This morning to have in our chapel, Dr.
John Piper, the director of Desiring God Ministries,
as well as the pastor of the Bethlehem
Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1946.
His father was an itinerant evangelist who was
still actively ministering through international radio and Bible
courses.
Dr. Piper has written a tribute to his
mother who died in 1974 in the booklet,
What's the Difference?, which is also chapter one
of the book, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
Dr. Piper attended Wheaton College from 1964 to
1968, majoring in literature and a minor in
philosophy.
He then completed a Bachelor of Divinity at
Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California in 1971.
Through Dr. Daniel Fuller, he discovered the writings
of Jonathan Edwards, his most influential dead teacher.
He did his doctoral work in New Testament
studies at the University of Munich in Munich,
West Germany from 1971 to 1974.
Upon completion of his doctorate, he went on
to teach biblical studies at Bethel College in
St. Paul, Minnesota from 1974 to 1980.
In 1980, sensing an irresistible call of the
Lord to preach, John became the senior pastor
of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where
he has been ministering for these past 20
years.
Together with his people, John is dedicated to
spreading a passion for the supremacy of God
in all things for the joy of all
people.
He is the author of several publications, and
he and his wife, Noelle, have four sons,
one daughter, and one grandchild.
Dr. Piper, we're honored to have you in
our midst this morning.
Would you join me in welcoming him to
our pulpit?
I don't think it would be any more
against the fire code for you folks standing
out there to sit in the aisle than
it would be where you're standing, so it
would not offend me in the least, and
in fact, I would encourage any of you
who would rather sit in the aisle to
come in, but if that's where you want
to be out there, that's okay.
Let's pray together.
Father, please take these few minutes now and
help me to be faithful to the scriptures
and to be filled with your Holy Spirit
and to be protected from the devil and
all his fiery darts, and would you grant
to this listening audience that's all around me
here a docile mind and heart to submit
to whatever accords with your word and to
be protected from whatever doesn't, and so work
mighty changes, Lord, wherever they're needed, and I
pray that the ripple effect would go to
the nations and to the decades, and I
ask, Lord Jesus, that you would be exalted
now in our midst and satisfy our hearts
with your steadfast love in the morning, that
we may rejoice and be glad in you
all our days.
In your name, Lord Jesus, we pray, amen.
One of the clearest and most central truths
in the Bible is that God is infinitely
glorious, infinitely beautiful, infinitely majestic, and
it follows from that that his supreme goal
in all that he has done and is
doing and will do in creation and in
redemptive history is to uphold and display and
to magnify that glory, which has the ripple
effect for you, according to 1 Corinthians 10
.31, that you are to do everything you
do, whether you eat or drink, to the
glory of God, which means to so speak
and so eat and so drink and so
live and so preach and so counsel and
so marry and so bury and so play
racquetball or ultimate frisbee, that God looks glorious
in your life, that he looks beautiful in
your life, that he looks satisfying in your
life.
That's your reason for ministry and your reason
for being.
So here's my life thesis, and I have
one shot at Dallas, and so I will
give you my whole package in 25 minutes.
My thesis is that if God is infinitely
glorious and if God does everything that he
does from creation to redemption and consummation to
uphold and display and magnify that glory and
therefore calls you to join him in that
great enterprise of God-centeredness, then this is
true.
God is most glorified in you when you
are most satisfied in him, which means that
you should make it your lifelong vocation to
maximize your satisfaction in God above all things.
That is your job, above all things, is
to maximize your joy in God.
Now, since this is Dallas, take your Greek
testaments please, this is mine, and turn to
Philippians chapter 1.
I have high expectations.
I don't do this at every seminary.
Philippians chapter 1, I want to just argue
very briefly exegetically for that thesis from two
verses, maybe we'll read three.
We'll start at verse 19 and read through
perhaps just verse 20, 21.
And I'll read it very literally so you
can follow along there.
