The following message is by Pastor John Piper.
More information from Desiring God is available at
www.DesiringGod.org You'll notice that on the
next page in your worship folder is a
piece of music called Gloria by John Rutter,
which the choir is going to sing in
about ten minutes.
My job right now is to lay before
you three biblically based reasons for why your
heart should leap up in praise to God
when they sing, and why when you're given
an occasion to sing just before and after
they sing, you should do it with all
your might and all your mind and all
your heart.
To do that, I want to open before
you a text from the book of Acts.
It happens to be the very next text.
And I invite you to turn to Acts
chapter 3.
If you have a Bible or want to
reach for one, in the pew pocket in
front of you, and turn to Acts chapter
3, verses 17 to 21.
My desire is that your mind might not
click off when the music begins, but rather
that it might be full of matter, biblical,
God-exalting, Christ-saturated matter.
Truth.
And so I want to give you three
truths, and then point to the place in
the text where they come from, and hope
that they'll be lodged in your mind, seeping
down into your heart, releasing praise for the
rest of this service when I'm done.
Reason number one.
You ought to say glory to God in
the highest with all your might, because God
fulfills his good purposes in spite of, and
even through, the opposition of ignorant people.
Verse 17 and 18.
He has just indicted the listeners with killing
Jesus, and now he says, Now therefore, brethren,
I know that you acted in ignorance, as
did also your rulers.
But what God foretold by the mouth of
all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer,
he thus fulfilled.
Notice that word, thus.
How?
He thus fulfilled, namely, through the ignorance of
rebellious people.
The highlight of the glory of God in
those two verses is that the people who
were handing Jesus over, mocking him, scourging him,
nailing him, killing him, were not in sync
with God.
They weren't intentionally obeying God and blessing the
human race.
They were against Jesus and against God.
But the glory is that it says God
was all the while fulfilling what had been
prophesied about the suffering of the Messiah precisely
in spite of and through the ignorance of
these people.
Now, this is a glorious thought because as
I look around America today, my heart wants
to sink again and again and again at
the godlessness of our land.
God is banished from school.
He's banished from the marketplace.
He's banished from educational institutions at the higher
levels.
He's banished from the media.
He's gone.
There is intense rebellion and rage against God
today, seething underneath the relativism and materialism of
America.
And I turn and say, how on earth
could God ever bring a glorious, good, hopeful
purpose to pass when there's so much opposition,
so much ignorance?
And I come back to this verse and
I say, it's no worse than the killing
of Jesus.
And if God was fulfilling everything He promised
and planned precisely through the opposition of ignorant
people when they killed Jesus, He can fulfill
His purpose today no matter what kind of
opposition and ignorance anybody has.
And therefore, let us rejoice and take heart.
God reigns.
Number two.
God wipes away all the sins of people
who repent and turn to Jesus.
Verse 19.
Repent, therefore, and turn again that your sins
may be blotted out.
That is why, by the way, he fulfilled
all those promises about the suffering of the
Messiah so that that suffering could become our
suffering, bear our sin, take our guilt, so
that the very next verse could say, everybody
and anybody in this room who turns to
God and trusts in Jesus, that's what repentance
is, turning from sin, focusing on God, receiving
the gift of salvation through the cross, and
honoring Jesus Christ with your life, if a
person will turn to God and Jesus, every
evil they have ever done or ever will
do will be wiped away.
That word, wipe away, is a real precious
and beautiful word in the New Testament.
It's used, for example, in Revelation 21, where
it says God will wipe away every tear
from their eyes.
So God is in the business of wiping
away sin to prepare people for the wiping
away of tears in the age to come.
And that leads us to the third reason
that we should exalt with the choir.
God will one day establish the kingdom of
Jesus Christ on this earth.
God will one day establish the kingdom of
Christ on this earth.
I want to read the second half of
verse 19 through verse 21.
You look for three features of this glorious
coming kingdom that would give your heart hope.
He has said, repent that your sins might
be blotted out.
Now he continues, that times of refreshing might
come from the presence of the Lord and
that God may send the Christ appointed for
you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the
time for establishing all that God spoke by
the mouth of his holy prophets from of
old.
Let me translate more literally that last verse,
that last phrase.
Whom heaven must receive until the times for
the restoration of all things.
That's the literal rendering.
The restoration of all things.
Now, let me tell you what the three
things are about the coming kingdom that is
going to happen as surely as God is
God, no matter what opposition or ignorance there
is.
That kingdom will be, first of all, a
kingdom of refreshment, everlasting refreshment.
We need refreshing in this life again and
again.
We need to lay our heads down and
go unconscious for seven, eight hours a night
or we get real grabby and real depressed.
In the age to come, it may be
that we'll sleep, I don't know, but whether
we wake or sleep, whether there's the rhythm
like that or not, it's going to be
perfect refreshment every time you need it.
We will mount up with wings like eagles.
We will run and not grow weary.
We will walk and not think perfectly.
The second characteristic of this kingdom is that
Jesus is going to be there as the
king.
He will send the Christ appointed for you,
Jesus, and he will establish his kingdom on
the earth and erect his throne and rule
his kingdom.
And I believe that my own refreshment and
yours will come from looking into the face
of Jesus again and again and again and
again.
And the third characteristic of this kingdom is
that it will mean a restoration of all
things.
As you look at the world today, they
are not what they should be.
And we often want to ask, what is
God up to?
Where is God in a world with so
much agony and so much tragedy and so
much futility and so much frustration and so
much immorality and so much corruption?
Where is God?
And the answer is he reigns and he's
coming.
And when he comes, it will all be
restored to Eden.
And I believe even better than Eden.
No more guilt, no more pain, no more
suffering, no more frustration, no more corruption, no
more decay, no more futility.
It will be as it was in the
beginning before the fall, only better with no
possibility for the fall.
As I draw this to a close, let
me remind you again that either through what
I've said or through what you hear from
the musicians now, let God do something to
you.
Don't resist God.
Let God speak and minister to your need.
Everybody in this room has a different need
right now, many different needs.
And at the end of the service, we
are going to have some prayer teams who
will just make themselves available here at the
front.
They have little badges on.
And it could be a little teeny thing.
And it could be a big, big thing.
And God may just touch you and say,
why don't you go up there and when
we're all done and dismissed, just ask one
of those teams to pray with you.
Tell them what it was.
Let them pray for a minute or two.
And you may go out of here healed,
well, restored, stronger.
I want you to know that they're here
and they're full of eagerness.
I was praying with them before the service,
in fact, to pray with you.
Let me sum it up.
There are three reasons now that we should
sing with all our might.
As you can see here, we're going to
sing, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and then
we'll go into the Gloria.
Three reasons why your heart should just leap
up in this hymn, why you should listen
with all your might to what they sing.
Namely, God fulfills his hope-giving promises in
spite of and even through the opposition of
ignorant people.
Number two, God wipes away all the sins
of people who repent and nobody needs to
go out of this room carrying sin in
your life.
God, in the twinkling of an eye, takes
it away when we turn to him.
And third, he will establish the kingdom of
Christ on this earth and it will be
a kingdom of refreshment and the presence of
the Lord and a restored creation where there
is no futility, no frustration, no sickness, no
pain, no tears, no sadness anymore.
So let's lift our voices and sing now
and welcome the Gloria by John Rutter.
Thank you for listening to this message by
John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist
Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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