A couple years back, Piper was asked, “what could unravel the gospel-centered movement?”
His answer was insightful: The disconnect between the majesty of God and the way we entertain ourselves.
“There’s an awakening to the majesty of God around the country, a filling of hearts with God-centered, Christ-exalted, Bible-saturated songs . . . a zeal for truth and biblical doctrine . . . and I’m concerned that there’s a disconnect between the big thoughts of God and how we live our daily lives.”
I’ve been thinking hard about this for the last few days. Am I inconsistent in how I entertain myself? Probably. Am I seeking to be more consistent? I hope so.
If anything is going to be offensive about how I live, I want it to be the gospel.
We must be his witnesses. It is a great necessity. Faith comes by hearing a witness. But we must not make much of ourselves. Beware of the witness that needs attention for himself. Beware of the preacher who constantly angles to put himself in a good light and returns again and again to his ministry and his achievements. Beware of the preacher’s subtle preoccupation with himself even when he speaks of his own flaws. Beware of your own bent to love the praise of men.
Remember, therefore, that from the very beginning of John’s Gospel, there is a human witness to the light—our witness. Our witness is a great necessity. And our witness is a great not. He must increase; we must decrease. Amen.
This is really important for me to keep in mind as I am developing sermons (and blog posts). The challenge with illustrations is that sometimes the easiest place to find them (in our own lives) is exactly the place that leads us to (sometimes inadvertently) spend too much time talking about ourselves.
In the above video, John Piper recites Psalm 1, Psalm 16, Psalm 103 and Romans 5:1-8 in their entirety.
From memory.
There’s something powerful about seeing someone live out the command that we should abide in God’s Word (cf. John 8:31, 15:7). Yet, it seems that memorizing Scripture is one of the most difficult things to do, and one of the most neglected disciplines.
Why should we do it, then?
In the following video, Piper gives eight reasons from his own experience why memorizing Scripture is so valuable:
Memorizing Scripture makes meditation possible at times when I can’t be reading the Bible, and meditation is the pathway of deeper understanding.
Memorizing Scripture strengthens my faith because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ, and that happens when I am hearing the word in my head.
Memorizing Scripture shapes the way I view the world by conforming my mind to God’s viewpoint.
Memorizing Scripture makes God’s word more readily accessible for overcoming temptation to sin, because God’s warnings and promises are the way we conquer the deceitful promises of sin.
Memorizing Scripture guards my mind by making it easier to detect error—and the world is filled with error, since the god of this world is a liar.
Memorizing Scripture enables me to hit the devil in the face with a force he cannot resist, and so protect myself and my family from his assaults.
Memorizing Scripture provides the strongest and sweetest words for ministering to others in need.
Memorizing Scripture provides the matrix for fellowship with Jesus because he talks to me through his word, and I talk to him in prayer.
I’ve been slowly working on memorizing some Scripture for a couple of years now; it’s been difficult to keep up with, but it’s been helpful for me. If you’re looking for a helpful resource for training yourself to memorize Scripture, check out the Topical Memory System from Nav Press.
Are you trying to memorize Scripture? If so, what have you found helpful in doing so?
The gospel of Jesus Christ reveals what that splendor is. Paul calls it the “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Two verses later he calls it “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
When I say that God Is the Gospel I mean that the highest, best, final, decisive good of the gospel, without which no other gifts would be good, is the glory of God in the face of Christ revealed for our everlasting enjoyment. The saving love of God is God’s commitment to do everything necessary to enthrall us with what is most deeply and durably satisfying, namely himself. Since we are sinners and have no right and no desire to be enthralled with God, therefore God’s love enacted a plan of redemption to provide that right and that desire. The supreme demonstration of God’s love was the sending of his Son to die for our sins and to rise again so that sinners might have the right to approach God and might have the pleasure of his presence forever.
In order for the Christian gospel to be good news it must provide an all-satisfying and eternal gift that undeserving sinners can receive and enjoy. For that to be true, the gift must be three things. First, the gift must be purchased by the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Our sins must be covered, and the wrath of God against us must be removed, and Christ’s righteousness must be imputed to us. Second, the gift must be free and not earned. There would be no good news if we had to merit the gift of the gospel. Third, the gift must be God himself, above all his other gifts.
