The following message is by Pastor John Piper.
More information from Desiring God Ministries is available
at www.desiringgod.org.
The authority for Pastor John's remarks come from
the scriptures today, Galatians chapter 6, 11 through
18.
See with what large letters I am writing
to you with my own hand.
And those who desire to make a good
showing in the flesh try to compel you
to be circumcised, simply that they may not
be persecuted for the cross of Christ.
For those who are circumcised do not even
keep the law themselves, but they desire to
have you circumcised that they may boast in
your flesh.
But may it never be that I should
boast except in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, through which the world has been
crucified to me and I to the world.
For neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but
a new creation.
And those who will walk by this rule,
peace and mercy be upon them and upon
the Israel of God.
From now on, let no one cause trouble
for me, for I bear on my body
the brand marks of Jesus.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be
with your spirit, brethren.
Amen.
Let's pray together.
There isn't anything greater in all the world,
Lord.
No event has ever happened more significant than
the death of the Son of God on
the cross of Golgotha, Calvary.
And so as I undertake to speak about
it and exult in it, would you grab
me your help so that there's some correspondence,
Lord, between what I say and the weight
of the truth.
And I pray for those in our midst
here who love the cross, that they would
see it and love it more.
And I pray for those who feel indifferent
toward the cross right now, that they would
be awakened to the infinite value of what
happened there and what significance it has in
their lives above all other things.
And so I pray that people would come
to Christ, see him and be drawn into
fellowship with him and make their lives one
long tribute to the cross.
In his great holy name, I pray.
Amen.
So here we are at the third message
in the series, education for exultation.
And today, exultation in the cross.
There's a very strange sound to it.
Would have been an unthinkable sound 2000 years
ago in Rome.
Education for exultation in the electric chair.
Exultation in the lethal injection.
It's all exult in the gas chamber.
Yay.
Exultation in the lynching rope.
It's all exult in lynching.
It's a funny sound to it.
And it would have been worse than that
because the cross.
In the first century was preserved for the
dregs of the criminals and was designed to
hurt as much as it could hurt for
as long as it could hurt.
Whereas all those others are relatively short by
comparison and easy.
So let's exult in the lynching of the
son of God.
Let's exult in the, in the killing of
Christ.
Strange religion.
We have strange religion, but there it is
in verse 14.
You see it.
This doesn't come out of my series.
This comes out of the text.
Verse 14, may it never be that I
should boast except in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
And that word boast, if you think back
to our last messages on Romans, three times
that word occurred in Romans five, one to
11, we will exult.
That's the word exult in the hope of
the glory of God.
Verse two, not only that we will exult
in tribulations because they were hope that's verse
three, verse 11.
We will not only that, but exult in
God.
So we're to exult.
So when we talk about education for exultation
in the cross, that comes straight out of
verse 14, our business at Bethlehem, the business
of Christians is to exult in boast in
rejoice in delight in praise, magnify display.
The electric chair, the lynching Jesus.
It's very, very frightening to have a religion
like that.
May it never be that I would boast
except in the cross lynching of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
No boasting anywhere but in him.
So I thought, all right, I've got to
preach this series of messages on education for
exultation.
And I see that there's exultation here in
the cross.
So I will make my third message after
exulting in God last week, exulting in Christ
this week, exulting now in the cross, because
surely the cross and our exultation in it
is one essential component to this vision of
why we exist as a church.
And when I said it like that and
read the text, it didn't work, wouldn't fit.
Why?
Because if I say, all right, alongside God,
alongside Christ next week, alongside faith, then alongside
training and education, then alongside money and alongside
building and alongside whatever city missions alongside all
those, you got this piece exulting in the
cross.
It won't work because this text says, may
it never be that I would boast in
anything else besides the cross.
So you can't preach the sermon that way.
You can't say alongside God, alongside Christ, alongside
faith, alongside missions, alongside money, alongside building alongside
whatever.
This is a piece.
It's not a piece.
There is nothing else, it says, to be
boasted in.
But this nothing else to be exulted in.
But this.
So I had to say, OK, I had
an idea in my head when I chose
that title weeks ago.
But now I've got a text in front
of me and it doesn't work.