For I know that this to me will
fall out under salvation or deliverance, depending on
how you interpret Soterian, through your prayer and
supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according
to the eager expectation and hope of me,
according to my eager expectation and hope, that
in nothing I might be ashamed, but in
everything with boldness or openness, courage, as always,
also now, here's the key phrase, Christ might
be magnified.
In my body, whether through life, whether through
death.
So now let's collapse that down and paraphrase
it, get it clear.
Paul's high expectation and grand hope for his
life, this is why he lives.
This is the message I preached in February
1980 when I candidated at Bethlehem Baptist Church
to say, this is what I'm about, and
I hope it's what you're about.
I want, he says, more than anything that
Christ will be shown to be great.
Surely that's the meaning of this word here.
Megalumphesetai, mega.
I want Christ to be mega in my
life.
I want Him to be shown to be
magnificent and glorious and beautiful and all satisfying
in my life and in my death, through
my body.
Now, how does that happen?
How does it happen so that you live
and die in a way that makes Christ
look great, which is the only reason we
exist?
And that's given in verse 21 with this
great explanatory clause here, this gar clause.
Most important words in the Bible are un
and gar.
For to me, to live.
Now correlate the word live there with the
word life in verse 20.
He said, I want Christ to be seen
as magnificent in my life.
And now he says, for to me, to
live is Christ.
And then he says, and to die.
To die, correlate the word die with the
word death in verse 21.
To die is gain.
Now, let's just work for a moment with
the die pair.
I want Christ to be seen as magnificent
in my body when I die.
How does that happen?
For to me, to die is gain.
Now you finish the message.
You finish the message.
You build the theology on that.
What is that saying?
Christ will be seen as glorious and magnificent
and all satisfying to the degree that when
you lose all your family, all your health,
all your job, all your future on earth,
you say, die.
Now, why?
Why would that show Christ to be gain?
Verse 23.
Much more, exceedingly better.
He's going to go and be with Christ.
And that will be Paolo Malon Crayson.
When he dies, he says, he's going to
go to be with Christ, which is infinitely
better than everything he loses here.
Moral eight.
These two great realities.
The goal for Christ to be magnified in
your body and the heart state of dying
which says, Christ is all.
Christ is better to me than my wife.
Christ is better to me than my grandchildren.
Christ is better to me than more books.
Christ is better to me than minister.
Christ is better to me than that long
for retirement.
Christ is better to me than preaching in
chapels.
Christ is better to me than sex.
Christ is better to me than money.
Christ is better to me than motorcycles or
whatever else.
Swim ball gets on.
I just visited his office and saw a
motorcycle in there.
I remember the, what was it?
Ruminator, percolator.
I can't remember what it was.
Simulator.
That was it.
Whatever it is, if you can lose it
at the moment of your last gasp and
feel gain, you glorify him.
You get the gain.
He gets the glory.
Does that feel like a contradiction?
Everywhere I go, people say that's a contradiction.
That to pursue your gain is unbiblical.
I just read it again in a notable
American theologian whose name, if I said it,
everybody in this room would know.
He said, to quote, the fundamental motive of
Christian obedience is always the heart of gratitude
and never the hope of gain.
Unquote.
Wrong.
And it's ruining the church.
It's ruining it.
It hangs in the air of America like
a gas that to pursue your own joy
contaminates virtue and ruins worship.
And I'm here to say the exact opposite
is the case.
To the degree that you undertake to deny
this pursuit of gain in Christ, you will
ruin worship, destroy your church, and contaminate virtue.
Now, to defend that in the next 15
minutes, I have eight points.
Let's see how many we can do.
What I want to do is, first of
all, let Jonathan Edwards have a say here.
Jonathan Edwards, bless you, bless you.
Wrong, wrong, however.
Not the most influential dead teacher.
The most influential extra-biblical dead teacher.
Let's get that straight here.
The Apostle Paul.
Because Jesus isn't dead.
The Apostle Paul is the most influential dead
teacher in my life.
And Edwards is a very distant second.
All right, but here's what he said.
So if it helps any to have another
authority beside this Johnny come lately, here it
is.
So God glorifies himself toward the creature in
two ways.
This is a quote from the Miscellanies.