It would be a misunderstanding of this book if it were seen as minimizing the battles being fought for a biblical understanding of the ways and means God has used in the accomplishment and application of redemption. The fact that this book is focusing on the infinite value of the ultimate goal of the gospel should increase, rather than decrease, our commitment not to compromise the great gospel means God used to get us there.
The gospel is the good news of our final and full enjoyment of the glory of God in the face of Christ. That this enjoyment had to be purchased for sinners at the cost of Christ’s life makes his glory shine all the more brightly. And that this enjoyment is a free and unmerited gift makes it shine more brightly still. But the price Jesus paid for the gift and the unmerited freedom of the gift are not the gift. The gift is Christ himself as the glorious image of God—seen and savored with everlasting joy.
“Should I consider not doing missions if it means constant danger for my life?”
That’s the question that often comes up surrounding missions—and one that I wonder if doesn’t keep more of us from pursuing short- and long-term missions work.
John Piper offers some pastoral advice for those considering missions and the danger that can come with that calling in the following video:
An edited transcript follows.
Yes, consider it. But after you’ve considered it, probably you should do it.
If your wife says, “No,” you probably shouldn’t.
I’m assuming you mean danger for both of you, not like you’re going to put your wife at risk while you have a nice, secure position. If that’s what you mean then you’re selfish and you shouldn’t be in missions at all.
But if you mean, “Should I consider a calling on my life that brings me, my wife, my children into risk?” I would say, “Yes,” because, if everybody goes that route the Great Commission will never be finished.
Unless you say it should only be finished by single people. “Let’s let the single people suffer. We married people, we won’t suffer. We marry and then escape suffering.” I don’t think that’s the way the New Testament reads.
That’s why Jesus says, “Unless you hate mother, father … wife … you can’t be my disciple.” Now he didn’t mean “hate” in the sense of feeling malice towards them. He meant “hate” in the sense that you take risks so that Grandmama says that you’re acting like you hate her. You know you don’t hate her. You love her and you love all the people who, with her, you’re trying to reach.
I don’t have a final, nice criterion about when to flee and when to stand. That’s the old stress that John Bunyan wrote about in his book Advice for Sufferers.
Bunyan chose to stay in jail for 12 years when he could’ve gotten out of jail. And he had a wife and 4 kids, and one of them was blind. He could’ve gotten out if he had just signed, “I won’t preach anymore.” And he chose to stay there, which put them at tremendous risk with poverty.
So he wrote this essay called Advice for Sufferers, and in it he gives biblical examples of people who fled, like Paul escaping from Damascus through a hole in the wall instead of being brave. It’s like, “Come on Paul! Why are you sitting in a basket, being let down and running away from trouble?” And then there are examples where Paul throws himself, as it were, to the lions in Ephesus or in Philippi, going to jail and being willing to be beaten.
When do you stand and when do you flee? Bunyan says, “God will show you.”
So, no, I don’t think it’s automatic that you keep yourself, your wife, or your children out of risk, out of danger, and out of suffering. But there will be times when you sense, “Yes, it is time, for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of all concerned, that I will move to another place and another ministry.”
It’s not a simple answer. I don’t have a simple answer to when those decisions are made.
Preaching is incredibly difficult; it’s something far different than simply speaking or communicating… and learning how to do it has been challenging.
Seasoned preachers, including John Piper, understand. In the following video, Piper shares where and how he learned not only to preach, but how he developed a passion for communicating God’s Word:
The edited transcript follows:
Where and how did you learn to preach?
I don’t know. Watching my dad when I was six, eight, ten, twelve. Watching how not to do it in lots of places. Being unable to speak in front of a group from grade five to my sophomore year in college. I think I was learning to preach during that time because I was so hurt, so wounded, so discouraged, and so desperate that I had to go way down into God, and way into Scripture, and way into pain, and God was making a preacher by shutting my mouth.