So I did the best I could to
to now try to figure out what do
you mean?
What do you mean you only exult in
or boast in the cross of our Lord
Jesus?
Because you said in Romans five, verse two,
I exult in the hope of the glory
of God.
You said in verse three, I exult in
tribulations.
You said in verse 11, I exult in
God.
You said in second Corinthians chapter 12, I
exult in my weaknesses.
It looks like there are other things you
exult in besides the cross.
What do you mean?
You only exult in the cross.
And here's my answer.
He means that for Christians, all the boasting
we do in anything and everything else must
be a boasting in the cross.
Any boasting you do, choose what you will.
Any exulting that you do must be a
boasting in or exulting in the cross.
Measure the rightness of all your boasting in
other things by whether the boasting in those
other things is a boasting in the cross.
And if it isn't wrong, it's worldly, it's
idolatrous.
Now, why is that?
Why is it that a boasting in God
or a boasting in tribulations or a boasting
in hope or a boasting in weaknesses, or
you continue the list?
Why is it that all of those must
be, if they're to be done rightly, a
boasting in the cross?
And here's my answer to that.
I'm a sinner and deserve, in my sin,
apart from Christ, nothing but pain, nothing ultimately
but hell for my sin.
Therefore, everything good that comes into my life
and everything bad and painful that comes into
my life that God then takes and turns
for my good, I don't deserve.
But rather, it comes from sheer mercy and
grace bought by one thing, the blood of
Jesus for me.
Therefore, everything good that comes into my life
and everything bad that comes into my life,
which God then takes and turns for good,
is owing to the cross.
And therefore, if I am to exalt in
that good thing because of how good it
feels or the bad thing because of what
good it will do for me, I should
at that moment, above all things, be boasting
in the cross by which it was purchased
for me.
Now, that's the sermon in a nutshell.
And I talked with one young woman, and
she may have stayed again, and you're so
welcome if you did, for this service who
said to me, I don't feel that undeserving
of the good things in my life.
And I just guess that that's where a
lot of you are right now.
This message will not make sense to you.
What I'm about to say and what I'm
saying about the cross and its value and
the intensity of its preciousness won't go home
to you if you feel pretty good about
yourself.
I deserve to breathe.
I deserve to go to school.
I deserve to have clothes.
I deserve to have a car.
I deserve to have a computer.
I deserve, I deserve, I deserve, I deserve.
You don't deserve anything but hell.
Now, if you don't believe that, the rest
of my message would just not make sense.
And so I'm praying in my heart that
sin will land on us this morning so
that we will sweetly cherish the cross, because
the cross is foolishness and stumbling block for
people who don't feel desperate, who feel pretty
good, who feel like they deserve the job
they have, deserve the health they have, deserve,
deserve, deserve.
Maybe there's some other people that need the
gospel, but I'm making it.
And if you're there, would you just open
your eyes?
Would you just open your eyes?
I said to her, you know, to feel
this, you have to see how high God
is in His worth and His holiness and
His beauty and His purity and His deserving,
infinite praise, infinite obedience, infinite allegiance, infinitely intense
love.
And we give Him what?
Little bit every now and then during the
day we think of it.
And we don't feel bad about it because
we don't see Him.
We don't see how magnificent He is and
what He deserves.
And so the gap, this infinite gap between
God and me, I don't see that.
I don't feel that.
And so all this talk now that you're
about to talk about the cross being that
which you exalt in for every blessing so
that you're exalting and boasting and everything is
a boasting in the cross that bought it
for you.
I don't get it.
Now that wasn't in the first service, close
parenthesis, just because it hit me like a
ton of bricks when she said that.
I don't feel that undeserving.
Please feel undeserving.
You are undeserving.
Get connected with reality.
You deserve nothing from God, but hell because
He's so great and you have sinned against
Him by ignoring Him or neglecting Him or
defying Him so consistently in your life.
You've come nowhere near the bottom of the
line that He deserves from you and He
loves you.
You believe that?
So the reason I say that all boasting
and all exalting in anything should be a
boasting in Christ and the cross is because
if Christ had not died for me to
cover my sin and to be a righteousness
on my behalf, all I would get from
God is judgment.
