woman jumps out and she comes up to me she says what do you think you're doing here and I said well I'm praying I'm praying that God will just shut this place down and turn away the doctor and bring him to repentance and conversion. She said, do you realize I had an abortion here two weeks ago and you're insulting me by praying here and you're trying to make me feel guilty, aren't you?

I said, I love you, and I'm just sorry that you lost your baby. My wife was with me and she said, you know, we have a child that would give anything in the world to have a baby. We would have helped you, we would have put you up on a home, we would have given you what you need, we would have supported you, there are other options, adoption, You don't have to kill your baby. And this lady started watching us and looking at us and It was amazing it she just changed her mind right right in front of us in seven minutes She said I'm beginning to see things differently and then she said but why are you yelling at me? She said, you guys were yelling at me when, because we told her about the Omega house, which was right next door.

Christians bought that house and when the ladies come in to get an abortion, what they do is they pull in the parking lot and the two properties overlap so that the Omega house people can stand on the wall and call to the women down and talk to them before they go in. They've saved about 40 babies this way. But they don't yell of course at all. But they just call to them. And I said, I don't think they were really yelling at you I said I think they really loved you and they loved your baby and again she calmed down and then she looked at us and she said you know I've never looked at things the way that you you look into them because I said to her you know I said you have to understand that we're Christians and I said you may not agree with us whatsoever but as Christians we believe God is in charge of everything and God creates life in the womb that's the way we see it so when you take life away You're trying to cancel out what God is doing and that's an insult to God.

And so we see every life as precious. And by the end of that conversation, she shook our hands, she thanked us for talking to her, she got in her car, she waved to us. I understand, I looked at Mary, I said this is like a surreal moment, I never dreamed this would happen. We are doing the right thing. We have got to understand the enormity of this sin that we get 58 million people that have been killed in the womb legally in America, more people than live in the whole nation of Canada.

Blood is on our hands. And we need to preach against this, we need to pray against it, we need to wrestle with it, we need God to send Reformation and revival in our land, in our hearts, in our churches, and we need our consciences to be aroused again and not be desensitized to the atrocity of abortion and to the plaguing needs that arise in our country with a whole endorsement of homosexuality. So these things are some of the things burning in my heart. Thank you.