One, by appearing to their understanding.
Two, in communicating himself to their hearts, and
in their rejoicing, and delighting in, and enjoying
the manifestations which he makes of himself.
God is glorified not only by his glory
being seen, but by its being rejoiced in.
When those that see it delight in it,
God is more glorified if they only see
it.
His glory is then received by the whole
soul, both the understanding and by the heart.
God made the world that he might communicate,
and the creature receive his glory, and that
it might be received both by the mind
and heart.
He that testifies his idea of God's glory,
get this now, he that testifies, and that's
what preaching is, and there are many who
get only half the truth here, to the
great hurt of their churches.
He that testifies of his idea of God's
glory doesn't glorify God so much as he
that testifies also his approbation of it and
his delight in it.
In other words, you give God half the
glory that is due when you only understand
and preach him accurately.
The other half comes from the exuberance of
your soul's delight in his glory, and therefore
preaching is expository exaltation.
You exalt over a text, that's what preaching
is, and if your heart is not pursuing
delight in God, you won't.
Consider that pursuit a contamination of preaching.
You will be a half preacher, and produce
a half people, and they will be sick,
and there are so many sick churches who
are preached to by half preachers because they
have been lured into this crazy Kantian stoic
ethic that says the pursuit of your own
joy contaminates and ruins virtue and worship, and
it is thoroughly unbiblical.
You insult text after text after text after
text to believe that ethic.
It blew me away in 1968 when I
first saw it, and I've been trying to
understand it ever since.
So here are my eight points, we'll get
as many as we can in.
Number one, this truth that you are to
pursue your joy to the end that God
would be glorified in your being satisfied in
him is taught by the fact that we
are commanded to pursue our joy.
Psalm 37.4, delight yourself in the Lord.
Psalm 100 verse 2, serve the Lord with
gladness.
This is not an option, this is a
command.
Tell me if you should not obey commands,
and should you pursue the obedience of commands,
and if one of the commands is rejoice
always, and again I say rejoice in the
Lord, to say you shouldn't pursue that joy
is wicked.
Second argument, the Bible threatens us if we
will not be happy in God.
Deuteronomy 28 verse 47, listen to this, because
you did not serve the Lord your God
with joyfulness and gladness of heart, therefore you
will serve your enemies whom the Lord will
send against you.
You consider joy an option?
Icing on the cake of Christianity?
Caboose at the end of the train?
Wrong!
If you do not serve the Lord your
God with gladness, you will serve your enemies.
He threatens terrible things, Jeremy Taylor said, if
we will not be happy in him.
Third argument, the nature of faith, the nature
of faith, what is faith?
Take two texts, Hebrews 11 verse 6, without
faith it is impossible to please God, for
he who comes to God must believe two
things, must believe that he is, and that
he is the what of those who seek
him.
Can't believe it says that.
And people deny that that's the nature of
faith.
Faith is coming to God for reward, period.
You cannot please God if you don't come
to him for reward.
And he is the reward.
I could defend that from the book of
Hebrews, because the new covenant coming to fulfillment
in this book describes, I will walk among
you, I will be your God, you will
be my people.
The essence of this reward is God with
us, at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.
The nature of faith is, let me bring
in the other text, John 6 verse 35,
I am the bread of life, Jesus says,
he who comes to me shall not hunger,
and he who believes in me will never
thirst.
What is believing in that verse?
It is a coming to Jesus so as
to be satisfied with him.
Or better, in the full picture of John's
theology, so as to be satisfied with all
that God the Father is for us in
Jesus.
So my third argument is, the nature of
faith commands that we pursue our joy in
God, as a means of honoring God.
Fourth argument, the nature of evil.
What is evil?
I wonder if we had different definitions of
evil offered in this congregation.
If the first definition that comes to your
mind is, acting contrary to the authority of
God, you're one kind of Christian.
And if you answer with Jeremiah, you're another
kind of Christian.
Jeremiah in chapter 2 verse 13 says, Be
appalled, O heavens, be shocked.