And now because He's covered my sin, has
been a righteousness for me, I get wave
upon wave upon wave of grace so that
every time I taste some grace, it's a
cross issue.
That's not hard, six-year-olds can get
this.
If the cross purchased for me all the
benefits I receive as an undeserving sinner, every
benefit in which I exalt is an exaltation
in the cross or I'm a blasphemer.
That's not hard to understand and it's the
essence of the gospel.
He died to purchase for me everything good
and everything painful that will be turned for
my good.
Illustration from life.
We totaled our car this week and nobody
got hurt.
Well, where did that come from?
Nobody got hurt.
We deserve to be hurt.
I deserve every disease I have, every sore
throat I have, every car accident I have,
I deserve.
Where did that safety come from?
Where did that rescue come from?
Came from grace, sheer undeserved providential watch care
of a God who had every right to
kill.
And who bought that for us this week?
Who bought that?
That come from nowhere?
Did that cost nothing?
Did that mercy cost nothing?
So that a just and holy God who
has every right to punish me, lavishes me
with safety.
Did that cost nothing?
It cost him his son.
And therefore, safety in the totaling of car
results in boasting in the cross or it's
an illegitimate boasting.
Let's take it just a little further.
Call the insurance company and looks pretty bad.
Would you get an adjuster out there as
soon as you can?
Adjuster calls and says in his technical language,
the cost to repair your car exceeds the
value of your car.
I said, that's what I thought.
So he gave me a check for $2
,800.
And David Livingston has a friend in Iowa
who sells cars.
Called him up, said, well, I got these
two cars, just got them in yesterday.
92 Lumina and another one.
My wife drove to Iowa with a check
yesterday and bought a new car, drove it
home in snow and got home safely.
Now here we are on Sunday and we
totaled our car.
We got a check.
We bought a car and I'm preaching.
It's like it never happened.
What's that called?
Mercy.
Sheer grace.
Takes my breath away.
I tremble at that kind of ease of
life.
That check for $2,800 was bought by
Jesus blood because I deserve to be in
hell instead of receiving a state farm check.
And the only reason I'm not in hell
is because Christ died for me.
To purchase for me eternal life and every
blessing that lands on me, including a crushed
car.
And had my son died, I'd be preaching
this sermon.
Which is why, and this was the second
thing I had to share with this young
woman, so I'll stick in another parenthesis here.
I have added in this manuscript here, and
I mean to add wherever I think of
it, not only every good thing that comes
into my life, but I add and every
bad thing that God turns for my good.
Have you been hearing me say that?
Raise your hand if you've heard me say
that.
Okay, because if you don't hear that, you're
going to get a real naive view of
the Christian life.
I don't believe that.
I believe that God does allow his children
to suffer big time, big time this week.
And that that too was bought by the
blood of Jesus in its redeeming, sanctifying, purifying,
sanctifying effects over my life.
So don't, please don't miss that.
I can preach this sermon when the insurance
check comes and when the funeral happens, I
can do it.
I will do it.
I have done it for many of you
and I will do it for my own
children if I have to.
So as I see this text, I boast
only in the cross means I boast when
I boast over anything else.
Only at that moment in the cross, because
I would not have it without the cross
so that all my boasting, whether it's in
good things that come to me or hard
things that come to me is a boasting
in the cross.
Now, here's my question.
How do you get to be a person
who does that?
And one simple answer that relates to this
vision of education for exaltation is that you
have to know these things.
I wonder how you're doing in this cross
work.
Dad's how you're doing at home is do
you see how pervasive the cross is in
life?
Nothing good comes to us, but what was
bought by the cross so that all gratitude
and all exaltation and all boasting is boasting
in the cross.
So let our homes be pervaded by cross
of Christ and in our Sunday school classes
pervaded by cross of Christ and in our
sermons pervaded by cross of Christ and in
all your witnessing pervaded by the cross of
Christ education for exaltation in the cross must
be education about the cross.
So if you wonder what is this project
all about?
One way to say it would be educational
for exaltation means education about Jesus Christ crucified
so that we would know him and what
happened to us in him so that we
would now exalt in the cross as we
ought.
These things don't come out of nowhere.
You don't live that way just because you
were born.