You don’t become an effective preacher by becoming a loquacious and effective communicator at age sixteen. You become a clever communicator, but you don’t become a preacher of the holy things of God. So that was a piece.
I don’t know. The courses that I took on preaching were marginally helpful. I got the lowest grade in seminary in my preaching class. I think I got a C minus in James Daane’s preaching class at Fuller Seminary. We never agreed on anything except the principle that every sermon should have one point, he said that over and over again. So I made a terrible grade there. But there were other teachers that…
I think the way that I became a preacher was by being passionately thrilled by what I was seeing in the Bible in seminary. Passionately thrilled! When Philippians began to open to me, Galatians open to me, Romans open to me, the Sermon on the Mount open to me in classes on exegesis (not homiletics, but exegesis), everything in me was feeling, “I want to say this to somebody. I want to find a way to say this because this is awesome, this is incredible!”
So for preachers today that go everywhere but the Bible to find something interesting or something scintillating and passionate, I say, “I don’t get it. I don’t get that at all!” Because I have to work hard to leave the Bible to go somewhere to find an illustration, because everything in the Bible is just blowing me away. And it is that sense of being blown away by what’s here—by the God that’s here, and the Christ that’s here, and the gospel that’s here, and the Spirit that’s here, and the life that is here—being blown away by this, I just say, “That’s got to get out.”
And then I suppose how it gets out. What is that? I don’t know what that is. That’s just the way I’m wired that I would say it a certain a way. It’s owing in part to me being a lit major, you know, I studied language a little bit. Goodness, a thousand things go into your life and nobody can copy anybody else. I don’t know. God makes us who we are. I don’t think there is much you can do to become a preacher except know your Bible and be unbelievably excited about what’s there. And love people a lot, that is, you want to make the connection with people and what’s in the Bible.
Have you ever been asked to read the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon or the Bhagavad Gita after encouraging a non-Christian to read the Bible?
If so, should you?
John Piper provides some interesting insights into why one should our should not read the “holy” books of other religions.
The edited transcript follows:
If I want people of other religions to consider the message of the Bible, should I be willing return the favor and read their holy books as well?
I think it depends on how serious they are and how serious you are. It also depends on what kind of person you are. Not everybody is gifted or called to be an analyzer of other people’s religious literature. I think it could be dangerous—especially if the other person is just provoking you. Continue Reading…
John Piper was asked the question, “If at the end of your life you could say one thing to the next generation of church leaders, what might it be?“
The edited transcript follows:
This is risky, because I know how it could be misused by people who don’t like me anyway. But I think I’m going to say to them on my death bed, “Make the Bible the supreme intellectual and emotional authority in your life, for the sake of magnifying Christ in the fullness of his person and his work, so that generation after generation preserves the foundation and the capstone of the glory of God in Christ, and the grace that is the apex of that glory.”
I’m a Calvinist, and I’m not going to go there, because I believe I got my Calvinism from the Bible. If I didn’t get it from the Bible, then I don’t want people to be Calvinists. So it seems better to say, “Hold fast to the Bible. Base everything on the Bible. If you are going to criticize somebody, criticize them from the Bible. If you are going to affirm somebody, affirm them from the Bible. If you are going to do a strategy, do it from the Bible. Be a Bible saturated people.” That’s what will make for long term staying power for the gospel.
I know this is going to be called bibliolatry, and people will say, “You worship the Bible, not God.” Bologna on that. People who reject the Bible for God become idolaters. The only God worthy of knowing and loving is the one we meet in and discover through the Bible. I do want him to be everything, and the Bible is secondary compared to him; but if we try to say him or something about him without stressing the foundation of the Bible, then we will lose what we are trying to preserve after a generation.
John Piper offers a thoughtful response to this question. The edited transcript follows:
A friend thinks allowing men free will, and yet still achieving his purposes, shows a greater view of God’s sovereignty. What are your thoughts on this?
Let me define the term first, and then I’ll respond. I’m going to assume that by “free will” he means something really controversial, not something obvious. What I’m going to assume the term means is “real, ultimate self-determination,” because that’s the only kind of free will that is controversial. Continue Reading…