He's calling the whole universe to be appalled
at this now.
For my people have committed two evils.
What are they?
One, they have forsaken me, the fountain of
living water.
And what's the other one?
They have hewn out for themselves cisterns, broken
cisterns that can hold no water.
Be shocked, universe!
I offer the world a fountain, and even
their theologians rise up and say it's wrong
to pursue drinking in this fountain.
Even their ethicists say it's wrong to be
motivated by the desire to glut yourself on
this fountain.
Be shocked, be absolutely shocked, Dallas, that anybody
would ever teach that, or believe that, or
act on that.
I hold out a fountain of living water.
I do not mean for you to deny
your desire to be happy in that water,
and turn away to anything else.
I mean for you to come and fall
on your face, and drink from me, and
drink, and drink, and drink, and spend eternity
drinking, so that when you look up every
now and then, and you will, you'll look
up every now and then, you will say,
ah, and that's worship.
That's worship.
Worship is not bringing buckets of your labor
into the service on Sunday morning, and dumping
them into the fountain, as so many pastors
tell you you should.
The reason we don't have life in the
service is because you don't come here to
give, that's the problem.
You just come here to get.
Wrong!
That is not the problem.
The problem is they've gotten up and watched
television, and stuffed their face with the white
bread of secularism, so that they're not hungry
for God when they come.
And you have to spend the first half
of the sermon with an emetic.
It's called conviction.
Trying to get them to vomit out the
world, so that they're hungry for God, because
when they're hungry for God, and they drink
in God, and they taste God, and they're
satisfied with God, I tell you, he is
mightily glorified.
Fifth argument.
The nature of discipleship.
Let's just take Matthew 13, 44.
The kingdom of heaven is like a man
who found a treasure hidden in a field,
and covers it over.
And, now I'm going to leave out a
phrase, and he goes and he sells everything
he has, and buys that field.
What phrase did I leave out?
From joy he goes and buys, sells everything
that he has.
I tell you, it was seeing little Greek
phrases like apokaros, years ago at Fuller Seminary,
that just blew my mind away.
And I was reading Ethicist, and I was
saying, no, no, Jesus versus Ethicist.
I'll take Jesus any day.
So, here's a call to discipleship.
Leave everything for the sake of the kingdom.
What's your motive?
Apokaros.
I want joy, God.
You've made me to long for joy.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for not
telling me that I have to deny that
in order to get to you, but rather
presenting the kingdom, the king, Jesus to me,
so that from joy in him I can
count everything as rubbish.
That's the way Paul paraphrased it.
Philippians 3, for the surpassing value of knowing
Jesus my Lord.
And since I've brought up self-denial, let
that be the, what, sixth argument?
Where are we?
Number six.
What about self-denial?
You might be sitting there saying, whoa, this
is really weird.
This sounds like hedonism.
It's pure Christian hedonism.
It is pure, unadulterated Christian hedonism.
No apologies.
I define hedonism as a life devoted to
the pursuit of pleasure.
That's all I'm about.
In God.
What about self-denial?
Mark 8, 35.
Whoever would be my disciple and deny himself,
come after me, for he who seeks to
save his life will lose it.
So, Piper, you are commending suicide.
Say, read the rest of the verse.
I always say, read the rest of the
verse.
99% of the objections that are brought
up against good theology should be answered by,
read the rest of the verse.
Or at least chapter.
And the rest of the verse says, but
he who would save it must lose it.
Now, what's he appealing to?
Don't want to lose your life, do you?
No?
Well, lose it then.
You say, whoa, what does that mean?
John's version, the way Jesus said this in
John 12, 25, makes it a little clearer
what he means.
He who loves his life loses it.
But he who hates his life in this
world guards it for eternity.
So, what is Jesus arguing in these two
texts, 12, 25 in John, 8, 35 in
Mark?
What's he arguing?
He's arguing, you want your life?
You want it forever?
You want maximum joy?
Listen, I don't want 80 years of joy
and then hell.
No, thank you.
I don't want 99% pleasure in this
world and then hell.