If you're going to be a cross centered
person, a person who exalts only in the
cross all day long in everything you boast
in, you got to be taught this.
So my job is to do it right
now.
I'm doing it.
And your job is to learn it, live
it, and then do it for somebody else.
That's what it's about.
I'm teaching you how to understand what happened
to you.
Now let me clarify that.
This is not a parenthesis.
I know where I'm going here.
Where, from where do you exalt in the
cross?
That's an odd question, but I mean it.
From where, where are you located when you
exalt in the cross?
Now the answer to that is in the
second half of verse 14.
May it never be that I would boast
except in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ through which the world has been crucified
to me and I have been crucified to
the world.
Boasting in the cross happens only one place,
on the cross.
If you're not on the cross, you can't
boast in the cross.
By the cross, it says, I was crucified
to the world.
And you may be sitting there saying, I
feel alive.
I think I'm alive.
I think I'm sitting here.
Yes, I feel that.
So what do you mean?
I've been crucified.
I'm dead.
Let's go to chapter 2 verse 20 to
get the answer of that.
Just flip back a page maybe in your
Bible to chapter 2 verse 20.
I have been crucified with Christ, Paul says,
and it is no longer I who live,
but Christ who lives in me.
And the life which I now live in
the flesh, I live by faith in the
Son of God who loved me and gave
himself for me.
So here's what that says.
When Christ died, all those who are his
died.
When Christ died, everybody who was to belong
to him died.
And now if you say, well, how do
I get connected to that?
Is it kind of automatic or there's something
I need to do or what?
There's a key word in this text.
Let's read it again.
I have been crucified with Christ, so I'm
dead.
I'm dead.
And it is no longer I who live.
I'm dead.
Christ lives in me.
His death was my death.
His life becomes my life.
Keep reading.
And the life which I now live.
Oh, I'm alive.
I'm alive.
Well, which is it?
I'm crucified.
And now he says, and the life which
I now live in the flesh.
Yes, there is skin there.
I do feel it.
I'm living in the flesh.
I'm alive.
I have a body.
My heart's beating.
I have a brain.
The life which I now live in the
flesh.
And here comes the key phrase.
I live by faith in the son of
God who loved me and gave himself for
me.
So, yes, there's something you must do.
And that death, which he died for his
own takes effect through faith.
So here's the way to think about it.
You're an unbeliever.
God moves in your life, draws you to
Christ, displays the glory of the son in
the cross, and you're drawn out to say
yes to Jesus.
You put your faith in him at that
moment.
The Holy Spirit, by your faith, unites you
to the son of God unites you.
There is some profound union.
And when that union happens, all that he
did for you becomes yours and his death
that he died becomes your death.
So now you can say I was crucified
with Christ, meaning my faith unites me to
Christ so that what happened to him really
did happen to me.
It's counted as mine.
His resurrection is counted to mine.
His righteousness is counted as mine.
And that's the gospel.
That's good news for all you undeserving people
in this room, which is all of us.
The link is faith.
But we really are the old.
Well, who died?
Who's dead anyway?
I mean, if I'm dead and I'm alive,
who's dead and who's alive?
And one way to say it would be
the old old rebellious, unbelieving you is dead,
died with Christ and the new you.
It's called in verse 15.
Is it not a new creation, a new
creation?
The new you is alive.
Well, who's this new you?
This new you is what verse 14 of
chapter six is describing the believing you.
But let's just let verse 14 have its
say one more time.
Back to chapter six.
Verse 14 is describing the new you that's
alive.
May it never be that I should boast.
You got a new way of boasting.
That's the new you.
That I should boast except in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the
world was crucified to me and I to
the world.
Now let's just.
As we close, unpack that for just a
moment.
I was crucified to the world.
The world was crucified to me.
So I'm a corpse to the world.
The world is a corpse to me.
What does that mean?
It means that the overpowering lure of the
world to conquer me and make me sin
is broken because the back of the world
was broken on the cross when Jesus died
my death.
And my subjective bondage to that world has
died and I'm freed from that overpowering lure
of the world to triumph in my life.
I'm a new creation and the new creation
has a new boast.
I will not boast in anything now, in
anything but the cross.
But you may say, yes, you do.
Yes, you do.
The insurance check.
You smile.
We could tell you were happy the way
you told that story.
You liked it.
You liked the check and you like this
new car that you have, this 92 Chevy
Lumina.
I didn't know there was such a car
until Wednesday.
Now there is one sitting somewhere, I hope
far away from the church.
So you like the world.
What do you mean the world is dead
to you?
You're dead to the world.
Sounds like hypocrisy.
Looks like hypocrisy.
Let's just talk about the world is dead
and you're dead to the world.
And I think, I think state farm checks
are world and they are.
So am I a hypocrite?
Is there no point in preaching this sermon?
There's no such thing as death to the
world and the world death to us.
What is this?
Well, here's the way I understand what Paul
means because Paul taught us in several places
not to be ungrateful for food and marriage
and other things of the world, but to
make them an occasion of Thanksgiving.
First Timothy 4.2. That's like the check
from the insurance company, like breakfast this morning.
Did you enjoy breakfast?
Is that idolatry?
Is that world?
Here's my effort.
Being dead to the world doesn't mean going
out of the world and it doesn't mean
not feeling the world, feeling the pain when
the world deals you a blow and feeling
the pleasure when the world deals you a
blessing.
It doesn't mean you have no feeling anymore.
You get one day and kissed another day.
I don't feel anything.
I'm a stone.
I'm a stoic.
I was the way the stoics were.
They don't feel anything.
It's not Christianity.
Not feeling anything in the world.
Well, what is it then?
How, how do you, what do you mean
when you say the world has died to
you and you've died to the world?
If in fact you're happy, you got that
check from state farm.
Here's what I mean.
What I think it means.
It means that every legitimate pleasure in the
world becomes a blood bought evidence of Calvary
love and an occasion of boasting in the
cross.
I'll say it again.
Every legitimate pleasure in the world becomes for
the person who's died to the world becomes
an evidence of blood bought Calvary love or
a blood bought evidence of Calvary love and
an occasion for boasting in the cross.
So that when the blessing of an insurance
payment comes, or if you didn't have insurance
and you've got a deal with the loss
and the blessings that God will bring through
the loss, whichever way it goes in your
life, when the blessing comes either positively or
negatively through that circumstance, do you at that
moment experience the new creation of boasting in
God and Christ and the cross as that
which provided it so that every single thing
in life becomes an act of worship towards
Christ crucified.
Let me change the image one last time
as we close.
I picture in my mind every good and
perfect gift that comes, whether it's hard or
whether it's easy as a beam of light
shining on me.
And I'm not thinking of it as coming
down now as coming through history.
And I trace the beam, I get on
the beam as it were, and I let
my eyes run down the beam.
Where's this beam coming from?
Where's the light?
Where's the fire?
And I trace it all the way back
until it gets to the cross where it
was bought for me at the cost of
the life of the son of God to
have died to the world means that when
you see a beam of light in the
world, you let your eyes run back to
the source and give the source glory and
credit to be worldly and to be alive
in the world is to look at the
beam and to love the beam alone.
The beam loses its worldliness when you trace
it back in all purity to its source
in the cross of Jesus Christ.
It retains its worldliness if you look at
it alone and don't give Jesus the credit
for it and exalt the cross because of
it.
And that's the difference between a dead man
and a living man in Christ.
So, oh God, may education for exaltation mean
at Bethlehem that all of our planning and
all of our hope filled meetings and all
of our praying and all of our bricks
and all of our dollars and all of
our teaching and all of our displaying of
these things be occasions even in the process
of education for exaltation, an occasion for exalting
the cross, exalting in the cross of Jesus
Christ.
All I once held dear and built my
life upon, all this world reveres and wars
to own, all I once thought gain I
have counted loss, spent and worthless now compared
to this.
Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you, there is no
greater thing.
You're my all, you're the best, you're my
joy, my righteousness, and I love you, Lord.
I love you, Christ crucified for me.
I'll be here at the front and elders
and other prayer team members will be.
If you want to pray about anything at
all in your life, linger and we'll pray
with you.
Now the Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon
you and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you
and give you peace.
And all the people said, amen.
You're dismissed.
Thank you for listening to this message by
John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist
Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Feel free to make copies of this message
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