I want 100% proof pleasure for 10
,000 ages of ages and anything less you
offer me.
I'm saying, no, thank you.
That's all my hedonism means.
Because Jesus is appealing to that.
Hate your life, students.
Go to the hard places.
Lay down your life for your congregations so
that you will keep it forever.
We can do this.
We can do this in three minutes, I
think.
Seventh, and it's right, we're on the brink
of it here.
Where does love come from?
Sounds like you're telling us to be so,
so pursuant of our own pleasure, you can't
possibly commend people to be loving people and
talk to them like that because it says
in 1 Corinthians 13, 5, love seeks not
its own.
Love seeks not its own.
Well, there's no time to exegete that text,
but I think it means love seeks not
its own immediate gratification, its own material pleasure,
its own earthly enhancement, but oh, love seeks
its own eternal joy big time.
And there'll be a couple of texts that'll
prove it.
Number one, Acts 20, 35.
Checked it out in the Greek again this
morning just to see how this participle in
the English version works.
Paul is saying farewell to the Ephesian elders
and he says now, it is necessary.
You've got this Greek day construction and then
he's got a couple of infinities that follow
that.
It's necessary as you serve the weak to
remember the words of the Lord, how he
said, it is more blessed to give than
receive.
Now, mark this.
When I was doing my doctoral dissertation in
Munich on Love Your Enemies and working for
month after month on the motivation of love,
scholars, I fell out of love with scholarship
in Munich, Germany and fell in love with
the Bible.
Isn't that strange?
My dad was worried, oh, my son's going
to Fuller in Munich and he's going to
lose his faith.
You know, God is so good because I
could have.
A lot of people do.
God is so good.
God did this.
God opened the word to simply say if
it says in the word, it's more blessed
to give than to receive.
Don't you let any New Testament scholar or
any big highfalutin ethicist with lots of degrees
after his name tell you that to do
something for the blessedness there is in it
contaminates the love and turns it into selfishness
and not love.
And here's the key word.
It's the word remembering.
Paul said when you serve toiling with your
own hands the weak, remember the words of
the Lord how he said it is more
blessed to give than to receive.
Now the ethicists have to say forgetting what
he said because the blessedness will contaminate the
love as a motive if you remember it.
I tell you, do your exegesis carefully here
because if Paul says keep the blessedness in
your mind as you go to the hospital
wishing you were at home playing with your
kids and you're on your way to the
hospital at a late night and you're tired
and you need rest and they haven't had
you for a few nights and you're wondering
what should motivate you here and you try
to deny your desire for joy you will
contaminate virtue but if you say Jesus has
said I will remember it Jesus said there's
more blessedness in this and as you walk
in that room and you take that dear
lady by the hand who's just had the
cardiac arrest and you look into her eyes
and she opens her eyes and she says
oh pastor this is what all old ladies
say they're so deferential she says oh pastor
you didn't need to come you're so busy
that's what they all say young people don't
say that young people say it's about time
but she says oh pastor you're so busy
you didn't have to do this now if
I said I know I didn't have to
and I didn't want to but it's my
duty and I'm here if I said that
she'd be hurt but if I say I
know and it's late but you know what
as I was driving here I was praying
and the Lord reminded me of the blessing
I'm going to get here and as I
look into your eyes there's no place I'd
rather be than here giving you a word
of encouragement and receiving back echoes of appreciation
and love and faith from you and then
when you tell her I'm here because I
delight to be here she feels honored love
is not contaminated by the pursuit of joy
in love by the pursuit of joy in
love and ultimately in the God of love
okay I'm two minutes over the time I
said I had to stop so I'm done
and I will end with this final word
the goal of all things is to glorify
God that is to show Him to be
magnificent in your life whether by death or
by life and the way to do that
is to be maximally satisfied in Him and
to pursue that satisfaction in everything you do
let's pray Father I pray now that You
would take this and make it a seed
of biblical reflection that You'd refine it in
any way it needs to be refined and
that You would magnify Yourself in the lives
of these men and women I pray through
Christ Amen